The Real Great Reset - Post 1

Rebooting your understanding of government and politics

Being off course by one degree can make a massive distance in your travel trajectory. Ask any boat captain or pilot, and they’ll be happy to confirm. Conventional wisdom (and math) holds that during a flight, every mile flown at just one degree off course will result in missing the desired waypoint by 92 feet. If the pilot proceeds at that trajectory for 60 miles, the plane will be a full mile away from where it should have been.  More significantly, traveling off course by the same one degree over the distance from JFK, in New York, to LAX, in California, would result in missing the target by 40 miles.

Suffice it to say that veering off course can have an extreme impact.

When I think about The United States of America and examine our present political surroundings, I can’t help but notice that we’re off course.  We’re nowhere near where we’re supposed to be as a nation, and that makes it really tough for each of us to understand where we are in our own political beliefs.

I firmly believe that, with just a little work, we can get more folks to identify beliefs that function as a lens through which we can look at the landscape, and develop a perspective, as opposed to darting from one position to another, based on opinion, and holding in contempt anybody who seems to be on “the other side”.

Assuming that I’m correct, we should probably take a close look at the roadmap and determine where we went wrong.

I’d suggest that, rather than making what we think is a course correction in the middle of the trip, the best place to start is back at the beginning.

Over the next several posts, I’ll be walking through (for my own benefit, mostly), not just what America should be, but what governments should be.

I guess “should be” is fairly subjective, depending on where the thinker or reader is coming from in terms of political philosophy. So, rather than starting with government(s), I’d like to start all the way back at the beginning…imagining a time before political hierarchy…and see where it takes us.

Full transparency; I want engagement on these issues.  I want to see if people mostly agree with the ideas I’m going to be writing about or if there’s a point at which I posit something that feels so incorrect or off base that I’ve strayed from the pack.

If you read through these posts and feel like we got to a place where I’ve skipped a step in my reasoning or inserted my own opinions, please chime in!

In order to get the ball rolling, let’s leave “origins” out of the conversation for the moment.  I think everybody will recognize that the answer to the question ‘where did people come from?’ will play a major role in this conversation at some point.  I’m just not so sure that we need to hash it all out right here at the onset.

As we go, I’ll do my best to remain as objective as possible and hold to logical and demonstrable suppositions.  Further, I’d like to take one step at a time and avoid, as much as possible, getting off by a degree as we journey.

So, let’s start by talking about the natural state of humans.  This is going to be a little tricky.  We’ll have to be thinking of a time in the world and a way of being that seems altogether foreign and perhaps unrelatable to people living the modern lifestyles that we all live…but let’s give it a whirl.

A person, existing in his/her natural state, is entirely equal in innate worth to each and every other individual.  I’m not making a particularly religious statement, and I’m referring to the person at his/her very essence; a human being…in the absence of any actions he/she has taken, is taking, or will take…someone…without the quantifying effects of his/her past, present or future thoughts, speech, feelings, or impact on anyone else.  I’m saying, “a person is equal to a person”.  It’s a mathematical equation.

A = A

People have the same, inherent, baseline worth. That does not mean that all people can achieve the same tasks or generate the same degree of productivity, or any other measure we might use to compare the net value of any object in contrast to another.

At the conclusion of this statement, it occurs to me that we may have already hit a point of divergence.  Either because of misunderstanding or legitimate disagreement, I may have already lost some of my audience to another camp.

It’s fair to say that some people believe in the innate equality of humans, and others do not.  So, here’s the first off-ramp.  Here’s the first chance to take another road and end up in another place.

What do you believe?  With consideration and thought, do you land in a place where you can, not only accept, but really believe, that all people are equal?

Let’s take the next step.

Rights are a slippery business.  Talk to a hundred people and you’ll get a hundred different definitions and interpretations of what rights are.  If you want to take that black and white picture and make it a little greyer, introduce the word “rights” into conversation about daily life, government, and so forth.  In short order, you’ll find that people use the word “rights” to mean something either slightly or immensely different than what they just told you “rights” means.

Merriam-Webster defines the noun form of the word “right” as:

something to which one has a just claim: such as

a.      The power or privilege to which one is justly entitled

This is a definition with which most of us would probably be comfortable.  This framing precisely references power or privilege, and not some material entitlement.

Here’s another chance at a point-of-departure.  You may not give intellectual assent to this definition, but I don’t presume that many would identify this as worthy of divergence, even if you prefer the definition provided by some other publisher.

Assuming we’re good on the definition of rights, we’d do well, now, to start enumerating some things that we can agree would qualify as the rights of a person in his/her natural state. 

It’s crucial to bear in mind that we’re not talking about a person living in contemporary society with access to the creations (physical or philosophical) of our various cultures.

I’ll postulate as thorough a list as I can while trying to strike a good balance between overly vague and minutely specific.

A person in the natural state has the following rights:

1.      The right to sustain one’s life and the lives of his/her family

2.      The right to protect one’s life and the lives of his/her family/tribe

3.      The right to utilize the resources at one’s disposal to achieve the most desirable life, as directed by oneself

4.      The right to protect the possessions one has acquired and the product of one’s efforts

If this list feels short to you, please remember that within each right I’ve listed above are contained innumerable combinations of thoughts, expressions, and actions.

Assuming that most of us would be comfortable with this list, I can make the next logical step of identifying that each person (in his/her natural state) is free to avail himself/herself of any course of action that he/she deems appropriate, according to whatever method of evaluation, rationalization, or decision-making he/she chooses to employ, to proceed through life unhindered by another.

Now, it’s time to make some connections with real implications.

If all people are equal, and rights exist (objectively), then all people enjoy all rights to an equal degree.

This is not an insignificant point!  It sets the stage for the rest of the conversation (in however many posts it takes), because it implies that the same certainty with which we accept the existence of rights, we must accept the existence of naturally existing boundaries to the exercise of those rights…namely, the rights of others.

I have the right to sustain my own life, but not at the expense of the life of another.

I have the right to utilize resources to achieve a desirable life, but not the resources that another has already acquired.

Once again considering the natural state of humans, we must concede that as equal people exercise equal rights, the sole method of dispute resolution is negotiation and cooperation among involved persons.

At this point, we’re coming to the first identifiable philosophy that gives a name to the form human interaction takes – anarchy.

Anarchy has a bad reputation and, as a philosophy, is the unfortunate victim of perpetual and fantastic misunderstanding.  People think of anarchy as chaotic lawlessness…The Purge.

In reality, anarchy merely represents the absence of governing bodies or authorities.  It is a system in which the prevailing method of person-to-person interaction is self-governance that is marked by voluntary cooperation, devoid of political institutions.

So, where the rubber meets the road, disparate people and families can, of their own free-will, band together with others, voluntarily – hoping, perhaps, to enjoy the exponential benefits of labor, protection, and so forth – into mutually advantageous communities.  In those communities, each is subject only to his/her own sensibilities, and is never under the authority of any other individual or group, apart from any situation established by free exercise of individual autonomy.

In such a case, individuals turn into groups, and negotiated understandings may turn into rules.

Don’t get worked up…I’m not an anarchist.  In fact, though we can point to various free-market principals and personal interactions as successful and on-going instances of anarchy, I believe that anarchy (as an overarching governing philosophy) has an extremely limited shelf-life in its practical usefulness.

So what does that mean for Mr. Natural Man and Ms. Natural Woman?

That’s what we’ll consider next time.