To dive into this subject I’ll be reading On Politics by Alan Ryan.
I chose this because it seems comprehensive and should give me a good overview of what politics is. It’s 1,000 pages and spans from ancient Greece to the Christian church to the Renaissance to Marx and closes out in the present. So even if it doesn’t show me everything I’m definitely covering a lot of ground.
So the introduction starts off laying out ancient Greece and Persia to be the two ends of the political spectrum.
By Greece, we’re mainly speaking of Athens. That’s whose government we’re looking at it when comparing it to today. Athens was a democracy, where eligible citizens could represent their views for any policy changes. ‘Eligible’ means native men. Women, slaves, and foreigners were left out, so it wasn’t as loose a democracy as it is today. Persia was a monarchy with a king who had the final say. Citizens had little to no room to participate.
So the root of the whole philosophy of politics is what is the best way for people to live amongst each other? As individuals, we have the right to do what we want for ourselves. The issue is, we live in shared spaces. Even if we do something that’s for ourselves, it most likely affects someone else in some way. You may own a piece of land, but if you want to start digging for whatever you’re doing and you end up hitting a power line that takes out the whole block, affecting land you don’t own, that’s no longer an individual right. This applies to all political issues. Drunk driving is a prime example. The only reason there’s a law on that is because the driver isn’t the only person that gets hurt. Again, going back to moral relativism. If we don’t have a universal system for how we decide to do things, then it’s just one giant war of “my feelings are more valid than yours”. Do you see that ending peacefully?
Past us simply having a system, there has to be a form of mediation that balances the people. If everybody is a mediator, then there is no
If you’ve ever played rec sports, you know inevitably there’s gonna be a dispute over something. “His foot was on the line!” “He fouled me” “That’s an illegal move!” Every single time one of these happens, one side ends up saying, “Alright man, you got that. Let’s just move on”. This is a rec center, where you just go for a workout or to have fun. Do you see that happening in pro sports when there’s money and glory on the line? Look how heated they get in playoff or championship games. Now raise that to real life when there are resources on the line, or social consequences (i.e. crime, poverty, or even the safety of our kids). There is no compromise with that. Most people aren’t just gonna wave that off. The only answer at that point is violence. Athens had their own democracy, but all of that went away when Philip II of Macedon conquered it.
So as we go through this, understand no matter how complicated or exhausting or boring this gets… the only alternative is for us to kill each other… and I don’t think any of us wants it to come to that.
So before I start, I’m gonna list some things I hope to learn from studying this subject. Some of this overlaps with law, and I do plan on studying that, but for now I’ll try to keep this on politics
- What is freedom, liberty, and justice? How do different definitions lead to different systems?
- How do I know for sure that my vote matters?
- If I do vote, yet my politician does not keep to their promises, what exactly can I do, step-by-step, to hold them accountable for this?
- What exactly can a person do to be an active citizen? I want a list. “Voice your opinion” is not enough, nor can everybody become a politician
- What systems are in place to prevent corruption?
- How exactly did Blacks earn the right to vote?
- Evolution of American politics from the first colonizers all the way to now.
- Pros and cons of other countries’ political systems
Grant Abraham 