WHAT DRIVES CHRIS CHRISTIE

The truth about Chris Christie is not pretty. But then again the truth about politics in America in general is not often a nice story either. Let me change that; the truth about politics “no matter where you find it” is often not a nice story. I think his story gives us an opportunity to back off from partisan politics and to think seriously about politics and the human condition.

I follow politics in several Latin American countries at a superficial level. Politics in these countries are openly frank and easy to understand while politics in the Untied States is conducted at a deeper level thus more difficult to understand. All I can say about American politics verses that in foreign countries, is that ours is more sophisticated; not better, just more sophisticated. At a level of evolutionary psychology, which interests me, is that our political behavior seems genetic based. We have seven billion people in the world and the fact that they all behave the same way in respect to hierarchy dominance and greed amazes me.

Yesterday on firetreepub.blogspot.com I posted an article about Christie’s behavior awkwardly entitled, Involvedness of Greed and Power. In the article, I was not excusing Christie’s bad behavior, only trying to explain it by couching it in moral terms. He did what politicians do. He used others people’s greed for power to gain power for himself. He interfaced politic with the business world. He applied his influence in the political world to the business world; thus, he helped many people to make money and I am sure he helped his own bank account. They in turn helped him. That is politics in the raw, which is a direct reflection of “survival of the fittest” that comes out of the primordial pools of Africa. What the Christie story told me is that when we color the story in human terms of good or evil; right or wrong; sometimes it is wrong or morally incorrect to make money while at other times it is morally correct. When is being greedy being too greedy? What is the line between success and avarice?  What is so wrong with what Christie did?

Keeping in mind that when we write laws; or more accurately, when we elect representative to write laws; what we are doing is attempting to draw lines between right and wrong. That is, what we have reason to think is right verse what is wrong: laws are a product of reason, which is often erroneous. The dividing line between them will be nearly impossible to draw without an understanding of the biology alluded to above.

Jared Diamond wrote a couple of best selling books that gave an answer to this question:  Collapse, and Guns, Germs, and Steel. Species become extinct all the time. They give up their biological variability by becoming too specialized; thus, they give up their capacity to adapt; they needed the wood in the last tree to survive, which means to survive they had to cut that tree. We, as a species, have to realize that if we do not curtail our individual greed we cannot survive. Christie was wining big time. Because of his successes, he could not help himself; to win was not enough; to survive, he felt compelled to win by a huge margin: he needed more. He cut down the last tree. 

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