In spite of the fact that many investigators of the social dynamic, from time to time,  have suggested that politics derives from how we view ourselves; e.g. as in ‘social darwinism’ wherein we consider ourselves to be a member of a ‘favoured race’, politics is usually discussed in terms of an intellectual ‘world view’ … ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘liberalism’ etc.

What this does is to put the focus, MISLEADINGLY, on the intellectual architectures of these different approaches and into debates as to the ramifications and side-effects of each and judgements as to which will work out the best for the overall ‘system’ etc.

We even insist that government is ‘secular’, that ‘church’ and ‘state’ can be, and currently are, kept separate.  This is evident nonsense, but it is politically correct to ‘go along with it’.

We all know that ‘religion’ is woven into the issues of governance even though we argue the case for this politics or that politics on ‘intellectual grounds’.   (e.g. see Peter D’Errico’s ‘American Indian Sovereignty, Now You See It, Now You Don’t’)

But if we are honest, we would have to acknowledge that it is not all about the merits of our respective ‘social dynamics management systems’ that we build into our ‘politics’.  It is more about ‘who we are’, how we give representation to ‘our selves’.

There is no reason why we can’t proceed directly to a review of the differences in how we give representation to our ‘selves’ and reflect on how that will relate to the political divisions which we debate and defend or reject on the basis of intellectually couched analysis.

That is, the relative merits and demerits of ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘liberalism’, ‘anarchism’ and so on, are merely ‘covers’ for ‘who we believe we are’.

This Newsletter, ‘Who Puts the ‘Representation’ in ‘Representative Government” goes directly to this deeper issue of ‘who we believe we are’ (how we give representation to ourselves’, and thus to our elected representatives).

Now, we as a culture that has actually convinced ourselves (wink wink, nudge, nudge) that we have achieved the separation of ‘church’ and ‘state’ in our ‘secular form of (representative) government’ are not going to back off debating the issues in terms of intellectual arguments as to how the world works and how it should work.

That is, we are not likely to admit that all of this intellectualizing is a cover for ‘who we really believe we are’.

Nevertheless, the internet does allow us to examine those things that the mainstream media quietly and selectively suppresses, so this is the ‘subtext’ that has given rise to this particular article; i.e; are our issues ‘political-intellectual’ or are they, more realistically,  ‘psycho-theological’?