RembrandtAnatomy Lessons by Dr. Nikolaas Tulp (1632). The Amsterdam Surgeons’ Guild commissioned this group portrait. The city’s anatomist, Dr. Tulp, is in the chair. In 17th-century Holland, anatomy classes were well-known social events, accompanied by music, conversation, food, and wine. (Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands) 7 ft. 1.08 in. x 5 ft. 6.72 in.
Few people despise biology, physics, or mathematics, with or without understanding. But “politics” is often despised. This is an unfortunate irony, given that politics plays a fundamental role in our existence. Even before institutions were established, politics were present within us and governed the interplay of our thoughts, feelings, and desires. Our inner debates shape our decisions, and there is a constant negotiation between our competing impulses. We are “political” from the beginning of life; it is how our bodies function.
This makes the word “politics” seem even more depressing. I’m not happy with the way my body works. Now that I’m older, I live under an authoritarian regime, where pain and suffering rule my days, where I’m forced to do what I have to do and forbidden to do what I want to do. I am an honorable person, whether I want to or not. In democratic times, as chaotic as they were, at least I had the freedom to make my own mistakes and act without constant vigilance.
The excesses of youth are less than in older people, but the body, accustomed to tension, seeks peace. This balance, or homeostasis, ensures stability and harmony, or reduces internal conflicts and the feeling of a “disharmonious” life. The most characteristic and essential feature of the organism is its innate drive toward homeostasis. (1) Homeostatic imbalances cause confusion, irritability, aggression, anxiety, lethargy, delirium, increased heart rate, low blood pressure, rapid breathing, and falls.
New genomic science is revealing how genetic predispositions causally influence public health and social dynamics. All I can say is that, as far as I know, natural laws, including our own, reinforce cherished ideals by making them essential. In a culture that values connection and community, that is crucial. Three lessons stand out:(2)
beginning, synergy In biology, synergy refers to the combined effect of factors, from genes to ecosystems, that exceeds the sum of their individual effects. Political synergy brings two ideas together without compromising. This process creates a third perspective that incorporates the original ideas but is independent. Unlike a compromise that satisfies neither party, or a middle ground that leaves everyone equally unhappy, synergy produces a solution that incorporates the best of both ideas. This approach is valuable not only in public politics, but also in social gatherings and family get-togethers, making parliament look like child’s play.
Number 2, Interdependence It involves interdependence among diverse members, balancing needs and contributions to achieve fairness and stability. It describes how organisms in an ecosystem depend on each other for survival. For example, eliminating a predator can lead to overpopulation of prey, vegetation depletion, and habitat alteration. In the political world, interdependence is seen when opponents recognize each other’s needs or when public agencies work with the private sector on issues such as homelessness, combining resources and expertise to reconcile differing perspectives.
Third, Resilience Resilience is the ability to learn from experiences, recover, and adapt to adversity in order to grow from hardship. In everyday health, resilience is demonstrated by a person who, after suffering a serious illness, makes healthier lifestyle choices and builds stronger support networks to improve their quality of life. In politics, a community demonstrates resilience after a natural disaster by using lessons from the past to prepare for future challenges and rebuild stronger and more united.
Synergy, interdependence, and Resilience The body has laws of gravity. They are essential to maintaining balance and equilibrium, both biological and political. As the apostle Paul puts it in his famous body analogy, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ … God has arranged the body so that each part has the same care for another. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts rejoice with it.” (Paul is inclusive; the “unattractive parts,” so to speak, are “clothed with greater dignity.”) Breaking your pinky finger makes your blood pressure soar; enduring shortness of breath makes you the star of your own medical drama; relieving back pain makes your whole day easier.
To live a good life, we need to respect who we are. Within our lives lies the seed of rebirth. We can still become who we are meant to be.
The poet expresses it well.
“And so the end of our exploration
You will arrive where you started
And then for the first time you know the place.”
— TS Eliot, Four Quartets
Notes and reading
(1) “…the driving force towards homeostasis.” – from “Cognitive Systems and Homeostasis” – David Bentley Hart (Substack) Leaves dancing in the wind – January 6, 2024. ) Traits that contribute to homeostasis increase an organism’s fitness, improving its chances of survival and reproduction. (This concept is so well-known that many people fail to appreciate its importance.)
(2) This is not just another example of an “appeal to nature,” a rhetorical technique that makes morality a function of nature; that is, something is good because it is “natural,” or wrong because it is “unnatural.” Appeals to nature often justify controversial moral positions, such as male dominance or monogamy, by calling them “true to nature.” These arguments assert that heterosexuality and traditional gender roles are the only natural and acceptable forms of sexual orientation and gender expression (as if nature were only about alpha males and straight apes).
The quote under the title (footnotes below) both relates and distinguishes between “natural” and “moral” law; they are not two sides of the same coin. In this spirit, the three lessons I learned from nature function as “law,” understood not as commands or imperatives, but as the foundational context for human-developed moral law and as guardrails for argument. (Perhaps a critical strategy: all this is “glorified proceduralism,” whereas “substantial ends” are said to tribalize the common good.)
The Second Birth: On the Political Beginnings of Human Existence (2015) — German political thinker Thilo Schabert (mentor: Eric Voegelin), Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Erlangen, Germany. Schabert’s writings explore how our bodies affect our understanding of the political by analyzing the intersections of politics, philosophy, and religion, especially Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Taoism. He believed that to fully understand natural law and human existence, one must take into account spiritual and transcendental dimensions. If Schabert were a theologian, he would say that grace completes or perfects nature. At least for him, reason and revelation are intertwined. His naturalism is tempered by a “political cosmology” steeped in theology, which I acknowledge without going into further detail.
Note: While Sherbert and the works below influenced my statements in this essay, they reflect my own original thinking.
Genome Politics: How the Genomics Revolution is Shaping American Society (2021) – Jennifer Hochschild (Harvard University) “Can Progressives Convince Genetics Matter?” Gideon Lewis Krauss, New Yorker (September 26, 2021): Example: “Building a commitment to egalitarianism on genetic uniformity is like building a house on sand.”
“The Body Politic” – Julia Metzger Traber, If the Body Polity Can Breathe in Refugee Times: An Embodied Philosophy of Interconnectedness (2018), pp. 63-82. Metzger Treiber is an American performance artist and social activist. “Politics has long drawn inspiration from the body. As symbol, object and metaphor, the body has been the muse of political philosophy and inspired the blueprint for many of the emotional and political landscapes of belonging.”
Antifragile: Benefiting from Disorder – Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2014). Resilience Bestselling Author Black Swan. – Thinking about homeostasis – tough (Antifragile) Because it is soft (Fragile).
“…the Apostle Paul’s famous allegory of the body.” – 1 Corinthians 12:21-26 (abridged).
T.S. Eliot – Excerpt from the final poem, “Little Gidding” Four Quartets.
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
