328
full egoism
(quokk.au)
Seize the Memes of Production
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the โMLโ influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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When the tools no longer need the monsters to operate them?
But the tools themselves make men into monsters. It's not that exceptional individuals rise to power; it's that only exceptional individuals can wield power for any significant amount of time without being corrupted by it.
Shit, I definitely wouldn't be able to be trusted with power. You know how quickly I'd set up the firing squads? A self-righteous know-it-all cunt like me? I despise authoritarianism, but I would bet you that I would find some twisted pretzel logic to justify it to myself. What happens if I lose the opportunity, after all? Will my enemies be so sparing with these tools? Can I keep my enemies from remaking them? Better to make an end of it while I can, to set things on a firm and defensible foundation for the years coming after me. If everything goes right, if everyone just goes along with my plan... the delusion of every True Believer who ends up in a position of effective autocracy in world history.
Once you have power, once you have opportunity, so precious and so easily squandered by hesitation, you justify anything to yourself to make the most of it while you can - whether in serve of selfish aims or ideological aims. Even the best men can be corrupted by it - it's essentially only a very few kinds of people, not necessarily good, who is not corrupted so. Even men who die with their karma balance books still positive are still often corrupted by power, just not so much that it blots out the good they do.
I wouldn't do any of that. I just need everyone to give me unlimited power with no takebacksies.
/s
Seriously though, this makes me think of Xunzi, Mencius, and their differing views of human nature. A short excerpt for the unfamiliar:
Xunzi thought it was the structures of authority that help make us from evil selfish people into a civil society. On the contrary, Mencius felt like it was society that corrupts our intrinsically good nature.
Where do you fall?
If I say 'neither', will I get called out for being roadkill? I'm more 'nurture' than 'nature' on what on a man is.
People generally pursue their own interests. Their interests include the welfare of others, and their own feelings wrt empathy and the like, not just traditionally 'selfish' interests. The purpose of government is to restrict that pursuit. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. Almost always it's contentious. As a non-anarchist, I feel very strongly that the restriction of that pursuit is especially historically, but still also contemporarily, a net good from a utilitarian and virtue ethics standpoint.
Without a means of imposing conflict resolution on parties which will not compromise to a satisfactory degree with one another, conflict intensifies and escalates. It's exactly this 'ungoverned' condition which leads to the rise of 'honor societies' wherein offenses must be met with irrational escalation, because rational escalation is, ironically, irrational in the face of an inability to guarantee retaliatory capacity.
No government thus makes men worse than their natures, I believe, precisely because we are rational and social animals. The rise of state societies is simply the rules-oriented application of tribal/familial governance to populations where unrelated individuals cannot avoid interacting. When a social unit exceeds the amount in which stable groups of related elders have enough influence to create consensus, strict tribal/familial governance is no longer possible.
Bad government also makes men worse than their natures. The worst governments, arguably, can be worse than even the most chaotic absence of governance, because it has much more room to 'cultivate' specific flaws, like servility or bigotry.
I mean, I was thinking specifically about literal war machines and those getting automated by AI, not so much power being a corrupting force (which it very much is. The saying is true; "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."). ๐
As an anarchist, I am already against anyone having any power over others, period, because it will almost certainly lead to corruption.
The issue is that everyone has power over others. A man who farms has power over a man who doesn't. A charismatic extrovert has power over the friendless introvert. A man who knows a secret has power over a man who is unaware.
And that to assert that no one should have any power over others, ironically, strips one of the ability to ensure that no one has power over others. Even anarchist polities require people to be able to enforce rules on others; the institutional structures are simply weakened to create fluidity of power and, ideally, thus prevent its abuse.
All systems are compromises between constructing something with the power to achieve its goals (such as preventing the rise of traditional states, for example) and restraining it's own capabilities to prevent it from turning into something else (... like a traditional state. For example.)