The Big Picture

The idea that the natural order of things could in anyway be instructive to human concepts of social/political organization would probably be repulsive to most people. (Edward O. Wilson’s sociobiology met with extreme resistance from all sides.) We like to believe our civilized states are constructs that have nothing to do with the natural world. They are conceived supra-naturally stemming from minds that hover above the nature of things. That is the attractive idea.

However, as we shall see, by coming to know the natural order of things we can get a better appreciation of how to order ourselves, our societies, our world.

As we have seen here in prior postings the natural order of things requires a collaboration of what we commonly perceive of as polarizations. Socialism and capitalism work best in combination with one another as has been and continues to be borne out in many countries around the world. The same is true of liberalism and conservatism. In either case it is not a question of installing the one over the other, as many extreme ideologues would have us believe. Rather it is a question of how to form a synergy of the two that will contribute to creating and maintaining optimum societal conditions.

In democracies like the U.S., where right and left factions continually vie for domination, social imbalances generally seesaw from one era to the next. An era being that period of time necessary for the dominant political party of the moment to once again prove that its one-sidedness cannot provide the coherent vision required to maintain a healthful balance of social and/or economic conditions. Depending on circumstances either the left or the right point of view is generally favored and those who identify with the prevailing view are riding high on the political pendulum absolutely convinced of the correctness of their position, while those with the opposing view wait for the pendulum to swing back their way so they can once again hitch a ride on the upswing. And when back on top they take it as proof positive that they were absolutely correct in their convictions all the time. And so on and so forth ad nauseam. A grand farce if there ever was one.

Of course, things do change and it’s good to be able to adjust from liberal to conservative policies, and vice versa, as conditions warrant. However, with the system as it presently is, the separate factions contribute more to the drastic swings of the pendulum than to affecting ongoing stable directions. They both vie for the seat of power in order to install a predominance of their particular policies. Any so-called bipartisanship amounts to compromises which have more to do with insular political maneuvering within the halls of power than with fashioning a balanced vision of things for the purpose of forming a cohesive society.

Liberals and conservatives are always the main competitors in political bodies everywhere, with each side contending that it alone has, at any given time, all of the solutions to all of the existing social problems. But what are these factions of liberal and conservative all about? Where does this demarcation of political viewpoints originate? Is it an a priori systemization, a product of the mind, of pure logic, installed for reasons of convenience and definition? Or is the liberal/conservative formulation an intrinsic characteristic of the material world that has been co-opted by civilized minds as a pure intellectual invention? I submit that it is the latter case. I will show that the concepts liberal and conservative are dynamic properties of the natural world and it is not by free choice that we assign them their place in our political arenas. Liberal and conservative margins are a natural dynamic that is found in every natural system.

The dictionary definition of liberal is; not bound by orthodox tenets or established forms, more permissive, a letting go, allowing for deviation from the norm. Conservative is defined as; strict adherence to established forms, low tolerance for change.

We define liberal and conservative as opposites and confine them to separate insular categories while losing sight of the fact that the one could not exist without the other. Indeed, looking at the nature of things it seems that nothing at all could exist without the ongoing interaction of this dynamic duo.

The liberal/conservative dynamic is not unique to politics. Its tension is universally pervasive from microbial to galactic systems. From the infinitesimal particles of quantum physics to the gargantuan galaxies of the universe itself. Everything is characterized by simultaneous tendencies for continuity and change, or operates between conservative and liberal guidelines.

From its inception, the evolution of the universe has been prescribed by the forces of attraction and repulsion. The repulsive force, dark energy, is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. The attractive force, gravity, is resistant to that expansion. The repulsive force is a force for liberal change that pushes things apart while the gravitational force is a force for conservative constancy that seeks to pull things together.

The repulsive force or dark energy, discovered by cosmologists Dr. Joel Primack of the University of California, Santa Cruz and Dr. Katherine Freese of the University of Michigan, permeates space, pushes against gravity and is the dominant cosmological force. That dominance is what makes the universe possible.

Indeed, for a universe to happen, only the repulsive force could so dominate. If gravity were dominant things would have remained totally conservative and virtually unchanging. The dominance of gravity would not provide a meaningful role for the repulsive force. A dominant repulsive force, however, allows room for things to happen, allows for change and allows gravity a partnership in the revelation of our universe.

