bridging the gap between theory and praxis: an optimal political ontology

time after time, i've heard from the academic far left about their ideologies and visions of what they consider to constitute justice, freedom, and a global democracy. i often feel that these opinions, though well-intentioned, are misguided and unsupported, and perhaps are more detrimental than they are helpful in mankind's pursuit of the three aforementioned ideas. let me explain what i consider to be one's political position relative to the rest of the world. imagine that there is an objective standard of truth for achieving justice, freedom, and democracy, the collective emitting of behaviors of every person in the world and their interactions with their surrounding environment needed in order mankind to optimally avoid seemingly imminent disasters later this century, e.g. global warming, the energy crisis, the global population crash, etc. this standard of truth is "resource-embedded" and its ontology is exclusively physical in nature: human behaviors and global resources interacting. now, consider the very notion of power, the ability of an individual to compel other people to behave in a way that that individual desires. there are two extremes on this spectrum illustrating the possibility for a perfect unity and complete discord regarding the interplay between political theory and praxis. take, for example, someone who suddenly gains absolute power over the world and whatever his political beliefs are (theory) are immediately and fully implemented into society (praxis). whatever ideology this person espouses is correct in both theory and practice for the collective ontology (not the resource-embedded ontology, however). now, consider the opposite end of the spectrum. imagine a person who exerts absolutely no political power -- he/she cannot vote, cannot discuss politics with other people, is helpless and is cared for by family so he/she cannot influence the political economy by buying any goods or products, etc. suppose this person has a very conservative ideology for whatever reason, but at this given time in the state of the world, the prevailing ideology is very liberal (although not so liberal so that the far left circles around to overlap with the far right); his/her ideology (theory) is diametrically opposed to the world's affairs (praxis), and there is nothing this person can do to change his/her surrounding world. however, although this person is helpless to exert any power or influence politically, he/she can still align himself/herself politically so as to be perfectly compatible with the prevailing world ideology, which in this case is very liberal. whereas before this person had the widest gap imaginable between theory and praxis, now this person, simply by switching his/her own political beliefs to the exact opposite of what they once were, is now in a position wherein there lies no difference between theory and praxis as personal and world ideologies are aligned perfectly and completely harmoniously.

of course, these are two extreme, abstract examples, for in reality, people, though sometimes very impressionable, are still not completely malleable and provide at least some resistance to external forces controlling their minds, and simultaneously, people exert political influence no matter how hard they try to be apolitical because of consumerism, etc. i guess there could be extreme examples that are real -- e.g., extreme mental retardation, etc. -- but since these people can't conceive any political beliefs, they in effect do not exist as "real people" in this schema of humans and politics. anyway, returning to the previous point, the political beliefs of people and the way they are manifested through their actions and behaviors exist as ontologies, and in both extreme cases, these ontologies are absent on one end (in the former case absent from the collective whole except the one person exerting absolute power over everyone else, in the latter case absent from the single person who is unable to exert any influence on the rest of the people in the collective whole ontology). but seeing as how in the real world these ontologies exist, it is important to consider one's own political ontology relative to everyone else's collective ontology. the central idea here is the connection between the collective political ontology of the global population and the ontology of the resource-embedded standard of truth mentioned in the first paragraph. we see here that a triad emerges between one's political ontology, other people's political ontologies, and the ontology of the standard of truth. the goal of optimization is as follows: the individual, by estimating the ontology of the standard of truth, tries to embrace a personal ideology that can align the political ontology of his/her people he/she can influence (this ontology being a part of the larger "collective ontology") -- friends, family, etc. -- as closely to the ontology of the standard of truth ("resource-embedded") as possible. the key here is that the political influence one can exert varies from person to person, and most certainly from ordinary citizens to politicians. whereas a normal person can only exert a political influence on anywhere from a handful to a few hundred people and a "politically-active" person can influence thousands of people, leaders of countries can influence hundreds of millions, or even billions of people. as such, the personal ideology for someone who exerts political influence over only a hundred people and his position relative to moving the collective ontology in greater or lesser alignment with the ontology of the standard of truth will almost certainly be different from someone who exerts political influence over an entire nation.

so what happens if the range of the flexibility of the collective political ontology does not overlap with the optimization point for the ontology of the resource-embedded standard of truth? in that case, it is simply one's duty to attempt to move the collective political ontology as close to the ontology of the standard of truth as possible. this is where i take issue with some of these far left academics. while we can never know for certain the ontology of the standard of truth even with the best estimates of global warming, etc., we can still make reasonable inferences as to the limits of the general public's ability to change their collective political ontology. for example, as evinced by the last presidential election, a "left" (he's really more moderate than most people think, but anyway...) democrat was able to be elected president. however, it is highly implausible that a green party member ever will in the near future. as such, i believe that espousing a green party agenda as an implementable perspective (this is different from someone who agrees with the green party in theory, but recognizing the constraints on the political ontology of the general public, espouses voting and doing all political activities in practice for a branch of the democrats) is counterproductive, as was proven by nader unintentionally assisting bush in winning the 2000 presidential election. of course, one could argue that had that not happened, then someone like obama never would've been elected so soon, so it was bad in the short-term but better in the long run, etc. -- i disagree with this position. but returning to academics, my problem is that they hone in on approximating the ontology of the standard of truth while either ignoring the collective ontology of people in reality or treating it as a theoretical construct that is subject to their own metaphysical whims without proper evidence to support their position. going about business in these manners results in either criticizing the collective political ontology without realizing that this does not solve problems and can sometimes be counterproductive and/or projecting one's own beliefs with such conviction so as to belief that they can alter the collective political ontology beyond its objective range of possibility.

