The Purpose of Politics
I ask for one act from readers before proceeding: believe that everything which follows is possible. If you do not, cannot, or outright refuse, what follows will be unintelligible. Possibility is not so great a burden.
Politics is the great ongoing comedy of humanity, though not because we wish it to be. What should be our rhapsody collapses into satire and tragedy, time and again. As with many comedies, our politics begins with a simple but profound misunderstanding. We have been in the wrong about the purpose of politics for millennia. The greatest disservice which humanity can perform for itself is to perpetuate this error, however much this may beggar the comedians. Politics is not purposed for justice. The notion of justice seems reasonable as the purpose of politics, but this notion is seductive, so none should be surprised when yet another political system takes up the mantle of justice only to mock its own attire. We wonder if this system will know justice better than others, whether that one will administer justice properly, devising justice of justice, all while believing that politics is possible and observing the difficulty. As the failures of a political system accumulate, our capacity to find humor in them, to enjoy the spectacle, becomes exhausted. Politics has one purpose only, but prior to understanding it, we must know the first principle of humanity.
Differentiating humanity from every other kind of creature is reflex for us, yet articulating what, with exactness, makes us unique among all species on Earth has been an enigma. Plato is said to have categorized man as a featherless biped, and in response, Diogenes the Cynic anthropomorphized a chicken, plucking away its feathers and remarking, “Here is Plato’s man.” Another feature used to distinguish humanity is wisdom, through our taxonomic name, homo sapiens, though our history suggests that wisdom is more of an aspiration than attribution. More fodder for the comedic cannonades. What distinguishes us, from all others, is how we employ ourselves as a standard of measure. Each of us understands the world in terms of ourselves. There is an urge to render the world familiar, to see ourselves in others and in our experiences. This urge is inescapable, it drives every thought and action which we think to dictate. Denying it to yourself is inhuman. Denying it to others is monstrous. We are driven to render the world familiar by joining with it, urged to oneness. This is religion, binding people into unity. To have a religious experience is to be unified with what you experience, to be both with it and of it. And so, we arrive at the first principle of humanity: the signal characteristic of humanity is a religious nature, that we seek to be bound into unity.
Religious experiences are not magic, but they certainly seem magical. You’ve had many, though you had no name to apply until now. The most common and accessible religious experience to describe is a concert. Build this space in your mind, either newly or from memory. A cavernous space crowded with people and the anticipation of revels. Our bones remember the caves. Warm glow filters through the acrid smoke and haze, reflecting tension and impatience for release. On the dais, musicians gather, dazzling under hues of sunset and moonlight, behind the roaring fire in the cave, and the people become restless to be joined with the music. Each instrument tested pulls the crowd taut until the musicians strike the first note and everyone is unleashed, electrified, people captured by the rhythm, then the melody, stomping feet, clapping hands, howls and screams, and without warning there is sudden harmony. Tension sublimates, the release is explosive, ecstatic. For a brief moment, musicians and crowd are one. And beyond the magical nature of this experience, as with all religious experiences, is a profound lesson: everything that happens within a religious experience is not only true, it could be nothing else. Only after a religious experience is ended and we are left with the mundane world do we compare the blinding truth of the experience with the uncertainty of the mundane. Why would we want anything other than this potential from our politics? Perhaps because we have forgotten that this is possible.
Provisions
This map contains all possible configurations of human political systems into mundane political space. Take mundane by its old meaning, of the world. You may also consider mundane to be a ground, both as reference and as a place to build. Using this map presumes three claims:
1. The first principle: the signal characteristic of humanity is a religious nature.
2. Religion is the attempt to bind subjects into unity with what they experience, to include other subjects.
3. The purpose of politics is to create conditions for religious experiences by binding people together in preparation for them.
If there are substantial alterations to, or omission of any of the claims, then the map becomes quite useless. Altering the third claim removes the boundaries and axes from the map, as it references the shape of mundane political space. Altering the second claim negates the possibility of location on the map, as it relates systems to the shape of the space. Altering the first claim negates the possibility of intuiting or understanding any movement on the map, as it relates to impulse. Presuming that the purpose of politics is justice, for example, alienates the map entire. This map is a navigation tool, but it can also be used to plot political dynamics if, and only if, you accept the three claims on at least a provisional basis. As I opened with, I ask that you believe this is possible, nothing more.
To address the cataclysm which I visited upon political science, it was necessary. The field has long labored under the mistaken presumption that the purpose of politics is justice. Pretense to the contrary leads only labyrinthine and torturous formulations of politics. To the academics and professionals working in political science, this was hardly your fault. The weight of history was against you. I did not create the purpose of politics, I simply remind you of what we once knew and seem to have forgotten, that the purpose of politics is to create conditions for religious experiences by binding people together in preparation for them.
The Map
Within the boundaries of the defined space, all of the possible human political systems can be located. There is no human political system imaginable which can be made to function beyond the bounds. Many political systems which can be located in mundane political space seem undesirable, but this space does not judge how desirable a political system is, nor does it deliver judgments of any sort.
