I've often heard right from the days of my childhood that politics was a dirty game.


As I grew older, I began to hear learned individuals of the Social Sciences refer to man as a Political Animal. Surely, I thought to myself, these intellectuals can't possibly be prophesying that man is a dirty being. That'd be crazy.


Anyway, though I've always been interested in politics, but I never sorted out the time or even the patience to seek and properly define the true meaning of POLITICS.



A polity (Greek: consisting of many) is a governed body or a group of people who come together in agreement. A polity could be Corporate, Religious etc.

So when it is said that man is a political animal, what is meant is that man is a being that loves to commune and live in company of others of the same species rather than individually in isolation.



Politics is the means, method and tactic by which groups of equal and independent people make decisions, formulate or apply policy to govern or police their social relations and utilise their power in regulating the polity.

Therefore, when we hear that politics is a dirty game, it is an absolute fallacy. Coming together to institute the rules by which humanity chooses to live together is a noble endeavour which involves everybody one way or the other.



Besides the various phenomena encountered by polities, communities, societies and nations in everyday modern life, politics performs the traditional functions of :

Decision-making
Agenda-setting
Preference-shaping



Aristotle who first proclaimed that humans were by nature, political beings, also postulated that:

Monarchy often devolves into tyranny or dictatorship.

Aristocracy often devolves into oligarchy.

Politics often devolves into democracy (demos= common people/masses/talakawa, cracy=rule).




Left-wing or Right-wing politics first came into being during the era of the French Revolution when members of the National Assembly who opposed the Monarchy sat on the left, while those who supported it sat on the right.


Though left-wing and right-wing politics may mean different things in different countries, but broadly speaking,
-The right attempts to maintain moral and social conservationism, law and order, and religion
-The left attempts to effect the redistribution of wealth and resources to the poor and less privileged, and also to maintain secularism in society.



Politics generally is using the general will for the public good. I think it is Rugby which is a dirty game.