Politics at the Bottom of a Cliff

By Olivia Pierson
First published on the Good Oil, 11th April, 2025

When a culture becomes unmoored from its philosophical roots, the politics of that culture will amount to little more than an ambulance waiting at the bottom of a cliff.
Political wrangles are the very endgame of a nation’s broader philosophy. The culture of that nation is the atmosphere that reveals which ideas have been digested. When the late conservative media guru Andrew Breitbart proffered his famous line: “politics is downstream from culture”, this flow of ideas from philosophy to politics is what he underscored.
 
Breitbart well understood culture had become completely saturated with leftism via big media, Hollywood (of course) and university campuses but, before his sudden death in 2012, he predicted a cultural swing back to conservatism (which had already started with the Tea Party movement) and with it the inevitable political swing, which has delivered Trump to the White House…twice.

Here in New Zealand, the political wrangling over Green MP Benjamin Doyle’s alarming social media posts strikes me as the ultimate example of current politics at the bottom of a cliff. Because the left still largely dominates our culture, debasing it so thoroughly, our deputy prime minister had to be the one to call for a police investigation into Doyle – a step I believe is not only highly prudent but also a matter of some urgency. However, the real question is this: how did we reach a point where a member of parliament captions social media photos of a child with crude, sexualised phrases like “Bussy Galore” as if it were merely a nothing burger?

That question points to culture. Identity politics has long been fixated on gender and sexual orientation. Those steeped in it seem unable to move beyond an obsession with anatomy. It began with the waves of feminism, especially the third, and now we find ourselves in this disturbing territory because, instead of focusing on the important realm of ideas (philosophy) that can shape a culture and influence its politics, too many people have remained mired at the level of physical identity, mistaking it for politics. Politics, in its classical sense (think Locke or Rand), isn’t just power games – it’s the practical arm of philosophy, wrestling with how we ought to live together, grounded in reason and ethics. Art and aesthetics train and shape our moral sentiments, our sense of what is noble and our moral imagination – this is deeply philosophical terrain. High culture isn’t just elitist art, classical music or big books: it’s a developed mindset that grapples with the good, the true and the beautiful, keeping politics from devolving into a dumpster at the bottom of a cliff.
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If we want cleaner and more thoughtful politics – and I for one do – it is incumbent upon us all to sow seeds in richer soil for moral and intellectual growth. This is imperative for our young people who are often starving for real conversations along the lines of ethics. Art and ideas really matter. If all we consume is cynical, shallow and smutty rubbish, our politics will end up mirroring that. But, if we’re immersed in heroic stories and finer ideas that ponder on what’s real, right, good and true, we’ll start to demand more from ourselves and our leaders. It’s not about being a snob: it’s about giving people the intellectual software to reach for better politics with no cliff in sight.