Who’s got kids? Some of you do, some don’t. For those who don’t, are you at least familiar with the general concept of children? You know, they start very small and, over the course of several years, get bigger and amass more knowledge and eventually become adults.

Well that’s a grand arch, isn’t it? We’re definitely glossing over some details here.

Not accounting for biology, what happens in between childhood and adulthood? Most of it could be characterized as choices and learning.

For those of you with kids, particularly toddlers, you’ve probably noticed that they periodically regress or disintegrate or fall apart. It could be an illness or temper tantrums or moodiness or withdrawal. It’s perfectly natural. Kids grow fast, so fast that you can watch this phenomenon unfold. An attitude or biological attribute or mental state no longer serves the child and they naturally shed it for a more appropriate form. Whatever inner structure was propping them up previously simply goes away and with no support, things fall apart. This passes and parents are relieved at the return of their little bundle of joy.

This concept is applicable to so many things--political maturation, families, organizations and businesses, governments and societies, etc. This is the basis for spirals (this link can take you to a few different spiral examples). Check out THEE’s version of this metaphor if you like.

Most period-->transition-->period-->transition-->period cycles don’t happen as fast as they do in children so they aren’t as directly observable. And of course, there are differences. When a society falls apart, there is no parent figure to catch it and coax it to a state of stability. That’s up to the members of that society.

But THEE doesn’t begin with spirals. Actually, spirals are quite deep in THEE and a lot has to be discovered before any spirals can be formulated. This blog, you, and I got started somewhere in the middle of THEE--or maybe even closer to the end. You see, I started this blog talking about The Spiral of Political Maturation because I, personally, am interested in this stuff and like many, many people, I am quite flabbergasted at the current political/social paradigm. Essentially, I thought I could hook some readers while exploring my own interests. And if that isn’t enough for you, please feel free to send me an email or post a comment and we can discuss anything posted in the blog in more detail. And who knows? Maybe I’ll make my way back to the Spiral of Political Maturation (and there is actually quite a bit before and after the Spiral of Political Maturation in the Politics framework).

Starting next week, we’re starting from the very beginning--you. We’re going back to childhood, if you will, so we can break ourselves down and see what’s at the core. What happens to you when you decide to do something? What happens to the world around you when you decide to do something? How do you make the best possible decision? Are you free, constrained, or both?

If you follow long enough, hopefully, I’ll be able to illustrate how the answers to these questions are connected to the social and political events that seem so much larger than our individual selves. There is a connection, and not a metaphorical one--a real-world connection. I’ll give you one clue: at the origin and destination of any society and any government, there lies the individual. A group doesn’t choose. A lot of individuals choose.

But I have to stop there.

Tune in next week for a blog about you.

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”
-    Arnold Bennett (British novelist, playwright, critic, and essayist, 1867-1931)

In the last few blogs, we’ve been discussing political maturation in the West. It’s been a crazy ride! It’s sometimes a fun exercise to contemplate the course history has taken this particular culture and what’s in store, a little brain candy. And of course, this blog and THEE tend to avoid details but rather, they focus on the larger scope, the grand arch of social and political motion through history--hence the name, “The Big Picture.”

When we left, the West had made the transition from Plutocratic Pluralism to Conventionalism. After Conventionalism comes Transcendentalism, then Communalism, and finally Participative Pluralism. I considered continuing this series to include these socio-political modes but decided against it as they are quite speculative and still but a distant glimmer in the West’s future, close enough to imagine but likely nothing anyone reading this will ever experience. However, I highly encourage anyone who is interested in learning more about what characterizes these modes and what they may look like to explore them further here on the THEE website.

Instead, I thought I would just decompress, debrief a bit about how my thinking and writing about this topic has affected me. It has definitely had an influence, and that’s great. I consider it very encouraging that I can notice a shift in myself and my way of thinking. Any honest inquiry can only be undertaken with true openness and willingness to put aside one’s pre-conceived notions, biases, and prejudices.

THEE has a way of speaking to you. It might not say something specifically, but will plant a seed with far-reaching implications in your mind. WK, THEE’s creator once wrote me in regards to THEE inquiries, “It is possible you will find certain topics uncongenial/difficult for some inner reason… It is a feature of THEE.  Working on it is a bit like looking into a mirror.”

I did indeed find things that were disagreeable initially. As an American with strong ties to Europe, I had always thought of the next step in our political maturation as something towards a more developed social welfare state. I thought that humanities ills were only curable with strong oversight. I thought that the role of government was to take care of its people. This is blind idealism. It would be nice, in a perfect world, I suppose.

This particular THEE inquiry has made real for me the old saying, “Power corrupts, and ultimate power corrupts ultimately.” We cannot even fault our politicians for their corrupt ways. What else would anyone do in their position? They have numerous incentives to continue their corruption and increasing their powers in the name of “social welfare” only gives a larger, more complex, and less transparent mechanisms with which to practice their corruption.

