Knowledge Processing, Creativity and Politics

Knowledge Processing, Creativity and Politics
An Evolutionary Political Theory (EPT)

Showan Khurshid
An Introduction
The aim of this theory is to offer an explanation of, and to make connections between, political reality and political history. To achieve this some unique assumptions need to be made regarding morality and ideologies (including religions). On a foundational level, this theory relies on Dawkins’s Selfish Gene and, Plotkin’s systematic argument that adaptation can be seen as knowledge. Plotkin’s argument underpins an assumption that the most essential, and the most politically relevant, human characteristic is the capacity for knowledge processing (the acquisition, transmission and application of knowledge propositions). On the basis of the Selfish Gene we can assume that morality is good not necessarily for the individuals, or groups, but for the genes that code for creative lifestyles.
This latter single idea has the potential to turn the despondency which is said to be a collateral inference from the Selfish Gene, into a more optimistic outcome. To say that ‘morality is good for genes which code for creativity’ does not mean, “eureka”, now we can see all our moral obligations clearly and realise them as our obligations. However, it allows us to assume that we possess some inner capacities and concern for creativity and morality, (possibly to varying degrees). Moreover, the idea that ‘morality is good for the genes which code for creativity’ resolves the intractable problem of justifying morality in terms of individuals or groups.
A significant derivative from Dawkins’s Selfish Gene is that there is no meaning to life beyond the reproduction of genes. However, nihilism is not the only necessary extrapolation that we can derive from this. Though it may be true, that this idea undermines a commitment to morality by rendering it meaningless, it also renders meaningless any commitment to immorality and ideologies like religions, nationalism and racism, which are the reason for a vast amount of misery in the world. Indeed, the meaninglessness inference can even undermine a commitment to one’s own interests. Thus many people may have rightly felt despondent. However, from this nadir we can build up a good case for morality, based on a commitment to creativity (see below).
One might think that in the absence of other guidance, humans would choose the hedonistic option of chasing what they assume yields the greatest pleasure, and avoid options that yield pain. As the Selfish Gene undermines the normative moral theories, one might think that we will be left with nothing but our bodies anchoring us to the world. This hedonism does not, by necessity, support immorality, but it may exasperate the moral crises. Obviously, a moral option may not look attractive when hedonistic calculations do not anticipate any pleasurable gains. Although I will not claim that there is anything in human nature that disposes us to make permanent moral commitments. I would claim that hedonism might not be the guide that we follow – it offers too simplistic a picture of human psychology. Even in the absence of a compelling a normative theory of morality, in the complex world of knowledge processing, where values matter, rather than simple hedonism, humans have a built-in quest for emotional fitness. Obviously, it is necessary to distinguish psychological capacity to interact with value propositions from the latter. Humans have inner capacity to act selflessly in response to social or political values. Yet, in case that these values are ideological, we may expect immoral outcome. However, one has also to take account of a fuller spectrum of human behaviour that ranges from what might look absurd from the point of adaptation and natural selection, for example, the work of stunt men, the horror of committing mass ideological crimes, or self-abuse on an individual level, to the other end of the scale, with remarkable acts of kindness, creativity and even total self-sacrifice for the sake of both loved ones and even strangers. What will be suggested is that the theory of emotional fitness is in a better position to capture these complexities of the interaction through values.
An important ground for building the case for morality on the basis of Darwinism, particularly the Selfish Gene, is to note that all humans are indebted to creativity. Creativity is manifest in civilisation, art, technology and science, upon which people depend for their existence. Creativity can also be applied in finding settlements for conflicts of interest in peaceful ways rather resorting to violence and destruction. Because of this dependency on creativity, there is a conflict between the lifestyles that depend on creativity, and those that depend on predation or parasitism – this conflict can be interpersonal or intrapersonal. In fact, even someone not committed to morality may be concerned to ensure that those around him are.[1] In consequence we must assume that there has been, along the whole human phylogeny (and some other animals perhaps) some kind of evolutionary pressure in favour of genes that code for the structures that underpin morality and creativity, and very likely the genes for the capacity to manipulate morality. This implies that there must have been some social selection in favour of the capacity to be moral or the capacity to manipulate morality, and against those who flagrantly and unconditionally disregard morality. To see the context of this social selection, I have put forward a picture of human social interaction, which I call the Resource Interdependency Systems (RISs), to take account of the vicissitudes of relying on, using or misusing, morality.
Some more arguments will be presented in the following sections regarding the factors which incline humans to morality which can also underpin a normative theory of morality. However, the most significant idea that deals with morality and figures immediately in the explanation of political history and events, is concerned with political power.
