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There exists a problem in the way that politics is analyzed. This much is clear to many observers of the political observers. People call Bush a liberal, when he considers himself conservative. People call Ron Paul a libertarian, when he considers himself a Republican. People make political dichotomies – someone exists either on the left or the right; with left implying liberalism, socialism, and even communism, while right implies conservatism, fascism, and even dictatorship. People have created seemingly endless labels, positioned them along a one dimensional spectrum, and have passed that off as the true nature of politics.

These models, based on the one dimensional political spectrum, based on the dichotomy of left and right, should hold no place in the understanding of politics. What does the term liberal mean? The term liberal means something different in Canada, Europe, America, and Australia. The term as it is understood today even deviates from its initial interpretation in our culture. The same phenomenon is applicable for the term ‘conservative’. Other terms such as authoritarian and libertarian, at their best, do not promote a real understanding of politics, and as such, they too must be adjusted.

Some say that the answer lies in expanding the one-dimensional axis to a two dimensional axis. They say that by understanding peoples’ political views as a comparison between liberalism and conservatism, and authoritarianism and libertarianism, that peoples’ political views can be understood. However, this still begs the question – what type of libertarian? Are you a libertarian that wishes to promote the rights of the states? Are you an authoritarian, who wishes to see power transfer from the Federal Government to the international corporations? Beyond that, it still does not promote any understanding of the true essence of what a liberal is, or the true essence of a conservative; it even does not help us understand what Libertarianism or Authoritarianism is – it treats those terms as vague terms and assumes that we will understand them. It treats two liberals who are authoritatively leaning the same, regardless of the reasons why they believe in such policies. Any understanding of politics that is based on the post-French revolution dichotomy of left-wing right-wing is doomed to failure, and any system of understanding that is based on such an atrocious foundation is a system that rewards the manipulative, and punishes humanity. It is systems like the one-dimensional interpretation of politics, or even the two dimensional interpretation of politics, that commit the people to be intellectual slaves to the elite.

Thus, I propose a new understanding of politics. The first order of business in establishing a new understanding of politics, is establishing an understanding of the basic unit of politics – the individual.

To first understand the individual, let me pose a question:
If “The United States of America” was a person, what would this person be like? This person would need some sort of body. There would need to be feet for America to stand on, and there needs to be hands to grasp objects with. There needs to be blood to bring food to the body, there needs to be a mouth to ingest the food, there needs to be a heart to pump the blood, there needs to be a liver to filter the blood, there needs to be lungs, bones, and every other thing that maintains life in individual. There needs to be a brain that has rationale and emotional capabilities. The brain needs to have the ability to be aware of itself, it needs to have an ego. Mostly, if the ‘United States of America’ were a person, everything that is found in a healthy person, must be found in the United States of America.

In addition to this, there is the society in which this person would live. This person needs a family, a sense of belonging. This person would need other people to whom he would interact with; this person would need others with whom sustainable environments could be established. This person, if it were male it would need a female, if it were female it would need a male – essentially, this person would need someone with whom the most intimate aspects of life could be shared.

Yet this person could learn these things, not necessarily from their close associates, but from people that live far away. If it were a man, he could learn how to act like a man not from his father, but from people who play fathers on television – if it were a woman, she could learn how to act like a woman not from her mother, but from Oprah. This person, would not need to learn about life from those that are very close to her, but could learn about life from people who were far away from her.

This is obviously only a small portion of what America would look like if it were a person, however this is the general mode by which politics can be understood.

How can politics be understood? Politics, as has been mentioned before, is made up of people – it is made up of different people, of different amounts of people, of people who have different goals, who have different backgrounds, who have different interests; regardless of their differences, intrinsically all people who participate in politics, whether through voting or representing or any other way of participating, are people. Therefore, politics can be understood as an extension of people. Politics can be understood as the realization of implicit or explicit desires by the people for something real.

The nature of politics, in any setting within humanity, can be shown to be related to individual through a recurrence relation – that is, the thoughts and actions of the people produce a certain style of interactions between the people at a local level, which produce a certain style of interactions between people at the mid-range level, which produce a certain style of politics at any level in the government. Thus, if you understand the forces that govern how people interact, how people are taught about society, then there is a way to create an understanding of politics that is based on the true nature of humanity. This is where the current understanding of politics has failed – it has based its fundamental theory not upon the individual, but upon the community.

