Politics: the secret application of vices in
preserving group cohesion; in professional circles, politics features the art
of telling noble lies to convince people, in effect, that Sartre was wrong when
he said that hell is other people.
When many people choose to live together in cities and
nations, a dominance hierarchy emerges as the most stable social structure, as
it does in most social animal species. However, most people are too vain to
consider themselves animals whose lives are governed largely by power
relations. From a genetic viewpoint, our great intelligence is a byproduct that
leads us astray, filling our heads with diversions and delusions of grandeur.
Whereas many kings, emperors, tsars, and dictators have foregone the political
enterprise, preferring to rule as unashamed beasts with displays of absolute
power, modern rulers are forced to resort to Machiavellian maneuvers. This is
because modernists preach secular humanism, which inspires people to think of
themselves as heroes, boldly confronting the forces that hinder our progress.
Spreading that myth and then undermining it with brutal oppression of the
masses would obviously be counterproductive, and yet modern myths hardly
prevent the emergence of dominance hierarchies. Thus, modern politicians
apologize for and exploit power imbalances with covert rather than with open
forms of corruption.
Politics is a charade in which leaders and followers pretend
to be rational and virtuous while demonstrating the opposite at every opportunity.
After all, politics isn’t just for professional politicians; no, whenever
people interact socially in a group of whatever size, we resort to political
maneuvers to maintain the power dynamic while distracting ourselves with our
group’s loftier stated purpose--lest we break our social bonds, since
we’re too vain and clever to sustain transparently-degrading group dynamics.
With political posturing, spin-doctoring, white lying, backstabbing, double
dealing, flip-flopping, gossip, and brinksmanship, we concede that we’re
animals vying for power while maintaining the legend of our nobility.
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