Fascinating Times

I cannot help myself. Watching the changes in the world is just too fascinating for a Political Scientist. The Chinese have a blessing and a curse that says, "May you live in interesting times". We are living in such times. As a Political Scientist (while I have a doctorate in Law, I have always considered myself a Political Scientist and have a degree in it).

It is like being a physicist and looking at new planets. We live in a time of great risk; but, I cannot help but focus on the possibilities and implications politically. It is just my nature. I am sure that someone who studies spiders, if bit by a violin spider, would be unable to help themselves from observing and studying the effect on his body even when in pain.

Political Science at it's most fundamental is a fascination with understanding how societies manage themselves and attempting to determine what the best form of government is. Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbs, St. Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire, Marx, Jefferson, they all come rushing back to me as I watch the world transform around us. I cannot leave out Arnold Toynbee.

I also believe one should read Oswald Spengler. Both Spengler and Toynbee were fascinated by the question of the rise and fall of societies. When I refer to societies, I am not speaking about ethnic groups or nations, we are referring to people working together as a group regardless of the ethnic, religious, gender or other criteria. The group can consist of anyone who works with the group. The issue of the failure of societies has to do with when they stop working together and the society fails.

The question is do all societies fail? That is the issue for all societies. How do we prevent eventual failure? My answer is that we cannot. Nobody ever likes my answers. Failure is an option, it is inevitable because change is not an option. Philosophically, the necessity of failure is hated by most. The eternal struggle between stasis and growth.

The vast majority of people want comfort, stasis, a lack of change or challenge. Change and challenge lead to advancement. Because the majority want predictability and comfort, change agents (outliers, creative people) are held back. If they are effectively held back, no change occurs and societies eventually fail, that is unavoidable. If they are allowed to make too many changes, too soon, society cannot handle it and people refuse to adjust, things fail.

The key to the length of the survival of a society is their ability to deal with change agents, outliers. Both a lack of change and too much change destroy societies. Societies must move forward with some sort of consensus on how much change is acceptable and at what rate. The proper balance allowing for continual change to meet a changing environment is the heart of political science. The proper formula has yet to be found or proven.

The death of societies is always the same. Towards the end, they see that they are losing what they worked for, then they seek to be more restrictive and kill off dissent and difference. The world has changed and societies that had been dominant seek to prevent change. Rather than adjust, they resist and thereby ensure their own end.

We are witnessing the end of a way of life. The end of a civilization, a way of organizing society. Our concept of freedom, privacy, capitalism, religion and family is changing. How we organize ourselves and inter-relate to one another is changing. Western civilization, as we knew it, is undergoing many fundamental changes all at once. Few understand how it is changing; but, most can tell it is happening.

Is this planned by a few or just a natural cycle? Maybe both, it is however inevitable. How will we manage the change and what will we attempt to change into, that remains to be seen.