The map can be disorienting at first glance. There are four dimensional axes drawn in two dimensions. You may consider all four dimensions at once or reduce the space temporarily. Rotate the map 45°, whether clockwise or counterclockwise, so long as one apogee or the other remains oriented topside from your perspective. With the Apogee of Regulation at the top, the vertical axis is Regulation and the horizontal one Responsibility. In standard orientation, with both apogees topside, the vertical axis is Granularity and the horizontal one Reality. Rotating the map and temporarily ignoring axes may help you to intuit the space until you grow accustomed to navigating four-dimensionally. Another method to ease into orientation is to locate political systems in this space on one axis at a time.
For those describing the vectors of systems, start simple and use an eraser. There are normative measures in some attributes of political space, but I have yet to craft yardsticks to place alongside particular politics. Neither are there marked quantities to reliably plot locations along cardinal axes nor are there marked degrees along the ordinals. At this stage, asking for the base units of ordinality and cardinality in this space is akin to demanding a cellist add frets to his cello. A great deal of this is art, as navigation in this space from one political system to another requires a rigorous understanding of each system in terms of the four scales. In a future piece I will attempt a mechanics of mundane political space which will contain those base units, but for now, enjoy the glissando.
Let us experiment with locating a political system, technocracy. The contemporary definition is hazy and unsatisfying, which I reduce to a totality of rules reducing members to instruments for carrying out those rules. Rules in a technocracy are typically generated by subject-matter experts. The primary effect of governance by those of narrow expertise is increased regulation. One advantage of using this map to locate systems is finding them by their attributes. You do not need to agree with my characterization of technocracy to find a location on the map corresponding to what I describe. A great naming of systems will happen eventually, but every possible configuration of political systems can be represented on this map. For technocracy, I describe it as having a maximal degree of regulation and minimal degree of reality, as I see people under the system as instruments of it which are heavily constrained by rules within the system. Using those two ordinal axes, I locate technocracy at the Apogee of Regulation, and find two other values that the system here necessarily has, those being a maximal magnitude of unity and moderate magnitude of responsibility. Explanations of each axis will follow this section, but first I want you to see how simple it can be to locate a system, even with incomplete information, and how a system’s location has necessary attributes.
Changes in a political system, measured on the four scales, would ideally be described as a flow. I advise simply plotting more points until the full mechanics of this space are written. As with events in everyday life, you may choose to connect points as an intuitive aid. Bear in mind that you are manufacturing data when connecting points. This is not yet a manifold of physics or mathematics, so please do not demand that degree of rigor too soon.
One additional note before explaining the axes. You will not find discussions of benevolence or malevolence, as well as good or evil in this piece. Any political system which can be located on the map can be bent towards good or evil, can be benevolent or malevolent. Likewise, religious experiences can be turned to either ends. For a person who is ignorant of the purpose of politics to be charged with organizing people politically or binding them religiously is a tangible threat. The accidents of ignorance often appear malicious. Removing ignorance is a critical step to combating malevolence, by making it easier to identify.
Granularity
As politics is a means to create conditions for religious experiences, and religion is an attempt to bind subjects into unity with what they experience, the first axis to consider is Granularity. This is a cardinal axis, meaning that it has a quantifiable magnitude. Granularity spans from plurality to unity. Ascending the axis decreases granularity, moving from finer to coarser. Unity is atop the scale as it is the goal of religion and creating conditions for religious experiences is made simpler through political unity; descending towards unity sounds bizarre. As a concept, unity is simple, but unity in religious experience is quite different from unity in politics. A religious experience is actual unity, where unity in politics increases the possibility of that experience, or lowers the difficulty, if you prefer. Should you be skeptical of religious experiences, simply accept that as provisional and focus on the scale from plurality to unity. Persons bound into a political unity, a coherent entity, may be exemplified by a uniform culture, but unity is not exclusive to uniform cultures. Another name I have for this scale is Community, and you are at liberty to use either name to aid your navigation. Community is an evocative word, but consider a band of musicians as a community. If the band is unified, a state gained through practice, experience, and a dash of talent, then the band behaves as one, each playing their part to produce a unified whole. The band which doesn’t rehearse, which lacks in talent and experience, will be at best a plurality, and may play so incoherently that the label of band is decorative. Moving from plurality to unity requires work; this is why having religious experiences out of a plurality is so difficult.
Plurality is not the absolute end of the scale, but it is in human terms, for beyond plurality is an amorphous mass of individuals. I call this pandaemonia, but you may use chaos if the former word is unsettling. This is the Boundary of Coherence, beyond which nothing holds together. The plurality end of the Granularity axis is analytic, as moving in the direction of plurality requires division or separation. For the physics-minded, breaking bonds, analyzing down, moving from unity to plurality tends to release energy; cascades towards plurality are not uncommon.
As a system moves towards unity, bonds must be formed, energy put into the system. People are being synthesized into groups, and those groups synthesized into larger ones in turn. Creating these bonds, investing this energy, moving towards unity is ordering the system. The upper limit of unity’s magnitude in a mundane human system is the Boundary of Inherence. Beyond this bound is a space I call monodaemonia, a perfect order of full association and connection.