It is hard, nay impossible, to separate the why from the how, to separate the community from the individual. To do such a separation would be an endless task in analyzing particulars of an ideology, with the result that such an ideology that was constructed in such a way that would be open to limitless interpretations. Every ideology that ignores the nature of the individual proclaims its followers to be the member of a particular tribe, or group – not of promoting a particular balance of power within society. A conservative has become is a member of the conservative community, so to speak; a white Christian, gun bearing, God fearing, Republican. A liberal is a member of the liberal community - they are someone who does holds that the government and religion should have no interconnection, are any color or creed, that everyone is free to do as he or she pleases unless there is some great wrong perpetrated on someone else, and they do not hold to necessarily any absolute views.

These are views on certain particular issues – these views do not speak directly to the balance of power within society. In no place do these views necessarily differ in their fundamental assertions about the state of the world and of humanity; they just disagree on how it should be implemented. The liberals agree that it would be within the power of the government to eliminate the right of people to own guns or to have private property, while the conservatives agree that it would be within the power of the government to eliminate the right of the people to marry whom they please or have abortions. In each case, for the contemporary understanding of politics, the question does not become whether or not the government has the right to regulate the firearms in society, but whether the government ought to regulate the firearms in society. The question becomes whether the government has the ability to do what it wishes to do.

If one speaks in terms of ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’, it has become implicitly assumed that the government is the sovereign entity in America. It has become the government that is the ruler, the government that is responsible for making the laws, and it is from the government that power extends. This contrasts to the theory that the people are the sovereign in America, that it is from the people that power extends, and that the people are really the ones who make the decisions.

There are still other terms by which people can speak of politics. However, these terms are also terms that are seemingly uniquely vague.

Take for example, the term classical liberal. What does this term mean? I recently asked a friend, and he implied that this term means ‘laissez faire’ style of living. When pressed, he spoke to me of ‘decentralized government’ so to speak.

Let’s analyze what the term classical liberal means. The name in of itself means absolutely nothing - for the words classical liberal are nothing more than words. However, behind the words there is an idea, that is accurately described by wikipedia:
Quote:
Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1] and laissez-faire liberalism,[2] or, in much of the world, simply called liberalism) is a doctrine stressing individual freedom. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, constitutional limitations of government, free markets, and individual freedom from restraint as exemplified in the writings of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill,[3] ACI Specialty Benefits Corporation | EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS, Voltaire | Home | InfiniBand, High Performance, Unified Fabrics, Next Generation Data Center, Storage Solutions, Virtualization,,[4] Thomas Paine and others

The first thing that is mentioned is that classical liberalism expresses individual freedom. It does not stress community freedom, it stresses the freedom of the individual.

What is the freedom of the individual? This definition goes on to answer this question - it includes in the definition, human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, constitional limiation of government, free markets, and individual freedom from restraint.

Let us come together to analyze what these terms mean.

Human rationality - in its truest essence, human rationality means that the human has the ability to logically discover things for themselves. Each person becomes that of which they are; they are not the extension of the society that is around them. The individual is the one that formulates the thoughts, actions, and plans that govern their life. The individual poses intellectual power over the influence of any other influence; be that other influence community, national, religious, or ideologically based.

Individual property rights - what are individual property rights? Property is something that is bought and paid for, it is something that is used by people to survive. Consider what has been bought or paid for. I have bought a computer; this computer facilitates the ease at which I can complete work, and this work is what allows me to continue to survive in the way that I want to survive. I have recently bought food; although food is meant to be eaten, by paying for it, I am buying some property that allows me to survive. In its essence, property is power, expressed in economic terms. Therefore, the property of the individual is the power of the individual in the realm of economics.

