"Irrational Political Constant."
That’s my scaberded answer when people poke at my politics. I, the Scalpel Scribbler, Scalpel-Scribe and mathematically slice through political theories because I enjoy cutting through the clatter of postmodern ideologues and the viral certainties that metastasize into popular belief.
"Conserve and Progress" is what I feel is the most pragmatic political approach for the overall well-being of the geometrically progressing 8 billion of us in this constantly evolving political world of ours. I carefully mentioned “Conservation” before “Progression,” not to piss off some rootless, “Barking-Liberal” nor to pander to some “Superficially-Rooted,” bark-less, branch-less Conservative. Think high school arithmetic: can “Progression” occur, be it arithmetic or geometric, without a starting value — without “Conservation”?
Yes, the science books drone: without progress, conservation stagnates; without conservation, progress collapses. Well done, professors — you’ve just described breathing in and out. The question is: who solves it? While Political Science theorizes “symptoms,” Political Mathematics slices “solutions.”
Side Note 1: “Science” likes to parade in lab coats and pretend it owns the truth. Fine, let them. I’ll slice them later in another Scribble. For now, I confess: I enjoy locking blades with bright contrarians who think experiments outweigh equations.
Now — back to Political Mathematics.
Both Conservation and Progression have to originate somewhere, and that somewhere is Nothing. Mathematically speaking, we call that Nothing the Origin. Remember that dull, high-school number line? No matter how many axes you draw (and for the love of whatever deity or partner you have, stop saying “axies”), every axis cuts back to one point: Origin; Zero.
I know my “proud” Indian readers may start jumping with vicarious pleasure when they hear the word Zero: “We gave Zero to the World, We gave Zero to the World” — that’s the chorus we Indians sing and dance for like a Kumbaya anthem. I say: Spare me, you idiots — Zero wasn’t our only gift to mathematics. Zero is not merely a national boast; it’s a doorway into Pure Mathematics — not just the laborious, applied cousins we drag through daily life. I’ll argue with you persistently and for myself, playfully that all sciences, every last one of them, are just applied mathematics wearing lab coats.
Think of it like a function. Conservation is the constant — the anchor that holds the line. Progress is the variable — the restless term that refuses to sit still. Strip away the constant, and your variable drifts into nonsense. Strip away the variable, and your constant just lies there, flat and lifeless. Only together do they form an equation worth solving. But politicians? They love campaigning on variables without constants, or worshipping constants without variables. That’s not governance — that’s bad math on a loudspeaker.
In politics, this isn’t theory — it’s policy. Conservation is keeping the essentials from collapsing; progress is pushing the line forward. The trick is balance. Tilt too far into “protection,” and you end up embalming society like a relic in a glass case. Tilt too far into “innovation,” and you burn through your foundation faster than you can rebuild it. Real governance isn’t ideology — it’s solving for both sides of the equation at once.
Without conservation, progress burns itself out — a political bonfire of vanity, leaving only ash and applause. Without progress, conservation rots into nostalgia — a museum of dead values, guarded by bored curators. Both camps think they’re saving the world; both are just rehearsing their own extinction.
Conservation and Progress aren’t rivals; they’re two sides of the same coin. Try flipping a coin on just one side — the coin won’t, but you will. You’ll flip and end up with nothing: zero dressed up as ideology. Together, they’re currency; apart, they’re counterfeit. Politics that forgets this balance isn’t governance — it’s bad arithmetic with campaign slogans.
Political science, in practice, keeps shrinking the political cosmos into a tired binary: left versus right, liberal versus conservative. This bi-polarity is less a framework than a constraint, reducing complex societies to a seesaw with only two seats. And the trouble with a seesaw? Only two can play, and unless they’re perfectly matched, it tilts into imbalance — or worse, a comedy of errors. The world is multipolar, yet the discourse insists on being bipolar — a flattening of nuance into slogans. Unfortunately, that is the lens through which most politics is played out today.
Modern politics, instead of embracing multipolarity, slouches lazily into the bipolar rut. When I — the Scalpel Scribbler — take my seat at Zero, the Origin of the Circle, and look at the diametrically opposed poles labelled “Liberal” and “Conservative,” or “Left” and “Right,” as if the political cosmos had run out of axes to spin on, both sides call the other irrational. My challenge to both tribes: First, accept that you are both of the same Circle with a Common Origin, since both of you started with “Nothing” called The Zero. Only then can you start to see the beauty — the razor-edged consistency — in what you dismiss as irrational.
What is the “irrationally progressing constant” in our universe? Pi (π). Whether you care for it or not, whether you know its decimal expansion or not, that irrational constant runs the known cosmos. Regardless of which political axis you cling to, we are all embedded in that same irrational reality. 8 billion of us. Progressing. It takes an Irrational Constant to close a Circle — and we are part of that Irrational Constant; we are part of π.
—The Scalpel Scribbler will be back with more “Math Cuts” on Political Science… for now, get sutured and chill.
—The Scalpel Scribbler & the Sword Poet
“I am the Sword, and my pen is mightier than I.”
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