Truth Reconciled

Introduction

Whenever a group of people come together to make a collective decision, a government arises in one form or another. In some cases, one person decides what to do and everyone else follows along. In other cases, everyone votes on what to do. When few people are involved, disagreements are often handled quickly and peacefully. Communication among group members is easy and efficient, and they usually know each other and likely care about one another. However, when large numbers of people are involved, the process of making collective decisions can become complicated and messy.

Governments are as old as history itself, and history teaches us that powerful governments can be very dangerous, both to those within and outside of their jurisdiction. War, oppression, famine, and genocide are almost inevitable when great authority is held by incompetent or malevolent individuals. Philosophers and reformers have thought long and hard about the best way to organize a society in order to limit these dangers. The arguments have become more complex and rigorous over time, as have our governments, but there is still very little agreement on the subject.

In this article, we will discuss the true meaning and purpose of government. We will try to avoid making assumptions about what type of government is better than another. Instead, we will start with a firm foundation, grounded in truth, and then the optimal form of government should reveal itself.

The Purpose of Government

Let’s first define the word “government.” Government is the entity that governs, that is, it makes collective decisions and performs collective actions on behalf of a society. The government entity is always made up of people. We can therefore define government as follows:

Definition: Government is the group of people with authority to make collective decisions for a society.

It follows from this definition that the best government is simply a government composed of the best people. But that’s not really the answer we’re looking for. We want to know what is the best form of government. In other words, what is the best way to organize the government?

The study of how to organize the government is called politics. There are many published theories about politics, ranging from naive to brilliant, but when we really dig down to the foundations, we see that all of them are based on assumptions. For example, one theory might start by claiming that governments exist to protect the natural rights of the people. Another theory might assume that the role of government is to control the people, to ensure they don’t do anything dangerous to themselves or each other. These foundational assumptions are not proven, which means that none of the political theories are really grounded in absolute truth. They can always be denied or debated. This is why it is so hard to resolve disagreements in politics. You can’t convince someone to join your side with logic alone, because each side is not derived from pure logic, but from assumptions.

The root cause of all political disagreements, past and present, is that the word “best” has never been well defined. How can we agree on what the best form of government is if we don’t know what “best” means? The word “best” means “most good,” but the word “good” can be very confusing, as I explained in my essays on morality. There are as many opinions about it as there are people on earth.

If you are familiar with my analysis of morality, then you know that the word “good” is defined by morality, and is actually equivalent to it. The principal goal or purpose of morality is to increase itself over the long term. It follows that the best form of government is the one which is most effective in promoting the eternal preservation and proliferation of morality. In other words, the purpose of government is to facilitate the long-term formation of a perfectly moral and unified society. This brings to mind the first phrase of the Constitution of the United States, “…in order to form a more perfect Union.” It’s possible that the best form of government has already been derived from a theory based on assumptions which happened to be true, in which case our analysis will simply give a stronger foundation to that theory.

The Duties of Government 

If morality is the government’s main objective, then the first duty of government is to preserve the things which morality depends on for its existence. The most fundamental necessity of morality is the existence of free agents, so the first duties of the government (and all of us) are to preserve life and liberty. These can be called the first “rights” of the people. The government cannot justify taking away the life or liberty of any individual unless doing so will result in a net increase in life and liberty among the people

If life and liberty are protected, then the next duty is to facilitate the exercise of morality. What is the best way to do this? The most naive approach would be to force everyone to do what is right. This approach is ineffective in two ways. First, the government is not omniscient nor omnipotent; it cannot possibly provide legislation for every situation and control every person. Second, liberty would be lost, which implies morality would actually cease to exist in the population. The naive approach is therefore counterproductive. There is a better way.

Morality, by definition, is best promoted by itself, which means a moral people is the most valuable tool the government can have in its efforts to promote morality. The government must not limit the ability of a moral people to pursue moral behaviors. This third right, the right to pursue morality, can be rephrased as the “pursuit of happiness,” since, as explained in my article on happiness, true happiness is tied to morality.

Any society that wishes to achieve the most perfect state possible must ensure the protection of these three rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of goodness or happiness. Evidently, this was perfectly understood by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, since these exact words were written down in the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

A Conflict of Wills

It is not usually the case that everyone in a society wants to practice moral behaviors. In any society, there are many different people with differing points of view. Each individual will have their own individual will and desire for things to be done in certain ways. This is called the “individual will,” and it is very random and unstable.