Natural rights - although this term is variable, I will assume that the author refers to Jefferson’s ‘inalienable rights’, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Firstly, what is life? Life, is living. Reflexive, but true; life is the is physical existence in reality - that those who live, somehow exist. Although this may seem to be innately given, the concept of natural rights arose in response to the tyrannical nature of previous styles of governance, where the government refused to recognize the right of its citizens to live in this world. The government assumed control, and defined whether or not someone has the ability to continue to live; in principle, the government has the power to determine whether the individual could live. This, necessarily, contradicts the concept of life as natural and inalienable; a persons right to life is natural, and cannot be overruled by something as a government. That is, the individual has the power to live.

In addition, what is liberty? Liberty, is synonymous with freedom, and is being explored at length now.

What is the pursuit of happiness? This obviously means that happiness is not guaranteed; however, the pursuit of such happiness is something that becomes guaranteed. But what is happiness? What does it mean to be happy? Although this term necessarily differs between two people, happiness generally means that someone is achieving a situation that makes them fulfilled in some way. It makes them feel like they are a complete person - it gives them something that they need, and that they realize this.

So there are the natural rights, hastily explained. Furthermore, this gives of a working definition of what freedom is.

Freedom, is power in context.

The one common denomination between all the tenets of classical liberalism, is that they all describe the proper balance of power in society. Individual rationality describes the individual as being the source of intellectual power; individual property describes the individual as being the source of economic power; natural rights describes the individual as being the natural source of power in society. At the core, every philosophical way of describing politics is described in terms of the proper balance of power in society. Classical liberalists believe in one style of the proper balance of power, while Marxian philosophers believe in another - the same goes for any philosophy that is of different character.

Therefore, labels such as ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ or ‘moderate’ define existence in a particular group in the realm of politics, and any political philosophy is described in terms of the balance of power in that society.

The question then becomes, why do we use such terms? Why do we define people as ‘liberal’, or ‘conservative’, for these terms describe no balance of power in society, but just how society should be? Why do we define someone as a classical liberal, when two people can consider themselves classical liberals and believe in two different styles of the balance of power? For instance, someone can be a classical liberal if they believe that the federal government should not interfere in the affairs of the people, while another person could be a classical liberal if they believe that the state government should not interfere in the affairs of the people.

So why do we use them? The labels like ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ have no meaning beyond their tribal-esque connotation, and philosophical terms such as ‘classical liberal’ are vague at best, and when defined, are defined in terms of their ideal structure of power in society.

Therefore, at its core, politics is the relationship between those with power, and those without power.

Let us consider how to create a new understanding of politics that is based on the study of power, its nuances, and the reasons behind the proper influence of power.

How is it that people come to learn and accept power? The answer lies in the construction of knowledge. All of our understanding of society, comes from the way in which knowledge has found its way into our life – understanding that we live in America is knowledge, that we are human is knowledge, that we live on earth is knowledge; all of what we understand about life is how our knowledge has been constructed, either through our experiences or through our discovery. Thus, let us understand how our first knowledge of the world formed.

The common experience that every person has in common is that they were brought into this world somehow, and when they were brought into this world, they knew nothing about the world. Men, women, Jews, Germans, Chinese, religious, secular, Mongolian; every type of person, at some point or another, was conceived. This is important to understand, because this provides the basis for all subsequent interactions with the rest of the world; that is, in the beginning, everyone had no knowledge about the world.

However, it is from that point of departure, that peoples’ experiences differ - some were brought into the world and abandoned by their mothers, some never knew their fathers, some knew everyone around them, some knew no one around them, however each person who survived learned about the world in a given way, and through a given lens. For instance, a baby who is raised by two parents learns about the world, and experiences the world in a different way, from other people who only have one parent. They differ on accounts of ideas that are promoted in peoples’ head – if they had two parents that were bad parents they may think that two parents are bad, while if someone had a good parent, they may think that one parent is good; the opposite also holds true. There becomes an implicit understanding of the way that things are; the world looks like this, people are supposed to or not supposed to do that, people are expected to act a certain way, people are expected to dress a certain way; ultimately, people will learn what it is that is around them.

And yet, there is two distinctly different ways that people learn about the world; either they learn about the world through someone that is close to them, or they learn about the world through someone that is far away from them. It is not always the case that parents raise their kids; it is often decried in the popular media and society that kids are increasingly being raised by the shows of television, that kids learn how to act and see the world through television, music, radio, and so many other sources of information that is far away. One prime example of this is the recent steroid investigations into Roger Clemens; ignoring the fact that the investigation is a stupid investigation, it primarily becomes justified on the basis of how steroid use among professional athletes influences the minds of young sports players.

