What Will It Take for Us to Get Back to Being a Decent Society?
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Saturday, April 25, 2026 00:05
VIEWED: 18057
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There is a difference between "totally fight" and "I'll still be doing something".
There really isn't.
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Of course. Because It's All About You. I will not engage in further discussions with you about yourself. OTOH, I'll be all too happy to talk ABOUT you, just like I do about rappy.
I imagine that will be just as constructive as your attacks on the younger generation and the uselessness and stupidity of them all.
Go to town. I don't care what you all think about me. You needed to be called out, I called you out. An echo chamber can hardly be a revolution.
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I could go on and on, but I seem to be the only person here in this thread making any contributions to the topic What Will It Take for Us to Get Back to Being a Decent Society? (assuming we ever were one). I've done blue-sky thinking and made on-the-ground suggestions. Where is everyone else? I'm tired of being the only one coming up with ideas.
Hearts and heads not in the right place? People not REALLY looking for ideas?
Yeah you're the only one doing anything or coming up with ideas. Not Frem, or Niki, or Magons. Or 1kiki. Or anyone else. Or me. Anyway, I gotta go do some "it's all about me" stuff.
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Quote:HAHAHAHAHA!!!
There is a difference between "totally fight" and "I'll still be doing something". -signy
There really isn't.-byte
Meanwhile, back to the topic at hand...
In the EU, regions are beginning to print their own local currencies.
http://rt.com/business/france-currency-alternative-euro-415/
I believe I've already mentioned this as a necessary part of creating a better society, yes? And no, Bitcoins are not going to hack it: they are too few, like any asset can be hoarded by the wealthy, and can only serve as a speculative asset. But as an alternate or "complementary" currency... the more the merrier!
As far as ideas are concerned... Ideas are CHEAP. Much cheaper than action. But they seem to be in short supply. So what I wonder is - WHY is this topic is such a problem? I think Magons touched on it earlier: it seems so hopeless. And, yanno, we mostly run on emotion (the word "motion" is the root word, as is "motivate" which means "to cause to move". Emotions prompt us to take action. But OTOH, we then often wind up responding to our emotions, and not the the reality at-hand. Not a good situation to be in.) It's pretty hard to look at something so awful, so big, so out of control, so dangerous. It's even harder to think of ways around it or thru it. It's difficult for me. That's why I keep posting "big topic" kind of answers. I hope that some of the thoughts that I pass along (only some of which are mine) will spark some thoughts in others. It seems not the case.
I apologize for my frustration with the situation spilling out onto everyone. It is not productive, and I let my emotions get the better of me. I'll endeavor to stick to the topic in the future.
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Quote:It is a longstanding, yet solvable small problem. Think of it as a painful tooth that sorely needs an Endodontic specialist. Why should we suffer from it forever? Does tradition perhaps justifies never fixing it? Political observers in the United States have always worried about the effects of government by the rich. During the Founding, Anti-Federalists warned that the Constitution would create a government of wealthy merchants that would “consist . . . of men who will have no congenial feelings with the people, but a perfect indifference for, and contempt of them.” www.constitution.org/afp/pennmi00.htm
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Government by the rich is not what the American people want, but it is what they are (for the most part) given as a choice.
You should not have people "running for office", because generally the more corrupt will win. How about appointment by lottery?
I seem to be the only person here in this thread making any contributions to the topic What Will It Take for Us to Get Back to Being a Decent Society?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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SECOND- thank you for engaging in the topic.
Here is the problem as I see it: Revolutions only work for a short while. Human society doesn't work like some obvious natural phenomena: money doesn't diffuse like gas, and power doesn't flow downhill. Human society seems to follow different rules. One rule seems to be that ANY imbalance in power, over time, creates springboard to even greater imbalance later. It's happened in civilization after civilization: leaders become chieftains, and chieftains become lords, and lords become monarchs, and monarchs become emperors. In this latest version, our energy is commandeered by a concept called "money". The wealthy control the money. They buy the media. They buy the government, the rules, and the soldiers to go with it, and are able to direct production (or lack of production). Like all powers, they create a new morality which lionizes their attributes: greed and callousness.
It's as if any organization or group that we create behaves LIKE A SPECIES in our human ecology. It has an internal structure. It has food. It lives, it grows, it fights for survival, and eventually it is displaced, morphs, or dies.