In a society of gods, where every individual is perfectly moral and omniscient, there would be no need for government because everyone would be in perfect agreement on everything at all times. Each individual’s choices would be determined by absolute truth and perfectly aligned with morality. In a mortal society however, where knowledge is very limited, a government is necessary to resolve disagreements and maintain unity, even if everyone is perfectly moral as far as their knowledge permits. As long as knowledge is limited, government is necessary. The government has the duty to gather all the necessary information from all parties involved in a dispute and to determine the best course of action.

If there happens to be a perfect, omniscient god among the people, then he or she ought to be the governor because they will always make the best decisions. The best government is God. Unfortunately, it is typically the case that an omniscient governor with a perfectly moral will is not available for the position. It is always very unwise to leave the government in the hands of any imperfect individual, because the individual will is very random and unstable. Even if an exceptionally good person is selected, their knowledge would be insufficient to make the best decisions.

The next best form of government would be based upon a less random, yet still imperfect form of will by taking a kind of average over all the individual wills of the society. French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau called this the “General Will” or the “Will of the People” and declared it to be the “sovereign” or the source of all political authority. A government based on the Will of the People would consist of a deliberative body of wise people, not consisting of the entire population because such a government would be impracticable and littered with unwise opinions, but of a subset of the people, set in place to represent the various wills and interests of the various portions of the population, while maintaining a high standard of knowledge and wisdom.

However, as pointed out by another philosopher, Edmond Burke, the Will of the People is not well defined. If the will of the people is just a simple average over the individual wills, then it becomes nothing more than Rule by Majority, which is highly oppressive and unstable. The majority does not always choose the right. Why should the will of the people be a simple average anyway? Should every individual carry equal weight? Should the will of a single man be equal to that of a father of a family or the head of a corporation? Do education and ignorance need to be taken into account? Are the opinions of the entertainer as important as the opinions of the farmer? Are the desires of children included? 

It is impossible to give a sound definition to the concept of “average will,” and, as Burke pointed out, it can’t even exist until after people organize themselves into a society. Therefore, the average will or the Will of the People is arbitrarily defined by each society. It comes into existence when the people have organized themselves and come to an agreement about how their average will is to be defined and calculated. This average is then formally recognized as the Will of the People.

Definition: The Will of the People is a kind of average taken over the wills of all the individuals in a society, the manner of averaging being determined by the society.

Governments are usually imposed upon people by force, but otherwise they are created and perpetuated by agreement of the people to carry out the Will of the People. However, being distinct from the people, the government can have its own collective will, the Will of the Government, which is some form of average over the wills of those who make up the government.

Definition: The Will of the Government is a kind of average taken over the wills of the individual constituents of the government, the manner of averaging being determined by the society.

None of these wills are necessarily good, nor do they carry any kind of moral authority. Only the Will of Morality carries moral authority. Morality declares that it is the duty of the people to behave morally. The true duty of the government is the same, to behave morally and facilitate moral behavior, but their actions are more of a collective nature, about issues affecting society as a whole, or subsets of it. It will often occur that these three wills—the Will of the People, the Will of the Government, and the Will of Morality—are in conflict with one another, in which case the political structure of the society ought to have some mechanisms in place that help to bring the two variable wills back into alignment with the infallible Will of Morality.

Conclusion

Whenever people come together, government becomes necessary. The objective purpose of government is to facilitate morality or goodness in a society. No other purpose can be justified unless it is tied to this first moral purpose, which derives its authority from absolute truth. The moral purpose of government requires it to respect the first rights of the people: life, liberty, and the pursuit of goodness or true happiness, which are necessary for the existence of morality.

Since the will of any given individual is unstable and untrustworthy, unless it is God, the authority of the government should never belong to one person. The political authority of a society must be derived from an average will, which is defined by the society itself. This Will of the People carries the authority to organize the government, which then obtains an average will of its own. The Will of the People and the Will of the Government are variable wills, which will not always agree with the Will of Morality and can often be in conflict. In a future post, we will go into depth on how a government should be organized in order to reduce conflict and maximize long-term alignment with morality.