This document discusses neuropolitics and various theories around human inequality and social stratification. It covers topics like the origins of inequality in human nature, the debate between functionalist and conflict theories of stratification, and the role of power, the state, and political culture in perpetuating inequality through the administration of privileges and use of violence. It argues that universal human affiliation may be a way to transcend the conflict inherent in traditional political organization and systems of social stratification.

1. World
I
Module
IV
NEUROPOLITICS
Prof.
Francisco
De
Paula

2. IV. NEUROPOLITICS
Since, clearly, politics is the administration of symbols and practices
related to the form and composition of society’s value patterns, society
cannot assume a static certainty in directing them. Instead, it looks for
dynamic techniques to navigate the currents emanating from the
insecurity present in human nature and its culture.
HAROLD D. LASSWELL
World Politics and Personal Insecurity

3. Political Science
• Political science is the study of the administration of privilege
in society, and human inequality is, therefore, one of its
primordial objects of investigation.
• Human inequality originated in the sequential development of
man’s intelligence, his self-consciousness, his insecurity and
theology.
• The study of inequality is reduced specifically to the historic
evolution of man’s conduct, which can be distinguished by the
asymmetrical relationship held among men since the concept
of authority and its resulting subordination emerged.
• Authority and subordination are at the root of human
inequality at all levels of man’s activities and his culture.

4. Primal Causes of Inequality
• In the recorded intellectual history of humanity we
recurrently come across an endless debate on the primal
causes of inequality inherent in the human condition. Two
dominant and opposing thesis have emerged:
– The conservative vision has repeatedly stated that, in order for
society to maintain stability, some form of stratification is
necessary. Stratification has signified the peaceful acquiescence
of a functional pact regarding authority and subordination.
• This constitutes the origin of the “unequal distribution” in
the administration of society’s resources.
– The radical stance has viewed social inequality in the light of the
philosophy of the Homo homini lupus : “man is a wolf to [his
fellow] man” : reflects man’s permanent fight against man for the
scarce material and spiritual resources necessary for his survival.

5. Social Stratification
• These two opposing views on
human inequality have been the
source of the different positions
taken by the classic authors in
political science (Hobbes,
Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Kant,
Mill, Marx and Weber).
• They were classified in two
great tendencies explaining
social stratification,
− the functionalist (realist)
and
− the conflictive (idealist)
trends.

6. Inequality: Explanatory Currents
• The functionalist current establishes that human inequality
stems from the stratification derived from natural
differences such as genre, race or health and the general
division of labor and benefits society in terms of the notion
of the compartmentalized responsibility of each of the
individuals that comprise it.
• The idealist and the conflictive theory have established as
the primary cause for stratification and human inequality in
man’s history is the “interest” of groups in power in
dominating and exploiting society, together with the
appropriation of privilege, prestige and organized human
coercion.

7. Theories on Human Inequality
• In the XXth Century the idealist current is represented by Kingsley
Davis in 1945; and the materialist, by the Hegelian and Marxist-Leninist
thought of dialectic materialism, represented by many thinkers, among
them Rosa de Luxemburg, Luckacs, Althusser, Polianyi, Trostsky,
Mandel.
• The idealists establishes human inequality as a strictly functional tool,
indispensable to achieve social stability while scientific materialism
conceives it as a result of the struggle among the different classes.
• Scientific materialism set the utopian goal of eventually achieving a
classless society. It attempted to establish a kind of “social engineering”
which proposed, the expropriation of acquired privileges through the
dictatorship of the proletarian, ignoring that all forms of power imply a
form of human subordination and subsequent social inequality.
• These two theories constitute a living lesson on their respective
failures.

8. Power, State and Insecurity
• Based on the notion of the raison d’Etat, Machiavelo
proposed a realistic political exercise which explains and
justifies the centralization of power in order to guarantee
the supreme goals of the state.
• Hobbes, overwhelmed by the insecurity of his time and by
his own, formulated the political philosophy of absolutism,
which was also practiced by the State as a means to
eradicate the anarchism natural to society.
• Rousseau, enthused by the idea of liberty, suggested that
anarchy should be obligatory, thus nullifying the very spirit
of liberty.
• Hegel, with his grandiloquent dialectic, took his view of the
State to the limits of the sacred and, consequently, to
totalitarianism.

