INVOLVEDNESS OF GREED AND POWER

Again, the political problems in New Jersey were the headlines this morning on Steve Kornacki’s program UP (MSNBC). The detailed reporting of this intriguing story is starting to detract from the main theme of the story, which is that politics are inherently corrupt. However, the real question is what we should do about it, if anything.

Evolution has embedded competition in our personalities: it is a manifestation of greed and as such, it is fundamental to our being. We would not be able to survive as individuals or as a species if we were not greedy; thus, we compete in everything we do and in every way we can. We use physical strength or influence of any and every kind as weapons in the constant battle. When we win, we look for a reward. Again, evolution has defined that reward with an embedded sense of hierarchy dominance manifested as politics. We inherently want to be the “top chicken” in the peck order, which can be reduced to resources for the individual and reproduction for the species in the most primitive form. In the learned environment of the modern world, we have modified this to include quality of life. We refer to the refinements in both competition (greed) and hierarchy dominance (politics) as our humanization.

I look at Chris Christie as  prime example of some one who sees the power of political office as affecting his “quality of life”. Obviously, he was willing to sacrifice “moral conduct” in an attempt to gain the power of the presidency, perhaps in his mind the highest rank in hierarchy dominance and level of quality in life. I used the word ‘moral’ in this statement, which is a product of our reasoning power and references what we in our culture think is right and wrong; a major factor in our humanization. Therefore, Christie’s behavior is biological “right” but culturally “wrong”.

Contrast this with the extreme of murder, which is both biologically wrong and culturally wrong. Our most powerful instinct is self-preservation and when we see a member of our society wantonly violate that premise, it is wrong, a universal axiom. Although an extreme example, this creates the awkward situation where killing in self-defense is morally acceptable but murder is not. What Christie did is nowhere near the level of murder but it was clearly biologically correct but culturally wrong.

What is disturbing is that some people are saying that what he did is expected political behavior. In our political culture, it was not “amoral” for Christie to use the George Washington Bridge closing to promote a money making project (the so called Rockefeller Group development) or to deny storm recovery money to the city of Hoboken  in exchange for another money making development. It was no more than competition and the Democrats are bitter because they lost. When you ask specifically what is it that they lost, you find the answer is that they lost “the power” to make that decision—a Republican was the top chicken. We all know that there are laws that say politicians cannot legally use quid pro quo, which at first blush sounds like double talk meaning those at or near the top of the hierarchy dominance ladder cannot use their power to maintain or gain power. I think that what it really means is that you cannot use one form of power to gain another form of power. A very rich person has power (greed) and a very high-ranking politician has power (hierarchy dominance); what is the “quid” and what is the “quo”? This brings us back to innate competition. We fear that one of us will gain too much power; thus, we “compete”, in a not so strange way, to prevent someone from gaining power. We fight the innate establishment of hierarchy dominance in others to satisfy our own sense of greed—we are greedy enough to want something to survive even if we cannot be on top.

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