Taking risks is perfectly natural for most of the life forms on earth. They have to take risks in order to go on living. The very things they must do in the interest of survival threaten their survival.

A rabbit, for example, has to continually leave the safety of its den and expose itself to predators in order to indulge in the survival practice of eating. It is not unaware of the danger as it is ever scanning its surroundings for approaching predators as it nibbles its food. The danger the rabbit puts itself in must, of course, take a backseat to the necessity of its taking nourishment.

Survivability then is threatened by acts of survival. One cannot go about the business of surviving without putting one’s survival in jeopardy. That, of course, is no reason not to go about pursuing one’s survival.

But, then again, one has no choice in the matter. In order to live one is compelled to eat and in order to eat one must take risks.

One participates in this risk/reward arrangement by virtue of one’s own nature with respect to the natural world – it is all orchestrated by the nature of things. - and Homo Sapiens are no exception.

This state of affairs, being naturally ordained, works best in a natural setting - where all participants are held within the immediate, real-time natural scope of things. Everyone knows how to go about pursuing self-interest and everyone knows the risks involved and it is all wrapped up in a moment to moment existence.

It’s important to note that, while individuals are put at risk, the groups, colonies, tribes etc. are not. The existence of a colony of rabbits, for example, is not threatened by the necessary risk-taking on the part of its individuals.

The same holds true for a primitive tribe of Homo Sapiens. The moment to moment behavior on the part of such a tribe is what assures its existence in perpetuity. The future of the tribe is palpably realized through all of its momentary activities. Natural disasters notwithstanding a tribal people, confident in the pursuit of their short term self-interest, might say, “What sustains us now will sustain us in the future.”

One cannot say the same for civilizations - what sustains them now will not necessarily sustain them in the future. Indeed, what sustains them now can and does threaten their future.

Such has been the case from the onset of civilizations. The city of Ur, for example, where the very agriculture it depended upon for its existence actually sowed the seeds of its destruction.

In their civilized setting the people of Ur were not able to assess their long term self-interest in their short term survival activities with the assurance enjoyed by a primitive tribe. Being unsophisticated about the ways of farming they imagined that all it entailed was plant seed, grow crop, harvest and consume. Ignorant in matters of soil erosion and depletion their once fertile farmland eventually became a barren wasteland and the City of Ur was no more.

The people of Ur thought they were acting in their self-interest. They thought that what sustained them in the present would go on sustaining them in the future. After all, that was their natural inclination. But, unbeknownst to them, civilizations tend to mess with the nature of things in ways that make it difficult to asses long term consequences while pursuing short term interests. This holds true on a collective as well as an individual basis.

Now, again, what all this comes down to is survival. And survival is, of course, uppermost in our self-interest, always was, always will be.

This was a simpler state of affairs in primitive times when basic self-interest was all about basic survival within the symbiotic arrangement of the natural world. What civilizations do in the name of their survival, in the name of their self-interest oftentimes turns out to undermine symbiosis with the natural world. For a primitive tribe it was rather obvious what their self-interest was and how to go about pursuing it. There were dangers and risks involved in their survival activities – from predators, for instance, who posed a mortal threat to individuals.

But it was the survival of the tribe that was paramount. The tribe provided the best chance at survival for each of its individual members. Every individual knew that their survival was dependent on the tribe they belonged to and, so, they were naturally inclined to contribute in whatever ways they could to promote the ongoing welfare of the tribe as a whole. There was a natural symbiosis between the tribe and its members that knit them together as a cohesive unit. What was in the self-interest of the individual was in the interest of the tribe and vice versa.

Civilization blows that arrangement apart. Members of civilized societies are cordoned off into separate hierarchical classifications where self-interest becomes problematical. What serves the self-interest of a civilized society does not always serve the interests of an individual and vice versa.

This has to do with the differences in how one’s membership in a tribe vs a civilized society is contracted. We were compelled by the force of nature to be part of a tribe. That compulsion came from within us and in that sense it was freely chosen. And it was positively reenforced on a daily basis through the palpable benefits of belonging to one’s tribe. There was a real sense of belonging engendered in the crucible of tribal life. In a civilized society, however, one is compelled by forces outside oneself to abide by laws imposed on one by the ruling class. Laws which benefit some at the expense of others.

Contrary to a tribal situation, then, one does not always feel that one’s self-interest is benefited by the civilized society that one is forced to exist in. So, individuals do not necessarily feel themselves to be an intrinsic part of a civilized society as thery once did as members of tribes.

Now, while a civilized society does serve to remove the need to attend to basic survival regimens on the part of its individual members it does not remove their survival instinct. Nor does it remove the risky business involved with survival.

Survival in civilized settings is centered around money. For the most part individuals get money by preforming specialized tasks that contribute to one enterprise or another that supposedly, in turn, contributes to the society as a whole. In other words one serves one’s self-interest by making money by working in a company whose business contributes to the GDP. And that is deemed to be a boon to the survival of the society as a whole. But, just as in the City of Ur ,where a farm worker was thought to be contributing to the survival of the society as a whole but was actually doing the opposite, a worker in a modern society doing a job in a particular industry that contributes to the GDP may be doing more harm than good as far as the big picture is concerned.

As tribal people we could not lose sight of the big picture it was plain to see in everything we did but burrowed into our little civilized cubicles, engaged in our momentary industriousness, mesmerized by the tunnel vision of making money we can and do lose sight of it. And so it becomes problematic to identify what is truly in our self-interest and what is not.

Money is the one and only means of survival. Money engages our survival instinct, as individuals and as individual companies. It engages the survival instinct in a way that can isolate self-interest from the big picture. And, so, a perceived self-interest can trump everything else.

The self-interest of individuals and individual companies they are employed by can become entwined so as to be indistinguishable. But not in the way tribal members are entwined with their tribes, where the self-interest of the one benefits the other. Within a business, for example, an individual’s self-interest can override and damage the interests of the business. And the results can be disastrous.

Inexorably engaged by a survival instinct that is riveted to the idesa of making more and more money one becomes disengaged from everything else. Like reality, for instance. And so, a perceived self-interest obscures real self-interest making it very difficult to make sound judgments regarding risk/reward factors of the big picture.