9. Pacific co-habitation
• John Stuart Mill , in the late nineteenth century, showed an
inclination to proposing centralism as a way of administrating
human interests.
• With an uncompromising outlook, Marx set out the eradication
of human inequality using the State as a supposedly infallible
tool.
• In the general context of the thought underlying our political
tradition, there has clearly been a recurrent tendency to
suggest formulas based on the suppression of subordination
and the concentration of power in the State, as a mean of
achieving pacific co-habitation among men.

10. Social Darwinism
• Herbert Spencer, suggested that the
world moved on a continuous path
toward progressive perfection and
established the need to avoid the
authoritative interference of the State
in the processes that society
undergoes in order to ensure its
survival.
• Spencer’s thesis was named “Social
Darwinism”. Unfortunately, in its time,
it was simply interpret as a general
“apology” for capitalism’s laissez-faire
philosophy.

11. Political Action
• Harold Lasswell influenced by the
discoveries made by Freud and Jung
regarding the mind’s symbolism and
psychology, believed that the “political
action” which emanates from the
insecurity of human beings is none other
than the action of administrating the
distribution of society’s privileges and
values. This is exercised by the elite,
who, through its ability to manipulate the
“symbols of identification”, political control
and economic power, ultimately
legitimizes them through the
indiscriminate use of violence.

12. Biological Heterogeneity and Diversity
Biological heterogeneity and diversity vs social inequality:
• While inequality is scientifically understandable in the
biological light of heterogeneity and diversity, in its social
extension, it is ridiculously disproportionate to the nature of
the biological inequality present in the original human scale.
• Man’s insecurity is also directly responsible for the
appearance of the irrational phenomenon of man’s
disproportionate power and, the appearance of the immense
injustice and corruption practiced by its administrators.

13. Civilization and Codes of Social Conduct
• As expressions of man’s power and how it is manifested –
injustice, war, irrational exploitation of natural resources,
genocide, armament, indiscriminate financial growth,
overpopulation and man’s discrimination toward man - today
are indispensable to be understood to initiate a study on new
alternatives to rearrange society’s traditional political
organization as part of the evolutionist context of a new way of
interpreting the human phenomenon.
• In the context of the human possibilities of this era, civilization
must adopt a different code of social conduct –also a political
one-, in terms of a “conscious selection” of the Homo sapiens
sapiens, and discard the Darwinian code of the Homo homini
lupus of natural selection from social co-habitation

14. The Creation of Language
• From the perspective of the
evolution of man’s intelligence and
his self-conscious discovery of his
death, man has always tried to
shelter his insecurity within
theology.
• This insecurity has been a great
influence in the creation of
language in terms of man’s
identification with sacred symbols,
which have been fundamental in
the constitution of his political
culture.

15. The Need for Human Affiliation
• In the creation of the structural
inequality in man’s life, not only the
original feeling of metaphysical
insecurity intervened, but also the
need for human affiliation.
• The elite has always used this
human need by manipulating
identification symbols in the
attribution of privileges concerning
“security”, “integration” and
“deference” in order to guarantee
the continuation of a pyramidal
class structured society.

16. Political Culture
• Given the natural human tendency to confrontation by affiliation
and its subsequent relation to authority and subordination,
paradoxically, this political culture has been a conflictive one.
• This political culture became rooted in man’s daily life, irrationally
adopting the rules, forms and ideologies that society imposes in
the procedures established for affiliation to take place.
• It has been interpreted by social anthropologist and social
psychologists as the “social instinct of belonging”
“In man’s life, identification symbols play a determining role in the
construction of society in terms of the recognition and reference
of its members”. (Lasswell).

17. The Need for Human Affiliation
• In the creation of the structural
inequality in man’s life, not only the
original feeling of metaphysical
insecurity intervened, but also the
need for human affiliation.
• The elite has always used this
human need by manipulating
identification symbols in the
attribution of privileges concerning
“security”, “integration” and
“deference” in order to guarantee
the continuation of a pyramidal
class structured society.

18. Affiliation
• Affiliation is conflictive by nature not only because of
the implications of taking up a membership, also due
to the consequences this membership has within a
community when there is a confrontation between
patterns of behavior and ideologies.
• The internal perception that one group has of
belonging and approved is juxtaposed to the external
perception of group that is alien and disapproved (in
group-out group) and is always subject to affiliation.
• In its daily exercise, this behavior is manifested in each
category of human affiliation, in the spheres of religion,
ethnicity, nationalism, economy, society and
intellectualism.