The capacity for creativity which facilitates peaceful resolution of conflict of interests and offers the opportunity to make a living without resorting to predation and parasitism, allows and necessitates the formation of political power – although this not to say that political power cannot be manipulated and fall into the wrong hands. Perhaps, such pressure exists in some rudimentary forms even among chimpanzees, as can be reading Franc de Waal’s books. In human cases, the formation of political power depends, to some degree at least, on having a group of people agreeing on articulated values, which can be phrased in moral or ideological propositions. Below, I give an account of the role and function of morality and ideologies, their propositions and their natures. I suggest that to understand politics we need to proceed from a starting point which considers that political power can be used as a means for obtaining resources, and thus we should expect power struggles; that some struggles for power take the form of competition through moral and ideological propositions; and that such a competition would lead to the disintegration of political power, unless there were institutions to maintain agreement over a set of moral rules. These institutions and procedures are embodied in ideologies and liberal democracy, although these two institutions have conflictual natures. There are common patterns for the unfolding of history. Liberal democracies will have different trajectories to the ideological systems. However, variation in the history of particular ideological systems may happen depending on certain factors, e.g., the size of the polity, the neighbouring polities, the existence of topographical barriers, technology and perhaps very significantly, the knowledge of the subjects and their reactions to the nature of their systems.


1. The Theory of the Selfish Gene
The theory of the Selfish Gene, associated with Dawkins, considers life as an epiphenomenon of the reproduction of genes. The individual organisms are seen as the survival machines of their genes, and the modes of relations among individual organisms, that can be, for example, altruistic, cooperative, competitive, predatory or parasitic, as strategies associated with genes. Genes aim at nothing and exist only because strategies they happen to code for give them the competitive edge against their alleles. Taking this genic point of view, as Dawkins urges us to do, obliges us to see that any behaviour is as good as any other, so long as it ensures the reproduction of the gene that prescribes it, regardless of the pain it causes to other individuals and even to the carrier of the gene. From the human point of view, it means that nature is indifferent to morality. I will argue that this worldview, notwithstanding the initial apprehension it causes, is necessary for explaining morality. The reason is that within this framework of the Selfish Gene, it is possible to think of morality as good for certain lifestyles which are based on creativity (and thus as good for the genes that underpin such lifestyles). Human evolution shows clear signs of achieving a greater capacity for creativity.
I use ‘creativity’ to refer to methods of creating resources through acquiring, transmitting and applying knowledge, excluding those violent or deceptive methods that aim at misappropriating what others have created which inflict loses or damages on the subject. Within this definition, most fields of human activity can be seen as manifestations of creativity. Agriculture, services, industry and trade all show evidence of the acquisition and application of knowledge, of past and present generations. However, I accept that someone who is inventing a weapon is also being creative, since he is creating an item that others may need and use. But to use this weapon to destroy or dispossess others indicates a failure on the part of the user to create resources and to resolve conflicts of interest with others creatively.
I assume that the impetus creativity possesses is due to the fact that those people who can make a living out of creativity may find it necessary to join alliances, aimed at producing co-operative surpluses, as well as curbing predatory and parasitic behaviours.
Considering morality to be good for certain lifestyles implies that there might also be some lifestyles which are not compatible with morality and thus stand to lose because of it. If we grant that it is possible to find a man who lacks creative skills to meet his needs but who is skilful in preying on others, then, considering that morality prohibits such methods, we should expect this man to lose if he were either to be punished for failure or forced to comply with moral rules.
However, this paper is not a recipe for nihilism. Once we are aware that our behaviour is unconsciously tuned to promote the interests of genes and take into account that we have no obligation towards them, we can allow ourselves some detachment and leeway. In the meantime, we can consider that absolutely every human being owes something to creativity. Creativity is what has produced technology and civilisation, without which the multitudes of humanity could not have existed. Therefore we can conclude that, if we owe anything to anyone or to any human quality, it is to creativity. But creativity is not possible without adherence to, at least some basic moral rules which allow creativity to pay off. This consideration can be used to counter the sceptic who thinks that morality might be no more than a sham, used as a tool for manipulation. Also, if we build in an additional consideration: that humans have a built-in attraction for beauty and curiosity for knowledge, we can appreciate that many people make a decision to adhere to morality. The reason would be not for the sake of morality, but in anticipation of what beauty and knowledge people can discover, in both nature and in humans. It is a reasonable assumption that such a drive already exists and is responsible for inspiring a great passion for attempts to discover beauty and knowledge.
2. Knowledge Processing
Human individuals, more than other animals, rely for their survival, (which involves competition and cooperation with other individuals, on the acquisition, transmission and application of knowledge (“knowledge processing,” henceforth). The application of knowledge in human life is most evident in what humans use to transform their environment. The greater the capacity of individuals or their groups for knowledge processing, the greater is their competitive edge.
The decisive role that knowledge plays and the deference to knowledge that humans manifest, opens the way for competition, and also for unfounded and fraudulent claims to knowledge, which if unchecked, may generate undeserved rewards for the claimants. This need for checks constitutes an objective ground that favours the evolution of institutions to validate or arbitrate between competing claims to knowledge. And indeed, humans have evolved institutions to deal with competition through the claims to knowledge. As I will suggest later, the methods of dealing with competition through claims to knowledge have the most decisive role in shaping human institutions and history.
Perhaps human knowledge can be seen to fall into three main categories, resources, aesthetics and politics. An essential focus for human inquiry and knowledge is that of resources. Resources, if seen from the point of view of genes, should include the physical properties of the materials and inhabitants of the environment in which they live, including the natural properties of human beings themselves, since qualities such as fertility, physique or mental capacity can have a decisive bearing on the potential for survival.
