Progress as Perception and Politics
June 25, 2025
Introduction
Progress happens up to the perception of an individual. Without awareness of something, it cannot be created.
Though it may be instinctual, to move an object across the table is a projection of your mindās local state into the global, environmental state.
Politics is the arbitation of human hallucinations and wills. Suppose you want the ball on the table below to be on the left. Another wants it on the right. How can this disagreement be resolved?
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Negotiation, Force, Hierarchy, World-Creation, Strategy, or Bribery/Free Stuff are a few.
Peopleās behaviors can be in three groups: those who agree in both action and internal state, those whose outward actions differ from internal state, and those who outwardly and inwardly disagree.
Words are important because they can resolve human disagreement without violence. Some will advocate for their interests, or they may convince the other why both have the same self-interest or to use the other personās points as the basis for their own argument, and still others yet may resort to trickery to get their way because their self-interest is against the needs of the majority. And of course the words must be delivered in a way that accounts for the emotions.
When words fail between people, violence ends up being a root solution. Hence given a common language, or even an uncommon language, one must always take heed to find mutual understanding and to consider the othersā interest, lest the last resort of bloodshed becomes realized.
Hierarchy means having an abstract social power over people. The political leaders may not be more just, nor brave, nor able than many men, but the rules of the State are this way so that bloodshed is not the arbitration method for its members because it would harm the existence of the State.
Of course this shows my own bias toward what type of leader I prefer, but it is also the type that invites the broadest appeal. Some people create different hierarchies with their own value system. A poor leader takes everyone to their doom, and the aware are wise to not follow or agree with them.
A State can be unnatural because many States compose of heterogeneous people with different group feeling. There is a natural leader in a family where bloodshed is unnecessary, or in a clan, or sometimes even in a company where the leadership position is earned and unquestioned.
Bonds between members of a tribe are weaker than the bonds within a family but most of the members of a small tribe are relatives and\or friends, and each person still feels personal responsibility toward every other person in the tribe.
At this level they are ruled by custom or tradition, which is derived from the way members of the family treated each other. Custom, tradition or religion may also protect strangers but the males of the village still see each other as potential rivals, and a strange male as a potential enemy.
At some stage decisions about who or what is right or wrong are delegated to a chieftain, priest or judge. Because he has significant prestige his decisions become law.
Each new judge may have authority of his own but in practice each one will serve as an apprentice judge for a long time and, as an apprentice, he will respect the wisdom of his elders. Eventually he becomes an elder himself but, after years of deferring to the decisions of his elders, he may not find it easy to change.
If the judges of today were raised to respect the judges of their day the idea of āprecedentā will develop. As the weight of decisions builds up we have a body of common law which still rules most cases in England and, to a lesser extent, other parts of the world. The common law is derived from tradition but where tradition is enforced by the people as a whole, law is enforced by rulers.
Thatās an important difference because as a citizen I must seek the approval of my family and friends and, by extension, other members of my culture, but I may not seek the approval of my rulers. If I am one of a conquered race ā an English Saxon, perhaps, in the days after the Norman conquest ā I may hate my rulers and while I may toady to them I may also try to kill them if I get the chance.
In a large society I have no ties of family or long friendship with most of the other members of my society, and in a mixed-race society I may see some of them as positively alien. If my rulers belong to another race or another religion, I may see them as oppressors.
Even when the rulers are members of my own race or tribe I may resent them, because they take part of my living and they themselves live much better than I do. In a so-called democracy I may resent both my elected representatives and hired civil servants, because I see them wasting my money and paying themselves more out of my work than I make myself.
So even with common law there is a major distinction between rule by tradition and rule by law. Tradition is what my family and friends expect and, as a member of society, I must comply. Law is what my rulers expect and if I donāt respect my rulers I will not respect their laws, however wise and just they may be.
World-creation means that you create the worlds that others live under. You may have created the entire aforementioned situation, table and all, just like the education system is a creation of the State. There is a standardized set of ideas through the national curriculum and a standardized set of tests, such as the AP curriculum in the USA. Given no alternatives, one must buy into the world in front of them.
Bribery is a difficult balance to strike, and I must admit I cannot guide you on this for lack of understanding, reading, or direct experience. Keeping in line with the humble Bedouin attitude, I will not go seeking for it if not necessary.
