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.