Evolution,consciousness, and political thinking

Evolutionary theory is utilized to sketch the outline of a performance-based perspective of political thinking. It is argued that human consciousness evolved as an emergent and interactive mechanism for enabling the individual to cope strategically with environmental exigencies. Within the context of this evolutionary perspective, consciousness at the individual level is shown to develop in patterned yet flexible and individually variable ways as a result of the interaction of biological and environmental variables including, among the latter, those elements of the social environment like ideas, values, and intentions, as well as institutional patterns of conflict, affiliation, and authority, which are themselves products of coping strategies. Political thinking, it is suggested, is a strategic coping enterprise involving equilibration between the individual's own strivings and social demands for conformity in collective affairs.