Mechanism of Politics

by Lee, Chang Hoo

Chapter 1. Basic Principles of Political Phenomena

A. General Principles of Political Phenomena

(2) Three Aspects of Survival Directivity

b. Three threats to survival and Samjae capacities

The survival directivity of humans is manifested as activities that eliminate specific threats to survival. Then, how can we classify the threats to human survival? I will divide the threats into three categories. Threats to survival in other areas appear to be logically impossible.

Threat of violence

Let me call the first category of threats 'threat of violence'. Threat of violence includes threats from wild beasts, threats of foreign invasion, and threats of robbery. Why can we call threat of violence a threat from the outside? It is because violent threats are generally caused by other phenomena outside the actor of survival. This is true for threats from a wild beast, a kidnapper, and an outsider. They are generally threats from other living beings or other humans.

The threat of violence has always been present in political situations. It is easy to have the illusion that there is no war or threat of violence in primitive small-scale societies. However, according to research conducted by hundreds of anthropologists over several decades, the probability of death caused by violence in primitive small-scale societies was astonishingly high. Keeley said, when societies are not separated from other societies by natural environments, 70-90% of band or tribal societies have had wars in the last five years, and huntinggathering groups such as the !Kung or the Canadian Coeur d'Alene had a four times higher murder rate than the average in the United States when they maintain their own social forms.

Threat of violence that is large-scale is called war. According to Heinrich von Trotsche, peace is merely blank pages in history books and there have been countless wars all over the world. American anthropologist Harry Turney-High consistently argues that, excluding exceptional cases, wars have been a universal human activity throughout all times.

The threat of violence is intense and briefly interrupts survival in a way that cannot be recovered, so a tool to prevent this is necessary for survival. That is military power. A nation must have military power to control wars in order to maintain itself. Rome was able to be maintained due to its strong military power and the Goguryeo, which flourished and developed until the late 3rd century, was also referred to as a complex armed force centered around "Iron Warriors" and won victories in battles such as the conquest of Seonbi states and the battles with China. This was thanks to its strong military capability, which can be seen from the examples of victory. Medieval European cities, which were independent political organizations, also grew as they were close to trade routes and had facilities to protect merchants.

Threat of poverty

Let me refer to the threats in the second category as the "threat of poverty". The threat of poverty includes threats arising from human biological conditions such as hunger and disease, as well as threats to survival that come from not being able to satisfy various human desires. These threats are intrinsically rooted in a deficiency of goods, that is, they originate from poverty.

The reason for explaining the threat of poverty as a threat from within the human being is because it is a threat that arises from within the life phenomenon of the human individual. If a person lives in a safe place, over time, threats to survival such as hunger, thirst, disease, and aging will arise. These are all threats that arise from within the human being. Hunger arises as a threat because the human body constantly consumes energy, and thirst is similar. Also, diseases generally occur because the immune system's ability to resist pathogens from within and outside the body weakens.

Threats of poverty such as hunger, disease, aging, and thirst are not immediate, and therefore, do not threaten survival in a short amount of time. Therefore, they slowly appear and are gradually solved. For example, hunger is not faced during drought or flood, but begins around winter of a year when crops are damaged by drought or flood. And the complete resolution of hunger is only possible when the next year's farming is abundant. Diseases are also similar. In that sense, the threat of poverty may be a consideration that is less urgent than the threat of violence.

What is needed to prevent the threat of poverty is economic power (i.e. economic capacity). This includes the direct possession of goods such as food and clothing, but also the ability to produce such goods. Because the threat of poverty motivates people in the medium or long term, any individual or force can mobilize many people with this economic capacity. They gain social influence.

Threat of chaos

The third category of threats is the "threat of chaos". These include wrong values, doubts about life, mental illness, suicide impulses, and powerlessness. The reason why this is called the "threat of chaos" is because the core of these threats is "chaos", such as mental confusion, contradictions in values, and loss of life's purpose. Although "confusion of values" or "mental confusion" are the essence of such threats, why are they not referred to as "threat of values" or "threat of mind"? This is because the problem is not the action of ideology or mind itself, but the confusion contained in it that is the source of the threat.

Such confusion of values and mental confusion can lead people to choose death not by others, but by themselves. For example, when a rapid change in an individual's social position or a massive change in wealth, or divorce, leads to the collapse of a familiar world, suicidal tendencies emerge. Similarly, when moral forces that form the foundation of society lose power, the political order collapses at the hands of the violent crowd, which is a threat of social chaos.

It is clear that the threat from this chaos is not a threat from outside of humanity. On the other hand, one could argue that the direction in which this threat is appearing is not "the self of humanity" but "the inside of humanity." However, if I use terms such as "outside" or "inside" here to refer to spatial positioning, I can say that the threat of chaos originates from the human being themselves. Furthermore, due to this distinction, a place is also created where the threat of poverty can be placed differently from the threat of violence.
Threats from within the human themselves may appear to be less important because they are not sensed in a sensory manner compared to threats from violence or poverty. In particular, this may seem to have less influence in the eyes of society and social sciences as it is just a matter of concern for philosophers. However, as a Korean economist has said, "A human cannot survive without the minimum necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, but at the same time, they cannot live solely on those necessities."

In order to prevent such confusion, it is necessary to use the ideological power that influences people's behavior, that is, the ideological capacity. Religion can be a representative example. In an era when religion had a stronger cultural influence than today, the suicide of the elderly with religion was rare. In the late 1640s, the people who built the first European settlement in the New England region of America in Plymouth in 1608 lived in poverty with nothing but a struggle, but were satisfied with religious freedom. Today, religion still plays a role in preventing the suicides of the elderly, who prefer death over loneliness, chronic illness, and dependence. In addition to religion, philosophical and cultural elements that influence people's behavior can also be included in such ideological capacity.

To summarize the above content, it can be said as follows.

The principle of the Samjae capacities is often accurately applied to events that occur in actual political reality. For example, if we look at the coup d'etat in Thailand that occurred on June 24, 1932, the main causes of the coup, led by Phibun Sonkram and Pridi Phanmyong, were: ¨ç the threat to the military's interests, ¨è the worsening of economic conditions due to the incapacity of the Thai monarchy, and ¨é the elite class's critical attitude towards the absolute monarchy.

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