It may be natural to downplay risks in favor of rewards but it’s downright suicidal to ignore them altogether. Especially in the natural world where becoming too engrossed in a meal advantages predators. In a civilized setting ignoring risk in favor of a perceived self-interest can also have such dire consequences.

Companies like Enron, Lehman Brothers, British Petroleum, et al, believed that they were acting in their own self-interest while in retrospect one might think they were hell-bent on destroying themselves. They were operating with respect to a perceived self-interest that undermined real self-interest. If they had been operating with respect to the big picture their real self-interests would have been plain to see.

BP, for instance, would have been extra conscientious in seeing that all emergency safeguards were in place and functioning. Perhaps BP now has a better sense of their real self-interest. Just in terms of the financial loss it has incurred from the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico it must be evident that it would have cost far less to have had all safety devices in place and functional rather than having to contend with an out of control gusher a mile under the sea.

It might be too much to ask that BP executives be concerned for the natural environment they operate in and feel remorse at the damage they have caused to the Gulf of Mexico. For them the Gulf is there to serve their business interests.

But, again that is ignoring the big picture. Natural environments are part of the big picture and must be conscientiously considered as part of a truly enlightened and therefore real self-interest.

However, had BP merely been duly concerned with covering their own butts by having all the appropriate safeguards operational then that in turn would have served to protect the natural environment as well. Real self-interest encompasses the big picture.

And the executives at Enron, the smartest guys in the room as they liked to refer to themselves, did they really think that they were operating in their own self-interest? Probably. But it was a delusional self-interest. They replaced their real self-interest with a perceived self-interest that was determined merely by high quarterly earnings, which were the result of cooking the books. They knew the earnings were not based in reality but chose to ignore reality in favor of phantom earnings. Their perceived self-interest then took precedence over their real self-interest. And this, of course, led to the catastrophic collapse of the Enron corporation. If the executives were truly self-interested they would not have been in the business of committing fraud. By operating with respect to perceived self-interest they sowed the seeds of their own destruction. If they had pursued their real self-interests they would have conducted business in a forthright manner, which would have also served the interest of their company and its shareholders. Real self-interest, then, serves the interests of others as well.

Dealing realistically with the healthcare issue would mean having to take into account preventable diseases and the individual behavior that causes them. Such a prospect seems to be anathema to politicians. Jerry Brown, in his bid to become Democratic candidate for president, was once asked at a campaign stop about his position on providing healthcare. His response to the question was, to paraphrase, “You smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, you eat junk food, and you don’t exercise. And you expect us to pay for your medical costs?” Jerry Brown was not nominated as his party’s candidate. Candid responses like his are not vote getters.

Raising the specter of individual culpability in exceedingly high medical costs is, it seems, to be avoided at all costs by politicians of either party. None have mentioned it. On top of that politicians are split on the issue - there are those who want everyone to be dependent on government and those who want everyone enriching the coffers of medical insurance companies. And so a realistic evenhanded assessment of healthcare reform is not possible. So, you have bills and plans being offered that are subject to endless tweaks for lack of a real solid foundation with which to base them upon.

My proposal for health care reform outlined in my last post is politically unrealistic because it deals realistically with healthcare costs and individual responsibility.

Healthcare is not the only issue which governments are prevented from dealing with realistically. Environmental conditions are another one. Greenhouse gas emissions, for instance, like medical costs are not a matter of ideological perspective they are what they are and measures to reduce them are inarguably clear-cut. But they are obscured by the perspectives of political expediency.

That we want to pursue unhealthy lifestyles and still be guaranteed health and abuse the natural world without adverse consequences points to a fatal flaw in all civilizations – the Idea that the business of civilizations are paramount on this earth and that the natural world is there to serve civilizations by providing necessary resources. But the reality is that civilizations always were and always will be subject to the natural world. Many civilizations have failed in ignorance of that reality and, yet, we continue to ignore it. Such ignorance is, of course, mandated by all our belief systems.

But nature will have its way and it will not be kind to our civilizations.

There are certain objectives that health care reform must be shaped by. These include bringing costs down, providing for universal coverage and ideological neutrality.

In order to bring costs down measures that are sure to bring costs down must be made part of the reform. Regrettably, such obvious logic needs to be pointed out to the minds of politicians, where vote-getting supersedes all thought processes. This career-minded self-interest on the part of politicians prohibits them from dealing with some salient facts about the ever rising costs of health care. For example, one study has shown that two-thirds of healthcare costs are due to preventable diseases that are linked to tobacco, alcohol, drugs and obesity. Such diseases are preventable through individual behavior modification. Thus, one would reason, the impact of individual behavior on health care costs must be addressed for any comprehensive reform package to be at all effective in its cost cutting objectives, i.e., incentives for individual behavior modification must be included. But the mind-set of politicians prohibits them from making such logical connections.
Another way of bringing health costs down would be to have a single-payer system which would, of course, dramatically decrease administrative expenses for healthcare providers who now have to process a myriad of different systems.

The single payer system should not be administered by the government to protect it from political mindlessness. So, what I propose is a nongovernmental single-payer entity for setting up and processing medical savings accounts for individuals and families and for making payments to health-care providers. It would be a bank whose charter would be to operate a nonprofit institution on behalf of individuals and health providers. Let’s call it a health facilitation bank. It would handle medical savings accounts exclusively.

The incentive for individuals to pursue a healthful lifestyle would be that whatever money in their medical savings accounts not spent on medical costs would be theirs to keep. The bank would of course be earning interest on its investments just as a normal bank would but the profits would go back into the health insurance pool and also into the savings accounts as interest earned on individual deposits. That interest would be rather substantial since the bank would be operating as a nonprofit institution.

Now let’s say, as a ballpark figure, there would be between 100 million and 200 million savings accounts with an average deposit of say $50 a week. This would amount to deposits of between 5 billion and $10 billion every week, or 260 to $520 billion every year. This plus interest on investments equals a considerable pool of money.

