timschochet
Footballguy
So this is going to be a rather esoteric thread, hopefully wading deep into political theory. All are welcome to partake of course, but if you’re looking for a discussion of recent events and want to play the Team Blue vs Team Red game, there’s plenty of other threads for that.
In recent days I’ve had recurring disagreements with @IvanKaramazov, @rockaction and others whom I have great respect for in this forum. The root of these arguments was not the usual liberal vs conservative, nor was it a disagreement on the right and wrong of any given event, but on the question of the importance and pattern of events.
Back when I was a political science major over 30 years ago, there were competing theories as to why political events take place. Of these, there were 4 that were the most popular:
The pluralist theory Competing groups of people push for certain things to happen or not happen; they are powerful because they are interested in that issue while most people don’t make it a priority. For example, the NRA has a minority opinion on gun control, but because it’s members are willing to cast their vote on that one issue while many of those in favor of gun control are not, that gives the NRA more power than their opponents.
The elites theory A small percentage of our society, those who control financial institutions, big business, the media, and the universities make all important decisions in this country. Their disagreements are with each other; the vast majority of us are merely pawns. It doesn’t matter who we vote for because they decide our choices for us.
The technocrat theory Technos control everything, only they don’t always realize it. But they have the real power in society.
The chaos theory This is not to be confused with the mathematical theory, which is a different animal. Basically this theory suggests that while all of the other theories might be true some of the time, most of the time there is no reason at all for events. They either occur completely randomly or as a result of so many unlikely elements that it’s not indistinguishable from being completely random. Furthermore, any narrative that occurs after an event as a means to explain it is simply that: an attempt to find explanations when most of the time there aren’t any.
For decades after college I was a pretty firm believer in pluralism. But in the last decade or so I’ve come more and more to believe in chaos.
In recent days I’ve had recurring disagreements with @IvanKaramazov, @rockaction and others whom I have great respect for in this forum. The root of these arguments was not the usual liberal vs conservative, nor was it a disagreement on the right and wrong of any given event, but on the question of the importance and pattern of events.
Back when I was a political science major over 30 years ago, there were competing theories as to why political events take place. Of these, there were 4 that were the most popular:
The pluralist theory Competing groups of people push for certain things to happen or not happen; they are powerful because they are interested in that issue while most people don’t make it a priority. For example, the NRA has a minority opinion on gun control, but because it’s members are willing to cast their vote on that one issue while many of those in favor of gun control are not, that gives the NRA more power than their opponents.
The elites theory A small percentage of our society, those who control financial institutions, big business, the media, and the universities make all important decisions in this country. Their disagreements are with each other; the vast majority of us are merely pawns. It doesn’t matter who we vote for because they decide our choices for us.
The technocrat theory Technos control everything, only they don’t always realize it. But they have the real power in society.
The chaos theory This is not to be confused with the mathematical theory, which is a different animal. Basically this theory suggests that while all of the other theories might be true some of the time, most of the time there is no reason at all for events. They either occur completely randomly or as a result of so many unlikely elements that it’s not indistinguishable from being completely random. Furthermore, any narrative that occurs after an event as a means to explain it is simply that: an attempt to find explanations when most of the time there aren’t any.
For decades after college I was a pretty firm believer in pluralism. But in the last decade or so I’ve come more and more to believe in chaos.