WHY OUR POLITICAL PROBLEMS WON'T BE SOLVED BY POLITICS
Article by LiveReal Agents Thomas, Grace, and Kevin
Many of our political problems won’t be solved with politics.
There’s a saying often attributed to Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
We can apply this to our current political situation in America, 2024.
Many problems we’re now up against can’t be solved by political routes alone.
We can get ourselves in trouble when we try to solve problems by working “on the wrong level.”
Here's a bad illustration of "working on the wrong level."
It can be like a guy who can’t figure out a problem with his car.
He’s washed it, waxed it, and spit-polished every square inch of the car, dozens of times. Each time, he gets more frustrated. He cries, “I keep polishing and polishing, but the darn thing still won’t run!”
“Have you checked the engine?” a friend asks.
He answers, “Engine?”
Terrible dad joke aside, the basic point stands: sometimes we try to solve problems “on the wrong level.” And when this is the case, we’ll never solve the problem with that approach, no matter how hard we work. We wouldn’t fix a toothache by buying a new pair of shoes, or fix a helicopter engine by sending it positive thoughts, or solve a problem of untied tennis shoes with prayer.
Call it a “category error.”
Some problems we’re facing today don’t have political solutions.
To be clear: none of this should discourage anyone from engaging fully in the political process. Any political problem that can be solved politically, should be solved politically. And plenty of problems can and should be solved by politics, to the fullest extent possible.
But some problems will never be solved by politics.
This raises a new question.
What are the “other levels”?
What lies “above” or “below” politics?
There are at least four answers here, along with one highly undesirable alternative.
The first has become so popular it's almost a cliché: “Politics is downstream from culture.”
The basic insight that culture determines politics often rings true intuitively. Culture is "upstream," or closer to the original source, or higher up on the chain of causation, than politics. If half of a citizenry consists of vegetarians and the other half of cannibals, even the most perfect democratic structure won’t solve the problem. Broad cultural harmony, on the other hand, prevents certain political disagreements from ever arising.
But what leads to “cultural harmony”?
That would be the second level: spirituality.
Speculations on the nature of Ultimate Reality might seem like a far cry from street-level, bare-knuckle politics.
But theologian Richard John Neuhaus took the above to its next level: “Culture is the root of politics, and religion is the root of culture.”
As individuals, we’re defined by our ultimate loyalties. We give our allegiance in the form how we spend our limited time, energy, and attention. This “giving” is impossible to avoid. Even if we ignore the matter entirely or even deliberately try to avoid the “Who or what am I giving my ultimate allegiance to?” at every turn, we still wind up giving our allegiance to “avoiding giving our allegiance.” (Another way to say it: everyone is religious, including atheists.)
Those allegiances ultimately stem from our answers to the “Big Questions” of life, or the existential riddles life throws at us: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? How should I live? What’s it all about? – and so on.
Whether they’re verbally articulated or not, those Answers form a foundation, a bedrock, that everything else is based on.
All subsequent beliefs follow, like a caboose on a train.
However, a big step lies between these initial premises and the resulting “culture” or day-to-day lifestyle.
That would involve the third level: philosophy.
Our answers to ultimate questions serve as starting points for everything we think, feel, and do. Our theologies eventually become our to-do lists. Connecting the two is our personal life philosophy, which works out the logic of our initial premises in a kind of cause-and-effect chain.
Even the most powerful emperor in the world is a servant of his ideas. A Napolean, Stalin, or Caesar carries out the half-conscious intuitions (or spiritual premises) he holds somewhere between his ears and ribs. In this sense, every ruler is a servant.
This “chain of causation” is traceable. For example, a ruler acts according to a “political philosophy.” What is that political philosophy based on? Ethics (or “How should we act?”). And “ethics” is based prior ideas about human nature (“human anthropology,” psychology, or “Who or what are we?”). But what determines human nature? “What we are” is ultimately a question of metaphysics. Metaphysics asks “What is the universe?” – and we are part of the universe.
So, political philosophy is downstream from ethics, which is downstream from human nature, which is downstream from metaphysics.
John Adams implicitly noted this chain of causation when he said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Along these lines, a change in the morality and religion of the “people” (that would be us) could lead to the document becoming “inadequate.”
All to say, politics, culture, spirituality, and philosophy are intimately connected. Yet they can all deteriorate together if they aren’t held in check by a fourth area.
We could describe that fourth level as “psychology” – shorthand for our level of sanity or psychological health.
Imagine a democracy where all citizens are narcissists or sociopaths. They would elect leaders who best represent their narcissism or sociopathy. Again, a democratic political structure, by itself, wouldn’t guarantee a functioning society.
Mere spirituality wouldn’t hold things in check, either. “Spirituality” without sanity can become zealotry or fanaticism.
Both fascism and communism can both be understood as substitute religions, or dysfunctional life philosophies built on premises that are based around an atheistic core. Since everyone is religious in certain ways, an atheistic core creates a vacuum that becomes filled by worship of and devotion to something or someone else. That could mean another abstract entity (like “Angkar” in communist Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge), individual politicians like Mao, Mussolini, or Kim Jong Un, or “the State” in general, an abstract principle (“purity” or “justice”), or a “good cause.” Each “answer” along these lines “solves” the problem of meaning in life, even if the “answers” offered are toxic.
Almost any political system can work if everyone involved was fundamentally sane and principled, and nearly any political system will collapse if they aren’t. The problem isn't merely that one person or committee has authority over another. Good monarchs are often beloved, and even flawlessly structured republics can lead to chaos if the citizens are out of touch with reality. (Asking “What is reality?” leads us again back to philosophy and spirituality.)
But what happens when there’s a total breakdown? What happens to politics when culture, spirituality, philosophy, and psychology deteriorate?
Here, we arrive at a fifth level – the undesirable alternative.
Politics can be described as the art and science of resolving disagreements. But when politics fail, disagreements get “solved” by violence.
On the verbal level, a disagreement can deteriorate into an “argument.” An escalating argument that remains unresolved on the verbal level eventually devolves to the physical level. Dysfunction at spiritual, mental, and emotional levels eventually leads to breakdown at the physical level. Inner conflicts spill over into outer conflicts.
Obviously, the majority of Americans detest the idea of political violence. Yet an increasing number of Americans refuse to speak to those they disagree with. Media figures often act more like fight promoters than mediators, and stoke drama instead of seeking solutions. But we should all clearly understand where this path can lead.
All of this leaves us with a challenge.
Trying to solve cultural problems solely with politics won’t work.
Trying to impose purely political solutions on problems that are rooted in other levels won’t work, either. Prohibition, to name one example, tried to impose a behavioral problem with a purely political solution. The result was the Gangster Era.
The challenge, then, lies not only in working to solve political problems politically, but also in working “further upstream,” closer to the source of what gives rise many political problems – the other realms of culture, spirituality, philosophy, and psychology.
In short, we don’t just need the next election to go well. We also need to get smarter, stronger, deeper, and saner. The arenas of battle aren’t just in Washington. They’re in our own hearts, minds, and souls.
Failure here will mean further cultural, psychological, and spiritual disintegration.
Success, on the other hand, could mean a Spiritual Renaissance and a surge of psychological health.
Whatever happens in the next election or the one after that, we should be prepared to pop the hood, look under the shiny surfaces, and study the “engine” that really makes things go. And then, get to work.