The "food source" of any organization seems to be energy - whether human labor or electricity or steam doesn't seem to matter. Whichever organization can commandeer the greatest amount of energy the fastest "wins".... it gets to grow faster than other organizations. That doesn't mean it's sustainable, and many organizations (we call them "empires") have in fact died from being too big, and other have died from stripping their environment bare. So there is a huge flaw in thinking that the "evolutionary" development of human society is a good model because it leads to dead ends and possibly the extinction of the human species. (It's certainly leading to the extinction of a lot of other species.)
The problem is, except for nature giving us and our organizations a catastrophic whack on the head every now and again, there don't seem to be many self-correcting processes. Even democracy seems to have been only briefly effective (if at all). Some societies seemed to have achieved ecological, economic, and political stability (Mohenjo-Daro, the Minoans, some Pacific Islanders, some extant matriarchies in the Himalayas, and possibly some early civilizations in S America) but whatever magic "key" they have discovered I don't know what that was. The question I have been asking myself (and others) is: What can we do to ENSURE that money and power don't concentrate in the future? How do we make it automatic, because humans are piss-poor at vigilance and are not the cussed individualists that most people assume. Most folks are willing, mostly, to just go along with whatever big organizations exist because big organizations have their technological and division-of-labor benefits.
I have not found that answer yet, and (unlike Libertarians) I'm not willing to assume that an answer will "somehow" develop, absent a demonstrated mechanism. So, I know this is prolly far, far more than you anticipated setting off. It addresses What Will It Take for Us to Get Back to Being a Decent Society? in the very broadest sense. But thanks for listening. You have helped me clarify some thoughts.
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Quote:How to make it automatic? That is a hopeless dream because one side is energetically plotting against you and using all its wits to defeat you.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND- thank you for engaging in the topic.
The question I have been asking myself (and others) is: What can we do to ENSURE that money and power don't concentrate in the future? How do we make it automatic, because humans are piss-poor at vigilance and are willing to mainly just go along with whatever big organizations exist. And big organizations have their technological and division-of-labor benefits.
The rich have a wonderful advantage over liberals in getting what they want from government – they can signal one to another with money. It is a generous tit-for-tat strategy – you make me rich, I'll make you rich. And, all by itself, the accumulation of money seems to energize the rich.
Liberals have nothing like that. They have so many more complex wants than simply money. It's hard for liberals to cooperate with each other because they don't have the same rugged signaling system as the rich.
Liberals rest. Rich are restless. All of which makes it easy for a rich minority to get their way against the majority. Not all the time about everything, but most of the time for what really is important to the rich: money.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I think this is about so much more than the rich versus the liberals. At one time, it was the peasants versus Pharaohs. (There was a revolt in ancient Egypt which tore down the entire dynastic system. But since there was nothing to replace it with, the ruling structure was rebuilt in 100 years). The peasants versus the monarchs or the emperor. Then it was about the feudalists versus the merchants.
There are, I think, certain systemic trends that are inbuilt, an interaction of human nature (in its broadest sense) with energy and technology trends.
Humans generally strive for maximum reward for minimum work. Humans are also, for the most part, a social species- occurring in groups. Living at a primitive level, in some climates... it's just a friggin' lot of hard work. But once you can harness more than human energy (thanks RUE) the situation changes... you can develop a surplus. Division of labor is possible. The greater the technology, the greater the division of labor... but the larger and larger groups people are economically drawn into. The drive, as I see it, it always towards larger groups, unless some outside event reverses it.
Those groups are far greater than our "monkeysphere" (thanks FREM). We have no way of automatically handling parasitic or predatory groups. So our economic (reward based) behavior leads us into situations which we don't have an answer for.
Anyway, the point is that I think this is far beyond specific groups and involves energy dynamics, entropy, technology, and fundamental human responses and capabilities.
Needs more thought.
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Quote:How about a smaller problem that can be solved, but hasn't because you-know-who insists that it can only be solved by their idiosyncratic methods?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think this is about so much more than the rich versus the liberals.
. . . So our economic (reward based) behavior leads us into situations which we don't have an answer for.
Anyway, the point is that I think this is far beyond specific groups and involves energy dynamics, entropy, technology, and fundamental human responses and capabilities.