Human experience and numerous technological applications can be seen as a part of a greater institution for validating, or arbitrating between, different knowledge propositions. Another part is science. Although science postdates competition through the claims of knowledge, and although science carries out other functions, it can be viewed as the ultimate institution that has evolved to perform the systematic validation of, or arbitration between, different knowledge propositions about the physical attributes of the human environment.
There is also aesthetic knowledge. The reason that aesthetics need to be regarded as a branch of knowledge is that they guide our choices –in a rule-of-thumb fashion – in the course of finding what is useful, and avoiding what is harmful. As such, aesthetic feeling can be viewed as a manifestations and signals of hardwired assumptions of knowledge about what is useful or harmful objectively. There is no doubt that our choice of food is decided, at least partially, on the basis of olfactory and visual clues. Evolutionary psychologists have advanced a number of arguments of this sort and, indeed, the argument that the attractive characteristics of a person of the opposite sex are indicative of, and favourable for, fertility sounds plausible. Perhaps one can broaden the speculation further by suggesting that the attractive features of a person may be indicative of social sensitivity and creativity. Art in this context can be seen as the arena where such sensitivity and creativity are displayed. A poem, for instance, may be seen as a display or celebration of verbal capacity and the feeling one has for words; and this is no insignificant capacity for an animal that captures much of its knowledge through language.
However, there is no denying that considering aesthetics as a branch of knowledge involves a broadening of the sense of the term knowledge. The semantics need not be an insurmountable problem. People say a child is learning to walk, and this indicates that there is knowledge involved. Yet, a walking individual is neither conscious of the mechanism of walking nor aware of the brain systems and muscles involved. Similarly, we might not know all the criteria for our judgements of beauty. Though, we are aware of their effects through our feelings of approval and disapproval, pleasure and displeasure or attraction and repulsion and this enables us hypothesizing about the underlying criteria, in hindsight. Natural science, in contrast, is based on objective and quantitative measurements of which we are aware. But this is not to say that aesthetics do not correspond to objective criteria. It is true, however, that our feelings are subjective in the sense that we may not be able to describe them and our description may not be verifiable, but they are not wayward experiences without correspondence to anything objective. It is true that we may not be able to convey our feeling about a certain colour, but, unless there is a visual defect, a certain range of light wavelengths corresponds to a certain colour, and therefore most people, regardless of their culture, concur on the colour spectrum.
A further category is political knowledge, which will be discussed in the latter sections. I use this term because of its implications in the formation of political power. However, certain points need be made. The thesis of ‘knowledge processing’ assumes that human beings are capable of examining the ramifications of ideas and that they may demand an account of validity or authority for knowledge propositions, upon which they may reject or accept an idea. This means that on more basic level, the thesis of knowledge processing involves presupposition that humans have an inner mental life, in a sense, this thesis takes the theory of ‘the mind of others’ for granted. Some researchers might object to such a presupposition, considering that minds are not directly accessible for verification. However, the presupposition is necessary. Indeed, all moral philosophers, and perhaps most social scientists make such an assumption, though mostly implicitly.
3. The Theory of Emotional Fitness.
The theory of emotional fitness is based on the assumption that the evolutionary pressure in favour of those who can fit into various social systems such as the family, the clan, clubs, businesses and friendships (or more specifically RISs -- see below) must have resulted in producing a human psychology characterised by interplay between emotions and social values. I conjecture that positive evaluation, inferred either from verbal or facial expressions, treatment by others, or self-assessment in the light of values that are constructed or endorsed by oneself or others, results in the arousal of positive emotions such as self-satisfaction, pride and elation which lead to a state of extroversion. Consequently, these emotions contribute to social success and survival in the Darwinian sense. In contrast, negative evaluation leads to shame, guilt or embarrassment that in turn leads to introversion, inaction and perhaps eventually submission. These are the kinds of emotions that cause pain and dispose the individual either to reconsider the self and others, or to conform and accept a subordinate position which might sometimes be more beneficial than confrontation insofar as it allow survival in the Darwinian sense. However, considering the important fact that individuals compete, we should also expect a drive to manipulate and abuse these evaluative-emotional-mechanisms in order to subordinate others, and thus to further one’s own cause. This means that a rival or a person who aspires for dominance may try consciously or unconsciously to induce negative evaluations into rivals or challengers as an inexpensive means of social or political control. In response, I speculate that there can be a mechanism whereby a person tries to restore their own positive evaluation of the self – I call this drive ‘a quest for emotional fitness’.
There can be many ways to achieve emotional fitness. One may try to conform to social values and attempt to achieve favourable social recognition. One may change the social setting to where one is assessed positively. The new social setting can be for some people a circle of sycophants, for others a new political party or their own initial social group. For more creative people it may entail rejecting some explicit or implicit values and attempting to develop alternatives. It may consist of resorting to self-delusion and thus isolating oneself, as I believe narcissists do. (Self-delusion may seem counterproductive; however, in a moderate degree it may be advantageous if it helps to maintain a positive assessment of the self and thus a degree of extroversion that can last long enough to attain social achievement. Self-delusion may also be useful if it makes a person immune to unjust social judgements or treatments. Other methods may consist of rejecting negative assessments and resorting to aggression, or applying various kinds of pressure so that an interlocutor evinces only positive assessments.
