Political priorities often begin with a simple question:
I want to do what is good — but for whom, or for what, should it be good?
The answer usually starts very close to ourselves: me and those I love. From there, our concern can widen to include our community, tribe, or nation, then humanity as a whole, and eventually the living world beyond humanity.
The idea has deep roots. The Stoic philosopher Hierocles described human relationships as concentric circles, expanding outward from self and family to fellow citizens and eventually all humankind. Much later, Peter Singer framed moral progress as an “expanding circle,” arguing that empathy should not stop at our own species.
A Political Outward Spiraling Movement
Aki Orr brought this into the political realm in Politics Without Politicians, asking that very same question: For whom should this be good? His scale spanned from the individual and family, through tribe and nation, to humanity, nature, and beyond.
Important, though, our concerns do not replace one another. A person can care deeply about humanity while caring most intimately for their own child. We can feel solidarity with our neighbours while remaining conscious of people across the globe. Moral growth is about widening the field of care so that the inner and outer can coexist. Not to abandon the inner core, but to complement it.
The movement looks roughly like this:
Me and mine → Local community → Nation/people → Humanity → The living world
Each widening brings both a leap in cooperation and a new political friction:
- The self and family: Concrete and visceral, but easily turns insular.
- The nation: Enables cooperation among millions, but often by defining an “us” against a “them”.
- Humanity: Transcends borders to value human dignity as such, but risks human chauvinism if we view ourselves as superior.
- The living world: Asks the planetary question: What sustains the whole life system of which we are only a part?
This dynamic reveals why political struggles are so persistent: they are often competing answers to the question “Who counts?”
From Moral Concern to Global Democracy
Yet moral awareness alone is not enough. The tragedy of our present moment is a mismatch between our impact and our institutions.
Our economic, technological, and ecological actions now permeate the entire system. What we emit, consume, and decide affects people across continents and ecosystems that have no say in the matter. Yet our democratic institutions remain largely trapped in the borders of the narrow nation-state.
If democracy means having a voice in the decisions that shape one’s life, then global democracy is not an idealistic luxury—it is the institutional expression of a widening moral circle.
When “who counts” expands to all of humanity, “who decides” must widen as well.
Can our systems of self-governance become as wide as the world our actions already affect?
This is precisely the challenge of our time, the Anthropocene.