Dualism and Its Effects on Political Beliefs

I finished packing the cars late at night for the trip to my dormitory for my first semester at college. I sat down to watch TV with my dad in the family room. We talked about how exciting it was and how I finally was moving out. He reminded me again how he saved up for college and told me more stories about his fraternity, friends and classes. He warned me that some professors I may get would be biased. "Be careful, don't come back a liberal," he quipped.

My roommate and I got along fairly well. We both enjoyed history and video games. We discussed the glorious defeat of the evil Nazis while playing it out in games like "Battlefield 1942" and "Medal of Honor." He plastered a rather large poster of the Twin Towers on the wall along with a huge American flag on his side of the room. We watched the surreal footage of the occupation of Afghanistan on Fox News. We tried to see who could name the type of guns and armaments the fastest while making fun of some anti-American hippies down the hall. Later, we both concurred with speech after speech that Saddam Hussein could not be allowed to sell his Weapons of Mass Destruction to other terrorists. This had to be for real, I never had even seen any coverage of this "United Nations" before. After the bombs began dropping, the TV was constantly tuned to the war porn channel.

I had argued vehemently with some leftists friends, including my girlfriend, that WMDs could not be left in the hands of an evil doer like Saddam. Mistrusting the federal government was nothing strange but when the endless search for WMDs proved naggingly futile, I realized that I was lied to. What else were the liberals right about? I began questioning the administration's motives. "So you're a Democrat Bush basher now," was the response of my mother on a visit back home.

Two political parties have dominated the United States from its very beginning. Many political ideals are formed by attempting to coherently fit them within a "left" or "right" side. Not only is it constraining but it is often the source of the formation of the political ideals themselves. This often occurs without wholly comprehending or even justifying the formation for any other reason besides it is the "liberal" or "conservative" way. The descriptive adjective form is then used to speak of something or someone as "liberal" or "conservative". This is becoming increasingly common even while general concern with politics is certainly decreasing due to widespread apathy. Yet we are not alone in the belief of the necessity of a self-perpetuating and self-justifying external normative abstraction, in this case a left-right spectrum. This notion has characterized modern Western thought since its conception. Most highly regarded thinkers sought to find a singular basis for order that was separate so it was sovereign but still ubiquitous so justification could be deferred to it. Thales is widely recognized as the first modern "lover of wisdom" who proposed that water was the basic, primary source which compromises the observable universe and underpins reality. Pythagoras later argued numbers take this role of coordinating and providing harmony in order to be the bedrock of order. Heraclitus claimed logos is both the single origin of norms and justice. As such, it is universal and authoritative. There is no escaping the external, monolithic entity.

Plato purported that the world is one of ideal form of pure truth and that of a world of illusions. These Platonic "Forms" are unaffected by contingencies and disconnected from everyday life. Aristotle wrote that this pure truth must be discovered through experiencing an empirical reality. Throughout the Medieval period, God served as the basis for order so it was viewed as natural and static. For Thomas Hobbes, people were innately egoistic and needed to be restrained by a "Leviathan" state which was external and reached above the "brutish and short" jungle of society. John Locke concurred that the state was important for preserving social order. People could sacrifice some freedom in order to cooperate and co-exist. However this sacrifice of freedom externalizes the state and makes it self-sustaining. All legitimacy is deferred to the state's perceived product of order. Since it is viewed as natural and necessary, the social creation now monopolizes the origins of its own creation. This reification through circular logic is the result of the Western tradition of dualism.

Later social thinkers followed suit such as Emile Durkheim, the father of structural-functionalism. He purported that social reality was similar to any other object in the world. It was observable, external, "fixed and capable of operating on the individual." He also looked at those around him and saw that everyone was greedy and selfish. Talcott Parsons believed that society was an organic whole whose parts solely served to maintain the whole. The parts are people and they input energy into the system. Social roles, a set of behavioral expectations, and rewards motivate these parts. The organic system of society becomes a totality and a separate entity unto itself. The system now becomes the reason for existence while it simultaneously was created to allow for existence.

"What are you, Republican or Democrat?" is certainly the most popular response I receive when informing others my major is Political Science or simply when discussing an issue deemed political. I must fit neatly into the normative spectrum in order to express myself and communicate. Or I use it to justify my attitudes and perspective. But in turn, the external abstraction defines me through this process of reification. It occurs even though this spectrum was originally created and defined by society itself. This vicious circularity reveals the conundrum of modern, Western dualistic thought. Jean Jacques Rousseau criticized Machiavelli and Hobbes for this reason. Their notion of humanity being innately egoistic which justified the need for society, was looking at humans in a society ordered in such a manner that treated humans as such. Once the social creation is fixed and self-reinforcing, it then becomes impossible for one to separate it from social existence.