Politics and Voting Systems
Politics
Politics is a religion with really shitty gods, but at least you know those gods probably exist.
There's nothing about politics that is an honest for truth and I'm inclined to say the same about Christianity. They both make virtues of confirmation bias and believing what you're supposed to believe instead of actually wanting the truth.
Any faith in those mythological caricatures of humans painted by the world media circus, the flotsam and jetsam of our political systems, would be utterly misplaced.
I'm outraged, livid and incandescent, that the way we do politics in the UK (and a lot of the world but our first past the post system creates a two party system which creates a system where the main goal is to attack the enemy rather than any integrity or commitment to truth) ensures that there is zero way of telling on any topic we hear about how much of it is true, how much is manufactured outrage, what should specifically have happened, what even has happened, how those decision were really made. Every thing you read is from a political perspective and trying to sell you a story, people care more about whether the news is on their side than about the truth.
I despise politics and politicians. Those who, for money and power, will compromise instead of doing the right thing. Politics is all about being compromised. And they're the ones who could change things and choose not to, because of "political reality".
For me it's getting to the heart of the matter that brings me peace. Knowing what exactly I'm angry with. It's not just anger at injustice and compromise and corruption, it's confusion caused by deception. That so few people care about truth, that agendas are more important, and the lies that causes. That makes me angry and makes me hate. I hate politics and politicians. I'm not afraid to hate these days.
Be angry with all sides that this is the case. All politicians are complicit in the corruption and compromise of the system. And all who espouse politics and feed off it and identify with it and put their aspirations and dreams into it are also complicit in it and sullied by it. The great polluter of minds and corrupter of hearts, political power. The idea that telling people what to do is a good idea is another great evil shared between politics and Christianity.
And in fact, I'm more and more convinced that this authoritarianism is not just a great evil but is the great evil. The Jesus Army was a living demonstration of how authoritarianism perverts and devours beauty. Authoritarianism (*) always has a place for those who willing to be aggressive, authoritarianism is the pecking order. So any authoritarian structure will always be corrupted and perverted by ugly people getting power and wanting to keep power, alongside the once good people compromised by that same system because the only way to keep power is to be compromised by it.
In her seminal work "The Origins of Totalitarianism" Hannah Arendt identified the conditions needed for totalitarianism to arise. The othering of a section of the population, scapegoating, was one of the things she identified. In her day it was the Jews, today how we as a society treat refugees and Muslims springs easily to mind. The antidote she suggested was a politically engaged populace, where politically engaged meant involved in the community and involved with people. This is against politics and the politicians and the established power structures not being hoodwinked by a shallow opposition to the things we hate into supporting politicians.
Care about issues and care about people and care about the environment and all these things. And despise politics and politicians with a fierce and burning passion.
(*) Authoritarianism is the philosophy that authority, backed by force, should be obeyed and respected just because it is authority. Authoritarianism allows evil to hide in the dark.
Voting Systems
- "Keep the most loved". The 3 candidates with the highest number of +1 votes are retained. Everyone else is thrown out.
- "Toss the most hated". Of the 3 candidates remaining, throw out the one with the highest number of -1 votes.
- "Pick the more preferred". Of the 2 candidates remaining, the winner is the one that ranked higher on more ballots. Toward that end, it counts exactly the same if, e.g., a candidate wins +1 to -1 on a ballot, or +1 to 0, or 0 to -1. This stage is purely ordinal (the specific scores don't matter).