19. Communal Pact
• Man’s social configuration, from time to time, established the
need to make a communal pact comprised of rules, usually
written ones, regarding the language used in the “instructions”,
“direction” and “commitment” of each affiliates status.
• Following Lasswell’s line of thought, Nicholas Onuf determined
that there are three parallel types of “language rules” used in
the political process of human affiliation.
• These language rules correspond with the assignation of
privileges in society, which, in the political order followed in
administrating scarce resources, eventually determines the
different forms of power exerted throughout the life of human
society. Among the most outstanding are the attribution of
influence, restrictive forces, economic property and social
stratification.

20. Institutions Through Association
• Every organization that maintains its identity and retains its continuity
begets a progeny of institutions. Though variously named, the latter
are fundamentally alike in the role they perform.
• Education is institutionalized through school, colleges, and
universities.
• Religion is organized by temples, mosques, synagogues, or
churches.
• Business is carried on by the firm or corporation.
• The family clusters round the home.
• Likewise, the State acts through government and its specialized
agencies –legislature, law court, administrative department, and civil
service.
• Every institutions constructed through association (affiliation)
produces rules that define the relations of its members, allot their
rights and responsibilities, and prescribe its operating procedures.
Prof.
Francisco
De
Paula

21. Administrating Society s Privileges
and Violence
• Culture has frequently assigned the elite
the task of administrating society’s
privileges, not only in the material and
economic sense regarding its resources
but also in terms of spiritual values.
• In this context, the bureaucratic elite and
the military and police forces that
worked for the “security” of the State’s
political and economic establishment
have guaranteed the preservation of this
system through a type of persuasion
that is based on the possibility of
applying violence.
Prof.
Francisco
De
Paula

22. Universal Affiliation
• The theoretical explanation regarding the diversity and the conflict
underlying the political conduct of the Homo sapiens can only be
explained in the light of interpreting his psychological configuration
• If man eventually were to become aware of his insecurity, this would
truly signify an initial gigantic step forward for humanity to transcend it.
• This would permit the gradual substitution of an affiliative culture, by
nature a conflictive one, for a certainly possible and pacific universal
affiliation.
• We can conclude that although man’s “primitive animal” condition is
partly responsible for his present history; it is actually the emerging
condition of his self-consciousness what actually brought forth the
disproportionate phenomenon of the Homo homini lupus in our
civilization.
• It must be emphasized that as we stand before the threshold of this new
era in evolution, only the subsequent development of human
consciousness and intelligence can guarantee its survival.

23. Democratic State
NEURODEMOCRACY
• Raul Manglapus, who was exiled in the United States during Ferdinand
Marcos’ dictatorship in the Philippines begins the introduction to his
extraordinary book Will of the People with the question: What is jazz?
• He then continues to say that whoever asks such a question will never
know what jazz is, and proceeds to establish an analog between jazz and
democracy, which he also considers to be indefinable.
• In the context of human life, its definition could, nevertheless, be narrated –
due to the dynamic nature of narration- and still corresponding with
Manglapus’ observation
• Manglapus’ thesis presented the democratic state in man as an attribute
characteristic to human organization, as opposed to an innovative ideology
that must be learned.

24. Neuropolitical Phenomenon
• Manglapus seeks to invalidate the
arguments set forth by totalitarian
regimes which consistently claim
that a people’s political maturity is a
pre-requisite to attain democracy.
• Democracy has to be conceived as
a neuropolitical phenomenon, that
allowed the human possibility, from
the standpoint of our being self-
conscious, of the feasibility of a new
non-subordinate relationship
between men

25. LEVIATHAN,
COMMON
WELFARE
AND
OTHER
STORIES
“…..a
human
and
individualis,c
society
free
of
arrogance
and
set
within
the
framework
of
a
state
of
legality
with
no
subordina,on”.
Alexis
de
Tocqueville,
Democracy
in
America

26. The Concentration of Power
• In the universal tradition of
political thought there is
the idea, that the greater
the power a centralized
authority concentrates -
representative or not-, the
more stability and social
justice there will be.
• However, history has
taught us that the
concentration of power in
all its manifestations is
precisely what par
excellence promotes
inequality, injustice and
man’s conflicts.

