Connecting With Those We Like – and Our Politics
Copyright (c) 2009 Dave Smart
Many people have told me over the years about how they feel more comfortable around “intelligent” or “smart” people. I can identify with that, but I am aware that many others feel most comfortable among ‘common folk’, and not ‘nerds’.
A friend of mine recently took this a step further. She felt that ‘democracy’ was an undesirable form of governance, since it puts the majority and so the power of decision into the hands of the ‘masses’, rather than in the hands of the ‘intelligencia’. Not many would embrace this Machiavellian concept once they knew its source. For Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), who has become known as the “dictator’s philosopher”, used for his starting point in political science the idea that “liberty will be more safely preserved by the nobles” – the intelligencia of his day – as opposed to the masses, the common man. But many if not most people are confused by just what democracy means. For although they think of the tribal-theory concept of the leader taking accountability for all people in his realm, common and ‘smart’ alike; the term ‘democracy’ actually relates to the Greek Democritus (b. abt 460 B.C.) who along with Epicurus espoused a materialistic philosophy, opposing Plato’s metaphysical philosophy.
A basic Jungian principle is that we “like” those around us who most resemble the parts of ourselves that we most accept; indeed since all we know of another person is our perception of him/her, and those perceptions are parts of ourselves; then those we like are those perceptions we are most connected to. Conversely, those we hate are also perceptions, parts of ourselves; generally disconnected parts of ourselves.
It follows that, in political science