here is a theoretical example of what i mean by these ontologies. imagine that we live in a self-contained world the size of city block that has all the resources we need to survive and the number of people in this world is 10. now, imagine that global warming is a problem (ontology of the resource-embedded standard of truth), and the current leader who has majority control over this band of people does not believe global warming exists. consider the power that the other 9 people have to change the situation, their collective political ontology. in this case, the collective political ontology does overlap with the standard of truth, so if the right actions do in fact take place, the self-contained world can be saved from global warming, but that this overlap is very slim. now assume that 7 of the people are "duds", i.e., average people like john doe. of the 2 remaining people (not including the leader), one of them is a far-leftist who wants radical change immediately. this idea, while perfectly compatible with the ontology of the standard of truth, is not compatible with the collective political ontology. as a result, the 7 people remain convinced that the leader, who does not believe in global warming, is correct and the group maintains its current practices until everyone dies due to global warming. now, consider what would've happened had the other of the 2 remaining people (not including the leader) espoused an ideology that fell into that slim overlap between the ontology of the standard of truth and the collective political ontology. while this ideology was not as accurate at approximating the ontology of the standard of truth as the previous person's, thus in theory not stopping global warming as quickly as the other person's proposal but still slowing it enough and eventually stopping it to allow all 10 people to survive, by being compatible with the collective political ontology, the 7 people became persuaded to make the person who had the ideology compatible with the ontology of the standard of truth and the collective political ontology their new leader and followed his/her instructions to change the group's collective practices so as to avert global warming reaching a stage of catastrophic proportions. the analogy here is that some of the far left academics are like the first of the two people, the one who clings to emphasizing only the ontology of the standard of truth (and i don't even think they necessarily are correct about that some of the time either) while preaching an ideology that fails to impress or somehow negatively affects the collective political ontology, resulting in an unimplementable solution leading to a failure for some or all of the global population. some of the more moderate leftists are like the second of the two people, believing that our primary goal is to optimize the collective political ontology (whether or not they actually realize this for the right reasons is a different story, but anyway...) because this is the only way real change can be actualized, even if this means not reaching the range of the ontology of the standard of truth. so even if this does "fail" due to not realizing the other ontology -- the ontology of the standard of truth -- it fails less badly than the ideology of the other person who places the primary emphasis on the ontology of the standard of truth over the collective political ontology. for the first person, total disaster results as the middle-of-the-road and/or right-wing prevail, causing 100% failure for humanity. for the second person, while partially failing by not fully optimizing the ontology of the standard of truth, by at least aligning the global population -- the collective whole ontology -- within the ontology of the standard of truth, the global population will survive even if it means enduring more hardship than if they had been able (in theory) to align the collective whole ontology more accurately with the ontology of the standard of truth. of course, if the only way humanity will survive is by overlapping the two ontologies and it is impossible to do this in reality (simply moving the collective whole ontology closer to the other ontology does not improve our survival ability any more than if the collective whole ontology remained farther away), then we're all screwed -- there's no way around it. however, i believe that the world is flexible enough that we can still do enough within the present constrictions of the collective political ontology to avoid a complete armageddon and that at least some of the human race will survive the pending crises that face us this century.

now, consider an alternate scenario using another group of 10 people facing the same circumstances as the previous group. now, of the two remaining people, there is one who espouses an ideology that falls in the overlap between the two ontologies. however, this person is a poor debater and is not generally well-liked by the other 9 people for whatever reason. so, despite his/her ideology being correct, the group rejects him/her and everyone eventually dies due to global warming. now, imagine if the other person of the two remaining people, a person who espoused an ideology that only pushed the two ontologies closer but not overlapping -- the only overlap being between the collective whole ontology and a "compromised" version of the ontology of the standard of truth -- but was a good debater and was generally well-liked by the other 9 people. despite his/her ideology not being as correct as the other person's, it's still better than their current leader's, and as a result, global warming is gradually slowed and 8 of the 10 people survive (only 8 of 10 because the overlap of the "compromised" version of the ontology of the standard of truth means that only some people will survive, not all people as in the normal version of the ontology of the standard of truth). do you see the lesson learned? the messenger is just as important as the message. so, making an analogy to academics, if some of the academic far left was able to present their positions without resorting to some of their silly tactics and ideas, then perhaps more people would be persuaded by them and the goals of the true far left of the range of the collective political ontology, presently unattainable due to the messenger instead of the message, could be realized and bring us closer to, managing an overlap with, or managing the optimal overlap with the ontology of the standard of truth.

now, it should be noted that nothing is ever perfectly static, and things are always in a state of flux. as such, one might ask whether the constant change that goes on both in people and the environment prevents one from establishing the two ontologies correctly, because after all, the ontologies are always changing. the answer is that the ontologies cover a range at any given point in time, and usually do so over more meaningful periods of time (say, from hours to days to weeks, but not as long as a year); there is a range that covers all possible ranges of the changing ontologies. in essence, they are approximations whose lack of a completely stable, definite ontology does not render them useless because the ranges are sufficient enough for practical purposes. furthermore, it must be stated that the ranges for the ontologies exist unaffected by whether or not we live in a determinist or indeterminist universe. using these principles, it should become clear that the ideas espoused in the previous paragraphs are as compatible with reality as they are in theory and thus my position is applicable to the real world, not just being some theoretical ideology disconnected from our everyday lives.