The “Centre” of the Political Spectrum

Trying to remain in the “centre” of the Political Spectrum is a constantly changing balancing act.  At any point on the continuum from politically left to right (passing for the moment what those terms mean) a person can be swept along by the waves and momentum of the collective swell of popular sympathy, but each side is a separate current of thought and they are quite independent so that in the centre one is between two quite different streams or currents, so it is like trying to surf two sets of waves at the same time.  

Basic to life is the primal division that the ancient Taoists called Yin and Yang.  The division between masculine and feminine, which does not equate with male and female, is another example.  Even within the “Ivory Tower” there is a basic division between the Sciences and the Humanities.  We have two sides to our brains, that apparently contribute to our thinking processes in different ways, the left being more logical while the right is supposedly more intuitive.  It is not surprising that our Politics should divide into two streams.

Human organisation goes back a long way.  No doubt during the long, last Ice Ace, about a hundred thousand years after the previous short, warm inter-glacial period, people were organised into tribes or gangs or extended families, much as they were up to Feudal times in relatively recent, recorded History.  

The authority of the powerful “big daddy”, favourite wife, mother of the heir or chief eunuch must have always been challenged by the rest, whether cousin-brothers challenging their father, daughters-in-law or the Pretorian Guard.   The democratic inclination is not a new phenomenon invented briefly in classical times and recently created but an inherent property of social organisation.   We do not need to be grateful to our elected representatives, judges or anyone else for their gift of democracy, because they are just the manifestation of it, not its progenitors.

The two sides of politics are as necessary for each other as are Debit and Credit in the Double Entry Book-keeping System, that so perfectly reflects the double sided nature of Economic Activity, such as the creation of Monetary Debt where the borrowing and lending are equal, though complications arise with the inclusion of the time dimension.  

It could be considered “un-natural” to be a political “centrist”, as if it were a Law of Nature that everyone must take sides.  Certainly, most people do take sides, but that need not be so.  For the sake of future Social Stability, it is desirable that more people move to the centre, even though it is a difficult place to remain.  Everyone could not move to the centre or society would achieve stasis and become stagnant, rather like some predictions of the “end time”. Hmm!  For progress, we need the tug of war between change and stability, but it can be relegated to the periphery, instead of clashing at the centre.  The centre is such an empty space, indeed it is barely a dimension-less line that separates the sides.  

New Whig aims for the “broad centre”, which is a much wider area than the old political division between left and right.  Whether people were centre-left or centre-right, they were not foremost centre, but belonged to one side or the other.  There is the Right Wing of the Labor Party, for example, that is “right” on some issues, like family values, but is really far to the left.  Similarly, the so called “Liberals”, who appear to be left-wing, and march with the left on protests, are definitely part of the Structure of Authority.  

The broad centre is different from the c-l or c-r, but covers some of the same ground.  The principal difference, also a principle difference,  is not what people are for, but what they are against.  It is the lack of opposition to difference that distinguishes New Whig. 

Just because people are different is no reason to oppose them or try to change them.  However this is not to be confused with the rather absurd argument put forward by some Bureaucrats, Academics and others with Social Power, who claim that it is wrong to change any person’s mental perceptions of the world and themselves, as we are all equally entitled to our own beliefs.  This is in contrast to Education and all Didactic enterprises.  It is the silly reason we punish and not reform criminals leading to recidivism not social harmony.  All good Literature and Art surely has a message intended to change the reader or viewer or listener.