I saw recommendations in THEE such as dissolving central banks and I thought in horror, “How would we regulate our currency? How will we compete globally? What about my economy and my place in it? We’ll be slaves to the amount of gold we can extract from our mountains!” Then I came across this: “Psychosocial Reality is in Control: When values and institutions of a particular mode have not yet emerged within a society, it is almost unthinkable that they could ever exist.” Follow the link for more context, but the point is this:

All of this is going to change--and probably sooner than later. This society that we all depend on, that we all work so hard in to succeed and advance, is transient. We tend to think that everything goes on the same forever even though all of history says otherwise. I recently read that the Mayans predicted that in the year 4772 AD, people would be celebrating the anniversary of the coronation of their great king Pakal. Who’s that?

Our monetary system may fall apart, our government may collapse, and our global economic position may slide to one notch above Zimbabwe. Who knows about specifics? One thing is certain: the current state of the West will not, cannot continue as is. But through it all, people will just carry on. They will weather this social/political transition just as their ancestors have weathered every social/political transition in history (and there have been many). So in a strange and frightening way, it’s all going to be OK.

I was killing time on Facebook (as so many of us do). I have quite a few politically-minded “friends” and I was following a rather long thread of a heated debate on ideology. There was a lot of back and forth about how Republicans in the U.S. would, if elected to power, destroy the country or that President Obama wasn’t really a Democrat but actually a moderate Republican. Someone wrote: “Libertarianism is the stupidest thing since Nazi fascism.”

To many who read this, none of it will make sense. That’s ok. It doesn’t make sense anyway.

It struck me at how this very conversation was actually an outstanding example of one of the most fundamental and defining characteristics of Western society. As we have discussed, plutocratic pluralism is a society of numerous groups, many of them in conflict with each other for the power and resources of a society.

The western democracies are masters of ideological manipulation. This is nothing new of course. Every regime change, coup, revolution, or cultural paradigm shift comes with it some ideology. The human race is quite familiar with ideology and it seems that its persistence would imply that it has some use. I think it does.

If we go back to 400 BC or so, Plato was talking about “forms.” A form could be truth or justice or virtue or freedom or some other ultimate value. Many of his discussions were an attempt to define an ultimate value with what now seem like cliché questions such as: What is beauty? What is truth?

If they do indeed seem cliché, it’s somewhat paradoxical. All of these ideologies--libertarianism, socialism, communism, capitalism, etc.--might as well be a Socratic line of inquiry. They are all the pursuit of an ultimate value. One might think that the only pathway to economic justice would be socialism. Others might think that we can’t find truth except through Islam. Still others say there is no freedom until libertarianism prevails.

I shrug my shoulders. Look at the set of values and institutions generally found in privileged pluralism. The next page, privileged pluralist ethos, sums up the point I am trying to make: “…I am not interested in the particular intellectual garb that existing political elites may inherit or choose to wear at any point in time or in any particular culture.”

Incidentally, every stage in the spiral of political maturation outlines the values and institutions of that stage.

Still, as many of us are currently starting to understand the fundamental problems of plutocratic pluralism, we wish to see it changed. In our desperation, we look to what we perceive as a different ideology. In the U.S., Democrats/liberals/progressives view the country as hard-core free market capitalism that needs more regulation, more oversight, and more government control. They look to socialism. Republicans/conservatives/Tea Partiers view the country as already too socialist with far too much government intervention and a skewed sense of morals. They look to religion or maybe libertarianism.

Which is it?

Both, neither. The problem is not ideology it is our political institutions: i.e. plutocratic pluralism just now. If we are frustrated and we want to see a change, it would be more useful (though perhaps not as intellectually or emotionally satisfying) to look to the next stage of social development which, at this time in history, would be conventionalism.

Conventionalism will not be a triumph of any ideology, old or new. It would, like every other manifestation of society, indicate that certain values and institutions were emerging and changing our politics. A short list of those is: moderation, equality, an emphasis on social consensus, and an acceptance of public choice.

I am not going to sway any passionate believers here. I know that. However, I highly encourage any readers to take some time to look into the spiral of political maturation. If you have already, take another look. Its scope is staggering. With brilliant simplicity, it manages to put aside the biases of history and any particular culture and actually examine, objectively, societies and their evolution over time. You will find that there really is understanding and truth here.

We live in interesting times, for sure. No dull moments here.

The average person generally sees themselves as little more than an observer of the larger political, economic, and social events unfolding around them. They hope for the best, of course, as these events will no doubt affect every individual in some way or another. But so many of us, regardless of our philosophical leanings, probably accept a certain amount of determinism when it comes to macroeconomics, macro-politics, and the larger society of which we are a part of and think very little about our place in ever-evolving social stages.

The purpose of this blog, and the next two, are to show that this is not at all the case. We, as a body of people, very much have control over the course of our own political and social development.

