Ideological pathology

A sad but obvious caracteristic of ideology is its pathological nature. All humans with a normally functionning biochemical system are capable of being entirely rational on all but a few issues. Those issues are among the most demanding in terms of emotional perturbation, love being an obvious candidate for inviting irrational behavior. Although we have not published an official paper on the subject, a venue we are studying at the Institute is the relation between intelligence and emotions. A few posts below reflect on that matter but we have not explained it yet.

Human intelligence was the result of a complex evolution that needed a set of careful objectives. Those objectives were provided by emotions, in the form of biochemical rewards to the biological substrate. What was good for the biological body, in terms of emotional satisfaction, was good for the organism. One of the most fundamental caracteristics of our intelligence is that we are capable of adapting to all new knowledge we can understand. Context is a very important factor in the rationality of this mental exercise. Emotional balance influences information received by the brain and changes the pattern of learned information. Emotion can therefore influence what we understand and therefore the computed solution to a particular input. When emotions reward an individual for a specific information, it is a biological constraint for the individual to reject information that contradicts and embrace information that strenghtens the emotional satisfaction. There was an evolutionary bias to seek information that pleases our emotions. It should thus come at little surprise that these biases affect political leanings.

A recent study by Emory University psychologist Drew Westen, briefly explained in this Washington Post article - Study Ties Political Leanings to Hidden Biases - identified through brainscans that emotional reward centers gratified discarding true information that did not fit emotional bias. Partisans of either the Democratic or the Republican party were as prompt to notice hypocrisy from a politician of different political leaning as they were to excuse similar hypocrisy from an individual who relates to their emotional biases.

While the implications of this can be overlooked, it calls for an important debate on the contexts in which political power should relate to the citizens it represents in a democracy. Politicians have largely taken advantage of emotional imbalance in citizens to gain support. While this is a largely accepted fact of political life, there are few justifications to reason that it is the best way to function. The governments' own incompetence and unaccountability are diseases that prevent them from exercising power in the first place. Fully accountable politicians would have much more freedom of action as abuse would be too easily detected.

Politics being the nervous center of a society, it is obvious that all should be done to achieve the best political system possible. Excuses abound about how much the task is difficult. Political philosophers and politicians have professed this for almost three millenas and achieved little while scientists have gone exactly the opposite way and have already achieved more influence than politicians. While the two groups may seem opposed, they both seek answers to society's problems and formulate answers to improve them. Technology has a much larger role in peace, justice, equality, wealth and health than governments do in every society. Politics are usually derided as deranged theatre and most citizens of modern democracies care little for political affairs. They do not affect them nearly as much as the technologies that grant them access to a material wealth that satisfies their most basic needs.

A marvelous epiphany most political science teachers like to reveal to their students is that politics is still working on the same problems as 2000 years ago. Such a fact is shameful in every science. Again, excuses abound to explain how hard the problems politics try to solve are complex. It's an obvious statement that changes little to the debate and neglects that it took over 2000 years to understand a clear enough picture of nature, which we mostly do not see. Politics at least has the advantage of being in position to know everything about itself. Decisions always tend the opposite way despite the absence of arguments.

Ideology is a pathology of the mind, a memetic virus that shields the mind from rational political debate. Politics, if it is to become a science, must provide itself with tools. Even economics has managed this well by using mathematical tools. The tools of politics are based on communications. At the Institute, we have formulated the systems of executive citizens, intelligent selection, the supercomputer-run encyclopedia and direct representation. We have also formulated a general theory of political science, which deals with a rational procedure that could be followed to achieve useful solutions. The idea of the tools society is fundamental to our research and could eliminate the pathology of ideology to produce a much more efficient, effective and legitimate political system. Most political debate, however interesting, is largely pointless as it rarely evolves from its original statements. If politics are to become a useful part of society, it must improve itself and equip with useful tools.