This implicitly assumes this argument; that kids look at Roger Clemens and other sports figures, and try to emulate them - they begin to see that the path to greatness lies not with doing what they are doing, but through taking a certain amount of drugs that will give power to their home run hitting ability. Therefore, it is believed that kids learn about baseball through sources far away; and to some extent, it is true.

On one hand, you have experiences and thoughts that are inserted into peoples’ lives through sources that are far away - on the other hand, you have thoughts and experiences that are inserted into peoples’ lives through people that are close into their lives. Someone who is close to another person has great influence over this person - a long time friend can bring you to a rock concert that starts you on a life of rock loving, a mother can feed you breast milk in order to sustain you, a father teaches you how to ride a bike; these are all instances where someone close to another person influences their lives.

So, there is a dichotomy here; either people learn about themselves through sources that are far away, or they learn about themselves through sources that are close by. Naturally, there is every shade of gray imaginable between the two - for instance, someone could learn how to ride a bike from their father, and they could learn about the various styles of bikes from a far a bike magazine.

It becomes just as much how you are taught what you are taught, and why you are taught what you are taught, as what you are taught.

But how does knowledge and how people learn about the world; how does that relate to my original point about power? Simple; in any given way of learning about the world, there are those that yield power and those that do not.

Lets take some examples to make it known how this is true:
America. America does not exist, except in the minds of people - you cannot taste America, you cannot touch America, you cannot feel America, for in truth there is no America that exists apart from our imagination. The ground beneath my feet is not America; it is dirt - and if you wish to imagine that all the dirt within a certain boundary is American dirt, so be it; however, that dirt is no more America than the air that we breathe.

Yet even in America, there are those that benefit and those that do not. The government becomes the sovereign, the ones who maintain and yield power, the ones who have the ability to dictate terms. Whether or not this is justifiable is irrelevant; if the government decides to undertake a course of action, it will do so; therefore, the only way to limit unilateral or potentially tyrannical actions is to organize the powers and base the government on sound principles in such a way to prevent such abuses.

However, it was not always the case that the Federal Government was the power holder for this entity known as America; in previous era, America consisted of many different sets of lawmakers all that came together under a common union. It used to be ‘The United States’, with emphasis on the states, rather than ‘The United State of America’, with evidence on the America. This was the case immediately following the revolutionary war; and it was largely the case until the civil war, when people began to learn about America as one unified nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. In short, under this style of governance, people were more accustomed to their state level government, and ascribed to them more power; thus, there was a far greater degree of sovereignty of the states than currently. Contrastingly, afterwards, people were mot accustomed to the one unified Federal government, while becoming less and less accustomed to the influence of the state government. A prime example of this is the current discourse of America politics; in a random sample of people, when asked about politics, they will increasingly talk about Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or John McCain, rather than their local politicians. Local politicians are not how most people learn about politics; it is through the federal government that they are learned.

Therefore, if a power figure exerts its power over a large area; where the people are too far away to experience and learn about that power first hand, it can be said that the balance of power within a given area or society has been consolidated into a few hands. Conversely, if in a given area, the power figure exerts its power over a small area, and there are many instances of this in a given society, and people learn about society through these local centers of power, be they parents, friends, or mayors; thus, it can be said that power within a given area or society has been confederated into many hands.

To put this graphically:

100% ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||100%
<———————————————————————->
Consolidation ||||||||||||||||||||x|||||||||||||||||||||||| Confederation

Point x represents how power is constructed within that society; it is either confederated, consolidated, or some where in between.

If you’re following me right now, make sure that you understand the quasi graph I have just laid out.

There is, however, two ways in which this power is constructed into the minds of the people. In its essence, these two ways are physical and ideological; it is actual or thoughtful. Ultimately, power is constructed through being a force of power in thought, or a force of power in action. One type of power answers the ‘what’ and ‘why’ question – what it is that people compare themselves and their thoughts to. The other type of power answers the ‘how’ question – how is it that people relate their actions to the rest of their society.