Reality
The axis of Reality concerns the tension between the abstract and the specific. You may be more familiar with a pairing of abstract and concrete, but concrete is the wrong word here, being related to Granularity, so I’ll quit playing the Irish Tour Guide. An abstraction has been stripped of details, made simpler. A specification has details added to it or restored, made more complex. This is reality. There is a stupefying amount of detail and complexity in the world, but we are equipped to filter and sort, find patterns in the specific, and we simplify things to understand them in general. I hear philosophers grinding their teeth at this point, so I’ve a few words for them on the topic which are banished to the end of this piece.
Simplifying things makes them less real, but also makes them lighter mental baggage. Adding or restoring detail to things makes them more real, but this gives us more to think about. This isn’t a problem, it’s simply reality. The axis of Reality goes from specification to abstraction because there is a human tendency to simplify matters so that they may be understood in general terms, to include people. An abstract person is an object, which is not necessarily bad. Perform a quick headcount among strangers and you’ll find the only criteria required for inclusion are being human and present. Perhaps a finer detail would be having a head to count. By contrast, if a mother tries to account for all of her children, suddenly there are names, clothing, timbre of voices, what they had for lunch, and all manner of information otherwise irrelevant to arrive at a number; the children are subjects, where the strangers were objects.
All functional systems of politics abstract people to a degree. Systems on the subjects end of the Reality axis will minimize abstraction of people, where systems on the objects end of the axis will maximize abstraction. Some systems are designed to deal with people as objects. Others deal with subjects. Most systems fall in between, abstracting people to varying degrees or dealing with people as a mixture of objects and subjects.
There is a limit to the degree which abstraction is practical in a political system. This is the Boundary of Intuition, beyond which abstraction leaves nothing for politics. There is nothing sensible beyond this bound, only phantoms. There is a corresponding limit to specification on the opposite end of the Reality axis, the Boundary of Understanding. Beyond this, there is too much detail, leaving a person in confusion or aporia.
Within the boundaries of Inherence and Coherence, of Intuition and Understanding, there is space for all possible mundane human political systems. Beyond these boundaries lies only order, chaos, phantoms, and confusion. There are two more tensions necessary to describe the entirety of mundane political space.
Complex Locations
Suppose you are trying to locate a political system on the map, particularly a system in practice, but the location seems impossible to pin down. Perhaps the system does not correspond to a single location. Two points to bear in mind while locating a system: first, this is a four-dimensional space collapsed into two dimensions, so navigation is not at all linear; second, the political system you are trying to locate is unlikely to be monolithic. Take the original Roman Republic. There are two consuls, acting as limited monarchs. The Senate is an aristocratic body. The Plebeian Assembly is a popular one. The Roman Republic has elements distinct from one another, so you should locate the Republic by locating its elements. You will end up with a shape rather than a point, but this is also instructive; recall Yeats, “…the centre cannot hold.” Subsystems may in turn have distinct elements and can be located separately in turn. As political systems evolve, these shapes will move across the map. You will see odd phenomena, at least they will seem odd until you remember that this is biology at scale.
Regulation
The axis of Regulation arrived out of necessity, as the two-axis model (Reality & Granularity) was inadequate to locating political systems. Regulation is an ordinal scale, having qualitative degrees. Recall that the purpose of politics is to create conditions for religious experiences by binding people together in preparation for them. Regulation serves this end. Consider a game of chess. There are rules to the complement of pieces for each player, how each piece functions on the board, how players interact with the board one at-a-time in orderly succession, and many rules more. If one of those rules is ignored, the players are no longer engaged in chess. A game of chess is a microcosm, with its own rules and conditions, and this little universe is maintained so long as the players maintain the conditions and adhere to the rules. Experienced players do not refer to the rules during each turn as they know the necessity of them to playing the game. Chess is a highly regulated system, as formal games generally are. You should take care to distinguish between the regulations and the conditions of chess, as well as in general. The game requires two sets of sixteen pieces, a board with sixty-four spaces arranged in eight rows by eight columns. These and others are material conditions for chess, but chess also requires players willing to understand and agree upon the rules. You could generate a list of conditions for chess approaching nausea and discover that most are not necessary. Chess normally has two players, and this is a necessary condition of tournament chess, but otherwise a minimum of one player is all that is required. A game might have three players, four, or more. Conditions make the system possible, and regulations are instructions for maintaining the system. One condition which you may overlook is the most important of all: that the players believe a game of chess is possible. The boundaries of the map are boundary conditions, but there is no regulation prohibiting you from wandering past them, only the consequence of political systems being impossible out of bounds and sanity being at risk. Avoid beginning a journey off the map.
