I will explain further what I mean about social components with a
metaphor: baking a cake. Now I am not a cook, so I may get some details
wrong, but I used to watch my grandmother and mother do it, so I have
some idea about how it is done. There are several ingredients: flour,
eggs, sugar, flavoring, coloring, spices, baking soda (which works like
yeast in making bread), etc. You have to put these ingredients together
in a certain order, and blend them in a certain way, and wait a certain
amount of time (for rising), and put it in the right kind of pan, and
glaze it with something like sugar to retain the moisture, and heat it
to certain temperatures for certain periods of time. All of this has to
be done just right, or the result will be a disaster.
Societies are like a cake. Can't make them of only one ingredient, or in
one simple step. A touch of love. Some education. The right amount of
the right kind of discipline. An external threat, perhaps. Cultivation
of a sense of duty. Just the right measure of some penalties (coercion).
If you do enough of the right things in the right order for almost
everyone, you will get an overwhelming majority who live in harmony, and
who internalize their sense of duty as a bonding experience they come to
experience as love. But you need a measure of coercion in there to get
things started, to "prime the pump" as it were. You keep the threat of
coercion in the background to reinforce the common sense of duty,
because humans are funny about abandoning their duty or even their love
if anyone is allowed to "get away" without doing his part. That is why
the IRS can enforce unconstitutional tax rules. Even jurors who know the
rules are unlawful may still convict someone for failing to file and pay
his "taxes" because it is perceived as "getting away" with doing what
they were all required to do, even if they only yielded to unlawful
coercion in doing. It's a herd thing. No coercion in the background,
even if it is almost never applied, and the whole thing can fall apart.
So don't think in simple Pavlovian terms of direct, active coercion. In
a real society it is much more complicated than that. A touch of
coercion, properly applied, neither too much nor too little, can drive
the process by which people acquire a sense of duty, then internalize
that sense into bonding that comes to be experienced as love.
And all that also serves to encourage people to be just to one another,
to discourage violations of rights, and thereby reduce the need for
courts to intervene, and if they do, to make them more efficient, and
their decisions more accepted. Dysfunctional justice systems are a
symptom of dysfunctional societies, and there may be no way to fix the
justice systems without fixing the society. On the other hand, feedback
being what it is, there may be no way to fix the societies without
fixing their justice systems. A complete repair will therefore involve
fixing both in tandem.
Terry L Parker wrote:
>Jon, if you don't think that there's enough love manifesting
>in the world, stop re-defining opportunities for its expression
>as 'duties' :)
>
>Despite my being born and bred in NEW YORK CITY ('git a rope')
>I have a lot more faith in people's 'love' capacity then you
>apparently. You went back DECADES to find that one example
>of not enought love in my home town (NYC). You ignored the
>day in day out counter examples. Most will never be 'famous'
>but some are: Bernard Getz being one. Remember, the subway
>guy with a gun who 'terrorized' thugs.
>
>Of cours the fear driven statists in my home town of NYC came
>down on him very hard; remember?
>
>A common feeling when pan-handled by strangers on the street
>in NYC is that one has already given enough through the power
>of govt coerced obligation. That belief that 'people are no
>damn good' so us elites will have to physically force them to
>'do right' Even sounds pathetic when ya say it that way. :(
>
>Coercing obligatory acts that should have been the province of
>IDEALISTIC 'love' (not just personal sentimentality) are
>destructive to society. Driven by, imo, exagerated fear that
>'people are no damn good' a policy of employing govt to force
>what should have been done out of genuine caring, DISPLACES
>the responses of natural caring. (btw,same arguments are made
>regarding other things 'wanted' as 'rights')
>
>But, despite this destructive influence via coerced caring,
>during 911 the were MANY 'above and beyond duty' responses by
>New Yorkers; even to the point of death (included a libertarian
>hero too) There are more examples but I'm not sure that you
>and I can agree about current human nature, Jon.
>
>I will say this, you and I 'love' the best of American ideals
>and no one could make us do the stuff that we do already :)
>
>
>-Terry Liberty Parker
>
>'Real world' experiment in LIBERTARIAN community became famous
>at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LibertyProspects/message/2569
>
>'Real World' experiment in LIBERTARIAN nation building
>at http://www.constitution.org
>
>
>
>
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