At the PURPLE end lie a powerful few who are in a position to use the state as a tool to impose their will on the entire society. At the PURPLE end lie a responsible few who are empowered through political institutions to make decisions that encourage the long-term stability of society.
At the GREEN end are many politically weak individuals whose real power comes from making the day-to-day decisions that impact mostly themselves and their close associates. At the GREEN end are many politically extreme individuals who seek real power for themselves by destabilizing the established political order of society.
This is the most fundamental division in politics, dating back to kings and pharaohs and chiefs and so on into the pre-history of mankind. The axis runs through the middle because there is nothing inherently left- or right-wing about being either politically powerful or weak.
Each of us, as an independent and existentially unique human being, has no option but to make choices about everything we do. We are all born into some society or other, though, and the conventions of any society we could be born into include collective decision-making procedures that everyone else in society will expect us to abide by (on pain of expulsion or death). Every person is existentially GREEN and governments are constitutionally PURPLE. Civil society grows out of the continuing compromises each of us makes along the GREEN to PURPLE spectrum.
No comments:
Post a Comment