Nothing like some hard cider and a shower to get the gears turning. I’ve finally mapped my political theory onto developmental psychology between the spectrum of the terrible two’s and Dostoyevsky’s most extreme version of self-actualization. This is useful in that it pulls us out of theoretical abstraction and into the present in the most pragmatic of ways. Please share with me which premises or conclusions you disagree with and help me understand gaps in this argument. The argument goes as follows:
Premise 1: At about 2 years a child forms an independent perception of the self and often reacts to this knowledge with tantrums when the world does not conform to his or her will and with possession. They say “mine” a lot! (Developmental Psychology)
Premise 2: All theories are articulated explanations of personal and collective experience. (Epistemological, psychological statement)
Conclusion 1: the concept of private property is learned around age 2.
Premise 3: Capitalism is built upon scaling out the concept of private property upon a social community. (Political theory statement)
Premise 4: Self actualization is the highest for of psychological development. (Developmental psychology)
Premise 5: Dostoyevsky defines self actualization in the most extreme way where ones definition of self no longer has any limits. For him, if anyone in the community hurts, the self actualized person will hurt equally. (Developmental psychology)
Conclusion 2: Self Actualization gives rise to the theory of communally owned property.
Premise 6: Socialism is built upon a scaled up system based upon the concept of eliminating private ownership and instituting communally owned property.
Premise 7: Adolescents and Young Adults who are in are learning Industrious, Identity and Intimacy usually are still a few decades off from reaching Self Actualization. (Dev psych)
Premise 8: Many people never reach Self Actualization. (Dev psych)
Premise 9: Starting at two years individuals are able to own property within the family unit and around 16 years they can earn monetary property within the societal unit. (Just facts)
Conclusion 3: Capitalism evolved before socialism because it was a system or game that the greater number of (nonself actualized) citizens could participate in or play.
Premise 10: A society of completely self actualized persons is the highest form of sociological development (dev psych + sociology.)
Premise 11: No society will have a complete citizenry of completely self actualized persons because an individual needs at least 2 decades and usually 4 decades to have enough experiences reach Self actualization. (Dev psych)
Premise 12: Socialism requires a global socialist system to maintain long term sustainability because it can be attacked by external or internal capitalistic regimes and destroyed. (Political theory)
Conclusion 4: A socialist state or global state will enforce ways of being that many individuals within that society do not have the experiences to fully understand.
Conclusion 5: The younger less developed individuals and the older ones who have stagnated at levels below Self actualization will actively resist a regime that enforces practices of communal property and outlaws private property.
Premise 13: A purely capitalist system is a pain in the ass because it allows the Pareto distribution of income inequality to reach its steepest curve and allows the world to be run by two year olds and Gawd, gets people like Trump elected. (Fact of life)
Conclusion 6: Since capitalism sucks and socialism is impossible, the hybrid system that best both actively helps and passively allows the maximum number of individuals to reach the maximum level of Self actualization will be the best system possible.
Premise 14: Public and Private institutions as well as ideal parenting are the three methods that best promote the quickest path to the goal of helping the most number of individuals to reach Self actualization fastest.
Premise 15: Self actualization requires individuals to make mistakes and to experiment with private property. (Dev psych)
Premise 16: the legal concept of the Right to do Wrong is a legal value when used reasonably. (Philosophy of law)
Conclusion 7: the best systems will be a system that allows only self actualized individuals to get elected and promoted into the highest positions of all institutions of society.
Conclusion 8: Once elected and promoted, Self actualization persons who favor socialism must resist the altruistic urge to regulate and bring about a socialistic state but instead focus on incremental steps towards maximizing Self actualization societal output until the human system reaches its peak.
Conclusion 9: Since socialism is impossible and since the Self actualization output of human beings will never reach 100%, self actualized leaders must infinitely resist the urge to implement absolute socialism so long as children, adolescents, young adults and immature adults exist.
Conclusion 10: All absolute socialism regimes have historically failed in so much as they were forced to pathologize non Self actualization behavior into prisons or killing camps.
