Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
I don't think humans are political in the sense it's usually meant.

The real issue with politics, business, and economics is that they're simple - but somewhat disguised - instantiations of competitive Darwinian self-interest.

And that's all they are.

So there's no rational logic to any of them. They're simply action reduced to the human version of animal instinct, hidden under various layers of misdirection.

You can't expect a herd with a few alphas battling it out for resource control to act rationally. The big lie of politics, business and economics is the nonsensical suggestion that animal self-interest is the definition of rationality, when in fact it's its opposite.

But as individuals and collectively, we are capable of assessing, planning and acting in truly rational ways that aren't limited to simple animal brutality.

So the challenge is to make politics more human, and to move it past the stage of dumb animal self-interest - not just sporadically, as has happened in the past, but consistently and institutionally.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Nov 13th, 2013 at 10:32:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Others have rated this comment as follows:

Display:

Occasional Series