On 07 Nov 2013, at 07:28, Chris de Morsella wrote:
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 9:58 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Our Demon-Haunted World
On 7 November 2013 17:11, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 11/6/2013 7:44 PM, LizR wrote:
On 7 November 2013 16:39, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 11/6/2013 6:32 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote:
The problem of any system ever devised is that eventually it will
become corrupted – through one path or another corruption will
become endemic and increasingly it will parasitize the system until
eventually the empty husk of the hollowed out society collapses as
all the illusions and Ponzi schemes become marked to market and no
one is buying into it any longer.
Systems are human creations and suffer from all the pitfalls and
blindness characteristic of our species. A system organized around a
Party or a Church will end up creating the same social structure of
a corrupt class of successful crime families becoming entrenched at
the vertices.
In Roma there is a saying that translated more or less: “The first
generation are bandits; the second generation are bankers; the third
generation are politicians; and by the fourth generation a Pope.” Or
the Anglo saying “Behind every great fortune there is a great crime”
I think it is important to look at how even a system dedicated to
the principle of wiping out class has invariably spawned various
nationalistic red bourgeoisies (the Radish communists – red on the
outside white on the inside) Look at the princelings in the PRC; or
the weird family dynasty in the PRK… or the Stalinist bourgeoisie of
the former USSR. Or conversely how a system purporting to be based
on the teachings of Jesus Christ resulted in the sordid history of
the Papacy.
It does not matter much what the superficial forms of a system are,
if the end outcome is invariably the same – that is the society
becomes dominated by a small entrenched elite that enjoys
disproportionate benefits and is concerned only with its own self-
serving interests.
You keep making these arguments that everything must necessarily get
worse, every human institution must become an oppressive force run
by an oppressive elite for pure selfishness. This is like the
argument Boltzmann initially made that entropy must always, and has
always increased. To which the response was, "Then why is entropy
not maximum and the world not pure chaos? Why is there abundant and
complex life?" Maybe when you ask yourself that question your posts
will become more than simple rants and counsels of despair.
Well, civilisations have fallen with boring regularity throughout
history - and generally when they fell, they had an entrenched elite
telling the populace that everything was hunky dory.
At least if one can believe Jared Diamond, Ronald Wright et al.
You miss my point. If you fall you must first get up. All I see
from Chris is down, down, down. Down is inevitable. Corruption is
inevitable. Oppression is inevitable. Do you see no problem with
this picture?
Well read like that, yes. My point was that what we have tended to
do historically was rise and fall, and rise again -- but now we may
have got "too big to fail" - which is a problem when we still have
the same old types of people in charge, leading us towards the usual
systems failure that has beset earlier civilisations. We urgently
need to "jump out of the system" and find a system that isn't doomed
to fail.
My fear as well – we have made the perfect storm for ourselves,
because we have in so many ways been so very successful, but in
other ways of critical importance we have – as a species (not as
individuals) – a distinct absence of any wisdom. We are doomed by
our short term thinking.
The actual problem is that if someone practice long term thinking, he
get all the corporatist reactions against him/her. Not just in politics.
We are at the time of the many non-transparent associations, which
cultivates the short term thinking, and ignore ... thinking.
Bruno
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