Now, individuals would be responsible for paying their own medical bills but they would also be backed up by the bank. Now, let say I have an account of $10,000 and I have a medical procedure costing $20,000. So, $10,000 out of my account is paid to the health provider and the other $10,000 is paid by the bank. But my account is now overdrawn by $10,000. Now let’s say the bank pays half of what I owe and the rest is paid off by me overtime with a low cost low interest loan. The loan is paid off by making deposits to my savings account and they would be considered as normal deposits accumulating and earning interest. If over the next ten years or so I have no major medical expenses and my account without the debt would have been $30,000 would actually amount to, say, $25,000 given the prorated deductions over time.

If an individual opens such a medical savings account at the age of 20, pursues a healthful lifestyle and for the next 30 or so years has minimal medical costs them by age 50 that person would have accumulated a rather large amount of money in their account to take care of any increased medical expenses one might incur in one’s later years. If one acquires a family along the way one would probably put more money in their medical savings account and instill good health habits in their children. Parents would have to pay for their children’s medical expenses but they would also know that the bank would be there to back them up if needed. Of course, the thing to remember here is that with this system medical costs would be much more reasonable than they are today. One’s medical costs would be affordable within one’s budget.

Everyone would be encouraged to open and keep making regular payments into their medical savings account providing the bank with more and more money to invest and to spread around as needed for account holders. A culture of pursuing healthful lifestyles would also be part of the picture. Doctors could retain their fee-for-service arrangements but the bank would also offer bonuses as incentives for doctors to keep costs down while providing quality care.

Medical procedures would be decided upon solely by doctor and patient and would be eligible for financial assistance if needed. Elective surgeries would not. They would not be eligible for any payments issued by the bank to cover a resulting deficit account.

Tort reform would also have to be part of this package to lessen the cost of malpractice insurance for doctors. Doctors could network with one another for diagnostic and treatment purposes and receive authorization from their patients to proceed as agreed upon. In other words, patients would be brought more into the process of deciding how best to proceed. The patient must put his trust in his doctor’s judgment and be an assenting partner in all procedures and, also, in procedures not utilized.

Egregious malpractice by a doctor would result in the loss of their license to practice medicine.

Another benefit of this system would be to the economy whereas businesses would no longer be paying for employees’ health insurance plans. This would free up a lot of money to invigorate the economy and produce more jobs.

The universe itself is created out of a mass of tiny particles, as is every object in it. A building is comprised of small components, bricks, for example. Anatomical structures are formed from microscopic cells. A social organism should also be structured in this way and anatomical systems can be a useful model in this regard. As Robert Wright puts it in his book, NON ZERO, “Analogies between societies and organisms go back to the beginning of cultural evolutionism. A state bureaucracy is a bit like a brain, and Aztec runners, sending commands to military outposts or distant farmers, are a bit like nerve impulses. That these analogies are easy doesn’t mean they’re worthless.” And now, with our greater understanding of how anatomical structures work and how we are biologically oriented, it might be prudent to view entire societies as actual living organisms subject to the natural scheme of things and view them as behaving in similar fashion to other living organisms.

We now live in an electronic world of information processing. We see everything as information processing and it seems that all of existence has to do with the processing of information in one form or another. And this is how a body politic, a social system, should be perceived as a processor of information. “After all,” writes Tom Peters in a section of his book, Liberation Management, “it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that the human body, the corporation and the economy are ‘nothing but’ information processing machines.” And it is no stretch at all to add to that list, social systems. The human body is an information processing system dealing with the maintenance and coordination of many different functions and organs, as is a social system, and the former can be instructive to the latter in fashioning an optimum operating system for social bodies.

Social bodies are complex entities, difficult and in some cases seemingly impossible to manage efficiently. On the other hand, our anatomies are even more complex and they are organized and managed in exemplary fashion. Of course, our anatomies are not perfect, things can go wrong with them, but for the most part they work quite well.

Overall, a healthy functioning body depends on the healthy function of each and every one of its organs. The body’s organs in turn depend on the healthy function of their individual cells. So, when each and every cell is in good working order the entire organism they incorporate is assured a healthy life.

So too with respect to social bodies; when each and every locality is in good working order the entire social organism they incorporate is assured a healthy life.

The body is instructed to provide for the health and welfare of each and every cell and the cells in turn provide for the healthy existence of the body. And this is also how a social body should work - constructed around providing for the health and welfare of each and every locality while localities in turn provide for the healthy existence of the whole social body. And as each and every cell provides for all of its individual constituents each and every locality should provide the wherewithal for each and every individual to prosper.

An overall synergetic symbiosis created out of individual self-interest. That’s the natural miracle of life. We can’t expect a social body to exactly mimic that miracle but given a totally transforming makeover it could closely come to resemble it. The desired, and I would think, universal goal here is to strike an ongoing salubrious balance between the self-interest and collective-interest that characterize the social body.

As it is now the self-interest of a powerful few dominates the social landscape everywhere. Whether the power elites are out for themselves or proclaimed do-gooders they thwart the possibility of creating a synergetic symbiosis between the self and the collective. They interfere with the natural confluence of the self/collective-interest dynamic. This is, of course, unavoidable given the structure of social bodies now in place.

In as much as self and collective-interest in the make-up of a social body is naturally mandated we can find it embedded in our social bodies. It works like this; collective interest is created out of a self-interest that is universal - the interest to survive, which amounts to an attraction to that which benefits ones survival. Everyone has an interest in their own survival. In order to survive in a modern society one needs to acquire money, one way or another. This results in the creation of employers and employees, which form collectives in the form of businesses wherein one’s self-interest in making money can be realized. The self-interest in making money results in one’s contributing to the success of a business collective and to the larger social collective through the payment of taxes. The problem is the dynamic is not allowed to operate freely from the bottom up so that the microcosm exerts more influence on the macrocosm rather than the other way around. There is a disconnect between the two that allows for the “Carnegie effect” where those in positions of power feel no allegiance to those who are not. (In reference to the great divide between the rich and the poor the tycoon Andrew Carnegie once quipped, “I am in heaven, they are in hell and that’s the will of God.”)

