Inevitable Behaviors and the Futility of Politics

There are two factors that determine human social behavior. The first is inevitable behavior, the product of genetic disposition in its environment. The second is convention, the product of historical memory. The second mitigates the first.

I want to be clear here because I have variously used the term "mediates" and "mitigates" over the years to describe this interaction. I really mean "mitigate" in the sense that convention will either lessen or increase the inevitable behavior. "Mediate" is the wrong term really and when I use it I mean it as a modifier in the foregoing sense. I do not believe that convention modifies behavior so completely that natural ethics are overridden - or that convention can install a behavior that is unfounded in natural ethics.

Let me give an example of how we might apply this model.

I use this analysis to observe that the convention of "prior claim" is "unnatural." It is derived from the judeao imperative "thou shall not steal" and "the rights of Kings." While the natural ethic of "ownership" appears to be based on "good and productive use." Translated to social behavior, piracy is inevitable when groups or individuals unreasonably hold on to resources but there is a tendency to allow command of resources to those putting them to "good and productive use."

This is an example of where some theories of social justice will consider convention to be detrimental since it leads to the establishment of unnatural divisions - class and unmerited privilege. Intuitively and, for me, viscerally this seems unjust - but one has to take into account our biases and be more impartial than that.

Of course, the overall dynamics are more complex than this simple example. Conventions - that cannot always be as clearly stated - embody a complete and often interdependent set of ethical imperatives. They mitigate the dynamics of natural ethics that are themselves determined by physical phenomena.

It should be possible to formalize these dynamics, and game theory takes a step in that direction, but it does not provide an overall theory of human behavior.

The implications of this theory are most clear if I ask you to imagine these dynamics in the contemporary world, with Al Gore as president in place of George Bush. I postulate that these dynamics are so powerful that the events since 2000 would be exactly those we have seen - but we would all feel differently about them because the semeiotic landscape would be different. Thus contemporary politics is futile except to the degree that it changes our perception - I think we'd all be happier if Al Gore were president but nothing else would change.

Now I'd expect a counter argument that runs something like: the conventions under Gore would have a different emphasis than under Bush. But I question that such an emphasis would have any impact except, as I say, on our perception of events. But even if true, the model still holds.

Is convention "slowly evolving?" At times it is. Al Gore may have intuitively learned this lesson - and have realized that he can only have a real impact on outcomes through the longer term development of new ethical imperatives. It's for the same reason that all "preachers" have a bigger effect on outcomes than politicians.

But it is also capable of radical change at points of revolution. New ethical imperatives are not the cause of revolutions - no matter how compelling they seem - because of inertia. Revolutions only occur as a response to the failure of prevailing convention to mitigate natural ethics - at which point new ethical imperatives can be introduced. Have yours ready.

We saw this in the early twentieth century - it was not "the spread of communism" but rather a revolution that was inevitable began and communism came in to fill the void (and there was some competition for the new order). The same is happening today with Islam. It is not "the spread of Islam" - the revolution was the inevitable product of conventions that brought wide social injustice. Islam is simply filling the void and the conventions that it brings. That we do not understand those conventions limits our ability to predict outcomes because even if we can identify the natural ethics we do not know how they are mitigated.

If you want to compete with Islam you have to be on the ground and able to introduce something new (not the conventions that are perceived to be the cause of the inevitable rebellion). It may be too late to do that.

[This post is a modification to a post I made in a much longer discussion of these matters on the list for Peirce scholars, peirce-l.]