Human Governance and Critical Thinking, Part 1

You can not have government without man. Government can be defined as the way that man organizes the way that he deals with other man. Logically, government is man in all his glories and all his faults. One way the term politics can be used is to describe how man governs and the ways governance can be affected. Power is the term we will use to describe how to enforce our politics,

Man is driven by animal, or survival, needs. Man also is driven by social needs. There is an argument that social needs are based on animal needs, but for this discussion, I will separate the two kinds of human need. Survival needs include food, water, shelter, sanitation, and sex. Social needs include other people to socialize with, sex (yes, I did mention sex twice- I like sex, and so do you), an economy (which can be considered a way to get survival needs), a moral structure to live within, and leadership. Governments are usually set up to provide the last three items. However, most governmental systems do not describe the way in which they fulfill the human need for leadership in a formal manner.

Thus, we will describe this animal/human need for leadership(the human animal's need for leadership). As man is a social animal, the leaders of governments have all fit their societies' needs for leadership according to animal responses, and not necessarily by the moral codes set by the societies. For example, leadership in warrior societies is held mainly by warriors, with input from their woman, and from the older weaker, former warriors (the wise old men). In societies in which the majority of people are protected by a specialized class of protectors , leadership goes to the people with the most social ability and social “prettiness”.

One argument is that the need that some people have for political dominance is based upon sex drive. We will discuss other possible reasons throughout this series; whether or not that is true for all people doesn't really matter, because it shows that some people do feel the need to be in charge. This can be explained with one of my favorite jokes, as follows.

The parts of the body were arguing about who would get to be in charge of the body. The brain started by claiming that due to the brain's function of thinking and planning, that it should be in charge. The hands countered this argument with the claim that since the hands did all the work, the hands should be the ones in charge of the body. The stomach put in it's bid for leadership on the basis that the stomach converted food into the energy needed by the body, and thus was most important. The asshole then put in his claim to leadership, at which point the rest of the body parts responded by laughing at this stinky upstart. The asshole then went on strike by shutting down for two days. The brain became dizzy and confused, the hands twitched and were weak, and the stomach was sick and in pain. The body parts surrounded to the asshole and put him in charge of the body.

The moral is that you don't need to smart or useful to be in charge, you just have to be an asshole.

In everyday terms, you can see someone in the fast lane driving the speed limit or even slower, proving his power over others by slowing down the entire road system. On the other hand, you will also have someone trying to drive by hitching themselves to your back bumper and trying to force you to drive faster. Why this need for power? Why this need to have control over others? Later, we will also look at this from LeBon's perspective, and ask why people feel the need to be led.

We are going to use critical thinking to look at the reasons why this is so. As humans, we have both animal impulses such as sex drive, and thinking reasons, to do things. Let's move past our animal nature for a moment and focus on our thinking, also known as cognitive, nature. What affects how we think? Let us take a critical, or questioning, look at bias.

"He who knows only his own side of the cause knows little. "
John Stuart Mills

Yet most people only have an understanding of their own side of the cause. Any human must understand how to think critically in order to understand cognitive biases.

What is critical thinking? Critical thinking is using objective measurements and analyses to come to a conclusion about an argument or assertion. As we will discuss, true critical thinking is hard to accomplish.

To begin with, we need to understand objective versus subjective measures. An objective standard is based on fact, while subjective standards are reached by personal interpretation. Even so, what can be considered as an objective standard is often argued on subjective grounds. The sources of that “objective” fact may have left something out.

Example: On the subject of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct State Department business, conservatives claim that this was illegal due to national security law and accountability law, while liberals claim that this process was legal. A law should be an objective standard, and thus easy to judge. Why then, is there a dispute in this case?

Critical thinking includes (but is not limited to) the following processes:
Identifying arguments
Summarizing the terms of an argument
Analyzing arguments in terms of evidence and logic
Analyzing the credibility and/or strength of evidence
Identifying the assumptions of an argument, both stated and unstated
Accounting for discrepancies between different sources on an argument
Identifying the reasons an argument is presented (bias)

Before we move into structured processes used in critical thinking, we need to look at the subjective processes that prevent objective thinking…basically, we need to ask: Why don’t humans use critical thinking?

Because of cognitive bias.

The first thing to note here is that all humans are biased. Someone who tells us that they are not biased is either lacking in personal awareness or is lying. Humans are subject to the processes of socialization that bias their thinking; humans are subject to protecting themselves first before all other concerns. We can look at the survival mode as self-interest. However, other personal needs are also met via self-interest, such as the need to be in control.

Socialization is the process by which we as people learn how to behave. Socialization is based upon many things, such as governmental control, parental temperament, religion, the people that we grow up with ( our peers), who we work with (our peers, again)etc etc. There are probably more influences that you have consciously registered that have influenced what you think. The process of socialization will be discussed again in this discussion.

In addition, personal experience, inherited biology, and individual personality have an effect on thinking processes. The way that these processes are affected is known as cognitive bias.

Cognitive biases include (but there are MANY more types):
Confirmation bias – This bias is the result of only taking in new information that supports an already held idea.
Normalcy bias – This bias leads people to ignore potential disasters or the possibility of bad results from a situation; it can also be known as “the ostrich effect”.
Optimism bias – This is an individual bias in which a person overestimates the potential of a good result and/or underestimates the potential of a bad result for themselves.
Groupthink – This bias occurs in group decision making when no individual risks confrontation to identify problems with the group's decision.
Pluralistic ignorance – This is a group based bias in which the person privately holds an opinion that is against the public norm. He publicly agrees with the public norm (as in groupthink ), but doesn't understand that that the majority of the group is also against the public norm. Each member of the majority is actually against the norm, but thinks that everyone else holds the public position...which is actually the minority's position.

A list of cognitive biases can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases.

Cognitive biases can be personal in origination, or they can be the result of socialization through an institutional bias, or a group bias. Social psychology tries to explain some of the group biases.
The explanation for any given bias can overlap another, and there can be multiple explanations for any given bias These biases can lead to the “cherry-picking” of evidence, which is selecting or agreeing only with the evidence and/or logic that supports an initial position of the argument.

I will end Part 1 here. Part 2 will be an overview of the critical thinking process.