27. Expropriation
• When the concentration of power stems from a “social pact” which grants
subordinates and transfer man’s individual power to the abstract entity of the
State (Leviathan), expropriation is the only alternative that can make
historical revision possible.
• As more democratic systems slowly appear, and expropriation becomes more
evident, the concentration of human privileges could come to an end, and,
therefore, it could gradually stop inequality and the consequent stratification of
our class-structured society.

28. Neurodemocracy
• To stop inequality, it would be
indispensable to complete the
millenary process regarding the
self-conscious action in man that
leads to the decentralization of
authority and human affiliation
(Neurodemocracy).
• Subordination and the
authoritative centralization of
power could be forever eliminated
as the accepted principle
indispensable in bringing about
social peace and common welfare.

29. Conscious Selection
• The admirable neurological quality, developed in
the Homo sapiens during the last twenty-five
thousand years, will provide him with the
intellectual tools necessary to intelligently
elucidate the possibilities he has of living
harmoniously in his milieu in order to ensure his
survival.
• In this new stage for man, his survival could come
to substitute the evolutionist Darwinian code of
“natural selection” found in our political conduct
for a “conscious selection” in our civilization.

30. Technological Advancement and Possibility
of a Non-representational Democracy
• In its development and evolution, this intelligent
civilization could eventually eliminate the sacred
concepts and practices surrounding political
culture, authority, power, affiliation, subordination,
leadership, representatively and even in
governments, making the technological
advancement parallel to the mechanical possibility
of a non-representational democracy with
individual participation within the framework of a
pluralistic co-habitation in society, which is always
related to its heterogeneous condition.

31. Democracy
• The modern concept of representative
democracy is slightly different from its
original conception, especially in terms
of the inseparable relationship it holds
with a legal framework that is closely
related to the figure of a constitutional
government.
• Democracy has evolved through a
great diversity of interpretations, and
has served as a parapet to disguise
dictatorial regimes: from the aristocratic
democracy of absolutist monarchies to
the despotism and oligarchy of
authoritative regimes

32. Democracy and Socialization
• “Democracy is the highest expression of the
“socialization” in modern man and, therefore, of his
individual assessment. Democracy is part of that vast
process of secularization, whereby man has slowly
liberated himself of his former “corporate” entity
(sometimes, of his “mystic body”), and of the dogmas
and visions which explain his belonging to that original
and undifferentiated entity. Modern democracy releases
man from his “natural integration” to a hereditary body,
transforming him into a proper individual, a member of a
society of individuals”. Flores Olea, 1994.

33. Different Forms of Government
• Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Machiavelo and Kant agreed in various
aspects as to how the regarded democracy defines different forms of
government in relation to the diverse state of political representation
that can be found within a community.
FORMS of GOVERNMENT
• They identified the
monarchy as a social-
economic unity
(Commonwealth)
administered by one sole
person; an aristocracy as a
representative assembly that
is exclusive to an elite, and,
a democracy as a
government where an
assembly is representing the
whole of society.

34. Democracy: The Ideal Form of
Government
• John Stuart Mill considered their version of democracy as the ideal
form of government, whereby the State’s supreme power is voiced by
the totality of the citizens in a community for it to exercise it freely,
thus establishing the state of liberty and equality “for all citizens” as
the community’s ideal.
• Antagonistic to this idea, Nietzsche arrogantly proclaimed the concept
of the “minority’s aristocracy”. He established that the masses are not
worthy of compassion, a noble man is solidary only to his “equals”.
• In a compassionate tone, Bertrand Russell simply interpreted
Nietzsche’s ideology as the exacerbated product of “the weak man’s
milieu”.
• It is noteworthy, however, that until the 18th century, Mill’s definition of
“all citizens” did not include slaves or women, nor did it foresee the
need to abolish constitutional discrimination, which established and
legitimized differences in race, wealth, social condition and within the
nobility.

35. Neurodemocracy: Alternative for a
Different Democracy
• According to Mill, an alternative emerges: the
representation responsible for the constituent’s initiative
and a periodic need for referendums.
• The problem that follows with Mill´s proposal is that the
questioning of the validity of the benefits of leadership
always arises. By the nature of its function, leadership
always finds itself caught between the fair administration of
the majority’s interests and the minority’s, usually unjust,
privileges.
• The advancement of democracy –neurodemocracy- will,
therefore, always be subject to the average state of the
evolution of society’s “conscience and self-consciousness”.