The Three Levels of Political Thought

A rough draft of an idea I’m working on

Note: I haven’t fully fleshed out this idea. I am writing this post in part to help me think through it.

There are three levels of thinking about politics. The first is politics-as-sports, the second is politics-as-values, and the third is politics-as-systems.

Politics-As-Sports

People that engage in politics-as-sports are thinking in terms of emotions. This is a very tribal way to engage with politics. It is the politics of us vs them, in-group vs out-group.

This is the level of politics people tap into when engaging in party politics. People choose their tribe — Democrat or Republican — and then bitterly fight the opposing tribe.

Some people don’t even know why they are fighting the other tribe. They don’t know enough history to understand how we got here. Frankly, they don’t care about the history of the ideas they are fighting over. That’s because it isn’t about the ideas at all. It’s about feeling good. In order to feel good, you must become accepted as part of a tribe.

Luckily, it isn’t complicated to become an accepted member of a political tribe. Just turn off your brain and turn on the TV. Listen to the people on your screen and let them tell you what to think. Now parrot what they tell you to the rest of the tribe. Congrats! You are successfully engaging in the ground floor of political thinking.

To be clear, I don’t think being tribal is always bad. We are tribal animals. We want to belong to a community that shares our values and beliefs. I think the concern comes when you completely turn off your brain and uncritically follow others. That’s no path to truth. Go to any social media site and you will find hoards of people trapped in the ground floor of political thought. They think solely in terms of political slogans and meme phrases.

Politics-as-Values

People that engage in politics-as-values are thinking in terms of ideals. What do we value and why do we hold these values? After studying history, ethics, economics, and more, people come to an idea of the kind of society they would like.

The primary value of a leftist is equality. The goal is to abolish hierarchy.

The primary value of a classical liberal is liberty. The goal is to maximize liberty.

The primary value of a rightist is order. The goal is to maximize order.

The methods to achieve these goals are different for different types of people. These methods are laid out in the third level of political thought: politics-as-systems.

Politics-as-Systems

People that engage in politics-as-systems are thinking in terms of incentives. How should government be structured? What should its functions be?

One of the goals of politics-as-systems is figuring out how to get the wrong people to do the right things. Since the right things have been figured out in the previous stage of political thought, the new objective is to materialize these values in the real world.

The structures of governments, economic systems, and societies as a whole will determine how successful a society is in actualizing a certain set of political values.

This first post appeared on my substack.