The quest for emotional fitness can highlight the rationality of some moves that would otherwise be deemed irrational from the mere economic point of view, and even from the point of view of a simplistic evolutionary assumption, which endeavours to find rationale in terms of the survival of individuals rather than in terms of the survival of genes which may be underpinning certain psychological strategies that on average succeed more than fail and thus ensure the survival for these genes. For instance, stunts or involvement in creativity even without obvious economic motives, which seem outright counterproductive, can all be explained in terms of achieving a positive self or social assessment. Likewise, risking one’s own safety to visit loved ones in desolate and dangerous places or to rescue other people may also have the same effect since such actions usually draw approval, and also because the loved persons are usually celebrated and this consolidates emotional fitness.
The theory of emotional fitness also provides us with the context to broaden the concept of need or interests. For instance, love and affection, owing to the fact that they are expressed in the form of celebrating the beloved, will be seen within this scheme as consolidating factors of emotional fitness; the demand for respect and/ or equality, and the rejection of demeaning values and discourses, can be understood as strategies for gaining and maintaining emotional fitness, so we can expect that some people will insist on them even at a great cost to themselves. The broadening of the concept of need also allows us to see love, respect and other socially important attitudes as resources for which it is likely that some people will make great sacrifices.
Finally, and important in this context; the perspective of the theory of emotional fitness allows making sense of many aspects of life that are concerned with political (moral and ideological) values. One such is the strong emotional valance for the concern with these values – people, for instance, defend, sometimes extremely violently, the values that cast a favourable light on them, and reject with equal force the values that question them. Another is the drive that some people may have to change identity, be assimilated or integrated into another social background when the prevailing values do not favour them and they have no appropriate intellectual or physical response. A third is the drive to construct and propose a new set of values that give a better position to the actor. If this is the case, this theory highlights the psychological background for concern with political values and it contrasts favourably with Marxism, which attributes the formation of political values to economic interests, without highlighting the significance of values on a personal level and without illuminating the process whereby the personal is involved in the public. No wonder therefore that Marxism fails to explain, using its own conceptual tools, the reasons that, for example, two persons in a similar economic and social position may think differently and may even end up fighting on opposite sides.
The emotional fitness theory also tells us that people are concerned with values, and specifically with being valued favourably according to the values that they themselves endorse. However, since some of these values may be cruel or ideological we should expect that some individuals may participate in or condone the committing of atrocities. This point has a direct bearing on policy-making: to address a social or political conflict we need to address the ideas and values that are held by the parties to the conflict. This approach differs markedly from the approach that sees nothing but economic inequality as the culprit in social and political conflicts and thus advocates economic aid, which often achieves little. The failure of economic aid should not in fact come as a surprise if the recipients believed that the wealth of the donors has been plundered from the recipients.
4. The Resource Interdependency Systems, RISs
The fourth assumption that informs this political theory is the concept that I have termed ‘resource interdependency systems’ (RISs). One of the important steps to understand the context of human interaction is to broaden the concept of Resource. Humans need many things, such as, sustenance, nurturing, shelter, education, protection, power and even affections, sex, moral and psychological support, some might need the genetic materials of others, even some body parts. I suggest that we refer to all these as resources whether they are from human or physical sources.
Thanks to the potential for knowledge processing, humans can tap into many natural resources and enjoy them. However, for this potential to be realised, there is a need for some social resources that can only be produced from within social systems such as families, clans, clubs, businesses, states, and gangs, which are what I call RISs. The most basic of RISs that humans need is a family. Within this system, the relationship is likely to be cemented by the emotion of love, which may be a sort of expression of genetically mediated altruism that disposes the bearers to care for other bodies that are likely to carry the same gene. The practical expression of this altruism is manifest in what parents offer to their children, which is sometimes tantamounts to all they can possibly offer including self sacrifice. Now if we think of love as a need for which a person may make even the ultimate sacrifice, then the object of love or what fulfils it should be considered as the most valuable commodity.
As an individual gains more capacities for knowledge processing, s/he might be able to form or join more RISs, such as friends, businesses, clubs and political elites, which might include the elite that runs the state. However, it is important to note that not all resources, and therefore not all their providers, are of equal survival value. If we avoid interposing morality, from the mere survival perspective, some services and their producers are dispensable or replaceable – indeed, this is the reason that some employees are laid off and some spouses are changed and sometimes friendships are ended. Moreover, while people need resources and services, they may not need, or do not care about, the wellbeing of the producers of the resources. Humans can produce food, hunt or build facilities but humans can also be used for labour, sex and as warring machines, and nowadays even as body parts for each other. This creates a strong incentive, or pressure, on an individual to be on one’s guard, to demand moral qualities and commitments from others, and to organise institutions for protection. The autonomy or protection that others enjoy creates both evolutionary and developmental pressure to evolve and develop morality – or otherwise to develop the capacity to construct and deal with moral propositions or even take advantage of them. Now considering that some people, at least, are capable of producing their resources by using creative methods without the need for predation and parasitism, and, that these people would stand to benefit from building alliances, then considering also the benefits of appealing to morality by an individual who needs moral commitment, we are in a position to see the basic factors that lead to the creation of polities.
