Let's unpack politics

Any discussion around politics that doesn't first address our different priority of inflexible needs quickly runs into errors. The more we address our specific needs, the less we rely on the generalizing of politics. The most important distinction in politics is not between left and right nor between populism and the establishment, but between generalizing too much and addressing specific needs. Let's get to the needs politics exist to serve. Let's unpack politics, like you've never seen it unpacked before.

Let's Unpack Politics [pdf opens in a new tab]

Which do you think is more likely?

You formulate your political views based on reasoning through the options on each side.

You gravitate toward those views that best express your priority of inflexible needs.

Ready to turn hostile politics

into opportunities to give and

receive some love?

Good! Then let’s

spread

some

love.

CONTENTS

Your political beliefs
Your political differences
Politics defined
Your needs takes sides
Your political orientation
Deep & wide
False balance or false dichotomy?
Your politicized needs
Hold your ground
No conversion
Issue by issue
Spread the love

Let's unpack politics, like you've never seen it unpacked before. Let’s appreciate why it can be so difficult for you to politically agree with others. Or for others to agree with you. Then pave the way to overcome polarization, to spread some love.

1. Your political beliefs

Are you sure you freely choose your political positions after carefully reasoning each option? If so, others should be able to freely choose it too, and agree with you. But they don’t, do they?

not freely choose political views by reasoning alone

Why? Because, in all honesty, you are compelled to choose a position that best fits your painful needs. As others are compelled to choose what best fits their needs. Reasoned arguments emerge after the fact. You politically believe what you need to believe.

2. Your political differences

Needs.

That’s the frequently overlooked part of politics. While you need the same basic things as others, how you need them differs from how others need them. And they can’t change how they need ‘em any easier than you can change how you need whatever is vital for you.

general contrast between liberals and conservatives

The more your situation differs from theirs, the more differently you need from them. The more you need differently,

specific contrast between liberals and conservatives

the more your politics naturally diverge.

3. Politics defined

Politics is the art of generalizing how to agreeably address needs in differing social situations.

Defining politics this way illuminates its risks for polarization.

Instead of encouraging specifics, status quo politics spurs generalizing. You then avoid specifics that risk undermining party unity, and for agreeably relieving pain.

Instead of engaging your specific needs, status quo politics enables avoidance. You then use politics to avoid dealing with the cause of the pain, instead of resolving the needs in a way that stops the pain.

Instead of unifying around what can be done to resolve these needs, status quo politics favors polarization. You then get more out of fighting each other than fighting to resolve each other’s affected needs.

conflict porn = enjoying the conflict more than finding a solution.

4. Your needs takes sides

So why does anyone become a liberal? Or a conservative? Mostly, because each partisan side serves a particular way of experiencing and expressing needs.

One side experiences their psychosocial needs in the opposite direction as the other side. Your

psychosocial situation prioritizes the opposite set of psychosocial needs.

Liberals

Conservatives

must relieve unmet social needs. While guarding their more resolved self-needs.

If a liberal, you feel you must relieve your social need for greater acceptance, for example, than your need for personal resilience. So you rely more on government protections against discrimination, than try to personally overcome repeated rejections by others.

Meanwhile, you guard your more resolved self-need for personal authenticity, like being culturally nonwhite, or being gay, or trans, or a Muslim, against pressures to cooperate and conform with more traditional norms.

The vulnerability of being disadvantaged can make that much more difficult. So you find solace among others of similar experience, and like-mind.

must relieve unmet self-needs. While guarding their more resolved social needs.

If a conservative, you feel you must relieve your self-need for self-sufficiency, for example, more than your need for equal social treatment. So you endeavor to provide for your own the best you can, before seeking fair help from others you don’t personally know.

Meanwhile, you guard your more resolved social need for family cohesion, like safeguarding traditional marriage and the nuclear family, against pressures to allow self-expressions that risk destabilizing established cohesion.

The expanding role of impersonal government can make that much more difficult. So you find solace among others of similar experience, and like-mind.

Whether liberal or conservative, you become oriented to this distinction. Arguments cannot change who you are, or how you experience your needs sharply different from others. Arguments provide you and your cohorts a guarded shell, a fence to protect your vulnerable differences. Arguments that tend to politically privilege dishonesty on both sides.

5. Your political orientation

Your political orientation is the outward expression of your inward psychosocial orientation. Any tension between your self-needs and social needs creates the lens through which you see all things political.

----

For example, if your undermined self-need for privacy floods your thinking, you can hardly find space to consider another’s affected social need for intimacy. What you do with your own reproductive organs is too private a matter for you to open to another’s prying eyes.

Or if your strained social need for reliable local supports feels threatened by government mandates, you can barely appreciate another's vulnerable dependence upon such government provisions. You struggle to stick with your self-initiative, against temptations to depend more on impersonal others.

6. Your political orientation

You believe with others what you need to believe. Your painful needs prioritize your perspective, to compel you to see what the other oriented side cannot easily see.

If your social needs resolve less than your guarded self-needs, you're inwardly wide-oriented.

If your self-needs resolve less than your guarded social needs, you're inwardly deep-oriented.

