MY POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY: PART I

This shall be the first in a series of posts I make detailing my personal philosophy and how it inspires my approach to politics, ethics, and life. There is a lot that I want to get into regarding modern politics and Trump specifically, but I would still like to get this out of the way first so that I can have a foundation laid from which to frame my thoughts.

What is a "Personal Philosophy?"

Put simply, a personal philosophy is the set of values that we humans, on an individual level, use to guide us through life and the decision-making process. That's the simple version, but as we all know, we humans are not always rational actors -- the decisions we make are not always grounded in our personal philosophies. Not only that, but our personal philosophies are also composed of values that we don't always arrive at rationally. In fact, I'd argue we arrive at most of these values implicitly -- as a consequence of our brain chemistry, and the environment around us, which is composed of billions of other humans who themselves are not totally rational, along with other non-human factors which we often have no control over.

Despite the intrinsic nature of many of the values we hold, knowingly or unknowingly, I believe that we generally all arrive at the same conclusion about what our core values should be because we almost all have the same core values. The fact that we, for so much of our documented history, have organized ourselves in the same way -- in societies -- is a testament to that statement. Even if we differ in how to organize our societies, the very formation of society is an indication that all the participants share core common values. When we differ in opinion about how to organize our society, whether it be the economic system or the political system, the disagreement lies in how best we can maximize what it is we value most.

My Core Values

The core value I've been alluding to is enjoyment. I believe that at the root of every belief or value is the pursuit of joy, and we generally conduct our lives in the way that we best think would maximize our own joy. This might seem like an obvious observation at a glance, but I think it permeates much more than we intuitively believe. Even when we might think someone is doing something for purely altruistic or selfless reasons, they likely derive enjoyment from helping others and are therefore serving themselves. This may sound very cynical, but I think of it more as a function of our brain chemistry.

To summarize this first point, underpinning all of our values and beliefs is the pursuit of joy. From this commonality, we come up with different, but generally similar ways to maximize our joy, and I do believe that there are "wrong" and "right" ways in so far as the "wrong" ways are less efficient in maximizing enjoyment for oneself than the "right" ways. The "right" ways, I posit, will maximize enjoyment in the greatest number of people possible, rather than one to a few individuals. We have somewhat of a symbiotic relationship with each other where other people's joy rubs off on us and, conversely, other people's misery also rubs off on us. When people are miserable, they will resort to desperate measures of seeking joy, and unfortunately these methods often tend to be at the cost of the joy of others. An example of this is crime. If people are struggling to find food and water, both of which are medically necessary for life and therefore joy, they will often turn to theft, which inevitably makes the victim of the crime more miserable. Thus, it is in the best interest of our society to focus on maximizing the happiness of others, as it will eventually influence our own happiness.

In short, we should seek to maximize joy in the greatest number of people. It is an entirely different question, however, how we approach maximizing joy. I believe there are two types of approaches: those that provide instant gratification, and those that provide delayed gratification. And, almost invariably, the approaches that provide delayed gratification do so at a greater magnitude, albeit later, than approaches that provide instant gratification. A prime example is labor. Why do we work jobs -- why has anyone ever worked jobs? Of course, this is a multivariate question that requires a multivariate answer, but at its core, I believe it can be partially explained by this model. The reason we work is to play a part in providing some service or product to a group of people. This service or product serves some utility, ranging from a very small amount of use to necessity, which serves to make people's lives better or at least more convenient. Even when our bare necessities are met, convenience, no matter how small, serves to make us happier. The "labor" model is, of course, not perfect in following this principle of providing enjoyment, however. For instance, I can point to how fast food restaurants provide a product to people that is very gratifying in the short-term due to how tasty the food is, but can be very detrimental to people in the long-term.

In summary, enjoyment can be achieved instantly or in a delayed manner, but delayed gratification is almost always more worthwhile. And therefore, we should seek to promote achievement of delayed gratification. Importantly though, we shouldn't seek delayed gratification for the sake of it, but rather because it provides more joy in the end as opposed to the amount of joy we'd derive by taking the instant approach.

Conclusion

Thinking through many political and ethical qualms, I've found that this framework is universally applicable. With that said, I cannot fool myself into thinking it is universally applicable, so I expect that it will be ever-evolving. I also realize there's plenty of room for nuance in this take, but I hope that as I continue to learn about history and politics, I'll also continue to develop my foundation for my beliefs. In the coming blog posts centered around politics, I look to stay true to this framework.