The microcosm has to be able to hold the macrocosm accountable at all times in every way. This was a major objective of the American Revolution, which got blindsided by the ascendancy of “special interests” looking to satisfy there own self-interest first and foremost without regard for the society as a whole.

The problem, however, is not with self-interest per se. The healthful conditioning properties of the natural world that channeled self-interested instincts and appetites are lost upon us in the confines of a civilized state

Take our appetite for sweet tasting foods, for example. We are all attracted to sweet tasting foods to one degree or another. How we were able to satisfy that appetite in the wild and how it is exploited in a civilized setting can be instructive here.

Honeycomb was an attractive delicacy for a primitive tribe. And in the wild it was there for the taking. But there was a price to pay. In order to get some honey for his tribe a tribesman climbs a tree and hacks away at a beehive with a stick delivering chunks of honeycomb to the ground below where fellow tribe’s people gather them up and bring them back to the rest of the tribe. The cost is multiple bee stings to the attacker of the hive, which dissuades frequent assaults and limits the portions that can be taken at any one time. Thus, in the wild appetites are effectively controlled by the nature of things.

In our civilized states sweets are readily available and easily acquired making overindulgence all too convenient. Appetite is a powerful motivator in the natural world that in a civilized world can become an out of control unhealthful indulgence. We say it is a matter of self-control but controlling an attraction that is linked to one’s survival instinct is a tall order. In the wild our appetites and instincts were plugged into the nature of things and were naturally restricted.

It is a very strong appetite that faces a swarm of angry stinging bees. It is very difficult to come to understand that something that makes so much sense to us, that seems so right, like eating sweet foods, can be so wrong. But our inclination toward eating sweet foods is not wrong at all. The problem is not inside us with what we want to eat but outside us with the products offered. We are not wrong but they, the products, can be wrong. The fault is not in our appetites but in those products that exploit and pervert those appetites.

Our innate inclination for sweet tasting food and the civilized-created-temptations that cater to it is a good, basic example of the convoluted situation our natures generally find themselves in with regard to the refinements of civilization. Instinctively guided cultural refinements can turn our natural appetites into unruly torments. In this convolution we tend to find fault with our natures. We get the idea that we don’t know what’s good for us.

Money exacerbates the situation. Money explodes communities into a compendium of individuals competing in a zero sum game where self-interest can manifest itself as greed. Money becomes the focus of all our appetites. With money we can have whatever we want. Without it we have nothing. We devise ways of getting as much money as possible. With money everything that was once seamlessly integrated in creating a tribal community becomes a particular commodity. Shelter, food, clothing, sex, aggression, intelligence, beauty, cooperation, competition, craftsmanship, knowledge, information, etc., all have a price. They were all, at one time, interlocking parts of a whole working tribe. With money they become disassociated objects that one seeks to sell to the highest bidder. That’s the law of survival where money calls the shots.

Being greedy for money is a result of one’s natural self-interest becoming individualized, isolated and distended by the matrix of civilization. How wrong is it to be greedy for money in an environment where one’s survival is solely dependent on making money?

Instinctually driven to provide shelters that protect us as much as possible from the exigencies of the natural world we have invented civilizations where our instincts, appetites and drives can be driven to distraction. A proper catalyst to bring about the synergistic confluence of individual self-interest is not provided for in our civilizations as it once was in the survival game of the natural world.

Religion attempts to act as that catalyst by declaring war on our instincts. We are taught that our instincts, appetites and drives are bad. Greed is bad. Self-interest is bad. Sexual desire is bad. Our appetite for food is bad. While vows of poverty, self-sacrifice, celibacy, and fasting are good. The world belongs to demons who want to destroy our souls by tempting our evil instincts. Only by denying ourselves the pleasures of the flesh can we survive for eternity. Just as we had to abide by rules and rituals for physical survival in the jungle we have to abide by the rules and rituals of religion for the eternal survival of our souls.

Religion’s great appeal is that it engages us in a game of survival. In the jungle it is good to physically survive and all our instincts are employed for that purpose. In civilization basic physical survival is not an overriding concern and our instincts become separate venues for self-gratification. Religion creates another world which it declares to be the real world where spiritual survival is good and we must deny the physical world along with our instincts as much as possible in order to achieve that survival. Of course, religious institutions don’t always practice what they preach as they cozy up to the rich and powerful, for instance, for their own physical benefit.

In civilized societies there is a need for a catalyst to mold our instincts into a positive creative force. But declaring those instincts evil is perhaps no longer the way to accomplish that. If it ever was. But traditional religions were born in ignorance. They didn’t know any better. Basically, our instincts are good but they need to have a vigorous conditioning process through which they are channeled into enriching endeavors. We don’t need to change ourselves we need to change how our civilizations are configured. We need to change the way in which our instincts are channeled through the social matrix. We need to change things with respect to present knowledge rather than continue on as we are with respect to the ignorance of the past.

To begin with we all need to develop a very strong sense that each and every one of us is the source of social order. That law, order and morality are concepts that have arisen and arise from within our very selves. That the social order we are subject to is of our own making and not something that needs to be imposed on us authoritatively from above.

In subsequent posts I will detail how this can be accomplished.

As it is now, the prevalent social dynamic is one in which members of particular associations tend to regard their group’s survival as paramount over recognizing and maintaining their proper role within the overall scheme of things. Examples of such behavior are rampant and indulged in by whatever kind of association one can think of be it a government agency, a business, a political party, a street gang, a religious organization, etc. We have, for instance, quasi-religious groups, either godly or secular, tearing at each other’s throats to secure some illusive high moral ground as their exclusive territory; right-to-life v pro-choice, for instance. Also, there are the political par-ties who contend that their ideology provides the only worthwhile perception to the absolute exclusion of all others and, thus, we forego the possibility of forging the super-vision necessary for more effective governance. We have bureaucracies like Health and Human Services, better known as Welfare, which exacerbate the very conditions they were formed to alleviate so as to ensure their own survival at the expense of those they were supposed to serve. We have street gangs like the Crips and Bloods, which are, perhaps, the most brutal manifestations of this pathologically insular mind set but they are merely conforming to the behavior of the society at large, i.e., their associations are the only ones that matter. And we have the media providing the asylum where all this pathology becomes institutionalized.

