First Principles for Political Realism: Rights, Needs, & Equity

Recent events in my home country of the United States of America have prompted me to extend my perspective on equity in education beyond the schoolhouse. I have been striving to rethink education from first principles for over two decades. Evidence that I’ve made some progress is that The Independent Press Association gave my book Schooling for Holistic Equity awards in both Psychology and Education. Now, the political situation in my nation has taken such a tragic and foreboding turn that I cannot help but apply what I’ve discovered more broadly.

My perspective is primarily grounded in the science of Self-Determination Theory, the most widely respected and productive model of human psychological needs, motivation, and engagement in the world today. The principles I am sharing today go beyond that scientific grounding into the realm of politics. Given my presence on a few social media platforms my biases are easily discoverable. For eight years I was the co-founder and primary administrator for Portland Clean Air which fights industrial air pollution in Oregon. That suggests that I tend to favor the left side of the political spectrum in the USA, though I think there are valid and important criticisms of both major parties. I may have once or twice been registered as a Democrat decades ago but have not been affiliated with either of the two major parties since. The point being that I have aspired to a degree of independence from the ideological commitments of the major political parties; this is also consistent with my educational perspective. I have criticisms of both progressive and conservative sides in the education arena, too. My aspiration is to ground my critiques as solidly as possible in science, though going beyond that limited realm is necessary.  

I believe that the first principles that I have posited for education have relevance to our current political situation, both nationally and globally. My principles below start off with a bold statement about what makes the United States Bill of Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child meaningful. The current events here in the USA show that the current executive branch has abandoned almost all meaningful pretense that the constitution, and the Bill of Rights specifically, are relevant to their policies. What makes my perspective unique is that mainstream schools, public, private, and charter have never even put up a pretense that the UNCRC was relevant to their policies here in the USA. We are the only nation in the world that has not ratified that particular convention. The fight against institutional reluctance to honor the rights of children must now be extended to a fight against institutional reluctance to honor the rights of the entire population of the USA. 

I. The United States Bill of Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child are meaningless unless they are used to achieve pervasive need satisfaction (a.k.a. liberty and justice) FOR ALL

I.A. Human rights are legal fictions that are useful for dealing with reality, they are neither real nor fantastical

I.A.1. Griffins, nifflers, and unicorns are fantastical beasts that are not real

I.A.1.a. They are only useful to those who profit from talking about them and those who are entertained by that kind of talk

I.A.2. Center of gravity, zero, and mind are useful fictions but they are not fantastical

I.A.2.a. They are broadly useful for understanding unseen features of reality

I.A.3. Rights are useful fictions for systematically creating a societal pattern of pervasive need satisfaction (see item II.) 

I.B. Proper enforcement of human rights will create equity, except for the legal ownership aspect

I.B.1. Equity is: 

I.B.1.a. parity among groups in regards to getting their needs satisfied 

I.B.1.b. distributing resources fairly to satisfy needs

I.B.1.c. removing barriers to need satisfaction

I.B.1.d. a felt sense of and/or legal ownership in a collective

I.B.2. Those subjected to enforcement actions should have their human rights respected through fair decision making and participation in conflict resolution (a.k.a. due process), in spite of being accused, and in some some cases being guilty, of violating the rights of others 

I.B.3. If ignoring or undermining human rights leads to the neglect or thwarting of needs, the result will be members of a collective that are alienated from it

I.B.3.a. Being alienated from a collective to which you belong by the actions of people, individually or through the operation of institutions, is oppressive 

I.B.3.b. Being alienated from a collective to which you belong by circumstances that are not caused by people is not oppression, though it is unfortunate

II. Needs are real 

II.A. Needs are the causal sources of well-being 

II.A.1. Equity, except the legal aspect, is an inherent outcome of systematic need satisfaction by a collective

II.B. A scientific understanding of needs recognizes primary, secondary, particular, and derivative needs 

II.B.1. Persistently thwarting the universal primary physiological needs for air, water, food, and shelter causes death

II.B.2. Persistently thwarting the universal primary psychological needs for sleep, relatedness, autonomy, and competence causes increases in anxiety, depression, and other forms of psychological distress (death can be an indirect result) 

