WHEN GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM

Originally I didn’t plan to write more than just one post on the over-spending problem of government (#46). Then I received a dozen emails questioning my assumption that the problem is one of over- spending. Several suggested that the problem is unemployment and under-employment. And true enough, that’s another significant problem that we are currently experiencing in the US and in many countries around the world.

One person suggested that if only government would spend more, namely give the unemployed more money and benefits, that would help. And yes, in that case, there would be more money in the economy. Of course, doing that is only dealing with a symptom of the problem and not the cause. Sure, in the short-run it would help. In the long-run, however, it creates another problem— dependency on the government, and more costs, and a sense of entitlement. The hidden presupposition is that it is government’s role and purpose to “take care of us”as if we were helpless and powerless and unable to take care of ourselves. And that’s a frame that violates one of the fundamental assumptions that we operate from in Neuro-Semantics.

To make sense of all of this let’s back up, identify what we mean by “government,” and then use the questioning power of the Meta-Model of Language to gain greater clarity on these things.

What is it? How does it work? Who is it? What is it about? What are the assumptions (presuppositions) that any given form of government is operating from?

What is it and how does it work? The term “government,” a nominalization, refers to the process of governing and that speaks about how we govern the way we communicate, interact, create rules for ourselves, gather money, spend money, protect ourselves, and so on. This is what we refer to as the governance of a home or business or corporation or association. And when it comes to governing a group of people—we are speaking about how we organize ourselves and what form of organizing that we use (dictatorship, kingdom, oligarchy, representational republic, democracy, tyranny, aristocracy, etc.). And of course, this is the way we “author” our reality (our organization) and so creates the “authority” that we live by.

What is it? It is us. It is how we as a group function, organize ourselves, invent the rules that we then use and follow as our government. In the US, our founders framed a constitution that operates as the foundational rules of our society and started it by a declaration. That declaration declared itself as valid because it is an expression of We the People. We are the government and the good

thing of a democracy, or a represented republic, is that if we don’t like it, we have rules and processes by which we can change it.

How does it work? It works by the rules. The rules describe the operational processes of a government. And the rules work by its explicit and implicit assumptions. That is, the rules themselves are governed (managed) and they are governed by the presuppositional frames that drive the assumptions. So now we can back up to ask philosophical and psychological questions that drive the government: What do these rules assume about human nature? Dependent, independent, inter-dependent? Good, bad, neutral? What do the rules assume about people coming together to create a society? Natural, unnatural; natural competitive, cooperative, collaborators? What do the rules assume about what people need, what drives them? What do they assume about people following the rules— their motivation, intentions, understandings, etc.? What do they assume about leading people— those in charge, those creating the rules (legislators), those enforcing the rules (police, judges, tax collectors), those overseeing and executing the rules (executive offices, supreme court, etc.)?

Ah, within and behind our thoughts and ideas about government are lots of psychological and sociological ideas about we the people who need government, create government, and exercise government. We separate Government and Politics as if they are separate disciplines, yet they are not. They inherently and inescapably involve human psychology, human functioning, human communicating, and so on.

Who is government and what is government all about? It is we the people getting along with each other. First and foremost to create a safe environment so that people are safe from being attacked by domestic or foreign enemies. It is to create stable enough society so people can predict how the economy, schools, and businesses function and how to succeed in making a sufficient living. It is to create a free enough society so that people can fully develop their talents, intelligence, creativity, art, etc. so that people can pursue their interests and passions.

What are the assumptions (presuppositions) that any given form of government is operating from? Does the government now think that their job is to control people or free people? Do they think they need to police everything the people think, say, and do or that they are to enable, equip, and empower people so that they can be the best they can be? Do they think the people are children who have to be taken care of or adults who can take responsible to take care of themselves?

These questions indicate that “government” is us, it is comprised of our human psychology. It relates to what drives us, how we function at our best, our potentials, our social nature, etc. So when government is the problem—it is a problem due to the frames it is operating from. And if it operates from conceptual frames of beliefs about how to lead and govern, then when it is the problem, we can correct that problem by changing the frames.