Eric Schwennesen - Politics

Does anyone else wonder why politics has become the center of human existence? Yeah, me neither. But actually, and unfortunately, it has done exactly that, and mostly within our present lifetimes, because many of us can still remember a time when politics was not the center of existence. It wasn't even peripheral. In the 1950s, politics in our social circles ranked right there with dirty diapers as a subject for serious thought.

It helps to take a close look at what "politics" actually is. It's one of those words, like "grazing", that everybody knows until asked to actually define it, whereupon their complacent smirks vanish in red-faced stuttering. (I will now confess to provoking exactly that reaction to exactly that question many, many times among our agency and academic people over the decades). 

It doesn't take much effort to find that "politics" is generally a derogatory term, often associated with the scent or appearance of excrement. 

A workable definition of politics might be: "The structured efforts of some, to devalue actual efforts and results, in favor of theoretical efforts and results, without a unifying standard." 

How has this become the pivotal term of modern existence?

Knowing something of history is crucial to understanding the present day, so a quick review is helpful: the Western World as we know it took form with the brilliance of a Roman republic that admired science, dignity, effort, skill, knowledge, and results.. They were able to create whole disciplines to further human progress in architecture, engineering and construction. (They also invented poured concrete.) A thousand years on, the physical remains of their efforts are still there to see and admire. But the Roman initiative itself is long gone. Why? 

Politics. By diminishing the significance of the Republic's achievements and insisting that something theoretically better had to be pursued (sound familiar?), politicians forced the Republic into the Empire. Actual achievements became less valued than theoretical alternatives.  Naturally the Empire collapsed, and the world was treated to a thousand years of shadows, suspicions, witchcraft and misery we call the Dark Ages.

How do you un-learn centuries of brilliant engineering, and replace it with superstitions? Politics. How do you replace self-sustaining commerce across the known world, with universal starvation and conflict a few generation later? Politics.

The Scientific Method finally evolved from the murk, specifically to show the way out of the swamps of deadly ignorance. Intelligent people realized that true Science was the antidote to generations of pointless suffering: mathematics; then physics; then astronomy, natural philosophy, biology -- all modern science blossomed. So did human existence. And then...

Just as in Rome's 500 AD, politics has intervened. Science is now largely pursued not by driven intellects, but by faceless government agencies. Virtually every physical achievement of the last few centuries is now being demeaned by those same theoretical challenges to governance, trade, exploration, transportation, agriculture.

Politics is the fabricated opposite of science. It seeks to drive existence without proof or merit. Today, it -- once again -- dominates our lives.

Eric Schwennesen is a commercial beef rancher in the Mogollon Rim country. He grew up in Belgium, cowboyed in Nevada, and helped Navajos and many African peoples with rangeland conflicts for over 35 years. He recently published "The Field Journals: Adventures in Pastoralism" about his experiences.