Moreover, the interest in joining favourable RISs creates an incentive to develop the capacities for producing resources (or at least to look as though one is capable of producing indispensable resources).
However, in considering the emotional aspect of human life, we should decline the assumption that what matters are material resources and brute physical and mental strength. This emotional aspect must have been the reason that humans evolved their capacities for humour, jocularity, and gregariousness; their passion for singing, dancing and the arts, as well as the capacity to respond to emotions such as shame, guilt or embarrassment that function to punish anti- social behaviour as well as disposing the subjects towards self-correction or perhaps submission.
The RIS perspective has many advantages. It tells us that a person may be interested in forming varieties of RISs but not necessarily interested in a society, which, ill-defined as it is, gives the impression of a harmonious social unit. Yet in reality a society usually subsumes varieties of RISs or subunits that may be locked in deadly interaction. RISs can also be seen as institutions where most social selection, as a part of general natural selection, takes place. For instance, different individuals may make transactions with morally suspect people within the wider society on a one-off basis, but they try to keep these suspects out of their essential RISs and may even back violent action against them if they are deemed to be out of control. RISs are also the institutions for which individuals construct and introduce moral qualities. The concern for the safety of children or business would surely make promulgating moral rules useful. In contrast, it is not unlikely that the same family- or business-person tries actively to undermine the moral standard of a rival RIS. The perspective of RISs, unlike that of society or community, has diagnostic significance. We can expect, all other things being equal, the greater is the number of RISs, to which a person can be a member, the happier that person is. This might give a useful guide to the direction we should take in order to improve the wellbeing of some people. Even observing the nature of relations within RISs can give us a clue to the difficulties a person may experience.
5. Knowledge and Political Power
Obviously, on my definition of creativity, a lifestyle dependent on creativity clashes with a lifestyle dependent on predation and parasitism. It is true that, at least some people can use both methods. However, an apparent or genuine subscription to creativity allows the building of alliances or the forming of RISs. Such a subscription, considering that it allows the growth in wealth, would also prepare the ground for the existence of a greater number of people. This feeds into a new cycle that produces even greater wealth and greater impetus for creativity. Two reasons for the prevalence of creative lifestyles over destructive or parasitic lifestyles can be cited here. Firstly, no one can sustain an RIS or an alliance while indulging in a predatory and parasitic way of life. This is not to say that some RISs cannot be formed exclusively for the purposes of predation and deception. However, I assume that even within such RISs, predators usually take a moral stance which exalts themselves and morally disparages their potential victims, and they may select their victims among those who are alleged to be worthless or harmful. The other reason, which is a consequence of the first, is simply that people who profess morality can maintain RIS. This might explain why human civilisation has survived and also why humans become increasingly characterised by creativity. Seeing morality as a means of promoting certain ways of life and thus the genes that underpin them, casts new light on the meaning of the expression ‘morally good’. Within the context of this evolutionary political theory, the expression suggests that this good is peculiar to certain people and it is absent in others who are more successful in preying on other people rather than providing resources for them.
As we have seen, many kinds of RISs can exist. Perhaps, a family might be formed because of a sexual relationship and because of kin related altruism without a clear articulation of the moral rules and values that are involved in its running. However, when many RISs, without clear shared genetic interest between them, come close to each other, and when this proximity makes it possible for some RISs or outcast individuals to gain resources through predation and parasitism, a need arises to articulate moral values to build specifically political RISs that can arbitrate between different RISs. However, we need to take into account the following: that we cannot be certain of the validity of many claims to knowledge of morality; that a simulation of morality introduces further complications; and that moral knowledge propositions are capable of mobilising collective forces in favour of certain ways of life against others. These points prepare us to expect competition through moral propositions. Indeed, people compete to put forward their own views of what morality is. Yet, this means that, despite the need for a particularly political RIS, such an organisation may fail to exercise power specifically because of a failure to agree upon one set of moral rules.

6. Building Model
Now, if we grant that the formation and continuation of political power hinge upon whether a group of people agree on some moral rules, and we consider the difficulty of brining about consensus on certain moral rules, we will arrive at a key question. How has it been possible, at all, to provide and maintain a unified set of moral rules that can form an effective political power? It is possible to build two models of institutions that can foresee the function of providing and maintaining a unified set of moral rules. Taking our cues from the reality of political bodies past and present, and considering the characteristics of human beings,the context of their interaction as mentioned in the previous sections, we can assume that violence may be one effective way to suppress ideational challenges against a unified set of moral rules after they have been formulated and presented. Humans and animals use violence as an arbitrator of disputes and it is the fierce and physically fit who win such contests. In the case of humans, it is only because of the potential for creative lifestyle, which also allows resolving conflicts of interest peacefully, that coalition, can be built against arbitrary and excessive uses of violence.