What does it mean to be a force of power in thought? We all perceive things differently; how we look at a given situation depends on the situations that we experienced beforehand and how those situations related to ourselves. For instance, if a boy grows up hearing always about how the Jews are a group of evil people and that they are worth nothing to the rest of humanity, most likely that person, when confronted with a Jew, will begin to hate and possibly attack the Jew. This is only one case; we, as people, judge and perceive the events around us, in relation to the events that came before. It does not matter if the events actually happened the way that we recall that they did; however, it only matters if I think that they happened the way that they did. If you were to see a homeless man walking down the street, if you did not know homeless, or you did not experience the phenomenon known as homeless, you might feel sympathy, anger, or any other emotion; however, as most people know, society ignores the homeless as a group of people. People are taught to ignore the homeless, and by extension, they become ignored.
If you were to look at a woman, and you thought that the woman was pretty, that was because you have some pre-conceived notion of what ‘pretty’ is, and through this pre-conceived notion of prettiness, you come to think that the woman standing in front of you is pretty. If you were to look at a city, and see it as a pathway to fortune, this could easily stand in contrast to a nomadic person who views the city as a travesty upon the earth.

Overall, peoples’ perceptions of events are governed by how they interpret the past, and what forces governs the peoples’ past is integral in understanding who is in power in the present. If someone never knew about America, never heard the name, then the Federal Government would inevitably not be their government.

Contrastingly, what does it mean to govern someone’s actions? This, as Alexander Hamilton so freely states, is the sole legitimate area by which government can operate. But the question is how - how do my actions relate to the forces of power within society?
It is quite simple; those who control the way that people act within society are those that control the actions within society.

Every person who participates in something in society does so through action - if someone merely thinks all the time, then they will inevitably die. Action is movement, transactions, any type of exchange or movement that transfers between the people; it does not matter whether this movement is based in money, or for the sake of women, or whatever. Action is movement.

However, innately to our condition as consumers, rather than producers of energy, there is a certain cost that is associated with action. Action requires energy – and we do not make our own energy. We consume to get energy. Without action there is no life, but action requires a constant input; it requires energy. It takes energy to type onto a keyboard, it takes energy to scratch my beard, it takes energy to do anything that I wish to do; and by extension, energy is something that is highly prized. Those things that promote the energy retention by people are readily accepted; find me the man who would willingly, everyday, travel to china and back in order to buy some paper towels that are made in China, and I’ll find you a man who does not exist.

So, to govern a persons actions is to govern the realm in which they can operate with reasonable cost; to govern someone’s thoughts is to govern the perception of how people interpret their life.

Both of these things are power, albeit in different realms of understanding; one of these is in the physical, structural nature of the beast, while the other is in the mental perception of it. The domain of one is attributed to the ease by which people move around in a given area, and the other is attributed to way that people interpret the events. Because these are both styles of powers, then the understanding about the difference between consolidation and confederation is vital; in fact, understanding that difference is all there is.

So, the power that governs the thought of people can be confederated or consolidated; this means that people can understand the events of the present based on the understanding, as related to them by a far away figure, hence a consolidation of understanding; or it can be confederated, which means that people understand it through something that is close, that they can touch. The power that governs the actions of people can either be confederated, or consolidated; this means that people can either be able to travel far away cheaply in the same society, or the people can either stay in their close community style living, and only travel outside of that setting when they need to.

And thus, I have updated my graph:
………………………………………….. ..^X axis = actions
………………………………………….. .|100% Confederation
………………………………………….. .|
………………………………………….. .|
………………………………………….. .|
………………………………………….. .|
100% Y axis = thoughts ………………|…………………………. ……. 100%
<———————————–x———————————->
Consolidation …………………………..|…………….. …………. Confederation
………………………………………….. |
………………………………………….. |
………………………………………….. |
………………………………………….. |
………………………………………….. |100% Consolidation
………………………………………….. v

Y axis represents the degree to which consolidation or confederation occurs within thoughts, the X axis represents the degree to which it occurs within actions, and point X represents the overall power structure within society.

