The Mental Origins and the Evolution of Political Order

Abstract

The paper proposes that the four-component structure of political order consists of state, imagination, rule, and accountability whose mental origins are the social brain, theory of mind, the rational brain, and the empirical brain, respectively. The rational brain and the empirical brain are from the thinking brain. This paper posits that in the evolution of political order, the main function of political order is to pacify changed social structure derived from technological revolution. Therefore, the four technological revolutions (the Upper Paleolithic, Agricultural-Bronze, Iron, and Industrial Revolutions) produce the four changed social structures (linked bands, tribe, mega empire, and modern nation, respectively) whose internal conflicts are pacified by the four political revolutions (the imaginative, hierarchical, thinking, bottom-up political revolutions, respectively) to form the four politics (the imaginative egalitarianism, decentralized hierarchical tribalism, centralized top-down thinking, and multilateral bottom-up thinking politics, respectively). In the competitive West originated from Greece and Middle East, the rule of law is the rational rule of competition among competitors, and the accountability of election is the empirical accountability of competition among competitors. In the cooperative East originated from India and China, the rule of relation is the rational rule of cooperation among kin-friends, and the accountability of professional qualification is the empirical accountability of cooperation among kin-friends. For political order, the two viable politics are competitive liberal democracy based on liberty and cooperative well-off democracy (well-off socialism) based on wellbeing. The direction of political order is middle democracy between liberal democracy and well-off democracy based on the multilateral bottom-up thinking politics.