A THEE inquiry into the overall advancement of political developments has uncovered certain social stages. These stages effectively describe the ongoing relationship between people and their governments.



It all begins with pluralism, the first socio-political structure in which a certain, relatively small group of people find themselves in control of a society’s resources--wealth, land, divine rights, etc. Plural refers to the fact that many groups vie for power and wealth in society. For some, the struggle is successful--be it the monarchy or the military or the church. These elites consider themselves separate and greater than the “unwashed masses.”

This first stage of pluralism, or privileged pluralism as it is identified in THEE, can be found in many societies today such as Egypt’s military government, but to offer a few well-known historical examples, there is feudal Europe, the priesthood-theocracy of ancient Egypt, and communist Russia. Unless you found yourself among the elite in any of these societies, it would not likely be a pleasant time in which to live out one’s life.

In all political endeavor--which is essentially the drive and action to gain access to a society’s wealth and power--there is exploitation. In privileged pluralism, the elite classes are generally the least productive. They see themselves as the administrators of a society’s wealth where non-elites are the actual producers, be they farmers or artisans or laborers or merchants, and this administrative position entitles them to the bulk of the wealth.

For those vocal protestors who see through the inherent unfairness of the system, there is always an infrastructure ready to quash their voice (police, paramilitary forces, military, etc.). History is rife with examples of this. Google “Tiananmen Square Tank Man” for a particularly disturbing example of this. The elites justify their actions with the need to keep social order and/or their self-proclaimed right to power.

To further maintain their place in power, the elites control information. An historical example would be the Council of Nicaea in the 2nd century in which Catholic officials decided what would go in and what would stay out of the Bible.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Check out this recent example of what I'm talking about--or the fact that if you fly to Beijing and Google “Tiananmen Square Tank Man,” nothing comes up. If you think that the later of the two examples doesn’t happen in Western democracies, fly to Switzerland and Google “Abu Ghraib,” note the number of search results, then compare that to the same number of Google search results in the United States. It’s shocking and the implications are quite disturbing.

Obviously, we don’t live in communist Russia or feudal Europe but many of us live under Chinese party rule, or in Middle Eastern regimes. Western society has advanced through the series of political and social stages. Science, the Enlightenment, and many hard-won battles for human and civil rights, among other things, have brought us out of this primitive pluralism and seen humanity produce some of her most beautiful and admirable institutions and accomplishments to date. We will not go backwards.

However, the spiral circles back around to a new form of pluralism. The only significant differences are that the elite, responding to a population more demanding of their hard-fought rights, have devised more sophisticated, deceptive, and arguably dangerous methods for maintaining power. Western society currently finds itself deeply entrenched in this new form of pluralism. Rather than the elite being composed of feudal lords, a dominant military, secret police or religious authorities, they are now politicians, financiers, regulators, CEO’s, bureaucrats and the like.

The current unsustainable nature of our economic system and the subsequent popular reactions to it are throwing back the curtain and exposing the everyday citizen to the existence of a truly powerful elite and their exploitation of the world’s citizens and resources. We find ourselves in the midst of a transition, with all of the classic markings--the public’s widespread distrust and disenfranchisement, desperate political and economic reactions, money buying power and power buying money, and an impending, inevitable systemic crash.

Tune in next week for what’s coming.

Hello. Welcome to The Big Picture.

For this post, I just want to introduce readers to a resource that I am going to be using to examine, analyze, and question the world around us.

As members of the human race, we all have questions about the big picture. For some, the answers lie in religion or faith of some kind. For others, science is the key to ultimate truth. Some just say common sense is all you need to navigate our world.

As a race, we have consciously set up these institutions: religious institutions, political institutions, philosophical/ideological institutions, communicative institutions and the like. They have become, in a sense, the set of rules we all live by to get on. And we all have an innate sense of our relationship to these institutions and the relationships within and between these institutions. It is these relationships that define, in a way, our existence and define our responses to our existence.

The resource for exploring these relationships that The Big Picture will focus on is a website, much like any other website, except for a significant difference--this one attempts, and quite successfully I think, to order these institutions and our relationships to these institutions in a rational and useful manner. It is a taxonomy, much like the periodic table of elements or the taxonomic order of biological life are taxonomies, officially called The Taxonomy of Human Elements in Endeavor (THEE).

THEE is far from complete, as it deals with some of the most complex, subtle, and important aspects of what it is to be human, much is left to be explored and entered. However, what has been completed offers a fascinating insight into the ever-evolving world around us and points out the many constants in human endeavor.

You can visit thee-online.com here.

To view the bulk of THEE's content, you have to register, but it is free and THEE asks nothing of you except your inquiry--no financial commitment, no information mining, no emails you don't ask for, etc.

However, participation on the THEE website and in this blog is highly encouraged.

Thank you and enjoy!