polis

"Polis" is said to be the ancient greek word for "city". This is evident in modern words like metropolis, megalopolis, police, policy, and politics. These all refer to either the actual city place, or to a core component for the correct working of a city.

I notice also that "poli" or "poly" is known to mean "many". Polygon, polyglot, polymer, polytechnical, polyhedron, polyamorous - this root is also deeply embedded into our languages, and denotes a plurality of entities that compose a whole; a core concept in this varied reality we inhabit. So far, so good.

What strikes my interest is the concept of "city". Imagine cities do not yet exist - each of us engages with few people on a regular basis. Perhaps we live with our immediate family, or with our extended family, no larger than a small tribe, and we move with the seasons to find food and water. Or perhaps we live alone, preferring solitude and self-reliance. Then one day you notice people traveling in the same direction. Family after family passes you by, and they tell you of this place that has lots of food and water and people live comfortably. You decide to go there and see it for yourself.

When you get there, you notice several things. Some houses are large and well-built. The ground has become worn with frequent footsteps, and trails abound which mark the main paths people take. Yet what makes this place different at its core is not what has been built upon it, but all the PEOPLE who live here. Many people, more than you've ever seen before at a time. And the dynamics between them are different, too. Living so close together requires finer levels of coordination than you've known before, and their language is accordingly developed and beyond your own. Their resources are shared, their skills are shared, and this new place prospers.

Now imagine going back to your family and telling them about this place. How do you tell them? We can say it has big houses, that it has trails and a good river beside it. But the core element of this place, I gather, is All The People. So many people, living close by as you never saw before. I imagine I would describe this place as "the place with a lot of people". "Place of many people." We have several people over here, and that family by the hill has even a few more. But the place with MANY people? That's that place over there. The polis. The city.

And from this derivation I see our other words derive naturally as well. Many people living very close together are prone to encounter frictions and disagreements with their neighbors. A higher density of humans implies a lesser space per human (on average), a higher likelihood of one's expressions crossing another's perceptions and causing annoyance, irritation, anger.

Agglomeration increases the pressures of interaction upon one another, and from these often develops conflict. Conflict can damage people and values around them. How can we prevent this damage? We make some rules that we all learn, and each person is free to act and express within the given rules, which were designed to prevent people from infringing upon other people's boundaries. They are the rules that people know and follow when living in the polis. The rules of the polis, the rules intended to help the *lots of people* live together well. A policy.

And what when conflict still occurs? And what when the polis needs some taking care of - some maintenance, some upgrade, some expansion? How will this place and its people be taken care of as time progresses, decay progresses, and accidents, social and physical, threaten the stability of this place? Well, how about some of us do that with our time? We'll make sure things are working, we'll see that people are not harming each other too much, and we'll see that the policies are being followed.

Who are we? We're the ones who take care of the polis. The policia. The police.

The more connotation-loaded derivation from "polis" that I see is "politics". As I was growing up, I remember, "politics" was one of those words that I couldn't manage people to explain to me clearly, or even consistently, and I suspected most of them did not have a clear understanding of it themselves. And yet it seemed to creep into conversations of a wide variety of topics, where I noticed it often impassioned some people, it alienated others, and people seemed to gravitate to the political "teams" they aligned with, and members of different teams would raise their voices towards each other, and proceed to try to convince the others that "my team is better than your team". Never did I see anyone convince another to drop his allegiance and join one's own. They were just loud stalemates.

Yet politics is talked about. It inhabits our conversations, it covers the news headlines, and it affects the structure of our lives. The dictionary refers to it as "the activities of a governance", "the debate between parties having power", "the academic study of government", "beliefs or principles", "concerned with power and status". The core idea, nevertheless, can be traced back to our root word "polis".

A human being is complex. Beyond the pure animal, a human has expanded its awareness to a varied array of desires and preferences. Survival is not enough anymore. A human notices gradations and new perceptions within what was before merely liked or disliked. He begins to aim for comfort, for luxury, for specific emotional and social interactions, while survival, previously his main aim, he now assumes to be a "right", an inviolable part of himself. He is within himself a flow of ever-finer desires and expressions, and must find balance both internal and external for these flows.

This complexity only compounds when multiple humans interact together, especially during long periods of time. Some of my expressions may fit your wants and viceversa, but some of our wants will collide, and will drive us to fight for resources. Some of our preferences will clash, some of my being may hurt you even without intent. The possibilities and their combinations are vast... vastly complex.

For a group of many people to be in balance with itself, the inflows and outflows of its individuals must balance each other out. What I want he has, and what she needs, I offer. But the excesses and lacks that manifest in a single human being also compound in groups, and finding adequate supplies and outlets for my needs and my expressions, especially as the group grows larger and our senses grow finer, becomes infeasible. Man then turned to another idea: central coordination.

Required surely for any city, gathering the decision-making, the communication, and the intent of a population into a center can greatly speed up signalling and coordination between its members. It introduces a common star topology that can transmit any signal from any member to everyone else in one or two steps. It can align the intents of the individuals - divergent, arbitrary, unaware of each other - into common desires and intents. As a polarized ferromagnet aligns the units of its crystalline structure into a single direction, towards which it will move once it has found its aim, so the population aligned towards a common direction or intent holds a tremendous power to move towards and to achieve what it seeks. Coordination, alignment, in matters both internal and external to the polis, to the "many people", is the value that I see politics offers.

And it strikes me that the role of a person in a political position, beyond the cliché issues of selfish interest and mundane livelihood, is one of service. A human steps into this artificial role-box willingly, whose aim is to provide a reliable and common structure to the group. He offers his own body to the body of the group structure, and he becomes a fulcrum on which the designed machine can run. A government without bodies is no more solid than an idea, and a society in the physical world requires a physical structure. Each such politician contributes his body, his energy, for the sake of the group - so that the group's machine, designed to stabilize and coordinate them all, continues to function.

Whether or not this machine is actually effective at such stabilization and coordination, however, is another topic. Hardened shells must be let go if the life within is to continue to grow.

Upon noticing these details, my perception of politicians and politics changed. No longer a privileged throne of wasteful luxury and corruption, nor just a stepping stool to steal from the common treasure vaults. Nor were their tacky discourses and their mundane droning only futile exercises. They all are, consciously or not, the Life that steps into the common structure of government and coordination that we ourselves designed, and in which we, majorily, continue to depend on, to trust, and to expect.

Living and coordinating together with other humans is not effortless, and its effectiveness is not guaranteed. This was ongoing at the beginning of our species, and we ourselves have recorded countless stories of our trials, our triumphs, and our collapses via history, myth, and lore. Villages, towns, cities, nations, empires have risen, prospered, and fallen through the perpetual flux of interactions they each engage in with their neighbors. Trade, cooperation, conflict, destruction, merging, submission, diplomacy, war - all these are specific instances of the dynamic push and pull, the mixture, the cracking, the pressures they induce upon one another, as various pieces of some substance(s) grow, find each other, and learn to cohabitate, all of them morphing in the process.

As true a process occurs between human units. Between two metallic pieces being welded, and at the onset of two fluids. Between two molecules yearning to exchange electrons, between gas bubbles in a fizzy drink. In the ever-caresses of the ocean upon the coast, and between the kingdoms and empires and nations this planet has hosted for millennia, and continues to host.