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Sociology and rational politics

“One cannot fully grasp the political world unless one understands it as a confidence game, or the stratification system unless one sees it as a costume party. . . . . Finally, there is a peculiar human value in the sociologist’s responsibility for evaluating his findings, as far as he is psychologically able, without regard to his own prejudices likes or dislikes, hopes or fears. . . . . To be motivated by human needs rather than by grandiose political programs, to commit oneself selectively and economically rather than to consecrate oneself to a totalitarian faith, to be skeptical and compassionate at the same time, to seek to understand without bias, all these are existential possibilities of the sociological enterprise that can hardly be overrated in many situations in the contemporary world. In this way, sociology can attain to the dignity of political relevance, not because it has a particular political ideology to offer, but just because it has not.”” Peter Berger in Invitation to Sociology

To try for something more rational about politics, it is arguably necessary to have some understanding of the causes of irrationality. In his short, highly influential 1963 book, Invitation to Sociology, Peter Berger describes the profound and usually invisible influence that society and social institutions have on most people. Social institutions and a person's social identities or tribes exert a high degree of unconscious control over our perceptions of reality and how we think about what we think we see.

Berger asserts that “society not only controls our movements, but shapes our identity, our thought, and our emotions.” Social institutions are therefore, to a significant extent, “structures of our own consciousness.” From a personal freedom point of view, that seems a rather harsh vision of society and social institutions. In this scenario, humans are puppets being moved by invisible social strings, and we have little control, unless we are self-aware about the major influences on our perceptions or reality and how we think about what we think we see. In that regard, a rationalist political ideology, would rely on some degree of self-awareness of how the human mind operates both as individuals and as members of groups, tribes, e.g., political parties, and nations.

Berger argues that politicians know how to manipulate social conditions to achieve their ends: “sociological understanding is inimical to revolutionary ideologies, not because it has some sort of conservative bias, but because it not only sees through the illusions of the present status quo but also through the illusionary expectations concerning possible futures, such expectations being the customary spiritual nourishment of the revolutionary.” The anti-revolutionary aspect of sociology is not lost on tyrants: “Total respectability of thought, however, will invariably mean the death of sociology. This is one of the reasons why genuine sociology disappears promptly from the scene in totalitarian countries, as well illustrated in the instance of Nazi Germany. By implication, sociological understanding is always potentially dangerous in the hands of policemen and other guardians of public order, since it will always tend to relativize the claim to absolute rightness upon which such minds like to rest.”

In essence, what Berger is talking about is a political ideology or mindset that can be called pragmatic rationalism or pragmatic rationalist. He sees a place for applying sociological understanding of human thinking and behavior to politics because the whole point of sociology is seeing through illusions and fallacies, especially ideologically-inspired ones. Core political moral values designed to make illusions and fallacies less believable than they now are ought to help rationalize politics to some extent. If one accepts those morals or values as logically reasonable, then one can see that some modest understanding of sociology would be helpful.

Is the rationalist argument that by being less susceptible to ideologically pleasing illusions and fallacies, politics should be rationalized to some extent? For a less irrational political ideology, is it necessary to explicitly hold, among other things, evidence and sound logic as highest political morals? Or, is it impossible to rationalize politics much beyond what it is today?

Germaine 6 Mar 3
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Concrete evidence and sound logic should always come first...

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