However, to build the first model, I suggest imagining a group of people who are not permitted to use violence or restrain themselves from doing so. We should anticipate that in such a situation chaos may follow. Not to resort to violence does not imply that humans will be completely different. They will still be competing and they might even take advantage of the absence of violence through excessive demands which might disrupt social life. Perhaps, in the past when people were not able to overcome their disputes and did not want to resort to violence, they had no choice but to move apart. But let’s assume that the group of people in our experimentation cannot afford to move apart. So how can such a group of people overcome their differences and agree on some moral rules that can organise their social life. To proceed in building the model we need to imagine the possible moves, arguments and counterarguments.
People, even children sometimes, resort to polling to find out the majority preference, because those who feel being equal to each other, and prefer to stay together but who otherwise disagree which way to go, may ask that the minority follow the majority. Adopting majority rule would be necessary because it is hard to sustain any argument in favour of minority-rule, as such an argument will need to be premised on the superiority of the minority.
In other words, here we may not need to engage in a lengthy argument to explain how majority rule came about. We can easily imagine someone in a majority of a group of people, who have been disputing which direction they should go, to suggest to the minority ‘well, you should follow the majority’, and also imagine the evolution of systematic or institutionalised processes to identify the majority preference. Democracy, identifying the majority disposition, has independently been evolved twice, once in ancient Greece, and in the course of the evolution of current liberal democracy. However, there is no reason to assume that even less formal democracies have been being practiced among families, clans, or even loosely associated tribes. This is not to say that it’s impossible to argue that the majority should follow the minority, but then the argument should strive to emphasise that the disputing parties are not equal. Such arguments are not exceptional of course and, as we will see, they constitute the bases of the second model.
Of course, we should not expect that majority rule will be the magic bullet. Majorities, as anyone can tell may make pitiful choices. Thus we should not expect a great respect for democracy or majority rule when the demagogues and fanatics can suppress their critics and rivals, thus perpetuating their rules and rivals and thus perpetuate their rules. Perhaps this is the reason that the democracy of ancient Greece failed, and may have been the reason that it did not take off elsewhere. So what else, besides democracy (defined as the process for identifying majority preferences), would be needed for the community of the thought experimentation to devise so that they can cooperate? Of course, we have already stipulated forbearance from violence, that is why we can assume that democracy will survive. But what else will be needed? No doubt to correct wrong decisions needed freedom of expression, and to have this will need a certain degree of autonomy to individuals. Perhaps, a more advanced stage of such a model will have institutions that are dedicated to researching the intended and unintended consequences of their previous decisions and also have procedures to solicit new ideas about better moral rules. Now reaching this point, we can note some similarities between this model and actual liberal democracy. Two main similarities stand out. The actual liberal democratic institution of rights matches to some degree the special measures suggested above, and the actual election of liberal democracies is a forum in which voting on moral matters is permitted. These similarities justify considering a proposition that liberal democracies may have evolved precisely for the purpose of dealing with moral disagreement, and for providing a unified set of moral rules that allows the maintenance of political power. Indeed, liberal democracy evolved in England, where the balance of power between monarchs and the upper class of the country, as well as the inspiration of the Magna Carta, controlled political violence to some degree, making governance almost impossible without brining in a parliament to vouch for the monarchs’ decisions for the acceptance by the population.
But there are important differences. Obviously, liberal democracies are associated with nation states. Many writers from both the right and the left argue forcefully that liberal democracy is necessarily associated with capitalism, although I dispute this as latter arguments suggest. Yet, it is clear that actual liberal democracies are associated with centralised forms of government, borders and capital cities. None of these features could be predicted in the course of building the model above. Thus to argue that the actual liberal democracy has evolved in response to the challenge of providing and maintaining the unified set of moral rule requires an explanation of the discrepancy just mentioned. This explanation is possible, if we examine the behaviour and the possible courses of evolution of the second model that we need to devise.
The building of this second model begins with considering how it is possible to provide and maintain a unified set of moral rules without liberal democracy. This is possible if some people are inculcated with the idea that humans themselves are not the source of their morality, but that it is decided by some ulterior force. Perhaps, some people would not be persuaded to adopt a moral perspective on life, regardless of whether their scepticism was due to acuity of intelligence, or only spite aimed at avoiding ceding power. The conceivable range of methods to deal with such a dissident – and indeed these methods have been in wide use – consists of buying them off, coercing them into silence or eliminating them. Due to the suppressive nature and also the nature of the starting argument – that humans are not the author of their moral values – we should expect that the model would face difficulties of a different nature.
One difficulty is how it can be possible to make people believe they are not the authors of their own morality? This is, unfortunately, very easy. Even today, many scholars, let alone lay people, are inclined to believe that morality is something out there waiting to be discovered. This is understandable, considering that humans are only starting to understand themselves and this thanks to evolutionists – a fact which is nevertheless not yet accepted universally.