II.B.3. Persistently thwarting secondary needs does not affect well-being, even though supporting secondary needs boosts well-being (e.g. beneficence, a.k.a. benevolence)

II.B.4. Particular needs are causes of well-being for an individual (e.g. being put on life support systems in a hospital after a car accident), in a specific situation (depending on a space capsule as an astronaut in orbit), or in a cultural milieu (knowing what to eat versus starving to death when lost for an extended period of time in a specific ecosystem)

II.B.5. Derivative needs are terms that consist of combinations of other types of needs (e.g. meaningfulness, a.k.a. purpose) 

II.C. A person’s true identity consists of the unique combination of need satisfiers that ensures individual well-being which is also aligned with achieving the well-being of the collectives in which the individual is embedded 

II.D. False identities arise from:

II.D.1. A collective pursuing collective desires and/or need satisfaction without regard to individual consequences (e.g. conscripted soldiers as cannon fodder, corporate wage slavery, national or international test scores)

II.D.2. A collective exerting control over an individual’s behavior by pitting that individual’s needs against each other and/or distorting the individual’s understanding of their situation (e.g. abusive interpersonal relationships, “cult” mind control, ideological purity movements in politics and religion)

II.D.3. An individual deactivating or distorting one or more of their needs in response to delusions about themselves, the world, and/or the relationship between the two, which they know as their situation (e.g. mental disorders)

III. Political advocacy in favor of universal need satisfaction through the enforcement of human rights will be optimally effective when voters and other decision makers can perceive the connections among 1) the issues they face, 2) the policies that are proposed to address those issues, and 3) how the satisfaction of their needs can be aligned with collective well-being 

III.A. Everyone always has and always will vote according to some version of their identity 

III.A.1. Despite folks sometimes misunderstanding it, identity politics (in the psychological sense stated in items II. C. & D.) is the only kind of politics

III.B. A realistic political party:

III.B.1. Clearly articulates their values (an emotion-laden form of discourse) in a manner that is strategically aligned with their constituents’ issues and is supported by specific policies

III.B.2. Refines their platform through internal debate among allies

III.B.2.a. Allies should discuss the issue of how to level criticisms of each other’s strategies and tactics in way that will minimize undermining the broader movement in the public eye

III.B.3. Supports built-in accountability structures (check and balances) that avoid the worst hazards of both bureaucracy (a long-standing wide-spread grievance) and political infighting (dominant pattern of the current regime)

III.B.4. Governs best in the face of principled, effective opponents who share a commitment to universal human needs satisfaction and human rights

III.B.5. Will disagree with other parties on how the State should enforce human rights, what issues are currently faced by their constituents, and/or what policies would be the best for enforcing rights, addressing issues, and expressing shared values

III.C. Ideological purity is an extreme form of collective delusion

III.C.1. Ideological purity movements in politics and religion are fundamentally based on mass generation of false identities (as identified in item II. D.) 

III.C.2. Ideological purity is reinforced by political advocacy that relies on strong emotions elicited in association with ideological framing of issues without regard to policies and their effects (e.g. Trump-ism) 

III.C.3. Ideological purity is politically effective in the absence of a proper opposition

III.D. In the absence of both a proper opposition and ideological purists, effective political advocacy occurs when issues and policies are ideologically aligned, which means those policies might not align with the realities of individual and collective human need satisfaction (e.g. mainstream party politics, pre-Trump)

III.E. Proper structuring of institutions can achieve the alignment of diverse individual need satisfactions while maintaining collective well-being, though it is difficult and can sometimes become fragile (like now) 

III.E.1. Both state and corporate governance should be seen in this light because any benefit that might be gained through tyranny is always fragile (while properly structured governance is usually stable with fragility arising only occasionally)

III.E.2. The civil society sector should be considered a necessary third element in a system of checks and balances for anti-fragile national/global societal structures 

III.E.2.a. Complex systems are more stable with an odd number of elements (e.g. having more than two political parties, a media/scientific ecosystem dominated by civil society entities balancing out a societal system that would otherwise be dominated by for-profit corporate entities and state-controlled entities)