All social systems are based upon mass adoption, and later the illusion of their universality. The law is enforced because people enforce it because otherwise the law will be enforced against them because otherwise the law will be enforced against them because... and so on. If you're like me, if you understand where I'm coming from, you see that all of the mechanisms of power we interact with on a daily basis are entirely removed from reality. They exist just because. We must trust information from detached sources that we can't be sure are telling the truth. We do our part to keep this machine going because we are afraid, and every single other person that keeps it going is doing it for the same reason. All of us are afraid because of what the other people upholding it will do. Social systems thus become disembodied. Kafka was prescient in this matter. In a way, we are now controlled by ideas themselves. Things we cannot begin to understand are essentially destroying the world in something out of an existentially bleak story Lovecraft himself would have paled at. Hannah Arendt famously studied the banality of evil, and Foucault the nature of institutions of power. Their views, put together, paint an image of a world where unimaginable suffering can be inflicted by one man upon another just because. And we aren't in control of this. We can't control these things we've created. They're beyond us now. I have difficulty communicating this point due to how abstract it is, and I don't really have a point. I just want to put this out there. There's something deeply and fundamentally hellish about the world that I cannot put into words and I so desperately want to make other people see it.
As someone who has observed anarchy up close and personal. I see no viable alternative to the rule of law. If you see a better way I would be interested to hear you out. Define "mechanisms of power". Explain what you mean by "entirely removed from reality". " We are the social system. As herd animals we exist in society and any small group becomes a society by pursuing a common cause. We all have our choices. We can fold up in the corner, we can follow the stream and become part of the problem or we can stand up and be part of the solution. Every time one person stands up for the good, regardless of the outcome, that echoes far beyond that moment. We affect the choices of others. If each of us does our best within our current circumstances. The stream shifts, ever so slowly. You see hell. I see opportunity for good. In Chinese the word for "risk" and "opportunity" are the same word. I think they have it right. I choose opportunity.
I'm not even trying to define an alternative. I'm trying to express the invisible totalitarianism that has ensnared us. The systems by which force is imposed upon people with the implicit cooperation of mass amounts of people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation This explains it far better than I could. What I'm trying to articulate is that society has become inhuman and dehumanizing. The humans that make it up have become irrelevant. Deception is far more than telling an untruth. The highest form of deception is preventing people from even asking. Look deep into lies. The limited hang-out. Propaganda techniques. Etc. You'll realize how trivial it would be for powerful people and institutions to control said shifting with little to no effort. And we'd never know. Our subjectivities belong to the powers that be. Our very minds are controlled, not by a conspiracy, not through technology, but by dumb information. A virus does not know what havoc it wreaks, it simply exists and destroys. Similarly, we are brainwashed by self-sustaining ideas for no reason other than that they perpetuate themselves that way. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I see something far bleaker. Less Illiminatus and more The Trial.
I understand that a race of space aliens who are reptilian control all the governments of the world ..... it must be true I saw it on the internets and it was confirmed on late night radio and The Radio does not lie so it must be true ...
You guys are aware that social systems is completely different then a political ideology I hope. Although this thread did make me laugh pretty hard. Any society and even down to small groups, no matter what their politics, are comprised of social systems.
Well that's dark. Further, that is not the basis of American Constitutional Liberalism and the recognition of our fundamental human rights: Justice is respect for the rights of individuals and associations. (1) The right of several property specifies a right to acquire, possess, use, and dispose of scarce physical resources— including their own bodies. Resources may be used in any way that does not physically interfere with other persons’ use and enjoyment of their resources. While most property rights are freely alienable, the right to one’s person is inalienable. (2) The right of first possession specifies that property rights to unowned resources are acquired by being the first to establish control over them and to stake a claim. (3) The right of freedom of contract specifies that a rightholder’s consent is both necessary (freedom from contract) and sufficient (freedom to contract) to transfer alienable property rights— both during one’s life and, by using a “will,” upon one’s death. A manifestation of assent is ordinarily necessary unless one party somehow has access to the other’s subjective intent. (4) Violating these rights by force or fraud is unjust. Barnett, Randy E. (2014-06-02). The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (p. 205). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
The literary reference I see is Nausea. You've got a severe case of existential angst, inevitable in a sensitive and intelligent soul who espouses the philosophies you do. There is a remedy, and you may want to read up on Sartre's later life. --------------- You write "society has become inhuman ..." When was it different? For what are you nostalgic?
Perhaps you have trapped yourself in your own existential notion of "evil," which you have derived from your observations of the world and those of particular thinkers?
Enjoy the feeling of starving to death, of sackcloth scraping your body and the vermin gnawing in your hair as you scratch out notes on the walls of your inhumanly cold and damp cell ... erm wait that would be the socialist reality... In the capitalist one, rife with all the terrible institutions you decry, type out banal complaints here on an inexpensive miracle machine while living in a comfortable space, well-fed, clothed, and waiting to see what "insufferable horrors" the rest of your 79 year lifespan will bring. Who knows, a TV show you like may get cancelled... <shudder> Yawn.
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the will to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Hope that helps.
The problem with this attitude is that we decided [during the evolution of democracies] to delegate to an abstract system the government of ourselves. It's like about math: we have created an abstraction to describe reality [numbers in nature aren't, they exist in our brain, or in the brain of enough intelligent species, enough intelligent to be able and to find it useful to count]. In the case of politics, we have created an abstraction to manage the "public thing". The starting point for this is that if this "thing" is public, it belongs to all and to no one, in the same time. Since no one can say "the state is mine!" [that would be a dictatorship]. Now, once we understand that historically we decided to create an abstraction, we can avoid to be astonished by realizing that what governs us is an abstraction [we created it so!]. And if we keep this in mind ... we can control it. It's not true we cannot control the abstraction we created. Think to what's going on in EU: next June UK citizens will vote a referendum to remain in EU or to leave it. This has become necessary because [yes, because, all happens because something ... you know cause - effect process. We cannot avoid this, it's natural, it's reality] UK public opinion has made such a pressure on the government at London about how oppressive and pervasive EU is that ... may be it's time for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to abandon that abstraction called "European Union". Probably not understanding the mechanism of these abstractions, someone can feel to be excluded, finding preferable a different abstraction ... why not? In democracy we can change ...
It sounds like you've worked yourself up into some delusion that the world is evil. That's your choice, and you have made it your reality, but it's not reality for others who have a different perspective about life.
