The whole is greater than the sum of the parts

The usual way most see this statement is during scientific debates, where much is known about the pieces of a thing, as how a watch or a duck works. It’s when one adds the pieces up and combines them that the debate gets going. A good example is in medicine when the drugs one takes individually may have other unexpected effects when combined as a whole.

The emergence of chaos as a new field of complex systems is a modern resurrection of this science debate which goes back hundreds of years. The religious debate about this principle goes back thousands of years.

Seldom I have ever heard this debate applied to human politics. Certainly humans and human political systems are complex, and when science topics like global warming are dragged in, even the subject of religious overtones comes up. What one believes on this debate does affect our societies and nations.

Most laws at all levels tend to be enacted piecemeal. The federal income tax code is an example, where the size is something like 68,000 pages. Most individual tax laws may have some honorable intent, but when taken as a whole, one should worry if there is some adverse effect as in the medicine example earlier. The public policy of social security suffers this way, having been grown in “pieces” and benefits and funding, and now it appears the “whole” thing will collapse and die sometime in the near future. If one buys this line of reasoning, then one may use their imagination to apply it to ideas like globalization, global warming, mainstream religions, size of governments, and even the administration of Yellowstone Park over the last 100 years. Piecemeal application of good intentions without considering the whole can lead to bad results, it seems. And too often lack of information or poor information is not an impediment to those who make the laws and policies.

The alternative of thinking as a “whole” is fraught with political problems, also. Most know the expression “jack of all trades, master of none”. It can apply to presidential debaters, pundits, least common denominator study groups, and arm chair generals and secretaries of state. Any individual or group who proclaim they “know” the truth, if only all would listen to them, and obey their commands or edicts that address the “whole”, make many also ask: “just show me the votes”.

Fortunately, this dilemma has one solution. It is called the vote, and we voters should be influenced by those Americans running for public office who know the difference between the “whole” and the “pieces”; and the effect on human politics. For example, we should avoid voting for those who offer “piecemeal solutions only” to social security, health care, the war in Iraq, etc. We should consider those who display recognition that complicated problems have elements of the “whole” and the “pieces” that come into their thinking, and should come into our thinking. Hopefully, these types of political doctors won’t kill the patients in their prescriptions for the various political drugs we are going to have to take.