“my, my! humans! so aggressive.”
rape, murder, nukes, war, torture, power, seemingly unlimited greed…
why don’t i have that insatiable drive?
can’t all be how i was raised, can it?
do you know of any studies or philosophical insights?
thx! 🙂
“my, my! humans! so aggressive.”
rape, murder, nukes, war, torture, power, seemingly unlimited greed…
why don’t i have that insatiable drive?
can’t all be how i was raised, can it?
do you know of any studies or philosophical insights?
thx! 🙂
I did not mean to imply that “if we just got the right people in power, everything would be okay”, we need checks and balances, and we need to strengthen our democracy by making sure to have an educated, politically engaged population, and reform the democratic system to become a full democracy to prevent the abuse of power.
As for ambition not being binary, I agree with that as well, however, I think most people’s desire for power is dependent on their material conditions and social well being.
I do generally agree with your point that we should get rid of the unequal structures of power, just that your 95% assessment seems unrealistically high.
All of the things you suggest (checks and balances, strong education, democratic reform) have consistently been weakened rather than strengthened - this is because they would negatively impact those in power, and those in power make the decisions about implementing those things.
In addition, they would help, but not nearly enough. Checks and balances are a temporary improvement but eventually become captured and consolidated by the power they’re checking/balancing. Education helps people to understand how these systems are abusive, but can be countered by propaganda and misinformation - no one is immune to psychological manipulation. And democratic reform again acts as a temporary improvement, but eventually, power is consolidated and the reforms are integrated.
Humans unfortunately are still quite instinctual creatures, we often don’t have an “off” switch that says “okay, we have enough material wealth / security now, we don’t need to hoard anymore!” because we’re kind of always inclined towards building up a stockpile for winter.
We need to accept the reality of our situation and dismantle power structures - this means the abolition of money, the police, prisons, private property ownership, etc. - this may sound far fetched, but it is the only way that we can have a world without abuses of power and exploitation. I completely believe that it’s possible and worth working towards achieving that goal.
I am aware that we are in democratic decline, one would need to be completely disconnected from reality to not realise that, which is why it is important to fight for it. But abolition of the police means there won’t be a way to enforce laws. The corrupt police force must be reformed, and bad cops fired or jailed. A lot of crimes can be prevented by improving people’s material conditions, and education, but there will still be crime and violence, and for that we still need some police force, though at a reduced capacity.
The police were founded in 1829. We managed without them just fine before they were founded and we will manage just fine after. I’d propose the creation of a voluntary group of people with no powers beyond that of any other person, but who take some time out of their day to keep watch and deal with any issues that crop up. The overwhelming majority of crime is caused by poverty as you rightly said so there’s likely very little that they would have to deal with.