Conclusion 11: it is theoretically possible for a perfect socialist regime to emerge if it has maximally functioning public and private institutions and families that permit the right to do wrong and permit the usage of private property within each institution that can satisfy non self actualized persons needs to play with and learn from private property games. (I.e.: using allowances within a family unit or earning points for prizes in a classroom or earning gold in video games or earning credit within banks, etc. these examples are within institution forms of private property that help us to learn to better manage real property recognized by the state.)
Conclusion 12: Conclusion 11 is the ideal state and society and citizenry.
Conclusion 13: A state must evolve with the psychological development of their citizens and the sociological development of their institutions.
Conclusion 14: the concept of a perfect state is a fluid concept that evolves from our current states to the state and ultimately world order outlined in conclusion 11.
Premise 17: Internal and external threats to societies and states can take the form of persons, things or the environment. (Comprehensively inclusive statement)
Premise 18: thing threats are made inventions like the nuclear bomb or social media ;) (If you don’t know me, then you don’t know that I’m critical of Facebook and believe in full on governmental regulation that all social media require Opt-in policies (versus Opt-out) of their sharing and selling of data without the user’s knowledge. Practically, its ethical exploitation of ignorant users and theoretically, its a violation of the social contract)
Conclusion 15: Person threats are people who desire a two year old world and pull us back there (murderers, rapists, fascist dictators, weasels).
Conclusion 16: Person threats are also people who prematurely push the community and state towards Self actualization in a way that does not support individual growth but begins to pathologize non self actualization behaviors. (I.e.: Politically Correct Authoritarians and Marxist Dictators)
Premise 19: One must consider the environment when considering political regimes because it can place a significant amount of pressure on a society and state. (I.e. How eastern island folks turned to canabalism after the deforested their island). (Anthropology)
Premise 20: higher evolved states are better able to eliminate or adapt to environmental threats.
Premise 21: societal resources include human brain, muscle and heart power, technological power, environmental resources, and symbolic units of universal value (money). (Comprehensively inclusive statement)
Premise 22: a society or states ability to maximally eliminate or adapt to a person, thing or environmental threat is best measured in its ability to mobilize societal resources towards that threat while not removing adequate resources from other constant threats.
Conclusion 17: the best state in the present and the future can be measured in common by their maximum capacity to mobilize resources ideally to meet all threats given the current psychological and sociological development.
Conclusion 18: immature capitalistic and fascist regimes at present can use the concept of private property to more quickly mobilize resources towards threats than socialist regimes at present because of the low prevalence of self actualized citizens in existence who will not volunteer resources towards threats and require and open market that is just vulnerable enough to internalize such threats into its private property system which can trigger spending towards addressing threat. (Ie the organisms
of the stock exchange)
Conclusion 19: self actualized persons willingly give (versus spend) property and resources (including their own Human Resources) towards meeting threats to the community because to them an attack on one is an attack on all.
Conclusion 20: the ideal socialist regime in Conclusion 11 has the maximum number of self actualized persons at any one time and is this maximally able to mobilize resources towards all possible threats through giving (versus spending).
Premise 23: self Actualized persons are one with the collective unconscious (Jung theory)
Conclusion 21: the ideal socialist state is not absolutely socialist and is one collective unconscious organism that acts with one will.
Conclusion 22: this concept outlined in conclusion 21 is the abstract religious concept of heaven of the Judeo-Christian religion in so much as Jesus models a maximally self actualized person and Revelations outlines heaven as a place where multiple nations and tribes gather together to worship one God (one will).
If you are interested in talking with me about why I went from agnostic atheism to Christianity at age 19, I’d be happy to grab coffee and hear your own journey as well. Also I am very interested in meeting with anyone over coffee or doing some community organizing around helping heal our political dialogue through emphatic conversation and teaching on helping the Alt-Right and Progressive Left understand the argument above.
Premise 24: Self Actualization requires an individual to adopt a phenomenological pragmatist philosophy and way of life. (Total tangent, but just for fun).
And I’ll end with this quote:
