Polemos

When I first started thinking about the way of the world - the workings of the world - the idea of conflict entered my mind. I am not talking about warfare or violence but the conflict of ideas, institutions and the human struggle, like a competitive conflict. I sensed this phenomenon to be as natural an occurrence as night and day. What is more, I felt that our society fosters and cultivates this conflict as though it is a life force. Let’s see if I can explain and convey this idea.

I prefer to use the word polemics rather than conflict because it doesn’t have the same negative connotation. As it happens, polemics comes from the Greek word polemos which means conflict. To my ear polemics sounds more constructive, like in electricity. Electricity is a good example of what I mean. It has two conflicting poles or forces like in polemos. I wonder if the two are related. They do sort of have the same spelling. Anyway, the poles in electricity polemically engage each other to produce a current of energy. Can you visualize the polemic activity and the creation that is going on between the two poles? This is how I see polemics in our society, as a mechanism and a dynamo that propels and energizes us.

Polemics is a corollary of contradiction. Everything has it contradictory, opposite number without which nothing would or could exist. Things define themselves through opposites. Heraclitus, who originated the dialectic, a process based on polemos and contradictory opposites engaging each other, said "if you do away with contradiction or polemics (I added polemics) you do away with reality". He intuited this phenomenon more than 2500 ago in ancient Greece. “Heraclitus asks us to imagine the polemos is common to all things”, like contradiction, like in night/day, up/down and male/female.
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Being argumentative comes to mind when polemics is mentioned. One is also being dialectic when one is being argumentative or polemic. When one is being any of these things one is usually electrifying and animating a situation. These type of exchanges are incremental and add to the proceedings of life. “Unity is found in the constant balancing of opposites”.

My last post was about liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is a human governance that embodies the social polemics I am talking about. There the liberal ideal of human organization is pitted against the democratic ideal, two ideals I distinguished in my last easy. The clash of these opposing ideals makes for a dynamic and meaningful form of governance. Without that kind of engagement there wouldn’t be the ‘creative tension’ that has become so essential in maintaining modern society. This is one reason why this form of governance has ascended to the top, because of its unique sense of polemics and it application.

I believe that polemics and politics are related. They sort of sound the same and work on the same principle as opposites. However, I had no means of connecting them until I discover Karl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and military theorist, who made the connection for me. Two hundred years ago he said this, that “war is a continuation of politics by other means”. In that utterance Clausewitz joined polemics - war in Greek, and politics, recognizing them to be the same, satisfying me that they are one in the same. At least Clausewitz has give credence to my idea.

Today, for the most part, the polemics of politics has replaced the polemics of war. Politics has essentially supplanted war. Good thing that it has because humankind can no longer afford to be as warlike as it once was. It needed another outlet and a better way to resolve its differences. The world of today can not endure the equivalence of a WW2 and its more sophisticated weapons. Whereas once the conflict of war defining humankind, the polemics of politics now does. Polemics, however, is still essential for driving humankind as Hegel knew when he said, “Humankind needs conflict, and its reflection, to remain alive and awake”, so it doesn't atrophy. Polemics stir and stimulate us. As Clausewitz might say today, politics is the continuation of war by other means. Politics is certainly more pragmatic and less destructive than war.

I am fond of saying, “Litigation creates Civilization”. Litigation is typically polemic, as socially and politically polemic as you can get. The core of Civilization is about methods, procedures and how to conduct ourselves. Litigation is the polemic exchange in which, through the clash of opposing interests and ideas, such as in liberal democracy, we have devised our civil code and social policies. Civilization was born from nothing. Polemics is what has given it its definition and substance. Whereas once warring polemics did most of Civilizations bidding, today, for obvious reasons, polemic politics has become its chief bidder. In our politics we have the quintessential polemics, liberal vs conservative. The Constitution of the U.S., the most admired piece of legislation, was hammered out through the litigation of both liberal and conservative positions. Litigation is also what upholds and dispenses it.