What are the consequences for breaking a rule during a chess match? One player moves a pawn backwards by one space on the board. The opponent’s initial reaction might be shock, “You can’t do that?!” Clearly, the first player can move that pawn backwards, but the move is addressed outside of the game. A single transgression collapsed the microcosm, yet both players can restore the little universe through one player withdrawing the illegal move and both agreeing that it never occurred. In the game, it didn’t, because if it did, it wouldn’t be chess. As I enjoy burying ledes, here’s another: games are generally practice for having religious experiences.
Regulations are instructions for maintaining systems. Subjects or objects in the system carry out those instructions. As with conditions, there are regulations necessary to maintaining the system. The rules of chess, regulations one and all, are necessary for the game played to be chess. Playing chess within the limits established by adherence to the rules is part of the appeal. Boxing is similar to chess in that respect. While a no-rules bare-knuckle brawl could be an exciting spectacle for the crowd, the possibilities for the fighters are alarming. Rules in boxing constrain the possibilities within any match. Gloves, acceptable areas to strike, time limits on rounds, and other rules are in place to increase the challenge of boxing, but also to limit possible injury and death. Risks are not eliminated from the game and terrible things still happen to boxers, but the real danger is part of boxing’s allure. Adhering to the rules of a system constrains what it can do, limits what is possible within the system. Regulations can also be positive commands which change the conditions of a system. Consider the potluck, and keep in mind human interactions in general can be preparatory for religious experiences.
One family hosts a potluck dinner and invites several families over. The primary obligation, that positive commandment is, Thou Shalt Bring Food. On occasion, families will fail to coordinate, and the potluck will end up with seven meatloaves, but the potluck goes on. Beyond the obligation to bring food, coordination improves conditions further, mitigating the volume of meatloaf. Perhaps one family has nothing to bring, circumstances limiting or prohibiting them from sharing food for the potluck. Whether by accident or by design, the potluck happens, and one family joins the others to share a meal they might not otherwise have had. The potluck fails when few bring food, or none at all. The positive regulation of bringing food to a potluck will, if enough adhere to the obligation, create conditions which make the communal meal possible. Adherence to regulations should not be the purpose of a system.
Regulation is not law but does include it. Law is a form of regulation for placing objects or subjects, and often, owing to the lingering effects of Plato’s suggestion on the purpose of politics in his Republic, law is used to adjust the placement of objects or subjects. You know this as justice. Law is a standard of measure for adjustment. Justice should not be the purpose of politics any more than the rule of bringing food is the purpose of a potluck. Regulations, as instructions for maintaining systems, are followed to impel and constrain a system where it is, what the system does; adjustment is meant to restore the system to function by changing conditions within it. If the persons carrying out adjustment do not understand how the system ought to be, or worse, the authors of the laws instructing adjustment are ignorant of how the system ought to be, then adjustments will be unlikely to improve conditions or regulation of the system. Perturbations in complex systems can destabilize them, fragment them, or drive systems into other states.
A minimal amount of regulation is necessary to a system, else it is no system. Beyond the Nadir of Regulation is only chaos and confusion. As regulation increases by degrees, conditions of the system can be further altered, but constraints on the system increase as well. A system at the Apogee of Regulation requires the greatest degree of change in conditions to permit system function. For as much as I’ve written about regulation so far, I’ve said very little. This axis will be entirely intuitive when I reveal relations between the axes. What should be clear by this point is that the degree of regulation has an inverse relation to freedom within the system.
Responsibility
Responsibility is a cardinal axis with magnitudes from none to total. This describes the magnitude of responsibility a system has in binding people together and creating conditions for possible religious experience. A system at the nadir has no responsibility, is not charged with realizing the purpose of politics. The expectations of a system at the nadir are low, along with the potential for realizing the purpose of politics. Expectations and potential are not synonymous with responsibility here but are derivatives of it. Charge is another name for responsibility, reflecting not only the magnitude of responsibility, but also the potential of a system. Describing responsibility is tricky for the same reason that describing leadership is, being a metonym for responsibility. Leadership is nothing more than assuming responsibility; any other attributions to leadership confuse the concept. A system with low responsibility must have low leadership, but the reverse is not necessarily true. There is more at stake here than first appears. I am dancing around the topic because some among you will believe, perhaps even know, that you understand responsibility. This is a religious matter.
The responsibility of a system, similar to regulation, has an inverse relation with the freedom of the system. Freedom shares an inverse relation with responsibility and regulation in general, but the distinction here is of the system and within the system. Increasing degrees of regulation constrain freedom of subjects or objects within the system. Increasing responsibility constrains the freedom of the system entire to bind people together and create conditions for possible religious experience. Taking on responsibility is relinquishing freedom.
This may run counter to your understanding or experience. Perhaps you’ve been made responsible for a task and given no restrictions for carrying it out. Lacking any other details, it seems at a glance that you have total freedom to discharge responsibility as you see fit. Two objections: first, you may have generously estimated the magnitude of responsibility; second, you disregard how you choose to constrain your own freedom in discharging the responsibility, beyond any limitations predating your charge. As a system of one, you choose how to act and suffer the consequences. Within a larger system, as a member you are subject to, or object of regulation, constraining you within the system, and your responsibility is a part of the whole system.