The understanding is not done yet. The question of what society believes has been understood; people either perceives events filtered through a consolidated or confederated power structure. The question of how society believes it has been understood; people either derive their energy from very far places, or they derive their energy from a close place. The only substantive question that remains is why; what is the justification for the current state of affairs.

The answer lies in the way that we as humans make decisions. Largely, there are two ways that we make decisions; we either make decisions based on reason, or we make decisions based on emotions.

This dichotomy is at the center of any long-standing intellectual debate. For instance, one of the debates that has spanned the ages is the debate of science against religion; on one hand, you have a way of understanding things that seeks to establish measurable principles that can be universally shown to people, and ‘proven’, and on the other hand you have a way of understanding that seeks to elevate a certain interpretation of events because it is ‘right’. Do I believe in something because reason says it is right, or do I believe in something because a revelation says that it is right? Is it measurable, or is it somehow only connected to the underlying nature of the world that cannot necessarily be shown to be true?

It has been shown that we humans, more often than not, make decisions based on emotions rather than on reason. 70% of the time, our decisions are based on emotions; the part of our brain that governs our emotional response is over 5x larger than the part of our brain that governs our rational response. Beyond that, the part of our brain that governs our emotional response, is located closer to the spinal column, meaning that it has quicker access to the rest of the body, and thus has more control over the reactions we often face.

Of course, this does not discount the fact that part of our brain also governs our rational response. This is the part of our brain which allows us to say ‘I want x, y, and z’, and orderly go out and get x, y, and z. We can proceed through a train of logic, from a given input to a desired output. However, as I mentioned before, this part of our brain is far smaller and far less controlling of our decisions. In short, we are not as rational as we’d like to think we are.

This fact becomes necessary to understand in an understanding of power, because it is through understanding this fact that we can further differentiate between two different types of politicians. For instance, someone can be a republican because they believe that the republican party is the party that will promote morality in the government; and someone can believe in the republican party because it is the party that will give their business the most money and the most friendly of policies. Without understanding the why question behind why people desire certain policies that they do, it lumps evangelical Christians together with corporations; any diagram that seeks to truly understand those that are in it, must understand this difference. To call two people that believe the same thing, but for two different reasons, is to completely ignore one aspect of politics.

Remember, at the heart of politics is people; people are the ‘public’, people fill up the institutions, people are the primary beneficiaries of policy, people are the targets of campaign ads, people are the target of speeches; the common denominator in all of politics is that politics is the byproduct of people coming together to form this thing called ’society’, and therefore, the reasons of why people believe what they believe are integral to understanding how politics is formed.

With that said, here is my newly formed graph.

………………..100% confederation.^………../100%.Emotions………………..
…………………………………………|. ………/z.axis…………………………….
………………………….y.axis………|… …../……………………………………..
…………………………………………|. …../………………………………………
…………………………………………|. …/………………………………………..
…………………………………………|. ./………………………………………….
100% consolidation………………….|/………………………………………….. ..
<——–x axis——————-O————x axis——————>
………………………………………../|…………………….100% confederation
………………………………………/..|……………………………………….. …..
……………………………………./….|……………………………………… …….
…………………………………../……|……………………………………. ………
………………z.axis…………../……..|.y..axis…………………………… ………
………………………………./……….|………………………………… ………….
……………………………../…………|………………………………. ……………
……………………………/…………..|…………………………….. ……………..
…………100%.reason../…………….v…100%.consolidation………… ………..

Point O, located at the middle of the graph, represents a hypothetical society where 50% of the society wide decisions are made with reason, 50% are made with emotion; it represents a society where power over action and thought is 50% consolidated and 50% confederated.

The X axis is the amount that thought is consolidated or confederated; the Y axis is the amount that power over actions is consolidated or confederated; the Z axis is the amount that decisions on a society wide level are made with reason or emotion.

Questions?

So far, if you are still following me here, I have laid the foundation through the creation of my ‘power cube’. The cube has three axis, one axis that details the degree to which power over thoughts is consolidated or confederated, one that details the degree to which power over actions is consolidated or confederated, and one that details the degree to which reason or emotion is the justification over certain structures of power.

