I find philosophy and science fascinating fields of intellectual study. As I’ve grown more interested in broader intellectual curiosities, I am beginning to investigate the realm of politics. However, I’m not very comfortable with the wisdom of my elders.
Often, whenever I try to learn by listening to the political opinions of others, I sense lots of nasty bias. Where I notice a contradiction or an ambiguity in logic, I attempt to play devil’s advocate until the apparent error is resolved. This seldom ends well.
Online sources are rather overwhelming, and I sense the same hostility and bias as I would in my daily interactions.
I’m beginning to think there isn’t much substance to politics as compared to the fields of philosophy / science.
Am I wrong? Is politics just too controversial or complicated to learn with any sense of objective certainty? Are there any reliable and intelligent sources to refer to?
While not responding to the OP, I find that “politics” is one of the most difficult words to define. The word is used all of the time but can anyone really define it? The word “politics” rolls off our tongues as though we understand it but what is it really?
Science is structured to lead to, in simplistic terms, the one correct answer about something.
Philosophy embraces all the different answers to certain things.
Politics has to deal with things where there are multiple conflicting answers, and each person thinks his answer is right and all the rest are wrong. At its best, it allows these conflicting views to coexist while progress is made.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
You’re finding a lot of objective certainty in philosophy, are you?
Well, what exactly are you looking for: public policy? Comparative politics? Political Theory?
Unless you’re talking about following the day-to-day nonsense coming out of Washington, the news channels, and the angry internets, it’s a field of study that’s not much different (if at all) from philosophy or some of the softer sciences. And if that is what you’re talking about, then, yeah, politics is probably just a good way to feel bad a lot of the time.
Politics is broken. The only way I can understand why is to look at our political history. History is the greatest teacher for me. I can see what politics was created to be, how it evolved and how it became broken as it is today. I read articles from all over the net but I stumbled upon this blog and am still reading the comments. I think I may be onto something. Try googling “What Happened to my Country”. What Happened To Reason And Values In This Country
The initial line in Wikipedia calls it a process of collective decision-making, and (for once) I agree with Wikipedia. Politics is a substrata of philosophy, with multiple “correct” answers. Read John Milton (for example, Areopagitica - the foundation of the “freedom of speech” concept; or Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce) and you’ll get an idea of how/why politics are so fuzzy - people will always disagree on these topics. Naturally, reading The Politics (Aristotle) is a good starting point.
In reference to prior posts, I disagree that political debate is about subjugation, repression, etc. It’s about opinion. And opinions change within the individual over time as often as not (McNamara, Eisenhower, Twain, Lee, and so on).
Poltics is about the relative status of different groups in a society. It is also about who controls the government which is a way to peacefully transfer money from the productive to the powerful.
Politics is the process by which policy is decided. That is, how we choose what to do. Whenever a group of people has to make a decision about what actions to take, there will be politics. This applies to all groups of people–families, clubs, churches, governments, etc.
Every group has its own political culture. It can be consensus-driven, where everyone talks until the group reaches near unanimity. Or it can be adversarial, where opposing options are argued vociferously. Or something else. Sometimes people form fairly permanent factions, other times sides switch fluidly, depending on the specific situation.
Politics cannot be avoided by any group larger than one that does anything as/for the group.
If you’re studying history, eventually you’ll presumably figure out that it has ever been thus. The Founders did far worse stuff than anything any modern American politico could even dream of doing.
Politics is the means to an end. While most people agree about the ends (modest taxes, affordable living, low crime, jobs, health, happiness), hardly anybody agrees on the means. Different theories on the means are typically different political positions.
And this one from Dave Berry: “The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites.’”
Any group of people sometimes needs to arrive at policy decisions that affect the group as a whole as well as its constituent members.
This gives rise to the question: what’s the best way to determine those policy decisions? Should just one person make the decision? Or should everyone have a say? What if some people know more about the issue than others, or care more about it? And what do we do if there is strong support for conflicting and incompatible opinions?
Politics concerns the history of that question, and the different answers that people have come up with, as well as the ongoing contemporary practice of whatever political (= policy making) system is in place in your part of the world as well as in other parts.
If you study this subject in depth, over the wide-ranging canvas of human history and political philosphy, you’ll find it boils down to one thing: it’s all about people with power, privilege and advantage trying to figure out the best way to retain those assets, and augment them, without actually provoking a revolution.