If wide-oriented, you’re compelled to prioritize inclusion of the historically excluded. You feel the injustices they endured.	If deep-oriented, you’re compelled to prioritize cohesion of the traditionally grouped. You feel the necessity to remain grounded.
If wide-oriented, you’re compelled to prioritize the most vulnerable, to serve widening demand. For you, “Each according to their need.”	If deep-oriented, you’re compelled to prioritize the most productive, to ensure a deep supply. For you, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
If wide-oriented, you rely on public goods, like public welfare. A safety net for the disadvantaged.	If deep-oriented, you rely on private rights, like private enterprise. A meaningful service bringing depth to lives.
If wide-oriented, you wonder if it is effective for the needy many. You likely see an active role for government, to effectively provide for the many who can barely provide for themselves.	If deep-oriented, you wonder if it is efficient for the creative few. You likely see a minimal role for government, to efficiently produce *for us all* only what we cannot do for ourselves.
If wide-oriented, you yearn to improve collective capacity, for those vulnerable to others.	If deep-oriented, you yearn to improve individual capacity, for those with untapped potential.
If wide-oriented, you call for freedom from oppression for those historically deprived.	If deep-oriented, you call for freedom to provide for yourown against pressures to accept disincentivizing handouts.
If wide-oriented, you generalize about wider inclusion, wider public supports, wider efficacies, and wider freedoms from oppression.	deep-oriented, you generalize about deeper cohesion, deeper private rights, deeper efficiencies, and deeper freedoms to provide for your own.
Liberal beliefs express these inner priorities.	Conservative beliefs express these inner priorities.

7. False balance or false dichotomy?

list of contrasting political values from opposing priorities

These are mutually exclusive mostly to those who are not whole.

“It’s best to hold onto one without letting go of the other.”

Sweeping generalizations make them appear more contradictory than they actually are.

Sure, there are false balances in politics. Some policies lead to better results than others. But comparing the underlying needs is a false dichotomy. Your needs are no more important than another’s. When their needs go unmet, they cease to function as well as you when your needs go unmet.

You could affirm the need for inclusion

without neglecting cohesion.

You could honor private property

without neglecting public services.

You could be both effective and efficient.

All without the self-serving generalizing, or pain-avoidant outrage, or echo-chamber polarizing.

The real political difference is not between

between

between

No, the overlooked political difference is between

between

between

A politics that overlooks the needs of others is not a legitimate politics at all.

So generalizer, beware. Avoider, beware. Polarizer, beware. Judgment begins in earnest, as a helpful evaluation for how well you did or did not love your political friend and foe alike. Instead of waiting for the ballot box, let’s measure your impact now. After all, what gets measured gets done. By overcoming polarization, we can do it together now.

8. Your politicized needs

Politics socially conveys your needs. No matter what position you or others take on any issue, your only honest difference is how to respond to needs. Not in the needs themselves.

If I told you I'm thirsty, hot and tired, would you ever say, "I disagree"?

man drinking water from a bottle at the beach

If I said I'm lonely and need someone to talk to, would you debate it?

woman sitting alone on a swing at an empty playground

The needs themselves are not open to debate.

You can choose how you respond to these needs. You generally cannot choose the needs themselves.

9. Hold your ground

So don’t let anyone trick you into giving up your political values for theirs. Their political values evolved to fit

their needs,

their situation,

their prioritized needs.

Not yours.

Your politics don’t require replacement. They need refinement.
Less pain-relieving generalizing, that doesn’t get to the cause of your pain. More need-resolving specifics, that removes the pain.
Less mutual defensiveness. More understanding and engaging of one another’s differing situations.

You don’t have to blindly compromise. You love in how you give, and convey the costs of that love.

handshake with text of 'COMPROMISE' on their sleeves

When political debating slips into disputing the needs themselves, reject this threat to love.

10. No conversion

If you held to one side

line with arrow indicating switching sides

and then switched to the other,

your needs allowed you to convert.

It wasn’t the persuasion of political arguments alone. You can hardly go against what you painfully need.

Your needs resist debate.

Their needs resist your best arguments.

As long as you experience a certain priority of psychosocial needs, your psychosocial orientation will not let you convert.

Not any easier than to convert

a lefthander to righthandedness,

or introversion to extraversion,

or same-sex attracted to opposite-sex attraction.

It’s time to stop trying. It’s time to stop hating on others for differences they cannot change.

clock with text: "time to stop hating others for differences they cannot change"

It’s time to accept each other as

It’s time to replace the status quo of

politically privileged hate

with this vitally needed

unifying understanding love.

11. Issue by issue

Issue by issue,

we step back from

hostile argument

to appreciate the underlying

inflexible needs.

Together, we’ll replace the status quo of

mutual hostilities

with better

loving understanding

of each other’s affected needs.

If we don’t,

who will?

So let’s apply this to the issue at hand. Ready?

12. Spread the love

You will never find a lasting political solution until you first

appreciate your difference in needs.

If you want to be understood,

seek first to understand.

Look at your situation. How does it prioritize your needs?

When looking into situations others face, do you only see your own familiar needs?

urban environment with blue background, rural environment with red background

If raised in a more urban environment, do you only see the need for cultural diversity in rural situations?

Do you not see their need to maintain local initiative, for resourceful responsibility, to provide for their own in the middle of nowhere? Do you think they chose these needs?

If raised in a more rural environment, do you only see the need for private property rights in urban situations?

Do you not see their vulnerabilities to insensitivities, their need for government protections against less visible forms of exploitation, to avoid being re-traumatized? Do you think they chose these needs?

If you do not love others in how you respect their difference in needs, why on earth would you expect them to respect your differing needs? Issue by issue, we pull you out of your shell. Together, we cross a bridge to the other political side, to respect their needs as we would have them respect our own. Issue, by issue, we dare you to love. If you don’t, who will?

So, please,

Together,