149. Political Questions

When we think about politics, we think of things like governments, laws, parties, elections, and so on. This is because we live in societies with political systems that put these institutions at the forefront. Our understanding of politics tends to orbit these concepts, and our political landscape is dominated by questions like what our government should do about a particular issue and who should win the next election.

But politics is much more than this. The practice of politics is fundamentally about determining the kind of society we want to have together. By focusing on technocratic distinctions between binary positions on narrow issues we completely lose sight of this much bigger issue. We get caught up in the details without questioning or even seeing the broad agreements that construct our political reality.

The most general political question of all is almost never asked. One way of stating it is: how should we act as citizens of a shared world? This might not even look like a political question, but it is fundamental to any possible agreement that might follow. For we can only agree on what we are going to do collectively if we first agree on how we ought to act. The most general question is thus not only political but also ethical.

It is our ethics that sets the the boundaries of what we can do together as a whole. When we lack awareness of ourselves and the world around us, we cannot expect our political systems to work in ways that do not produce more suffering, conflict, and violence. This means that to have a better politics, each of us must become a better citizen of the polis.

Once again (and always) the problem is a deeply personal one. We are the ones who are responsible, both individually and collectively, for our political systems. We must allow our attention to openly and freely explore both ourselves and our world so that our awareness continues to expand. It is only through greater awareness that we can create a better politics that is actively compassionate and works to reduce unnecessary pain and suffering for everyone.