What of behaving as though the responsibilities a person is charged with are greater than actual? As useful reference, this is called dignity. Acting as though a responsibility is less than actual is an indignity. There are no variations in scale when extending this to systems. As for honor, this is merely an echo of dignity, the past heard again in the present.
Suppose there is a system, charged with minimal but non-zero responsibility. How might you expect this system to discharge that responsibility? The system has substantial freedom to carry it out. The behavior of that system will depend largely on where it intends to be. Individuals who discharge responsibility with dignity are, in effect, seeking more responsibility. When behaving in an undignified manner, this is advertisement that less responsibility is appropriate. The same applies to systems, again without variance in scale. For this reason, systems behaving in manners above or below their responsibilities, the affect of dignity is a primary impulse for systems to move across the map.
You may find it helpful, when considering this axis in isolation, to identify not only where a system is in terms of its charged responsibilities, but also where it seems intent on being in terms of dignity. Distinguishing between what is and what ought to be is critical on all four axes, but this is of primary importance with responsibility. Knowing the is and ought of a system can give you vectors.
The Map
Before I relate the interplay of axes, I am duty bound to inform you that there’s a skill you must master before you can interpret the entire map at one: stereoscopic awareness. The paired axes of reality and granularity are independent of one another, as are the pair of regulation and responsibility, but the two pairs are not independent of each other. A system which increases its degree of reality necessarily increases its magnitude of responsibility and decreases its degree of regulation. A system which moves towards unity, decreasing its magnitude of granularity, will necessarily increase both its degree of regulation and magnitude of responsibility. This is a four-dimensional space; don’t expect to see it entirely at first. Rotate the map or tilt your head, as needed, to view two axes at a time. Focus on understanding relations between the axes. Once you understand and intuit them, stereoscopic awareness will simply happen. The good news? Humanity already possesses and uses this faculty.
As I’ve suggested earlier, this map can and should be used for more than politics. Individuals can be located on this map in the same way political systems can be. Any human activity can be located on this map. Any.
Consider the pairs of axes separately. First Reality and Granularity.
Ignoring two of the axes for a time, what you see is a map of groups and detail. There can be a group at any level of detail, or a degree of reality at any magnitude of unity. Anything you are capable of sensing or thinking can find a home on these two axes. I’d originally created this map as a tool for teaching literature to students by sneaking philosophy in through the chimney. Fortunately for the students, I have no teaching license and wasn’t granted provisional status. Reality and granularity are independent of one another, and for this reason the reduced map feels lifeless. There is no activity or agency when only the pair of reality and granularity are considered. Now view the axes of regulation and responsibility.
These two axes are independent of one another. You may have any degree of regulation for a given magnitude of responsibility, and any magnitude of responsibility for a given degree of regulation, within limits. Boundaries from the reality/granularity space remain, as this is a map of mundane space. Maximal values of regulation and responsibility do not exceed the Boundary of Inherence, for what else could be in the system? Minimal values of regulation and responsibility do not exceed the Boundary of Coherence, for there would be no purpose for the system or any means to hold it together. Values of maximal regulation and minimal responsibility do not exceed the Boundary of Intuition, as a system shot through with rules and having no responsibility is nonsense. Values of minimal regulation and maximal responsibility do not exceed the Boundary of Understanding, as having total freedom within the system and no freedom of the system makes discharging responsibility an unsolvable puzzle. I found these boundaries the hard way and I’ll not have you wander blithely past them, at least not in mundane space and certainly not alone.
Now we look at the map with no axes, only extrema.
View this as a species of demented clock. Begin in the conventional noon position of a clock, at unity. Proceeding clockwise, we leap to total responsibility, subjects, no regulation, plurality, no responsibility, objects, total regulation, and return to unity. The purpose of this exercise is two-fold. First, it’s an orientation to the space, showing the necessity of the axes. The map above is ludicrous without the axes, having no apparent dimensions. Second, having you move along the perimeter should have you considering what would cause a move from one point to another. You may find that you put yourself into the map; this is good, a spark of stereoscopic awareness. You are both looking at the map and part of it. How to move from point to point is simpler with the axes, as well as knowing the consequences of those moves.
Begin at unity. At this point a system, with respect to the Axis of Reality, is halfway between subjects and objects. This system could be a mixture of subjects and objects, or subjects abstracted (simplified) to a limited degree. This system also has a large magnitude of responsibility and a high degree of regulation, but not at maximal values for either. Moving from unity to the Apogee of Responsibility changes values on three axes, but does not change the magnitude of granularity. Recall the simplicity of the reduced space, reality and granularity only. On the full map, moving to the Apogee of Responsibility maximizes responsibility, which was intended by navigation, but the move also maximizes the degree of reality (specification) and decreases the degree of regulation. There is no means for this system to also have maximal regulation as that is a complementary pole to responsibility on the map.
This figure shows what must change on three axes to yield the net effect of moving from unity to the Apogee of Responsibility.
