I think a big problem we face in humanity is how we settle our disputes and it’s a large function of a government. But, after enough time people figure out the “rules” and get their own refs or figure out loopholes.
Fight to the death? Well not my death, i have a guy to fight for me.
Courtrooms? Got my friend to be the judge.
Arbitration? I have the money and you have the issue so let me hire a guy to hear you out and ignore it.
It seems that we need to change how we solve disputes like every 120 years before it gets overwhelming and the old system stops working entirely.
This just seems like an issue of power.
It’s not that the systems of solving disputes are broken in a “I figured it out!” sort of way, but moreso that all systems rely on power, and some people simply have more power.
Changing the system might improve things, I don’t know, but I don’t think your analysis sounds correct.
Just imagine if divorce proceedings changed from basic legal options on who gets to keep the kids but to who could register higher on a decibel meter while farting.
Don’t you think that would change up the power dynamics? And if you keep changing it who has the power keeps changing too. For a while its people with IBS butt, next it might be people with overly active tear ducts (who can cry the most). Really keeps it randomized and balanced for power. And by the time people start getting eye surgery and eating more beans to win more, boom changes again.
Obviously an extreme but changing the rules would change the people with power right?
I’ll pretend you didn’t just make me read about fart-based justice…
Obviously an extreme but changing the rules would change the people with power right?
I’m not sure it does!
When might made right, naturally that was by fighting. Now, we prefer to have a rule book (laws) for everything and then get a group of random people (jury) to decide who’s right.
So, in the first case, the person with the advantage is the best fighter, and in the second case the person with the advantage is who knows the laws best? Or maybe who can argue their case best.
But no! The person with the advantage is whoever has the power to rig the system, be it by hiring someone to fight in their stead or to hire the better lawyer or to stack the jury or whatever. The “power” I’m talking about is money, by the way, in case that’s not clear, and it doesn’t change depending on the system.
Sure, for the fartvorce (fart divorce) it would be the loudest farter… Or maybe it would be whoever gets to choose the decibel meter by bribing the fart-judge or something. Or maybe it’s whoever can afford the best surgery to implant a fart-enhancer in their rectum! I don’t know… Still, I don’t think changing the system does that much, at least, in terms of stopping people from just throwing money (power) at the problem.
LoL thank you.
Well written well said. I get it and also you still discussed using the fartvorce analogy.
I really appreciate you.
A tale as old as time. You can’t have good governance if you don’t have benevolent people. Bad ingredients, bad dish. Repeat until our technology exceeds our wisdom and triggers the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Life in the universe is probably somewhat scarce over time and space. We detect extra-solar life by radio emissions. Radio emissions require technology. Any life that evolves into technological beings suffers the same fate of exponential growth and resource degradation. (Stockholm Resilience Centre’s Planetary Boundaries or some alternate flavourings like nuclear weapons, or Militarized AI or Biological warfare gone mad.)
The biological imperatives that made life capable of continuing evolution for billions of years (maximum power principle) is likely incompatible with technological beings. Our intellect governed by our instincts is fundamentally at odds.
As we grow in sophistication in our technology, culture and governance systems, we find ourselves building higher and higher the biggest metaphorical Jenga tower while simultaneously our primitive tendencies are pulling out pillars. We know how every game of Jenga must end.
We can choose to stop building the tower. However it’s already unstable so that isn’t enough to secure it.
We could deconstruct the tower and use those pieces to shore up a stable tower. (Degrowth)
But it looks like we’re going to try to build to tower so fast and so high in the hopes of achieving escape velocity. We know how this ends.
Yes, that’s how systems perfect themselves. Once more Hegel is proven correct.
I tried to look up Hegel’s philosophy…
Would the kind of system Hegel desires be a mere idealized abstraction from, and of dubious relevance to, the actual world? No. For Hegel such abstraction is merely half-baked systematicity: it cannot justify its making one assumption, rather than others, about what is so unimportant that it should be abstracted away.
Help.
None of us are particularly talented at ruling, and when given power we tend to impose it on others.
Limit personal wealth/power, make it difficult to entrenched, and make it easy for society to strip it from those who want to hoard it.
That’s how you get “general secretaries” and “chairmen of military commission” who are totally not Supreme Leaders.
Any attempt to “limit” power by declaring that there are no rulers and everyone is “just a comrade” only leads to obfuscation of power and complete shift to backroom politics.
There are people who like being told what to do and there those who enjoy giving orders (and “apolitical” people who “just want to live their lives” are actually part of the first group). Hierarchical systems will form one way or another, whether codified or not.
That’s how you get “general secretaries” and “chairmen of military commission” who are totally not Supreme Leaders.
President, king, politburo, commission, magnets, general secretary, whatever.
Forget naming conventions, and limit the scope of power. When someone gets delusions of grandeur and tries to consolidate more power, remove them.
