Fixing politics requires problem-solving. With a perplexing problem, that usually requires exploration and giving up the notion that we understand the problem. We must bring some not-knowing to it.

Problem solving begins with exploration

When I approached politics, I had no idea what I would find or where my efforts would lead. In the beginning, I just tried to get involved in politics. I wasn’t even intentionally problem-solving. I was just exploring. I had let go of my resignation about politics and I tried newly to make my voice heard. But I couldn’t. It was frustrating. There seemed to be lots of people and things to blame.

The main breakthrough occurred when I gave up trying to use our political system. Instead, I asked myself and others: What do we really want? The easy answer was “results.” But the desired results are different to different people. What desires could we agree on? A better political system. What would that look like? Our officials being accountable to us. That rang true.

Problem solving often means admitting we don’t know

So I looked for accountability. What was that? I realized I wanted it, but I wasn’t clear on what it meant, especially in politics. Research revealed no one in our culture was talking about it. There were a few interesting definitions of political accountability, but not from an operational point of view.

So I realized two things. There was little operational accountability in our political system. And we didn’t see it as a problem because we hadn’t really thought about what accountability would look like if we had it in politics. With our very fuzzy ideas about it, we assumed it just happened during elections. When it didn’t happen, we blamed politicians and parties and the wealthy and lots of other things.

Not-knowing is rare in politics

Letting go of what we think we already know seems to be very rare in politics. Perhaps it’s because politics is so important. It determines how fair and just our society is, and how safe we are and whether we’re prospering.

I had been moderately informed about politics for years and thought it was full of problems. But mostly I was learning about what was wrong or who was to blame. And it was always inside a specific problem area. I was furious at Bush for lying to get us into a war, mismanaging both wars, Congress agreeing to spend trillions on them, and the Middle East being destabilized. My anger and blame didn’t lead to a solution.

Lots of people have written books about various political problems. Most stay on the surface of problems. Some dig deeper and find more pervasive symptoms. Some even find egregious behavior and people to blame. But that kind of problem solving only works well if you happen to be right about what you’re looking for. In politics, we’re so fixated on who or what is to blame, we miss the truth.

In the next article, we’ll look at a key to finding truth- identifying context.

In the last post, we looked at how problem solving in politics takes exploration and not-knowing. That makes it possible to inspect the contexts that give rise to the problems, and see underlying truth.

I believe that if you really see the truth, there’s no one to blame. Yes, some people do bad things. But they’re doing what to them seems best to them.

Even when people are committing mass murder or terrorism, it’s because they think it’s necessary. Most Jihadist Muslims think it’s important to bring about a world that Mohammed would approve of. Some don’t think so, but see the immorality of the west as too horrific to allow. From what I’ve read, many are just trying to survive. From lives of boredom and hopeless about finding jobs, some respond to the deceptive offers from ISIS to prosper.

Context determines right and wrong, obscuring truth

I’m not excusing anyone, just looking at how humans work. Each of has a world view, or context. It determines our flavor of the world and ourselves and our lives. Different contexts, or world views, give different people different notions of right and wrong. And different notions of what’s best for politics.

Often, especially with things we feel strongly about, our context determines what we see. It hides the truth from us. To fix our broken political system, we have to get below what Democrats see and what Republicans see and what Greens and Libertarians and Independents see. We have to fix the system that underlies these views and causes them to fight each other instead of working together.

What determines our context?

Some of the context comes from and is perpetuated by our culture, our stories about it. But it’s all consistent with the opportunities we have and see. If we change some of the basic things in life, we can change our context.

For instance, it’s much easier to connect with a lot of people today than it was 50 years ago. Most of us share on Facebook. Most of us are available to friends and family by cell phone. That changes how connected we feel, a basic part of our context.

What are the basic contexts in politics?

One of the main contexts in American politics is that it’s a struggle for power. We expect to fight enemies. And naturally, the enemies are wrong and we’re right. So other contexts for it are right and wrong, good and bad.

When Congress sits down to effect a change, they’re unstoppable. During the housing bubble that brought the world economy down at the end of Bush’s last term in office, Obama and McCain and leaders of Congress got together and came up with a plan. A much worse disaster was averted. During that time, the context shifted from struggling for power to averting disaster.

How would accountability effect context?

If our politicians were accountable to us, we’d have a true democracy. We citizens would in a real sense be governing ourselves. We’d be acting responsibly, taking responsibility for guiding government.

We’d be able to look at politics as the method by which we decide what we want. Politics would be how we communicate together to design our future.

In order for our political process to improve, we have to solve for root cause. We have to dare to look at our contexts instead of leaving them invisible and searching for blame within them.

Please join us in creating a new context for politics. Add your email address to our announcement list.