Another issue is what to suggest as the source of morality. To answer this question we can turn our attention to actual answers that humanity has so far provided. Religions could be said to involve a specific pattern of answers, and they manage this task surprisingly very easily, perhaps very unluckily for humanity. For theistic religions, it takes no more than stating that humanity was created by a divine force which ordained morality, and that humanity should comply with its rules.
A different approach for denying human authority over moral decisions can be found within Marxism. Marx dismissed the relevance of morality, considering it a part of ideology. Ideologies, according to Marxism, come about in the course of the material production of the means of survival. For Marx, thought has no independence from the forces and relation of production.[2] That is why he assumed that liberal democracy is the ideology of the bourgeoisie. He did not see in the moral principles of liberalism a significant turning point altering the nature of governance and leading to a different course of history for the polity that adopts it, as this EPT suggests. Moreover, within the Marxist tradition it is assumed that social relationships of production are responsible for human conditions. This is the reason that they thought that states and justice will not be needed once communists, the abolishment of private ownership of means of production is abolished. In other words, Marx did not see a role for morality in the establishment of political power.
A third approach to divesting humans of moral authorisation is taken by nationalists and racists. In their discourses, it is suggested that morality is the property of the biological inheritance of a nation or a race. (It is possible to construct a fictional system of beliefs that attributes morality to a mystical entity outside direct human power – in the book-length manuscript which bears the same title as the article, I have demonstrated that an apparent benign and deceptively reassuring ideology, that is based on some sort of evolutionism, can carry out the gory function that other illiberal democratic belief systems can carry out.)
We can predict another kind of difficulty that would face this second model by considering the fact that issuing moral propositions or directives and rules is extremely significant considering the power dimension of moral rules. That is why we should ask how is it possible that the majority of people allow a few others to decide the moral rules to which they will adhere. In other words, how is it possible that some people believe in “prophets”, “great national leaders” or philosophers who decide for them what they ought or ought not to do? In an intellectual climate, where people are ignorant of the political processes and can believe in superstitions and have no experience of a free press to reveal the merits or otherwise of a leader, believing in extraordinary or mystical qualities of some leader would become easy. This is particularly so when people, in some circumstances feeling disconcerted and desperate, would want to pin their hopes on something or someone rather than on nothing.
However, if these conditions apply to some people, they do not apply to all, and some people may not be carried away. A sceptic or hostile section of a population ready to point out the shortcomings in the arguments and characteristics of leaders of movements may abort the growth of the movement – this, indeed, is my explanation for why fascists and communists did not succeed in reasonably well-established liberal democracies. That is why we have to assume that other methods of treatment will be needed. Economic pressures or opportunities may be sufficient for some people to change their stance. For others, a degree of intimidation may do. However, hardcore opponents may persist for whom violence may be the only solution. But bearing in mind that violence is usually associated with predation we should expect a collective reaction against violence. To prevent this we will need to assume that this model of institution should try to morally condemn the potential victim. In other words, within this approach the victim should turn into the culprit.
I term this model the ‘ideological model’. Examining the real politics of the world, one cannot find a liberal democratic system predating a few centuries-- apart from the inchoate democratic system of Ancient Greece. On the other hand, humanity has known empires and states that go back in history for at least four or five millennia. So if I am right in my assumptions that, at least, all multi-RIS political systems need an institution to provide and maintain a unified set of moral rules so that political power is generated, and if it is true that there are only two ways to accomplish this task, then all these pre-liberal democratic systems must have been informed by ideologies. This assumption is warranted considering that religions were the dominant systems of belief in the past, and that most religions in fact reject the idea of human authorship of moral rules and moreover, most religions condemned their sceptics. I would also include Marxism, anti-liberal nationalism and racism ideologies, on the assumption that they can support political systems without the need for liberal democracies and without considering moral decision-making as a central issue.
Structurally we should predict the availability of certain essential features of the ideological systems. These systems need to be centralised, because a centralised organisation is better able to deal with opposition, particularly when violence is employed. Centralisation comes about naturally within these systems because, in fact, the ideologues of an ideological RIS wield enormous power anyway, given that the whole power of the legislative body is surrendered to them. In essence, to be able to declare who and what characteristics and behaviour are good or bad ensures that the ideologue is in a position to direct political power against thousands, if not millions, of people and therefore determine their lives and their wellbeing. Such a person could be expected to be the focus for hatred, and envy, and a target of conspiracies and sycophancy.
Being in this position such people would benefit from buffering themselves by surrounding themselves with relatives who may be less inclined to betray or forsake them. This introduces a system of dominance for particular families over the system and paves the way for monarchy. This explains why even in professedly anti-monarchic systems, such as communism, Bathes and early Islam, monarchism nevertheless came to evolve.
Efforts to concentrate power can be expected to have the potential for favouring the formation of capital cities. Since having officialdom close to the seat of power ensures easier surveillance and communication, this must have been the case in the past.
Such a system should not have a system of rights, which is a characteristic of liberal democracy, as rights impede effective dealing with opponents.