From this apogee, if the system were to decrease in charge, the magnitude of granularity would increase towards plurality, and the reality of the system would decrease in degrees, but the degree of regulation would remain unchanged.
This was a simple move, translating the system down the Axis of Responsibility only and locating the necessary changes in values of other axes. Movement on this map occurs in no less than three axes. You may pretend that one pair of axes is not present and move a system in one dimension, but that does not change what happens to a system on those occluded axes. Removing axes is an abstraction of this space. With all four dimensions and the four boundaries, the full map is an instrument, a simple tool for navigating mundane political space. This map cannot be abstracted any further and remain a faithful representation of human political space and a tool for navigating it. That would be a hammer without its haft.
Attempting to move a system in less than three dimensions will distort and possibly fragment it. By example, pushing a system to a greater degree of regulation while attempting to maintain given degrees of reality and magnitude of granularity results in one of four general outcomes:
1. If the system can remain intact, then it will occupy a new degree of regulation with values of reality and granularity changed, efforts to keep them static wasted. Think of shooting a rubber band from your thumb. This is a dislocation.
2. Similar to 1., if the system remains intact, efforts to keep values of reality and granularity static manage to succeed, efforts to increase the degree of regulation are wasted. Think of trying to shoot a rubber band from your thumb and having it snap back. This is another dislocation, with the system returning to its initial location.
3. The system may distort, stretched over an area on the map. This always weakens a system. Think of trying to shoot a rubber band from your thumb and having it lose some elasticity.
4. The system fragments, resulting in discrete new systems. Think of trying to shoot a rubber band from your thumb and having its elasticity fail completely.
Results will be some variation of these four general outcomes. The results are not inherently good or bad. In the 18th century, English colonies in America conducted a rebellion against the Crown. Whether or not the rebellion was righteous is irrelevant to this map; the Empire was not a stable system, too many elements of it urged the whole in different directions on the map. Through accident or intent, moving a system against the shape of this space will waste energy dislocating it, distort the system, or fragment it. This can be made to function in reverse as well.
Because this is not a map of absolute space, there are no unique locations. This is the most severe abstraction of the map, measures of time and distance stripped away. I mention this because of the potential conflict growing in the minds of physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers reading. Two or more systems occupying the same place on the map are not the same system. Accepting this is little challenge for physicists, who habitually work in configuration spaces. Simpler still for the mathematicians to accept, who differentiate between function and domain. Philosophers, specifically the logicians, will be chewing gristle by now. In brief response, I’m violating the laws of thought here because this space cannot be constructed from your logic, but logic can be built in this space. I am, in effect, reminding you of the limits of relational logic, going back through Tarski and Gödel to Parmenides. Put another way, we are not the instruments of logic, and more importantly, we should not be.
Pushing a system with the shape of the space, not against it as in previous examples, may still stress the system. Inertia, as a physical concept, transfers nicely to this domain. Well organized systems transmit the stress of impulse, whereas poorly organized systems distort under impulse and aggregates may fly apart. This metaphor may stir interest in how energy enters and leaves a system, the nature of bonds in a system, and a host of other topics which fall under mechanics. I will attempt to codify the mechanics of the space after this primer is published. For now, abstracting systems to points and locating them in simple terms is appropriate and effective.
The Map is Not the Territory
The space for all possible politics in the mundane world is in aspects sensible and conceptual, in pieces and assemblies, simple and complex, shaped and guided by our fears and ambitions. Life is a gargantuan piece of territory, and while it may seem explored and developed, there are yet frontiers and wild lands to be found. This map, for its lines and labels, is empty. For this map to be useful, you must populate it. Yet, no matter how much detail you add to the map, it will never be the territory. Your map is a tool for navigating particular or general systems. Mine is universal, a map for making maps.
Because each of us is the measure of all things, which is a normal and healthy practice, you may wish to start by finding yourself on the map. If you do not know yourself well, you may find yourself all over the map. In this instance, locate where you would like to be on the map, perhaps where you think you ought to be. From this vantage, you can evaluate the axes, one at a time, and with a bit of guesswork you may determine how to get from wherever you are to where you ought to be. How disciplined are you in your life? Do you bear full responsibility for your life? Is the version of yourself which you present to the world, as well as introspectively, a simplified one or fully realized? The last one is a hammer blow. Are you a unified person? Not being unified will put you at more than one place on the map. Locating yourself on this map can be an evisceration, the most brutal personality test. Perhaps in locating yourself at multiple places on the map you discover aspects of yourself which you had only dim awareness. Locating yourself and attending aspects is done by the same method as it is for systems: through ethics. I’m reclaiming that word from nebulous contemporary discourse by restoring the original meaning; ethics means habits. One way to know a person is through their habits. Consign all other meanings of ethics to the flames.
Locate yourself by habits. Are you consistently disciplined in your life? Do you always bear full responsibility for your life? Does the version of yourself which you present to the world, as well as introspectively, wander between simplicity and full realization? And the final question made dynamic: do you always keep yourself together?
