The efficiency expected from political action under the
assumptions of literacy is characteristic of the scale at which
people constitute themselves. The nation is the world, or the
only thing that counts in this world of opportunity and risk. The
rest is, relatively speaking, superfluous. Nations, even those
that acknowledge the need to integrate, try to secure
functioning as autonomous entities. National borders may be
less guarded, but they are maintained as borders of literacy
translated into economic opportunity. When the goal of
autonomous existence is no longer attainable, expansion is the
answer. Ideological, racial, economic and other types of
arguments are articulated in order to justify the extension of
politics in the experience of battle. The two World Wars brought
literate politics to its climax, and the Cold War (the first
global battle) to its final crisis, but not yet to its end, even
though the enemy vanished like a humorless ghost.
A closer look at the systematic aspects of the political
experience of human self- constitution should prepare us for
approaching the current political condition. This should at
least provide elements for understanding all those accumulated
expectations that people have with respect to politics,
politicians, and the institutions through which political goals
are pursued. Political goals are always practical goals,
regardless of the language in which they are expressed or the
rituals attached.
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