The Politics of Cause and Effect

American  Thinker 

Cause and effect is a pretty simple concept; touch a hot strove and feel the pain. Or get mom really mad and wait for dad to get home.

Our friends at Google describe it this way:

The relationship where one event or condition (the cause) leads to another event or result (the effect). A cause is the reason something happens, while the effect is what happens because of it. Understanding this concept helps in making sense of events, analyzing situations, and predicting future outcomes by identifying how one thing triggers another.

A great deal of learning -- both as a child and an adult -- rests on understanding cause and effect. Most of our lives are based on it to a larger degree than we might realize.

In fact, is learning even possible without the knowledge gained by cause and effect? When one thinks about it, every single advancement in all of history was driven by understanding cause and effect. All of science, agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, everything.

But what if your hand seemingly randomly burned hours or days after touching the hot stove. How could you understand what was happening? Could you make the mental connection between the two and thus, how could you ensure it didn’t happen again? Without a clear understanding of cause and effect it would be like living in a country-wide insane asylum. 

As a child, how would you have learned how to throw or catch a ball, or ride a bike or a thousand other things? Learning “this” works better than “that” is key to developing understanding of both simple and complex systems.

Which leads us to politics, government, and the importance of understanding cause and effect for a self-governing people. Can a self-governing people survive long with little to no understanding of cause and effect in the political choices they make? Especially when the time between cause and effect is measured in months, if not years and decades.

Can one make the connections that are required to actually identify the truth and thus steer political thinking and decisions? And if not, it would seem catastrophic societal failure is sooner or later all but guaranteed.

This is the problem the modern behemoth state confronts. Often the effects of actions take a long time to even remotely become evident. Throw in the reality that there are a lot of other things happening all the time -- each with its own cause and effect -- and truly grasping specific cause-and-effect becomes quite difficult.

It is clear modern societies are failing far too often on this front. This allows demagogues, tyrants -- both large and small -- and others who crave power to twist supposed cause and effect for their own benefit. History shows it often leads to countries demanding more of the poison that is killing them in the hope it is just the medicine they need.

It allows political parties to claim credit for the good things “their” policies did and direct blame for the bad at their political opponents, the truth be damned. This might succeed in a political race or two but it is difficult to see how it can work long-term for a society. 

And as free people we are foolish to allow this game to be played as clearly understanding actual cause and effect is a prerequisite for a functioning complex society. Becoming even more and more tribal in our false understanding of cause and effect is the path to ruin. Yet that is the path many have chosen.

It seems the only possible solution is to have a belief system founded on the bedrock of reality. Luckily, this has largely been discovered. Individual freedom and small, limited government protected by a written constitution is clearly the path. The cause and effect are obvious.

The many will always be smarter than the few. Individual freedom allows the wonders of swarm intelligence to flourish. It acts as an incredible IQ multiplier for the society.

Socialism, communism, all collectivist thinking is based on a purposeful warping of cause and effect, all for the power and wealth of a handful. These have never worked and never will because they ignore the realities of cause and effect. They restrict and even end swarm intelligence and thus act as incredible societal IQ reducers. 

Look around the globe. Look at history. The evidence is overwhelming.

Our schools should teach this, but public K-12 and colleges and universities have for the most part completely abandoned it. Instead, they have fed young minds indoctrination with only false tribal cause-and-effect.

Are you poor? That’s because those rich SOBs are stealing from you! You are innocent and a victim and revenge is owed to you. This and a thousand other poisonous lies are fed to students and citizens each and every day. 

Can a free people survive with this rot spreading throughout the entire culture? We are quickly finding out.