The counterpoint to it is Free Stuff: you are just so productive that you manage to give away a large amount of value for free or at a low price, like all the services that Google provides, and giving away this stuff is at little to no cost to yourself but expensive for others to do. Thus you get peopleās compliance by continuously feeding them. You might not get everyone to comply, but bad actors will find that they donāt have many other choices even if they default. This strategy seems more effective for platforms (worlds) such as Google Calendar or Gmail (which uses its calendar to bundle upgrades for meeting schedulers) as opposed to one-time things such as WinRAR or Sublime Text which people just use indefinitely without paying for.
Companies seem to do this āfree stuff platformsā as well: air filters, Brita filters, car oil changes.
Resolving Conflict through Strategy
We are unlikely to see any large-scale citizen army wars. According to Carroll Quigley, that was a unique 19th-20th century European phenomena. Due to high specialization in technology, conflict in the modern era is likely about manuevering and strategy.
One might imagine the passion of infantry fighting: but that is nullified given precision-guided air platforms.
If you want something, you can use money to buy it (deny it) from others. By earlier awareness, you take quicker action. Rather than physical conflict, laws and documentation arbitrate because the State does not want violence among its members.
Slowly through a process of accumulation, certain people will gain strength and others will become weak. They may not necessarily notice anything happen, but one day it hits their realization.
Thus when disagreement reaches the actual stage of conflict it ends up being more: positioning, logistics, preparation, long-term effects, daily habits, economic strength. The best is to maneuver into a position where the opponent gives up without fighting.
But the first solution is to use words to discuss the source of disagreement.
Progress
Now through a variety of methods we see how shared mental conceptions can be created. This is the first step to progress. If everyone in a society had different mental conception, zero progress could be made and only conflict would ensue.
Finally, we have a new definition of progress because no individual can go at it alone: progress happens up to the mental perception of a group.
Therefore if people would not like to engage in the arbitration of wills, they can create walls. Roommates in an apartment are like this, or houses in a neighborhood. If many neighborhoods are gated, it shows that the society is in conflict with itself. Though members may reside in the same State, they are not trusted.
Constant entry of new people with different mental conception causes conflict.
When people have ownership of what they create, they will be productive because it is in their self-interest. When others with different ideas come to mess with the land, but nobody can do anything about it, then there is no ownership.
We can also say that progress is limited by social factors, or the mental conceptions of other people. This may include paperwork, processes, or self-interests rather than state-interests (such as the bureaucrat to do as little work as possible).
As these social factors accumulate (and without some higher authority to remove them), progress becomes gridlock. Few dare to ignore the system because violent overthrow of the social laws of a State invites reprisal, yet little opportunity is given to fix things.
Therefore we see a consistent pattern of evaporation from less competent to more competent areas. As a general rule, if mobility is low then hierarchy comes to place, walls may exist with lengthy interviewing processes, or a sort of weed-picking to see who survives the challenge.
Mathematical Model of Progress
Therefore progress (the global, environmental state) can be mathematically described as occurring up to the limit of perception, enhanced by additive factors (energy, machines, health and nutrition, coordination and social understanding) and reduced by resistive factors (different mental conceptions, pre-established social processes, nature/natural decay, complexity, inertia, time).
Rate of Progress with Respect to Time
This model tries to show that for progress to be positive, additive factors must be stronger than resistive factors, the rate of progress depends upon all current progress/awareness, and that the rate of progress slows as current progress gets to the limit of perception.
- Additive Factors at time minus Resistive Factors at time . If additive factors are stronger, this term is positive.
- The middle (progress) is the current state
- The 1 minus term shows that if progress is close to the limit of perception, this term goes to zero.
- The model isnāt perfect because suppose a disaster wipes out 80% of the population. The limit of perception goes very low, so the third term becomes negative (but the first term is also negative), giving a positive rate of progress (wrong).
Conclusion
Now that a simple model of the relation between progress, politics, and perception has been made, it may be possible to ask more exacting questions in the pursuit of it:
- What is high quality perception? Is this quantifiable?
- What is the level of mental conception of the people in an area?
- Say you want to do something. How does your problem map to this model?
- Say you have a disagreement with someone. How can you resolve it?