The role of scale

One reaction that I found myself having to both Aristotle and Plato was “wow this sounds awesome, but it would only work on a small scale.” Both Aristotle and Plato give accounts of what it means to be a good citizen and participate in a community. Politics in their time and society probably had little resemblance to what the term means in our own. Taking an active role in one’s city-state or local political forum was relatively easy since there were a limited number of participants. Indeed, there were probably many people, but not everyone could participate in politics as seen in Plato’s treatment of women in the Symposium. The political landscape was more homogenous than it is today. It seems that it would be vastly easier then to create laws aimed at promoting good habit, and benefiting the people since there was little heterogeneity of interests and aims.

Fast forward to our own day, and the political landscape is very different from ancient times. There are many more people, both who are under a certain government and who can also actively participate in politics. The very nature of politics has also changed, no longer are the best educated, and prominent members of society the ones running the show, but often those who happen to get elected. – granted, many of these people are very affluent – In any case we certainly don’t view politics in the same light as the ancients, and there seems to be a real disconnect that arises primarily from magnitudes of scale. Aristotelian conceptions of good politics get muddled when there are many varying interests and sections of the population. Hence, certain philosophical conceptions seem to be susceptible to changes in the scale of implementation. This is interesting to consider in our own day, when forces like globalization and technological advances bring nations closer together, and integrate the world. Perhaps there will be a time in the future when our own political system and underlying philosophy will become too constrained by the scale of implementation.