The ideological system would also be characterised by a concentration of wealth, mainly through the appropriation of that of dissenters. This should be an anticipated move, considering that a power exercise would be easier if the subjects are weaker economically, psychologically and even physically; and also considering that economic and political powers are exchangeable. Within this model we should expect the population to lose its capacity to challenge the system and in the long run even to feed itself. This EPT predicts that such conditions must have been or should be experienced in all illiberal democratic polities. Indeed, it can be argued that the old Empires of Islam, Rome, Babylonia and hundreds of others suffered such fates, and that the recent histories and present situations of the USSR, Iraq under Saddam, and currently Cuba and North Korea do not gainsay this prediction.
We should also expect the formation of political borders particularly along the lines where a campaign of subjugation and annihilation against ideological enemies has developed into war, and this war has come to an impasse.
It is possible to imagine an ideological system dominating the population of a society completely, and in this case the continuous downgrading of the economic, moral, and psychological state of the population may lead to slavery and may develop into cannibalism.
Change within an ideological system would not be expected to come from inside, although opposition can happen in the form of a split among members of the elite struggling to gain the upper hand. Thus the political struggle within these systems is characterised by factional fighting which may break up the system into smaller systems. Consequently, within this model we should expect the system to fall as a result of outside pressure. This indeed was the fate of many Islamic empires, the Romans and many others.
However, competition between rival ideological systems and the struggle for survival through improving economy, weapon technology and gaining more manpower may provide the incentive to the rulers, or at least to put pressure on them, to allow some reforms. In Britain, my expectation is that such a situation allowed the growth of societal forces, which, beginning with the Magna Carta, could eventually circumscribe the use of violence, and this laid down the groundwork for the evolution of a liberal democracy.
Reaching this point, we are able to see the roots of the nation state, the capital city, a centralised form of government and also the system of rights and elections. Other features, such as capitalism and parliamentarianism which I did not predict in the model, can also be explained.
Capitalism can be regarded as an accidental feature of liberal democracy which emerged as a result of the concentration of power, including economic power, necessary for maintaining political power. Capitalism reflects a moral state of mind, rather than a necessary stage of the development of human economic relations. It reflects an indifference towards inequality, environment and sometimes everything else apart from profit. This state of mind should come as no surprise considering that humanity has just started emerging out of an ideological era when even taking the lives of others by the thousands seemed, and still seems in some ideological systems, a prerogative of those who rule the ideological group. However, this is not to say that private property ownership has made no positive contribution. The mere existence of economic autonomy would give some power to individuals to voice their own opinion but an unrestrained monopoly of economic means undermines this autonomy for the many.
With regard to parliamentarianism which represents the confinement of moral decision-making to a small elite group, it could also be said that it reflects a mentality that sees the current condition of depriving the population from decision-making as the norm, and sees the political process as the prerogative of the few. This must be a relic of a past mindset when it was the norm to have a single person dominating political decisions. Indeed, parliamentarianism evolved when the rulers were not able to use arbitrary force and thus they needed a body of representative to endorse and vouch for the decisions made by the rulers. It is no wonder, therefore, that parliaments look out of place or even superfluous sometimes. Indeed, in the current era, political leaders are turning to think-tanks for more intelligent discourses and to opinion polls for guidance, rather than to mediocre parliamentarians, who lack real life experience but are vested with enormous power, making them attractive for all kind of interest groups and opportunity seekers.
Finally, I should say that this model has the capacity to make more detailed predictions about the cultural and spiritual state of populations under ideological systems than any alternatives. These and other detailed arguments can be found in my book length typescript which is due for publication in due course.

My thanks and gratitude to Professor David, Dr. Cath Filmer and Ms Cheryl Adams for commenting, editing and proofreading this article.

[1]This might be seen as a variation of the free-rider’s problem: that the free-rider, here, is aware of the necessity of having others contributing to the public good.
[2]As Marx says:
Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness (Marx, The German Ideology, Marxist Archive, DVD. www.marxists.org).

To contrast, EPT suggests that depending on whether we use violence, in the course of attempting to provide and maintain the unified set of moral rules, we may evolve either ideologies or liberal democracy. The most decisive factor in history, from the point of EPT, is not the mode and forces of production, rather, knowledge of the necessity of moral agreement, perhaps, a scientific worldview and crucially disposition to violence.
For Marx, however, ‘the multitude of productive forces accessible to men determines the nature of society, hence, that the “history of humanity” must always be studied and treated in relation to the history of industry and exchange’ (ibid).
Moreover, Marx did not give any role to morality. He seemed, for instance, as though he had presumed that a husband will, as a matter of course, enslave the wife and children and this ‘latent slavery in the family’ will form the nucleus for the greater extension of slavery.
With the division of labour, in which all these contradictions are implicit, and which in its turn is based on the natural division of labour in the family and the separation of society into individual families opposed to one another, is given simultaneously the distribution, and indeed the unequal distribution, both quantitative and qualitative, of labour and its products, hence property: the nucleus, the first form, of which lies in the family, where wife and children are the slaves of the husband. This latent slavery in the family, though still very crude, is the first property, but even at this early stage it corresponds perfectly to the definition of modern economists who call it the power of disposing of the labour-power of others. Division of labour and private property are, moreover, identical expressions: in the one the same thing is affirmed with reference to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the product of the activity (ibid.).