Politics-Everything Earth-Addendum 9, vol. 35

Politics – Everything Earth (“EE”) Addendum 9, vol. 35
Dr. Aazort’s Advanced Earth Studies Group – Multiversity of Artaxia

Greetings to Artaxia from exotic Earth! Your esteemed professor continues to masquerade as a human on this wonderful planet where “human” is so loosely defined that quite a wide variety of creatures are passing. Of course, understanding “human” remains my reason for having regularly visited here for several thousand years compiling your handy, dandy “Everything Earth” reference. Remember, these are potential space-faring beings. You don’t want one showing up at your door without ready access to your EE. Order yours today! (NOTE: Owing to the Federated System’s “no official contact” embargo of Earth, “Everything Earth” cannot be shipped to Earth.)

“Politics” is another “basics” recap. Should an Earthling actually arrive at your door, do not discuss politics with him or her. From what I’ve seen, for at least the last 3000 years the human political condition has remained utterly straightforward. Yet nothing but religion (See EE entry, “Peculiar Supernatural Enterprises”) produces such upset. Humans themselves even attempt, typically without success, to ban political discussions while at meals. Politics actually interferes with dinner!

Human politics boils down to this: those who have benefited the most from change do their best to stop change from happening. Strange, but true.

When humans lived in caves, the biggest and strongest males, with a nominal “chief” at their head, invariably made and enforced the rules. This has remained the basic pattern to this very day.

However, matters began slowly to shift after the move to cities and the subsequent accumulation of wealth. Cave dwellers had few possessions and lived in economic equality. City dwellers quickly split into a hierarchy as specialization and the production and marketing of goods made some rich, some poor and a few in between. Coming out of the caves, the strongmen benefited first and most from these changes, growing very rich. Acting as an oligarchy, with a “chief” or “king” at their head, they made and enforced rules that maintained what, to them, was now the perfect status quo.

But civilization made change impossible to control. The new working poor had made the rich richer, but now opposition arose as labor realized their collective value in the ever-more-complex urban setting. And a rising middle group of artisans, merchants, food producers was likewise aware of its new importance, and, further, had begun to amass its own economic resources. Capricious rule by the old oligarchs has been increasingly challenged ever since.

One famous empire of human antiquity, the Romans, offers a good example. There, the conflict boiled down to “optimates” vs. “populares”; rich vs. poor; conservatives vs. progressives. This provided the model for a struggle that continues to this day, spread out along a spectrum with anarchy at the extreme left end and monarchy at the extreme right. Numerous “ideologies,” blueprints on how to make the ideal civilization, have come and gone, with power over the centuries shifting slowly but surely to the populares. None of these rigid ideologies keep their original form, since reality, aka “change,” insists on intruding.

The most successful, flexible arrangements have mixed volatile direct rule by the masses, or “democracy,” with some form of “representative government” in a “republic.” The Romans enjoyed a rather impressive Republic for hundreds of years before sheer greed destroyed them, forcing a retreat to monarchy, something they had sworn never to revisit.

This forwards/backwards syndrome became common. By modern times, wherever the optimates proved wholly inflexible, a revolutionary populare communism often rose in reaction. In the ensuing confusion, some variety of “king” invariably appeared promising to impose order for the sake of “the people,” who tended to end up back in caves, hiding from his police. Even a terrible “order” seems preferable to chaos.

Where the optimates were not quite so stiff-necked, reform and progress could avoid the revolutionary fate. The most successful organizations today are “social democracies” letting free markets go and simply cleaning up the inevitable messes left behind. Think of a factory that makes “widgets” (a fine human term for just about anything). People need or want the widgets, but making them pollutes the air and poisons everyone. Once pollution prevention or clean up is factored into the cost of the widgets, conflict is minimized. Some call this “toilet-trained capitalism.” It’s an obvious solution, yet the form is still quite rare here.

This goes to that original matter of “change.” Always first in political power, the most dangerous optimates, happy to profit from changes that made them wealthier and more powerful, reflexively resist any development that might even slightly reduce their wealth — like adjusting the true cost of widgets. If a clean widget will cost five percent more than a dirty widget, a true optimate will insist that the entire five percent increase be paid by the public, as opposed to simply splitting the difference. The true populare will insist that the widget-maker eat the cost.

Essentially, the concept of “enough” seems as alien to humans as … a visiting professor from Artaxia. The failure to grasp “enough” compounds the political problem facing all beings everywhere, namely management of the inevitable-yet-unknown, a challenge all System civilizations recognize from their own histories. Of course, you may have to look quite a ways back.

Dr. Aazort’s Film and Video:

As my mentor, Prof. Spode Hardratt said: “If you want to study humans, you gotta watch TV.” Since so much human TV is so very bad, I’ve limited myself primarily to “movies” and their other long forms.

Good: Transsiberian  2008 R  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800241/ An American couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) looking for some bonding experience get a real adventure on the legendary, once-romantic-now-rather-worn Trans-Siberian Railway. They end up sharing some space with another couple, a suspiciously-charming youth and his suspiciously-reticent girlfriend. Drugs, corruption, murder and some nice deceptions ensue. Ben Kingsley and a menacing Thomas Kretschmann co-star as two Russian police officers on the case (or in it?). Little is what it first seems. From a suspense thriller by novelist Brad Anderson. Available on DVD, Blu-ray and from some streaming video sites.

Really Good: Howl’s Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro) 2004 PG http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347149/ Yes! It’s anime for people who don’t like anime. No exploding robots or spaceships here, but an absorbing story based on a children’s fantasy novel. It’s a dull little town with a dull little life for post-adolescent Sophie who works in a hat shop. Abruptly, she’s turned into an old woman by Lauren Bacall! Actually, it’s just Bacall’s voice playing the evil Witch of the Waste. Only the wizard Howl can break the spell, and Sophie runs him down in his fabulous walking castle, powered by the fire demon Calcifer. Mind bending art design and gentle humor from director Hayao Miyazaki.