To what degree does our political system form the way we think?
I thought about this question during a political discussion regarding the awkward marriage of party politics and the Canadian riding system, which we happened to agree suggests direct personal representational rather than ideological politics (if I can dichotomize those...). For clarification, what I mean is that the Canadian system seems to suggest an ideal in which constituents vote based on which candidate they believe will best represent their local interests nationally, rather than which local candidate represents the political ideology they subscribe to, or the "party" whose national platform I like best, or whose leader I like best. Anyway I came to ponder to what degree our very political system form our binary and ideological thinking? Is perhaps our polarized society and often vicious debates, socially, politically, and theologically, at least in part a result of the very systems we have created and live in? The American two party system and Canadian party system seem unable to capture the political nuance, which I would suggest are needed in our multicultural society and global village in which it is situated. Do representation by population democracies, such as are more common in Europe, contribute to what, from my perspective, tend to be individuals who both hold more nuanced and tolerant positions than seem common in North America?
It is my off the cuff impression, that those who have spent more than a year in a country with a "rep by pop" democracy, in which every vote counts (in a way that is not true of our systems), generally are significantly more capable of generating multiple solutions, thinking from other perspectives, and generally holding more nuance political, social and religious convictions than those who have live exclusively in North America. In this comment I am explicitly acknowledging my own tendency toward binary thinking having lived primarily in North America in contrast to some other people I know with more international experience, and am away that I am setting up a binary in this very post between North America and Europe.
Nevertheless, if any of this is even marginally true I think it then suggests that as we talk about learning to live in tension, which is a very common conversation in my life, we MUST create social and political and perhaps economic systems that also function in tension, ideally the multifaceted tensions which represent the realities of our world. However, our elected dictatorships generally do not function at all in tension and rather either are party regimes or entirely non - functioning. To be fair Beligium's non government for nearly 6 months does not necessarily support the functionality of the other system.
Thoughts?
Very interesting observation.
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