Anatomy, physiology and pathology of a State


A State and an animal body are two examples of very complex systems. They are both composed of units organized on different levels. Those units are required to efficiently cooperate for the wider system to survive. Given the similarities between the State and a - human - body, the second has already been used as an allegory to describe the first1,2.

     Here, I will apply definitions from biology and medicine as metaphors to concepts of politology. When describing a living being, both at microscopical or macroscopical level, three main aspects can be distinguished:
i) its anatomy, or how it is physically made; 
ii) its physiology, or how it works;
iii) its pathology, or how it gets disfunctional.

     All those aspects are directly interlinked and dependent on each other, bearing strict cause-effect relationships. On these basis, I am going to identify the correspondences between multiple organs and systems of a human body and the fundamental components of a modern State. I am going to analyze their parallelisms, into how they are structured and they absolve to precise functions. And I am going to review how they can be the focus of diseases. 

    So, would the development of a 'police State' be a case of autoimmunity? Or a tumor of the immune system?

     Is a 'credit choke' crisis an ischemia? Or a heart failure? Or renal failure?

     In future posts, I will follow logic in depicting a complex metaphors. I acknowledge that it can not be perfect because in several cases parallelisms would not fit. I will discuss case by case.




                                        Index

         Body organ                           State apparatus

1.      cells                                        people




4.      blood                                      money


5.      heart                                       trade


 6.      blood vessels                         jobs, cost of life, credit system


 7.      lungs                                      money investments, foreign capitals and funds


8.      kidneys                                  Central Banks, inflation/deflation


9.      digestive system                    refinement, production


10.    fat tissue                                welfare

11.    liver                                       healthcare


12.    immune system                     justice, police, military


13.    Th immune cells                   public opinion


14.    muscles                                  people's initiative

15.    bones                                     concept of society

16.    tendons                                  common values, national identity, language, attitudes


17.    brain cortex                           government, those who manipulates them

18.    lower brain                            burocracy

19.    peripheral nervous system    elections and laws



References

1: Spicci M. The body as metaphor: digestive bodies and political surgery in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Medical Humanities 2007; 33:67-69.

2: Sălăvăstru A. Disease of the Body, Disease of the State: a Metaphor of Political Discourse in XVIth England (Thomas Starkey). Argumentum 2012; 10(1), 18-47.

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