On the Futility of Politics

IASE
Sunnyvale, California

Abstract

This paper considers the following proposition:

If Al Gore had become president in the year 2000 then all of the actual events that have marked the political landscape in the world in the following eight years would have unfolded in precisely the same way. The only thing that would be different is our perception of those events. We would feel different because the actual and reported experience of the narrative, the drama, that surrounded those events is different, but that is all.

This is a specific example of a more general proposal that this paper examines. The proposal asserts that only two forces shape human behavior and the behavior of any species. The first of these forces is the inevitable behavior that arises from genetic disposition in its environment. We will refer to this inevitable behavior as natural ethics. The second of these forces is the convention embodied by the group. Convention serves to mitigate the intensity of natural ethics, increasing or reducing its effect. Convention cannot entirely eliminate a natural ethic, nor can convention introduce new behaviors into the world.

Hence the actions of individual politicians are only the superficial drama associated with the events that are, in fact, entirely outside of their control.

We conclude that the question here is not whether the proposition is true or not, but rather to what degree it is true and to what degree individual decisions are adjudicated or inevitable.