Civics Made Really Simple

Civics refers to any constitution or legal system. A constitution is a written plan of government. I do not have a new political or economic system. My thought is that at one end we have Capitalism and, at the other end Communism. The best course of action is to settle on a middle course that has the best of both and the worst of neither.

What I have today is a way of explaining the basis of all constitutions and legal systems that is simple and concise in a way that I have never seen civics explained anywhere else.

My way of thinking about civics issues, such as legal systems and constitutions, revolves around the concept of the subjective. The subjective is all-important in fully understanding any human enterprise. There is nothing complex about the subjective, a subjective is simply someone's opinion or wish.

As a simple example, the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship can be most effectively described in terms of the subjective. In a dictatorship or absolute monarchy, the entire society is subject to the whim of the king or dictator. If a powerful person says that a lesser person is guilty of a crime, then that person is guilty of the crime. These whims of the all-powerful are their unchecked subjectives.

All attempts to apply checks and balances to power to bring about a more equitable society from the Magna Charta until now have been attempts to manage and control the subjective. In fact, any system of law or government can be defined as management of the subjective.

In free societies, this management of the subjective usually takes the form of the establishment of fixed laws, legal processes, basic rights and, the presumption of innocence in the event of criminal charges. Such a civic structure is akin to the building of a house to provide shelter from the elements. Except in this case, the elements are the subjective.

Of course for the structure to serve it's purpose, the laws must be consistently applied. Inconsistent application of the law is allowing the subjective back in. This creates a lack of flexibility, which is somewhat inconvenient at times, but it is this lack of flexibility that keeps the subjective at bay.

Politics is merely the determination of the various possible slants of the civic structure. For example, two possible slants on freedom are "freedom to" and "freedom from". What about smoking? Should people in a free society have "freedom to" smoke in a public place or "freedom from" being exposed to smoke?

The subjective is only so if it is different from the subjectives of others. If everyone had the same opinions about everything, then there would be no such thing as the subjective. This means that we can check the subjective by matching it against the subjectives of other people. Two of the best-known ways in which this is done is political elections and trial by jury.

However, the opinion of the majority is not the way to create a free society in every way. Ownership, of a home for example, means the right to exercise one's own subjective while being free from the subjectives of others. But to be free from the subjectives of others in a free society, you must acknowledge that they are also free from your subjective.

The reason that human societies put so much effort into creating the structures necessary to manage the subjective is that the subjective is a part of our natures. People, as a whole, are not naturally inclined to live by high principles. People tend to prefer themselves above others and to think that their particular group is special.

It indeed requires some special people to live by the principles espoused by the world's democracies. But special people who do not think themselves special because the basic meaning of democracy is that no one is special. Thus, democracy is a vast undertaking aimed at checking the subjective.

It is true that expression of the subjective provides flexibility. It is also true that a dictatorship or absolute monarchy is more flexible than a democracy. But democracy seems to be superior at providing a better life for more people, meaning that democracy is one of those things that is more difficult in the short term but is worthwhile in the long term. When a civic structure is less-than-perfect or the people have difficulty living by it, the subjective will creep back in.

As in so many things concerning human beings, the best course of action is not one extreme or the other but an effective blending of the two. The same principle applies to the management of the subjective in a free society. Having no control over the subjective would create the law of the jungle. But having total supression of the subjective means a dictatorship or absolute monarchy.

This means that a free society must fall somewhere between the two. There must be a partial, but not complete, control of the subjective. This is accomplished by dividing society into two spheres, the public and the private sphere. The difference between the two lies in how the subjective is handled.

The simplest and clearest illustration of the public and private spheres of society is the ownership of property. One's own home is the private sphere. In a free society, part of the total property must be privately owned but not all of it. Freedom, like so many other facets of society, is best defined in terms of the subjective. Freedom is really freedom from the subjectives of others balanced with expression of our own subjective.

Aside from ownership, opinions also illustrate the difference between the public and private spheres of society. In a free society a person can express their opinions, the subjective, but cannot force their opinions on others, thus preserving their subjectives. The freedom of expression is the public sphere whereas the protection from force is the private sphere.

I find this concept of the subjective to be extremely far-reaching. It is a vital consideration in news and, in fact, any information that we may receive. A lot of what you read in the news is someone's opinion, or their subjective.

On my religion blog, http://www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com/ , there is a posting titled "Religion And Philosophy". In that posting, I gave my definition of the difference between a religion and a philosophy. A religion was in the "simple realm" because fundamental religious statements such as "there is a god" or "Jesus is the Son of God" must be either true or false, there is no middle ground in such statements.

Philosophy, in contrast, fell into the "complex realm" because fundamental philosophical statements cannot really be forced into the true or false labels. One philosophy may prove to be preferable to another, but it cannot be strictly said that either is "true" or "false". Put simply, religion is more concrete while philosophy is more nebulous.

The same concept can be applied to news regarding the subjective. We can have a simple news statement or a complex news statement. This simplicity or complexity does not refer to the actual complexity of the news event. Rather, it concerns the presence or absence of the subjective.

A news statement such as "There was an earthquake today and seven people are confirmed killed" is a concrete statement that contains no subjective. This would thus be a news statement in the simple realm.

However, a statment like "Conditions are worse than they were last week" contains a considerable amount of opinion, or subjective, that other observers may not agree with. This represents the complex realm. Advertising is, of course, filled with subjective. A line that a certain pizzeria has the best pizza in town is an ideal example of the subjective.

The subjective exists because we all see the world through our own lenses. All of us are products of different experiences. None of us has complete knowledge and few people are entirely free of any bias.

I have not presented any new social order or political system here. But this is a simpler and more concise way of viewing society than I have ever seen before. This concept of the subjective and it's management provides effective definitions of what freedom is, how democracy differs from dictatorship or absolute monarchy, the functions of all constitutions and legal systems, the difference between the public and the private domain and, the definition of news.