Simone Weil is the patron saint of anomalous persons

Agree with her on the dangers posed by political parties. Most people don't seem to have a political position, they have a team.

I really appreciated this article. I had never heard of Simone Weil but I just bought “Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage”.

I also question how people can go about their lives ignoring the suffering of others, buy into the bullshit that is known as ‘political parties’, etc. I am looking forward to getting to know Simone Weil through Dr. Cole’s book.

While I wouldn't go as far as her I agree that political parties are problematic but perhaps also symptomatic of a larger underlying problem with the political structure - that the process of 'making the right decision' and the process of 'winning the election' have two separate strategies. I cannot say for sure if it is solveable or unsolvable and in what contexts or systems.

For instance we know now with game theory that first past the post essentially guarantees a maximum of two viable political parties and a candidate with a political party has a substantial advantage against an independent one unless there are truly unprecedented degrees of bad reputation to the only major political party.

One small advantage that political parties and representatives in general address is 'what to do when you don't know' and division of knowledge and labor. Even in the past when the domain of knowledge was smaller it wasn't really viable for everyone to know everything. It is essentially the Ian Stewart paradox on a societal level that “If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't.”

Technocratic concepts had one proposal of limiting votes to experts in domains but that isn't really viable or a good idea. The fatal flaw is in deciding who is the expert and the even nastier feedback loop that has on incentives and truth seeking. Naked absurdities would prevail like miasmists denying germ theory to hold onto power.

Keep in mind the effects of first-past-the-post voting systems, though. People would probably be more variable in their preferences if the game-theory effects of actually expressing them at the voting booth weren't generally negative.

because human life is relativistic, it's more about fitting in a clan than absolute truth