There arises a few questions from my graph though:
1) What is meant by the point that represents society? Sure, there may be some agreement; but there are so many people with such diverse viewpoints that representing them all at a given point is rather meaningless and trite.
2) How is it that your graph can represent the dynamic nature of politics; what you suggest is that all of society is represented by a single point - is this single point really broad enough to encompass all of society?
3) What is meant by the term ’society’?
4) How can this cube be dynamically applied to different situations?
5) Why does this matter?

1) You’ve spoken about society- what about the individual?
This is indeed a very good point that has been brought up to me numerous times; on the quasi graphs above, I represent all of society by a single point - either society is on that x, or it is on that O. However, there are too many interests, and too many different beliefs for society to be considered all together at a single point.

This is indeed true, and that is why I have left off of the graph the next part of it. Most people, when they think about politics, fall somewhere in the middle of the graph; that is, they neither wholly favor consolidation or confederation, and they judge their views on politics neither wholly based on reason or based on emotion. In short, most people exist in the center of the graph.

As people deviate further and further away from the center of the graph, there will most likely become less of these people in a given cluster. There exists less people who favor consolidation over confederation than consider them relatively equal; and likewise with confederation over consolidation. In short, as people favor one viewpoint greater than the other viewpoint, there becomes fewer of them.

Fortunately, social science already has in its grasp the conceptual understanding of this; that most people will exist in the center of a spectrum, while progressively less and less people will exist further and further away from this ‘point’. This is known as the ’standard curve’! The ‘bell curve’, or ‘normal distribution’, or any other name you want to call it (you can read up on it here: Normal distribution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) describes precisely this phenomenon.

So, what I am proposing on how to understand ’society’, is to instill in my cube a three dimensional distribution of points within this grid; that is, at the center, there is a very high density of ‘people’, and at the center of the ‘people’ lies society. In addition, as one begins to favor rationality over emotion, there becomes less and less people; and by extension, the graph thins out.

Unfortunately, I cannot draw this in ascii; however, I can show you something like how it looks like:

yes, it looks sort of like an atom in my opinion; albeit, this is a crappy photo. So, the proton nucleus represents ‘the center of power’, and the cloud represents all the individuals that make up society; only, its distributed in a three dimensional ‘normal distribution’.

2) Really? Is the single point able to represent an individuals views? Don’t people conflict with themselves?

Often, when I bring up my points to people, they point to the fact that many times people support policies that seem to differ; for instance, a pro-life Christian that supports the death penalty and war - or a politicians that crusades against homosexuality while being a homosexual himself (sorry to poke fun at the republicans….but that’s mainly what is off the top of my head)

However, if you analyze these situations and beliefs, you will know that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with their viewpoints; in fact these viewpoints can be accurately explained by my power cube.

Take the case of the pro life Christian that supports the death penalty and war. When this person grew up, he or she did not grow up being pro-life; to be pro life is to be a person that becomes defined by a single issue. Pro life is not an outlook on the balance of power in society - being a religious Christian is. These people believe that the humanity has been built a certain way; for their entire life, they have been taught that the world is built a certain way, that there are those who are rightfully in power, there are those that work to undermine life itself, there are those that will promote my ability to eat, to be a sociable person, etc. In short, these people believe that life is a certain way; their belief in pro-life is a natural outgrowth of their principled belief. The way they view the world are their ‘principles’, and how these principles manifest themselves in the current discourse of politics is through ‘pro-life’.

Yet, how can these people believe that the death penalty is correct, and that war is ok? Simply; those that have taught these people, those that have governed the peoples’ knowledge and education throughout their entire lives, have deemed certain groups of people to be outside the realm of legitimate ’society’. In the case of the religous christians, it is the ’sinners’; it is the pagans, who do not respect the authority of God - it is the murderes and rapists, who defile the most sacred of commandments - it is the thieves, who undermine the legitimate way of doing business - it is the ’sinners’, or unacceptable people, who are given no quarter.

For war, it is not any different; however, instead of proclaiming individual people to be outside the ‘legitimate’ realm, other societies of people are proclaimed to be outside this ‘legitimate’ realm - and once they are outside this realm, they cease to be understood. Once they cease to be understood, the people no longer know anything about them; and if it becomes a matter of survival, war is justifiable, because that is all people know.