When we find ourselves lost in life, coming apart, becoming instrumental to goals instead of being the ends, failing our charges, or losing discipline in our affairs, we often look to someone who does not suffer this way, or suffers less so. This person is not necessarily an ideal to emulate but is certainly a point of reference for us. Without a map, references are all we have, else nothing save the featureless void. Becoming lost in life is difficult to avoid without these references, but the catch is, they’re all in motion as well. Imagine walking through a dense forest, no view of the sky or horizon, an unfathomable expanse of trees. You could navigate the forest from tree to tree, but think of your disorientation if the trees took to walking. Navigating from tree to tree is relative only to the trees which, in the absence of any other frame of reference, is better than hopeless wandering. If the trees move, then your frame of reference is moving and possibly changing shape, and within the forest there is no larger frame of reference. The map provides an absolute frame of reference.
If you know one attribute of a system or person, then the problem of location is reduced from the entire map to one line.
This system has a low degree of reality, but we do not know any of its other attributes yet. The system, as a point, lies somewhere on the vertical line. Finding any second attribute locates the system in all four dimensions because of dependencies between the axes in the total space.
This works from any axis.
If by this method you cannot locate a system by intersection, there are a few reasons why that might happen.
In this case, the system doesn’t resolve from the two known attributes. The only place which those lines would intersect is beyond the Boundary of Inherence. Four reasons why this could occur:
1. These are attributes of at least two different systems, mistaken for the same system.
2. The system is distorted, highly in this case.
3. The system is in motion. This could be a normal translation, a dislocation, or the attributes used are not contemporary to the system or one another.
4. One or more values is incorrect.
There are also exceptions to locating a system through this method. At the four poles of the space, the apogees and nadirs of regulation and responsibility, values of every axis are known.
Determining a system’s location in the absence of values on any axis is a demanding exercise. Interdependencies between axes can reduce the solution space if a direction on one axis can be learned, even without magnitudes or degrees. This will be folded into a supplemental piece on mechanics in the mundane space.
The map is not the territory. Once you’ve found yourself on the map, you will know this viscerally. Be sure to eat and hydrate before you set out on the map. Not joking. There will be another piece, supplemental to this primer, titled, “How to Explore the Map Without Going to See the Wizard.” There is not an actual wizard, this refers to the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy doesn’t go to see the wizard, she’s been in a coma. Creating an empty metastable space and exploring it will tax your mind and body. Treat this as you would any other strenuous activity, prepare yourself.
Nine Extremities
I tried describing this map to a friend and used what was, in retrospect and entirely by accident, a terrifying metaphor. Imagine a geographic map, lines of latitude running horizontal and lines of longitude passing vertical, but the map is devoid of content. No land features, no rivers, no cities, no streets, no oceans, nothing at all save for the lines of latitude and longitude along with the boundaries of the map. I wanted to explain why there are directions you cannot go on my map, moves both illegal and impossible, when I provided that metaphor and realized I was describing a void with an underlying structure. Staring into the void is not pleasant, so I present you with a general map of the nine extreme political systems. Whether or not you agree with the names I’ve assigned to these nine locations isn’t important, only that you know the attributes of systems at those locations.
Franchise Democracy: a system of maximal unity, high responsibility, high regulation, and moderate reality.
In this system, franchise to accept responsibility is extended to those meeting certain criteria, opening up the number of people who conduct politics. Freedom of the system and within the system is highly constrained, as it has the highest magnitude of responsibility and degree of regulation possible in one system. This is similar to the recorded system of ancient Athens following Solon’s reforms. Franchise Democracy is the opposite of Autarky.
Monarchy: a system of maximal responsibility, maximal unity, maximal reality, and moderate regulation.
There have been few monarchs in history which fit this bill of particulars. Monarchy is the antipode of Anarchy.
Aristocracy: a system of maximal reality, moderate granularity, low regulation, and high responsibility.
Excellence and capability are the criteria for what aristocrats ought to be. Regulation is lower here as there are a greater number of responsible subjects charged with using their own judgment. Aristocracy is the opposite of Bureaucracy.
Feudalism: a system of minimal regulation, maximal reality, maximal plurality, and moderate responsibility.
A clue to understanding Feudalism is in the name. A barely coherent group, though responsible for much, lacks regulation to maintain itself, falling into feuds. Feudalism is the antipode of Technocracy.
Autarky: a system of maximal plurality, moderate reality, low regulation, and low responsibility.
When most self-styled anarchists speak of their desired system, they intend Autarky, according oneself rank, self-rule. Freedom of the system and within the system is lightly constrained, as it has the lowest magnitude of responsibility and degree of regulation possible in one system. Autarky is the opposite of Franchise Democracy.
Anarchy: a system of minimal responsibility, minimal reality, maximal plurality, and moderate regulation.
People in anarchy are objects, typically instruments of their own needs and desires, but sometimes instruments of others. Anarchy is the antipode of Monarchy.
Bureaucracy: a system of minimal reality, moderate granularity, low responsibility, and high regulation.