The same holds true for the political field, as well. An ultra-conservative government, as a force of gravity, would not allow for change and any sign of liberalism would be crushed. Governments based on the free play of contesting ideologies allow for periodic dominance of either the liberal or conservative tendency. The liberal tendency seems to be generally dominant in free societies because it allows room for necessary change. States, like the Soviet Union, that are overwhelmingly resistant to change do not fare so well.

Of course, it should be noted here, that an ultra-liberal system allowing change for change sake could not work either. It would lack the necessary continuity to hold itself together and would soon disintegrate into total chaos. So, like the formation of our universe, our political realm is defined by an expansive/gravitational, repulsive/attractive, liberal/conservative dynamic. And, again, such dynamics are found throughout the nature of things.

Galaxies began as a liberal free-for-all mix of hydrogen and helium atoms trapped in pockets of gravity. The action of the gravitational force is eventually able to define particular galaxies and form their individual stars.

Stars themselves are masses of chaotic liberal change held in place by the force of gravity. A star is formed when an enormous amount of hydrogen gas collapses in on itself around a particular center of attraction. As it contracts the gas heats up and becomes a force for expansion. A balance between expansion and contraction is arrived at and the result is a controlled ongoing nuclear explosion. A star, in a sense, is in a liberal rush to change into something other than what it is. It seems hell bent on burning out as fast as possible, to self-destruct, to let go of itself completely while its gravitational force serves to conserve it as a nuclear furnace through time that manufactures a liberal array of new atoms which are all very conservative in their make up.

In a dying star the liberal and conservative forces go their own separate ways. The star explodes and some of its matter, freed from the conservative restraints of the core, is liberally jettisoned into space. The core of the star can then become an ultra-conservative neutron star, or black hole. Through its enormous gravitational pull a neutron star reduces all the matter in its gravitational field to fundamental particles. It’s like trying to take things back to conditions that existed at the time of the big bang. That is as reactionary as anything can get.

The material world is made up of particles that are also formed by a conservative/liberal dynamic. Inside a proton, a particle forming the nucleus of an atom, the liberal side of the equation holds sway. Its constituent repellent quarks are constantly involved in a complexity of constantly fluctuating interactions with the conservative gluons that corral the quarks as best they can. There is no accounting to a prescribed orderly existence, no commitment to an established order. However, the proton itself, comprised of these frenzied quarks, is an extremely stable, conservative object for which any variance in its ongoing consistency has yet to be detected. The proton’s stability has been calculated to continue for ten million million million million million years.

The rules that govern the linking of atoms to one another are also very conservative. The resulting molecular structures, however, amount to a very liberal array of material forms. Everything that exists, then, is a result of a dialogue between conservative and liberal tendencies.

DNA and the proteins they code for are highly conservative in structure and performance while the resultant biosphere is highly liberal in its resplendent variety. The overall integrity of genetic mechanisms is maintained between liberal and conservative elements, as in agents that favor mutation and those that favor invariance. A workable balance between the two elements must be maintained in order for life to endure and evolve.

If agents in favor of invariance were too conservative life could not have evolved passed the cellular colony stage. If the liberal elements, the agents for change, i.e., mutation, had held sway, every cell reproduced would have been so radically different from the previous one that no agreeable constitution could have been arrived at in order to produce a coherent life form beyond those of individual cells.

Likewise, if primitive groups of hunter/gatherer/scavengers were totally conservative affairs totally bereft of any liberal tendencies whatsoever we would still be living in caves.

Our freedom lies in using our intelligence to determine how the liberal/conservative dynamic can best be configured at any given time. That is, constantly evaluating what we need to be conservative about and what is best left to a liberal approach, tempered with the knowledge that neither liberalism nor conservatism, in and of itself, qualifies as a stand alone societal operating system. Such a regimen, if humanly possible, would serve to eliminate the extraneous noise in the political arena due to unwarranted claims of absolute righteousness from either side of the aisle. It would also encourage a more realistic overview of political organization and its relationship to society as a whole.

Political ideologies are not objective. They cannot in and of themselves show us the way to an optimum social organization. No particular ism is above the social landscape. They are part of it. No ism is capable of molding a viable society according to its precepts alone. History has demonstrated this fact time and again but it’s a lesson we seem incapable of learning. That’s one reason why history seems to be stuck in a vicious cycle.

We are caught up in a power game. Politicians seek power to try to impose a one-sided view on society rather than to use their power to benefit the society as a whole. Presently we are too factionalized, too much at war with ourselves, wielding particular isms like clubs to try and clobber those wielding different clubs. We need to be able to see how isms can effectively work together. That is where the real power lies.