Competing factions, such as Right-to-life vs Pro-choice, the Crips vs the Bloods and such, can serve to check one another so that neither side will become all powerful but what cannot be checked is the continuing deterioration of the social fabric these contentious groups cause.

It seems like all of our institutions lack a sense of propriety in managing themselves in relation to other institutions and to the overall social organism to which they all belong. Without this holistic sense of things it is, of course, impossible to create and maintain a wholesome social/political system wherein all organs can achieve their proper goals while at the same time contributing to the health and well being of the whole society as they go about their business. With a sense of social propriety, a symbiotic confluence of all participating entities can be created that promotes particular and overall conditions of synergistic vitality. This is what all groups and individuals need to be interested in promoting in spite of their differences. This would make it possible for everyone to contribute to the integrity of the whole social organism while at the same time serving their own self-interests as well.

Is this an unrealistic ideal? All ideals are by definition unrealistic. They are unreachable goals worth striving to approximate. The ideal is to keep trying to get as close to the ideal as possible.

The merging of self-interest and common interest, however, is not some abstract alien idea that needs to be artificially imposed upon people; it is in our natures to be so oriented. The individual members of primitive tribes work for the welfare of the tribe because it is vitally connected to their own self-interest. In our more advanced societies we have individuals working for the common interest of various associations, or “tribes”, which are extensions of their self-interest, be it a business, a political party, a religious sect, etc. And, though, one may also believe that one is working for the betterment of the whole society through one’s associations, this does not always prove to be the case. A business can provide products and jobs but be harmful to the environment. Political parties in seeking their own advantage can interfere with establishing and promoting optimum social conditions. Religious leaders who insist that their beliefs should be the law of the land create conflicts in society that threaten the ongoing cohesion of the overall community to which they belong and which is based upon religious freedom. We can lose sight of the larger picture as we become overly obsessed with our own peephole view of the world. The question for society is how to manage and contain all its various groups in a coherent form.

Soviet communism attempted this through coercion from the top. The State had absolute power to create the perfect society and it botched the job. Attempting to micromanage a society from the top down is a flagrant violation of the nature of things. A macrocosm cannot create the microcosm. The microcosm creates the macrocosm. This is the natural condition of things and applicable to social organisms as well as any other structure. Trying to form a society the other way, from the top down, makes for unwieldy top-heavy structures that are impossible to balance and eventually must fall apart for that very reason. The social structure of the United States is also much too top heavy and seems to be losing the battle in its continual struggle to maintain a pragmatic balance. There is a lot of checking and finger pointing going on but nothing much to promote balance.

Proportion and symmetry are part and parcel of the concept of balance and these three elements might serve us better as societal goals than do the concepts of justice, equality and liberty. Of course, balance, proportion and symmetry do not have the seductive power as the concepts of justice, equality and liberty do, but without the former principles in view the latter ones are mere mirages that torment us with continual disillusionment. But, again, balance, proportion and symmetry can only be achieved by allowing the microcosm to form the macrocosm as in the balance, proportion and symmetry achieved through anatomical organization.

Comparing the dynamics of the human anatomy to a social organism can serve to shed some light on the subject. In imagining the body politic of the United States as a human body the federal government would be its brain. As such, it is presently seen as an enormous monstrosity, grotesquely out of proportion to the social body that struggles to support it. It is a brain riddled with tumorous bureaucracies, all swollen out in cancerous profusion that consider themselves to be the whole purpose of the society they feed upon. They consider their existence to be vitally important. More so than the vitality of the whole organism. Nothing should happen unless it is first processed through their corridors. This would be comparable to an individual, who, through some weird genetic program, designed a brain to micromanage every detail of bodily function while interfering with much of the body’s necessary autonomous activity in the process.

The role of the brain in one’s body is to coordinate, synchronize and modify certain bodily conditions by being constantly alert and immediately and accurately responsive to them via the body’s nervous system. The messages to, from and within the brain must be handled swiftly and efficiently in order to maintain a healthy condition throughout the body. If, however, as it is with the federal government, communications are forced to slither around cancerous labyrinths oozing out ineffectual, contradictory, counterproductive signals then the condition is one of ill health. The brain is at odds with itself and is unable to function as a coordinated coordinating unit.

Now, this is not a prelude to a conservative harangue about the need for less government. No. Arguments for more or less government tend to obscure and distract from the rationale of establishing and maintaining a government proportionate to the body it is part of - which must now and always be the desired objective.

For this objective to be realized the government, of course, must change. Not just in the perennial transition of power, which is a meaningless exercise for entrenched bureaucracies. Not just in terms of cosmetic change but in terms of a complete dismantling and re-creation of all the organs of the body politic on an on going basis. That is, continually, periodically taking our institutions apart and putting them back together again, forming and reforming them constantly in ways best suited to deal with the ever changing social configurations that have been consistently outmaneuvering our misshapen, overweight body politic for decades.

For this to happen, changes need to be made in government similar to those that have been and are being made in business. Namely, the transformation of linear, hierarchical bureaucratic dinosaurs into spatial arrangements of small, discrete, fleet of foot components able to respond and transform themselves as volatile social, economic and environmental conditions require.

As we have seen, it is the natural order of things to develop out from the microcosm to the macrocosm. The microcosm forms the macrocosm. Indeed, everything is created in like manner. The complex intricacy of the human body is formed and maintained through the autonomous networking of individual cells. And, in turn, a system of small integrated components is what we should be looking at for the re creation of the social organism.

Basically what we have realized is that we are not in the driver’s seat. We cannot make things conform to how we might imagine they should be. I refer you to the Soviet Union, for example. Also, we used to make boasts about conquering nature. We were, for instance, going to rid the world of disease once and for all! And now here we are horribly confounded by AIDS, untreatable TB and other diseases resistant to current methods of treatment.

