THE DEFINITIONS OF POLITICS
Let’s start with the basic definition of politics that we can find of Wikipedia: “Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, ‘affairs of the cities’) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The academic study of politics is referred to as political science.” If we use a simple search by Google for “definition of politics” we will get the following result: “the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power.”
These definitions may already sound confusing, overwhelming to comprehend and for some even too academic. On the other hand with the risk of oversimplification we could consider an easy definition by Harold D. Lasswell who defined politics as who gets what when and how. When we put ourselves in the context of modern world which builds the value system around individualism than it seems like Lasswell really touched the core point with the power of simplicity. However the simplicity of his definition could be terribly misleading because it points to self interest as a core purpose of human lives.
So far one could realize how seemingly primitive term which on the other hand is so widely applied and mentioned on a daily basis is actually not so simple after all. Each of us may have our own definition of politics based on personal experiences and unfortunately most of us would probably define politics with negative connotation to a certain extent. What we have learned and experienced of politics is very subjective because the quality of human life highly depends on execution of politics in our proximity while the real meaning and the definition of politics may be something completely different especially from ideal and scientific perspective. Let’ turn to ideal mode!
MAN AS A POLITICAL ANIMAL
Politics is the art of managing human relationship in order to increase prosperity, happiness and well being for all. Does that sound better? It should because I just made that up 🙂 It may sound too naive but most of us would agree that this is the core purpose of not just politics but of any sort of interaction between individuals, communities, organizations, nations etc. Therefore politics is art that should serve to achieve the betterment for entire society. This is the core principle of politics from utilitarian perspective.
“Man is by nature a political animal” goes famous Aristotel’s saying. We all heard it a hundred times but yet again his saying may have a completely different meaning to each one of us. Especially if you take his saying for granted without considering the entire context of philosophy he applied to support it. For some it may sound as if every individual is driven by a self interest by seeking only ways to maximize personal gains just like Lasswell’s definition of politics may imply. For others it may sound as if people are naturally inclined to cooperate and work together in order to improve their lives as utilitarianism implies. The latter may be more convincing than the former if we consider how Aristotle continued to explain his statement: “every man, by nature, has an impulse toward a partnership with others”. But how one chooses to do so is a matter of personal preference which highly matters in politics.
It turns out that many of us would agree that how politics should strive to make our lives better but as soon as we ask the question HOW it becomes obvious that we are drastically different from each other. When we put politics into practice the primary focus on morality becomes easily challenged by practicality and all of a sudden we are divided between utilitarians and pragmatics who would advocate Realpolitik. Neither of us are totally right and neither are totally wrong. We just came to the point when the cultural norms start to matter more than the definition of politics itself.
SIMPLICITY IS NOT AN OPTION
So far there only we have looked at different definitions of politics and considered different perspectives when it comes to application of politics which might cause a round-trip to redefine politics based on how we would individually put it into practice or driven by our envisioning of the ideal world around us. That is when things start to become complicated especially because we are here on this world, this continent, nation, state, city, village, community or household together with each other and yet we are so different from each other. There is no way out while there is a necessity to cooperate and work together.
Furthermore there is no simple definition of politics just like there is no simple definition of human personality. So when you take into account how individual politics emerge from each one of us individually while we are bind to build families and societies together it all becomes a chaotic mess. Or perhaps a creative mess! Overall don’t blame it on the politics per se anymore whatever your current standpoint may be because politics is just the extension of each one of us alone like some sort of holistic organism.
AND NOW WHAT?
It would be pity to conclude without any thoughts about what to do regarding all that creative mess. We have many reasons to believe that we as a human kind are on the right course of development despite are personal and cultural complexities. Yes there are still problems with poverty, discrimination, abuse, wars, violence, crime, inequality, environmental pollution etc. But for most of us individually things are far better now then they were before.
The standard of human living has been on a steady increase for a long time now despite inequality and poverty which are still present to a certain extent. We are enjoying more civic liberties among all classes of societies of which our ancestors could only dream about while living in desperation under totalitarian and feudal regimes. World’s population is growing rapidly thanks to all achievements in medicine. We are continuously tackling emerging challenges like pollution with our innovative and creative ideas while slowly turning towards sustainable development. There has not been a major war for more than 75 years while the state of peace has become a standard more than an aspiration. Globalization has almost completely wiped out the era of colonial exploitation thanks to international relations.
There are many more encouraging indicators which raise hope that whatever politics we have been applying are working for our mutual benefit. Certainly things could always be better but now it is up to us to contribute individually. Finally more than ever before the ability of democratic participation in politics is available to most of us on this planet. So there are no more excuses and reasons for putting blame solely on politics. We have always been politics and now we have the freedom to make the best out of it!
