Musings on Politics

[unspeakablehorror]

Not understanding history and political theory is bad when people are making political decisions for obvious reasons, but I've come to the conclusion that understanding history and political theory is also bad, because I don't think individuals can really ever...comprehend these things beyond the 'just enough to be dangerous' stage.  And yes, that obviously includes me, but it also includes everyone else.  There are plenty of people smarter than me, more knowledgeable than me on these topics, but I just don't think even the smartest and most knowledgeable people can come even close to fully understanding these things. 

I do think this is not an intractable problem, but I also think it is a serious problem, and may explain a lot about why world politics always seems to be such a mess. 

Comments

[rugessnome]

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design"? (quote from F.A. Hayek)

[unspeakablehorror]

Hmmm, well, this statement was made by a human and makes an assumption about economics, an extremely broad aspect of politics with many possible different contexts, so I'd say what I said applies to this statement as much as to any other. Which is to say, it cannot be trusted to be authoritative or to consistently guide people to the correct course of action.

[unspeakablehorror]

And I don't say this because I don't think people should study these things! On the contrary, I think studying politics and history and economics (though economics is still only an aspect of politics and not its entirety) is vitally important. I just think that there's a lot of overconfidence regarding how well and completely anyone can understand these things.