We may find ways of genetically altering the agents of these diseases in order to defeat them but that will probably open the door to the rise of other viruses that will be able to compromise our genetic code in insidious ways - perhaps causing horrific mutations to take hold in the blink of an eye.

Who knows for sure, but that is the way the arms race between us and the viral world seems to go.

Our belief systems are also out of place. We have a totally wrongheaded Hobbesian view of them. We are operating under the impression that to be human means to exist in opposition to nature. We believe that religion was sent to us from some other world, some divine world that instructs us to take on the mantle of divinity in contradiction to our natural inclinations.

But religions were actually formed in opposition to the effects that civilized constructs have had on the nature of human beings. Our natural inclinations were once effectively modified and advantageously conditioned by the natural world which prompted us to form cohesive social groups that benefitted our survival. Freed from the constraints of the natural world by the imposition of civilizations our instincts, drives and appetites needed to be harnessed by some reasonable facsimile of the natural realm that attempted to match its conditioning power.

To the extent that religions are mock-ups of the natural state they are all the same.

Religion attaches self-interest to an after life which is good while self-interest in this life is bad.

But that’s looking at self-interest erroneously as some kind of isolated factor that needs to be dealt with in an exclusive manner.

In reality, however, we see that self-interest forms a natural dynamic with collective interests and we need to rearrange things, rearrange everything with reference to that dynamic.

This, along with the fact that everything is made-up from small discrete units, is the basis for the vision of things unfolding here in The Big Picture.

Collective-interest would be realized by giving free reign to self-interest - an enlightened self-interest that is not regarded as inherently evil and is immanently connected with collective-interests.

One’s self-interest is realized through collective-interests and collective-interest is realized through self-interest. All is realized from the microcosm on an individual basis inexorably connecting each and every individual to the society-at-large which is a direct expression of everyone’s self-interest.

Self-interest is dependent on collectives. The condition of the collective must be kept viable by the self-interested parties involved in forming the collective for their own self-interest.

Our self-interest needs to be released from grand institutions that claim to be operating on behalf of our self-interest while actually using us to pursue their own.

Individual self-interest left, in effect, alone and naked would soon join with the enlightened self-interest of others to form collectives that would genuinely benefit self-interest.

That is the recipe for a far less convoluted and much more user-friendly social system that will be explored further in subsequent posts.

Among the noisy clatter of hammering together some jerry-rigged contraption to get us through the exigent circumstances we find ourselves in there have been some clarion cries for a new model, a new socioeconomic model to operate under that will provide a more coherent system.

Of course, once the faulty system now in place is patched up those cries will die down and it will be business as usual as we head for the next big crisis looming somewhere over the horizon.

Anyway, let’s consider a new model here just for the heck of it.

First of all, with reference to the current outrage, it seems that self-interest is the culprit in all these business and banking crises, past and present. Now, self-interest is considered by many to be a bad thing in and of itself. But it isn’t. It’s all a matter of how it’s directed. For example, self-interest during our primitive existence is what accounted for the formation of close knit groups where individuals put the solidarity of the tribe above themselves. It was self-interest in one’s own survival that bound individuals together. Surviving in the wild on one’s own was not an option. Belonging to a tribe increased one’s chances of survival exponentially. It was also in one’s self-interest to contribute to the tribe’s well-being, to see to it that it was as harmonious as possible. For a tribe in optimum condition was much more likely to survive and that, again, benefited each and every individual’s self-interest because their survival depended upon the collective condition of the tribe.

The very same self-interest/collective-interest dynamic is a fundamental aspect of modern societies as well.

Although in our minds self-interest and collective-interest are separate, opposite and in conflict with one another they are in fact always intertwined It is plain for everyone to see that it is in everyone’s self-interest to be part of various collectives of one sort or another be it a family, school, club, business, gang, community, etc. Forming and being part of collectives is in the self-interest of everyone because that is how everyone’s self-interest can best be realized. One participates, then, in the maintenance of collective organizations as a means of fulfilling one’s self-interest while it is in the interest of the collective to allow individuals to pursue their own self-interest, which includes maintaining the collective-interest.

One’s self-interest is never pursued in an absolutely free state. It is amended and given relevance by the collectives one finds it necessary to belong to. But sometimes the collectives that individuals belong to, like Enron, Country Wide, Bear Sterns and the like operate in an isolated insular way only interested in generating profit for themselves. These collective entities believe they are pursuing their self-interest with their money making schemes but as they eventually find out they are not. They behave like cancerous tumors seeking their own growth at the expense of the whole social body’s well-being. The tumors metastasize and the cancer spreads.

A full realization and understanding of the self-interest/collective interest dynamic on the part of each and every individual would be a positive step toward weaving a sound socioeconomic fabric in which everyone could put their trust.

With this in mind we need to rethink and redesign the whole system where the government, the economy, the banking industry, the media and the citizenry form a seamless social fabric.

We need to define the terms, create the framework and lay out a blueprint for the radical changes necessary to govern effectively and do business in the 21st Century.

First and foremost we need to focus on the fundamentals and then focus on them some more and then keep focusing on them.

Fundamentals like money. We need to know and have a firm grasp of what money’s purpose is in a social body. Generally speaking the purpose of money is to energize the work that needs to be done to create and maintain a healthy vigorous social body.

Money also plays into the self-interest/collective-interest dynamic.

Collective interest is created out of a universal self-interest - the interest to survive. Everyone has an interest in their own survival. In order to survive in a modern society one needs to acquire money, one way or another. This results in the creation of employers and employees, which form collectives – businesses - wherein one’s self-interest in making money can be realized as can the collective interest of the business.

There is also a self and collective interest to have a system for the purpose of handling money. That would, of course, be a banking system whose role would be to, among other things, facilitate the operation of the economic system.

The socioeconomic system now in place is top heavy, convoluted, disconnected and generally obsolete.