This system will be familiar to many. A machine that governs. No one seems to be in charge. There are people in the machine but none of them have any agency. The labyrinth of rules is for the benefit of the machine. Bureaucracy is the opposite of Aristocracy.
Technocracy: a system of maximal regulation, maximal unity, minimal reality, and moderate responsibility.
Technocracy is a system of rules and objects, forced to operate as one. There is no freedom within the system. Yes, people are ordinarily ones writing the regulations, and in some cases those authors are particular experts, but it is possible for a rules-based system to be entirely generated and managed by a machine. Technocracy is the antipode of Feudalism.
Democracy: a system of moderate reality, granularity, regulation, and responsibility.
Democracy is not a system of unity. Extending responsibility and power to every member of the system makes unity impossible. This is the least stable location on the map. Of any place in the map, keeping a system at the center requires the most energy.
As I’ve said earlier, the attributes of any system at these nine locations are features of the space, whether or not you agree with the names of systems I’ve placed there. Here are several more systems which are not at extrema but are hybrids.
I’ve no doubt that these additional system locations will prove more contentious than the nine extrema. Consider this a provocation to define systems, understand them better, and find where they exist.
The Journey, Not the Destination
This map is a navigation tool. It doesn’t tell you where to go, but should make the journey easier. Some travels you’ll make alone, others in company. The more people you bring with you, the more you’ll find. For all my gnomic utterances here, I’ve left enough unexplained that you might enjoy some discovery yet. Learn how to use the tool, but don’t forget the three claims on this space:
1. The first principle: the signal characteristic of humanity is a religious nature.
2. Religion is the attempt to bind subjects into unity with what they experience, to include other subjects.
3. The purpose of politics is to create conditions for religious experiences by binding people together in preparation for them.
Without them, the map is a peculiar drawing. At a minimum, if you can accept these claims provisionally, believe that they are possible, then the map becomes possible to you. What would you invest into the impossible?
If you are having trouble intuiting and understanding the map, or know someone who is, explore it as a group. The challenge of this map and its structure comes not from complexity, but from elegance. Treat the map as a game to begin with, discover how it works, make heaps of mistakes, and have fun while you learn.
For those translating this work into another language, I commend you to a deep mastery of English before you begin, or find someone with that mastery. I’ve minimized use of colloquialisms, but also played loose with syntax and formalisms. English is immensely powerful because the consequences for violating its regulations are largely academic. Meaning is carried across often in spite of the rules. Focus on translating the fundamental principles of the map, as the map can be understood without labels. Hand me this map labeled entirely in kanji, and I will intuit it the same as one in English because I understand the space.
In a future publication, I’ll discuss the Manifold of Religious Space, though if you’ve understood me so far, you may know what it will look like. You’ll find that map at the very end of this piece.
I dedicate this work to humanity, with more works to follow. If well pull together, we might yet escape oblivion. I believe it possible.
Happy trails,
Cameron
Critiques
I received my first critique for this piece on 23 Sep 2022. My response along with gratitude.
Postscript, to The Philosophers
Those outside of philosophy are invited to follow along but should feel no obligation to immediately understand. These are old disputes and philosophy is, presently, a fractious community.
David Hume presents what I spread out over the axis of Reality as a dichotomy, that there are relations of ideas and matters of fact, and that connections between the two are never justified logically, merely injected between the claims. Hume does not argue that these connections are necessarily spurious, that we cannot think about the world we live in or live in the world we think is; he merely points out the limits of logic. Academic philosophers will lump analytic and synthetic judgements in with this dichotomy, which distracts from Hume’s rather obvious fork, that if there are relations of ideas and matters of fact, then there is the world and there is thought; the only connection between the two is the person in the world who thinks. This dichotomy burrowed into the mind of one industrious German, Immanuel Kant, who took it as a challenge. Kant bridged the dichotomy with an extensive argument, claiming that thought could reliably speak about the world, but to do this he had to manufacture conditions which make this possible. Without recapitulating Kant’s entire argument from the Critique of Pure Reason, he says that a person can speak reliably and truthfully about the world of their own experience because humans are predisposed to perceiving the world in an orderly way, with experience as a reference to oneself. Kant unintentionally ruined philosophy, which I will revive in a later publication, but he did succeed in joining intuition and understanding through a third faculty which is often translated as imagination. If you accept the transcendental unity of apperception, you are primed to accept my account of religious experience. This is the great Gothic joke of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, prior to Hegel losing his sense of humor and joining the Cult of Hegel. Kant’s goal was to protect religion from philosophical attack, but instead he cut philosophy off from both religion and metaphysics, making his 1st Critique a sort of solution in search of a problem. All of this to say, the world of experience combines our understanding and intuition, which hardly anyone outside of philosophy had problems with.
As for Plato, I owe him for provoking me to discover the purpose of politics.
Changelog
2022/09/24: Fixed two typographical errors, corrected label on one drawing. Added critique section.
2022/10/05: Added link to piece, “How to Explore the Map Without Going to See the Wizard.”
2023/02/23: Modified claim about lack of normative measures in politics, clarifying that I have yet to establish the norms.