I would consider this object to be valid, if you found a man who supported the confederation of society, through such maneuvers as allowing interstate tariffs, while correspondingly believing that a Federal Bank is good.

3) What is meant by the term ’society’?
I’ve spoken at length about the term society, and it has come time for me to define it. In short, society is the general organization of individuals around a given point of power. This point of power has certain dominion over the people - this point of power can influence the way in which people do the things that they want to do, or how they learn about the world. This exists on multiple levels; intellectual, social, economic, sexual, health, and any other things that people want to do. So for instance, if a group of five kids receives all their information about the world through their parents, it can be said that they live within a very confined society - their society consists of themselves and their parents.

However, this is never, or rarely, the case; more often than not, people learn about the world through a whole host of other sources - through the media, through school, through friends, through the neighborhood, through essentially wherever they go in life. Therefore, whatever ‘teaches’ them about the world, indicates that they live in a certain society; and how they learn about the world is their society.

4) How can the cube be dynamically applied to situations?

Yes, this is one of the most important issues; for it to be a well reasoned political diagram, it needs to understand the universal principles of power, rather than merely cultural understandings that are skewed by the people of power.
So, how does one describe this? More particularly, the problems are as followed:
1) How does it account for different societies interacting? If there are multiple societies, then obviously they cannot all be represented by one ‘center of power’.
2) How does it account for the progression of history?
- If it really is a good diagram, then it can be expanded and contracted and still hold together.

Answer to 1:
There is nothing that says that on any given graph there cannot exist multiple centers of power. So, while there may exist one center of power in the middle (lets say this is country A), there may exist another center of power towards the upper right corner, and another center of power towards the lower left corner; in fact, there can exist many centers of power. So, like in the diagram of the atom, the entire atom revolves around the proton nucleus; in this situation, the individuals revolve around many centers of power - obviously, they are slightly influenced by all centers of power, but they are closest to one and therefore influenced most by that one.

Answer to 2:
The power cube can be expanded and contracted to represent the progression of history. For instance, what is meant by the term ’state of nature’? This term is littered around the enlightenment philosophy, from Hobbes to Locke to Rousseau - at some point in time, man existed before ‘civil society’ as a pure autonomous individual that made his or her own decisions.

So, if you take a look at the graph, the upper right corner fits this mold perfectly. In the upper right corner, the entire human existence is perfectly confederated in its thought and actions, and it does so because that is emotionally what it right. If the graph represents the entire domain of humanity, at this point, all power and influence is confederated into the individual; although they may not be aware of each other, they still live within ‘humanity’. Because they live within humanity, there are some methods by which decisions get resolved - and, if each person is able to make their own decisions without regard for anyone else, then the power is confederated in society, and it is confederated because people do not know anything about the other person.

Furthermore, there is talk, or fear, about a ‘one world government’, as being the destruction of all freedom and liberty - I ask you what is meant by this one world government? It how all society is consolidated under one government, and this government is so powerful over our lives that all forms of other power would be lost. This, is a society where all power over thoughts as well as actions is consolidated to the fullest extent possible, and where it is done so for the most rational of reasons; for the benefit not of the self, but for ‘greater humanity.’ Overall, my model works very well in being applied dynamically to different situations.

5) Why does this matter?
This is probably the most important of questions that needs to be answered. Essentially, this matters for anyone who wishes to understand the more fundamental nature of politics or relations between people and societies. If you wish to know how to manipulate people to bend to your will, you need to know who holds the power in society both over the discourse as well as the actions; you need to know whether decisions are made based on reason or emotion; you need to know many things before you can ’say the right things’. If you want to understand some of the more mystifying things about politics, such as why all politicians skew the truth, you need to understand the Power Cube - the politicians, despite that they may say one thing, are influenced by the extent to which they control peoples’ actions, and the amount that they are able to influence peoples’ thoughts.

Ultimately, this is the way that things operate. To understand this is to understand much.

So, if anyone has made it this far, I congratulate you; but I don’t expect anyone to have made it this far.

Questions?