Needs more thought.
The anti-poverty agenda is still all about getting those layabouts to go to work and stop living off welfare. The reality that lower-end jobs, even if you can get one, don’t pay enough to lift you out of poverty just hasn’t sunk in. And the idea of helping the poor by actually helping them remains anathema, which is to be expected of programs designed to please the wealthy with mental shortcomings and sincere peculiarities. www.salon.com/2014/01/07/how_to_explain_the_rights_every_move_their_un
willingness_to_help_poor_people/
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Signy, I understand that you were bringing up what Byte said on another thread, but you didn't link to it or quote it, so I read through what had been argued back and forth on this thread. That is why I phrased it the way that I did.
I don't feel the need to be even handed. I support Byte's view of things in this instance more than I do yours.
I suggest that Edward De Bono was on the right track in his discourse on western debate. http://www.edwdebono.com/book/1021
As typified by this discussion.
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The problem is, except for nature giving us and our organizations a catastrophic whack on the head every now and again, there don't seem to be many self-correcting processes. Even democracy seems to have been only briefly effective (if at all). Some societies seemed to have achieved ecological, economic, and political stability (Mohenjo-Daro, the Minoans, some Pacific Islanders, some extant matriarchies in the Himalayas, and possibly some early civilizations in S America) but whatever magic "key" they have discovered I don't know what that was.
Empathy.
Tis why crushing it out of our children via our brutal "educational" and childrearing systems is the greatest disservice to our species.
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Those groups are far greater than our "monkeysphere" (thanks FREM). We have no way of automatically handling parasitic or predatory groups. So our economic (reward based) behavior leads us into situations which we don't have an answer for.
Sometimes, you *need* a VILLAIN, someone willing to infiltrate and tear them apart from within, to dive down into the gutter with the beast and strangle it, or shank it from behind in the darkness, stuff "heroic" kinda folk will not, can not do.
And Nature does provide them, as well as the Visionaries that guide and support, but our current so-called-society more or less murders them in the crib via labelling them as mentally ill, coercing or medicating them into compliance, and if that doesn't work, off to the hellcamps with em.
See, folks like to talk about what happened if you capped this or that insane meglomaniac before they came to power, but lets flip that around - what if Ghandi was beaten to submission as a child, what if Mother Theresa was medicated into an asylum ?
Because that is what we did, we crushed our Visionaries before they ever came to be, that's what this society DOES, and it does so on purpose to maintain a disastrous status quo which benefits the few at the expense of the many, but such a system is by its very nature doomed to stagnate and implode, because Darkhearted cannot be crushed, and will "become" in ever growing numbers because in their very efforts to prevent Visionaries, the powers that be *create* Darkhearted, and they tend to multiply exponentionally like a form of psychological contagion when things start getting nasty, because it takes a *LOT* to finish one off, and the collateral damage inevitably breeds a couple more.
That's what revolts and revolutions ARE, really, a breakpoint of Darkhearted going for the throat and the rest of the people deciding to roll with it, the social dynamics of concentrated power make it effectively a ponzi scheme which also creates its own opposition by the actions it MUST take to concentrate that power.
Matter. Of. Time.
And the bright spot to it is that humanity is actually getting BETTER at solving social issues with less or even no violence, but I don't think we're quite there just yet, nope.
-Frem
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Frem
While most are born with empathy, we also do a good job learning to not have it. People readily learn 'us' and 'them' - it may even be inbuilt into us as a social species, where in evolutionary terms, it was far better to stay on good terms with your us group than that other them group out there.
Also, people learn an awful lot of their 'reality' through what they're taught. And the rich/ powerful do set the rules for what people think. Can you imagine a Mayan priest saying - naw, I really don't have any power about whether the sun will return from under the earth. So, no need to sacrifice tens of thousands. Of course not. He's going to tell everyone how powerful and important he is so that they'll do what he says. The same is true of a minister, or a corporate head. OF COURSE they'll tell everyone that their system is the one and only system to follow. And depending on how much influence they have, they'll reach that many people, that consistently, for that long. And having been taught that, that is what a lot of people will accept as being just as natural and out of human control as gravity.
I don't think the answer is to change people, b/c they'll learn from whatever system they live in, and if you have powerful people, those powerful people will form the system to their own benefit over time.
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