Take, for instance, the way money from the private sector is pooled for the benefit of the collective-interest. The pooling of money to serve the collective interest is, of course, in every one’s self-interest. For example, if some disaster befalls a particular area we all want to know that funds will be available for assistance. The pooling of money is now the purview of governments that have the power to tax. So, part of the money that is made in the private sector by individuals and businesses and in the pubic sector by government workers is collected, in te US for instance, by the IRS and then the congress decides how to redistribute it. And part of the money that is redistributed by congress is once again collected by the IRS for congress to re-redistribute.

The whole rigmarole of taxation and redistribution is a bureaucratic nightmare that is all too expensive. The power to tax lends itself to abuse and it can never seem to be wielded in a judicious manner.

So, although a society needs to pool its money for collective-interest it need not be accomplished through government’s power to tax.

Another way of pooling a society’s money will be submitted here a little further on. There is, as we shall see, a way of doing this that would have everyone paying their fair share and have appropriate funds readily accessible whenever and wherever they were needed.

But first let’s look at the circulation of money in the private sector. In the system now in place money starts its journey from the upper echelons of the federal apparatus and banking industry from where it finds its trickle down way to the rest of us. And when things are good this is supposed to be a boon to everyone. As Ronald Reagan claimed, “A rising tide raises all boats.” But somehow it doesn’t seem to work out that way. Like the tax system the manner in which money is circulated lends itself to abuse, is not judicious and is inefficient.

In designing a socioeconomic system we can take a lesson from the composition of everything else in existence. Every macro system is composed of micro bits. Everything is built by connecting small discrete bits together to form a macrocosm. The microcosm fashions the macrocosm - from infinitesimal quantum particles to the gigantic universe - from hydrogen atoms to enormous galaxies - the whole biosphere is made possible by miniscule molecules of DNA – life forms are made up of microscopic cells - buildings are built brick by brick, nail by nail, rivet by rivet. And this how a socioeconomic system should also be created and maintained. That is, built up from localities – communities, neighborhoods, towns, villages. So, the idea is to support and secure the foundation of a social system and then go on from there.

So, the circulation of money would begin at the local level. Local banks, then, would begin the process of distributing the money supply throughout the whole system. The money would be supplied by the system’s “reserve”. Initially, the local banks would, of course, invest in their own communities in both the private and public sectors. Through sound banking practices local economies prosper and this adds to the banks’ value and their ability to borrow more money from the reserve. The local banks would use “extra” reserves to fund a county bank, or banks, to handle larger investments in the area.

County banks would actually be comprised of local banks and they would invest in the larger projects that would benefit the operation of the localities. County banks would be dependent on local banks for funding and, so, could not take on any projects without approval from localities.

The county banks would, similarly, create state banks, state banks regional banks and the regionals a national bank. Local banks would have to have confidence in all the various banking terminals from the county to the national. The confidence level would determine the amount of capital local banks would invest in county banks, state banks and the rest. Local banks would control the money supply throughout the system. Thus the financial system would not stray very far from its foundation.

The social dynamic of self-interest/collective interest also demands other services that need to be fulfilled by a system of government.

Government would not have the power to tax. The public sector would be allocated funds by private citizens and businesses, via the banking system. The scope of government would be determined by whatever is deemed necessary by those in the private sector.

The government per se would have nothing to do with the collection and allocation of money. Whatever government is deemed necessary to support and integrate the system would receive the appropriate funds with which to operate efficiently. Such funds would amount to a share of the wealth generated by the economy to be allocated as required with respect to particular circumstances.

A good image to illustrate this system would be to imagine the whole society afloat on a national pool of money. Let’s say the entire value of the GDP would create this money pool which would be allocated for private and public sector projects. Each and every individual, each and every business would be contributing to it and withdrawing from it, via the banking system, as needed for investments, or public works. Every segment of society including the federal government would be just another locality. In this vision of things everything flattens out floating on the pool. No higher and lower, only different perspectives and roles. One draws from and contributes to the general pool as one’s condition and circumstance dictate with reference to one’s ongoing and overriding need to preserve the solvency of the system as a whole.

Banks would be pivotal to this symbiosis. Government, business people and bankers would gather together to decide how available funds should be used in order to serve their mutual interests which must be kept in synch with the interests of the entire community as well. Bankers and businessmen would want to keep at a minimum the funds needed for government so it would not be a drain on the economy. On the other hand they would also have an interest in things being governed effectively.

Every dollar spent for government would need to have real value to the whole community in making a vital contribution to society’s proficiency as a synergistic unit. The way to keep government limited would be for the banking industry, business and individuals to play by the rules, to effectively police themselves.

As for services that are now provided by government like water, sewage, garbage collection and disposal, road building and repair, etc., these could be contracted out by the bank, as society’s executor, to individuals able to oversee an efficient operation and be directly answerable to the community for their performance - thus, removing the need to create enormous inefficient and often corrupt government bureaucracies to deal with these matters. Run by private individuals the operations would need to use economically sound business practices though they would not be profit making affairs. People would be charged for the delivery of these services in terms of what it costs to deliver them. The target for the providers of these services would be to operate at cost though some subsidy might be necessary from the general pool of money to which everyone contributes. Things like the building and maintenance of roads would be financed entirely through the general pool of money. Recently, however, the private sector has ventured into providing roads. This, apparently, is due to new technologies whereby tolls can be collected without inconveniencing drivers. A bar code on the windshield of their cars is read by a laser as the traffic speeds by. This is a good example of how technology can change traditional concepts of public and private sector arrangements. Generally speaking, all expenditures for infrastructure and basic services which the so-called private sector chooses not to handle have value to the social organism as long as they support a healthy vigorous economy. The infrastructure of a healthy social body, the roads, bridges, plumbing, etc. should cost the body much less than the value received. All organs of the social body must get just what they need to produce what they must through the circulation of money.

We have to be able to discern what our priorities are in terms of real value to our well being, in the long term especially, and see to it that resources are made available to invest in those priorities in a cost effective manner. With money going directly into certain needy areas for the purpose of dealing with specific problems there would not be the enormous waste of resources and effort there is today. So, disaster relief funds with more accurate targeting would be immediately available to affected areas through local banking systems.

The various terminals in a system of government would be formed as is the banking system. Basically we see the social body made up of a network of autonomous communities forming from within themselves all the political, social and economic organs needed for their own particular situations while at the same time creating out of themselves the larger body politic in which they would all be incorporated.

