- 01 Jan 2013 18:54
#14139917
Government is unjust by its very nature. The presidents who are most admired tend to be the biggest killers. The bigger the war, the bigger the casualties. Roosevelt won more electoral victories than anyone at his level, but he was also an extreme authoritarian (he surely ranks with the great killers of all history, as well). His propaganda posters look just like Hitler's: The everyman worker, anvil in hand of course, staring off with a stern expression, as if captivated by the sheer magnitude of his next prospective rape-of-nature (a more abstract style seems typical for such posters, because individual features are suppressed in the abstract style, and that makes it easier to identify with the ever-suffering and always-triumphant hero).
On the other hand, Roosevelt was giving the people what they want. What's wrong with that?
I have a theory. All of the order and government in society could dissolve in a single day, in a single second, if people spontaneously decided to withhold their consent. The entire structure is supported by consent on every level, and if that dissolved, the entire house of cards would come down.
The process would not be painless. These are not cards collapsing harmlessly onto a table. There will be many mangled corpses left in the wreckage of this admittedly unjust structure, once it is destroyed. Is it worth the casualties, in order to destroy it?
It may very well be, but then there is the question of what kind of society you expect to rise from the rubble. As man begins to rebuild in the ashes, the question of government will come up before too long. A very small community can manage its own affairs through direct democracy. But once your community grows beyond the size of a modest village, there will be a natural tendency, almost an instinct, to elect representatives to manage the broader aspects of civic affairs (waste management, drinking water, military defense, etc.).
The more I think about, even drug-addled and starvation-prone primitives have their representatives. The process of election may be radically different. They may pound a sack of mushrooms, and then in some nonsensical and hallucinatory process, decide on their next chief or shaman or whatever they call him. None the less, he is a representative of the community, and the ghosts and gods which he summons in order to accomplish his ends are also representatives of the community, in terms of symbolism or poetry, anyway (what else is mythology and religion?).
I would rather have elections in the modern style. If we reduce everything to ashes, then the survivors will still elect representatives, but they will preform the election according to a primitive and backward procedure. You cannot eradicate man's desire to order the affairs of his community through representatives, unless you would prefer to live under something even more primitive than the Iroquois confederacy. I like air-conditioning too much!
In the absence of any other process, we might as well stick with representative democracy. Counting votes may be imperfect, but it is better than pounding shrooms and throwing I-Ching sticks, or any other proposal I have heard.
When our society finally collapses, the CHUD's who crawl out of the rubble will still elect representatives, unless they are so shattered that they devolve into another species, incapable of using the powers of speech to order their communal affairs. But, if they survive as people, they will continue to elect their representatives, only now the method of election will be even more primitive and random. Shouldn't we stick with what we have?
On the other hand, Roosevelt was giving the people what they want. What's wrong with that?
I have a theory. All of the order and government in society could dissolve in a single day, in a single second, if people spontaneously decided to withhold their consent. The entire structure is supported by consent on every level, and if that dissolved, the entire house of cards would come down.
The process would not be painless. These are not cards collapsing harmlessly onto a table. There will be many mangled corpses left in the wreckage of this admittedly unjust structure, once it is destroyed. Is it worth the casualties, in order to destroy it?
It may very well be, but then there is the question of what kind of society you expect to rise from the rubble. As man begins to rebuild in the ashes, the question of government will come up before too long. A very small community can manage its own affairs through direct democracy. But once your community grows beyond the size of a modest village, there will be a natural tendency, almost an instinct, to elect representatives to manage the broader aspects of civic affairs (waste management, drinking water, military defense, etc.).
The more I think about, even drug-addled and starvation-prone primitives have their representatives. The process of election may be radically different. They may pound a sack of mushrooms, and then in some nonsensical and hallucinatory process, decide on their next chief or shaman or whatever they call him. None the less, he is a representative of the community, and the ghosts and gods which he summons in order to accomplish his ends are also representatives of the community, in terms of symbolism or poetry, anyway (what else is mythology and religion?).
I would rather have elections in the modern style. If we reduce everything to ashes, then the survivors will still elect representatives, but they will preform the election according to a primitive and backward procedure. You cannot eradicate man's desire to order the affairs of his community through representatives, unless you would prefer to live under something even more primitive than the Iroquois confederacy. I like air-conditioning too much!
In the absence of any other process, we might as well stick with representative democracy. Counting votes may be imperfect, but it is better than pounding shrooms and throwing I-Ching sticks, or any other proposal I have heard.
When our society finally collapses, the CHUD's who crawl out of the rubble will still elect representatives, unless they are so shattered that they devolve into another species, incapable of using the powers of speech to order their communal affairs. But, if they survive as people, they will continue to elect their representatives, only now the method of election will be even more primitive and random. Shouldn't we stick with what we have?