Communities, then, would function as centers unto themselves with respect to their associations with other communities and to the society at large as well. The communities would form out of themselves a county government made up of an individual representative from each community. This same process would be repeated at the county terminal with counties networking to form a state apparatus, and so on and so forth for regional and national terminals of government. The microcosm forms the macrocosm congruous to the contours of the microcosm and therefore prevents the macrocosm from becoming something alien to the microcosm.

All government terminals, in real-time communication with one another, could contribute what timely input each had to offer from their particular vantage point in regard to a given situation and decide among themselves how best to handle it. Generally speaking, it would be incumbent upon localities to resolve their own problems. When this would not be possible, however, the matter would be relegated to the proximate terminal and so on until some satisfactory solution was formulated. Lines of authority would not be altogether fixed but would be commensurate to the value of the input one had to offer in an ongoing process of checks and balances throughout the system.

So, if a problem were irreconcilable at a locality authority would be given to the proximate terminal to impose a solution. However, if and when the parties involved at the locality agreed to abide by a different solution arrived at among themselves, which they found preferable to the one imposed upon them by the county or other government terminal, then the imposed solution could be overturned in favor of the local agreement.

This kind of system would give communities better representation and allow for programs and policies to be as fine-tuned as possible to particular situations.

Through this kind of networking it would be possible to establish an integrated system that forms social bonds which allow for differences while not tolerating contamination. Bonds that define how we are individually oriented, how we fit into the overall scheme and how we can all find ways of making things work more harmoniously than is now the case.

A community must be able to decide for itself what policies and programs it needs to engender in order to keep itself fit and healthy. In extreme cases it might have to impose extreme measures on itself to achieve a healthy condition. Communities rife with crime, for instance, might choose to declare martial law to get things under control. Such a police state enacted from within rather than imposed from without and enforced by members of the community would be much more tolerable, would not threaten the law of the land with such extremism and could easily evolve into normalcy as soon as conditions warranted.

Some such communities have taken matters into their own hands with superb results. Citizens of a project in East St. Louis that had been under siege with theft, violence and drugs formed a committee with the power to decide who could, and who could not, take up residence within their borders. They were successful in cleaning things up by applying a policy of strict discrimination in regard to who would be allowed to be their neighbors. Such discrimination could not have been imposed by the government agency in charge of the project but administered by the people of the community upon their own it was an acceptable policy.

Government agencies residing in remote power centers which have no real interest in the communities under their purview cannot accurately prescribe the correct measures particular communities need to improve their conditions. The people living in the community know better than anyone what prescriptions to administer for the ailments they are inflicted with and no outside agency should be able to override the mandates they decide upon. They would, of course, be monitored, guided and influenced by the society at large.

People need to have a direct input with respect to their immediate surroundings so that they can effectively manage their environment. Being manipulated by remote centralized power structures distract and abstract us from immediate associations. Big business, big government, big media and big religion do more to distort people’s perception than to promote reason, balance and clear vision.

Within each of us resides a complex system of scales by which we weigh the appropriateness of what is going on around us. It is to everyone’s benefit that these individual systems be allowed to fully develop through their vigorous interaction with other individual systems to form and reform the social milieu within which the individuals reside. Being instructed and enveloped by remote power structures promoting a broad clinical socialization of society for their own interests weakens the necessary discriminatory apparatus of individuals which in turn erodes social cohesion.

One’s individual system of scales must be, first and foremost, fine tuned to one’s immediate environment in order to be able to weigh individual elements against each other, what is known about them, how they fit into the overall scheme, how one is effected by them, how one effects them and so on and so forth and through this process arrive at what action if any should be taken to deal with particular situations.

So, we have subjective views inter¬acting with other subjective views to form objective harmony through which one feels one’s subjectivity vital and elevated in the social organism one is instrumental in forming. We see social order as growing out from ourselves rather than something to be imposed upon us. This conforms to the nature of things progressing from the microcosm to the macrocosm. If everyone as an autonomous arbiter of what is and is not conducive to a harmonious environment is not allowed to act as such then license is given, through the manipulation of centralized power structures, to those whose sense of harmony might be cacophonous.

The whole measure of a society can be taken by how it effects, and is affected by, the individual. In the United States individuals are primarily thought of as con¬sumers to be cajoled, conned and/or compelled to buy any number of nicely packaged products from kitty litter to political platforms. Individuals are seen as quarry to be captured through the clever use of advertising techniques which operate on the irrational, the sensational, the unconscious level of our psyches. Hit them below the belt is the modus operandi. Or as one ardent member of a political movement once said, “When you’ve got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.”

We are continuously barraged with messages, images, and signals aimed at manipulating us in the crudest way possible. Appealing to our higher faculties would, one might suppose, be less democratic than appealing to the lowest common denominator. Anyway one is jerked around this way and that way by government, business, media and a variety of crusading cults without any recourse for individuals to correspond in a mindful manner. The prevailing attitude of most every social, political, economic set and subset is “you are either for us or against us”.

One would think that perhaps the Media might be the place to provide a forum that would serve to find common ground between the various factions. However, the Media is merely a multi-ringed circus of personalities and events using the most salacious and titillating aspects of the social/political scene to garner the highest rating share possible. Media stars pose as the guardians of reason and rationality while merely serving to highlight the scenes of mayhem and madness they’re only too eager to broadcast. They are dutifully serving their master’s monstrous appetite for ratings.

The two aspects of the social dynamic, self-interest/collective interest must be vigilantly attended to so as to maintain the optimum balance between them at any given time. Such a balance cannot be arrived at from edicts and manipulations conjured up by a central authority that chronically or alternately favors one aspect of the social dynamic over the other. Going form under-regulating to over-regulating, for instance. It can only be arrived at through the vigorous interaction of individual members of communities, and their associations, as they strive to find and maintain an optimum balance at all times.

Individuals that realize the self-interest/collective-interest dynamic and how it serves them as well as the society-at-large are guarantors of a viable social organism.

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.