I will take this opportunity to to try to express myself a bit more clearly. I don't really expect to convince anyone of anything, but rather I would like to reach the few people out their that do resonate with me and my words.
Government is superstition just the way Santa is a superstition. You can call it an inter-subjective entity, or egregore, but ultimately it's not more real than any other imagined concept. It is perhaps a useful mental model to apply labels and titles to groups of people, or certain concepts, but it is also valuable to realize these are labels and models.
A government, as far as I know does not exist, insofar as I cannot interact with it as a single entity, or see it. If you look at this from an esoteric perspective, perhaps nothing is real, or it's all consciousness, or a simulation, or vibration of energy, however that doesn't change my lived experience of what appears real now.
I take issue with collective thinking, labeling a group of people with an identity, and then acting as if this identity is real. I don't have any animosity towards any other man or woman living in a different "country". I doubt many people do, and yet under the superstition of collective thinking, many people go to war, fighting against a "them" that someone did us "wrong", because we've been told so, or believe in large geopolitical movements. If every single conscious entity took a step back, and only acted violently in self-defense, there would be no war. There would simply be no reason to do it.
There are numerous arguments against this, such as "there will always be 'bad' people, so we need gang up and make sure they don't do bad things", and soon enough, there will be a group of people, believing they are the only people who can legitimately use force and violence, because they are stopping the 'bad people'. If you look at a history book, you'll find more death and destruction because of "governments" by a very long shot, and very little due to the few "bad apples".
The "Common Good" is another fallacy that leads to much suffering. How do we define it? We can use numbers, and metrics and "happiness surveys", and try to use left brain thinking to optimize for it, but ultimately "good" is in they experience of the individual conscious entity experiencing it. Trying to define it mathematically is taking away the agency and life of those who experience it, reveals a certain hubris and elitism that certain "experts" know what is best for everyone, for the "common good".
A book I recommend for those interested in what I'm saying is "The Most Dangerous Superstition" by Larkin Rose.
If you think I'm wrong, please continue to do so. I am supportive! I don't intend or expect to reach you.
I only see atoms dancing around. That doesn't make it a useful abstraction at the scale we are discussing. Government is just an abstraction over a group of people self organizing.
> People feeling they have a right to use violence to achieve their goals, not so much.
Agreed, but government monopoly on violence is the only system that seems to have stuck. I would prefer a system of anarchy where everybody just did the right thing, but I haven't seen any evidence such a system lasts more than hours. Maybe we have to eradicate the cultural training and distrust we have already instilled into ourselves too. I've sat down and worked out the "root philosophy" of our political opinions with as many folks who will sit still for it, and this smells like the "Libertarian presumption that people, removed from the system of control, would all act better" and being in active denial that their planed solution for nonconformity they can't handle is "round up a posse and threaten/kill nonconformists".
Thing is, we are people. So the "people scale" is always going to be the most one relevant to us in terms of what governments do for / to us. The atom analogy doesn't hold here.
Replying to the lower comment by 'alehlopeh' since I don't think threaded replies go this far down.
Right now, I'm looking for people with "naive optimism" who would like to see this world. There are a few of us. I'll share concrete details with those folks.
Your rights are inherent to being a human being. You are endowed by your Creator with the inalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. A libertarian government would be one that enforces those rights.
Governments do not grant rights. They either enforce or abrogate them.
You're a right libertarian, no? Something worth bearing in mind, because a left-libertarian answer to many questions - especially those pertaining to property rights - is likely to be fundamentally different.
Libertarianism requires someone empowered to use force. The idea of multiple competing law enforcement apparatus within the same jurisdiction is not just theoretical wankery, either; it's actually been tried. Most notably in the Icelandic Commonwealth, which endured for 300 years.
> Libertarianism requires someone empowered to use force.
As I said.
> The idea of multiple competing law enforcement apparatus within the same jurisdiction is not just theoretical wankery, either; it's actually been tried. Most notably in the Icelandic Commonwealth, which endured for 300 years.
Libertarianism doesn't specify the form of government, just the role of government.
The path to such a future will either be paved with mass extermination to lower to population to remove scarcity or via surviving with government until scarcity is defeated and government can be safely dismantled.
I do agree that there is a root problem with any existing power structure not being truely incentivized to reduce scarcity and then loose power, but that doesn't make the thanos solution more ok.
What actions are you taking that could potentially cause billions of individuals to suddenly act as though the concept of scarcity doesn’t exist? If the only path forward you see is for every single human to start acting differently, then you don’t see any path forward.
People organizing and working together is great.
People feeling they have a right to use violence to achieve their goals, not so much.
Edit: https://xkcd.com/386/
I will take this opportunity to to try to express myself a bit more clearly. I don't really expect to convince anyone of anything, but rather I would like to reach the few people out their that do resonate with me and my words.
Government is superstition just the way Santa is a superstition. You can call it an inter-subjective entity, or egregore, but ultimately it's not more real than any other imagined concept. It is perhaps a useful mental model to apply labels and titles to groups of people, or certain concepts, but it is also valuable to realize these are labels and models.
A government, as far as I know does not exist, insofar as I cannot interact with it as a single entity, or see it. If you look at this from an esoteric perspective, perhaps nothing is real, or it's all consciousness, or a simulation, or vibration of energy, however that doesn't change my lived experience of what appears real now.
I take issue with collective thinking, labeling a group of people with an identity, and then acting as if this identity is real. I don't have any animosity towards any other man or woman living in a different "country". I doubt many people do, and yet under the superstition of collective thinking, many people go to war, fighting against a "them" that someone did us "wrong", because we've been told so, or believe in large geopolitical movements. If every single conscious entity took a step back, and only acted violently in self-defense, there would be no war. There would simply be no reason to do it.
There are numerous arguments against this, such as "there will always be 'bad' people, so we need gang up and make sure they don't do bad things", and soon enough, there will be a group of people, believing they are the only people who can legitimately use force and violence, because they are stopping the 'bad people'. If you look at a history book, you'll find more death and destruction because of "governments" by a very long shot, and very little due to the few "bad apples".
The "Common Good" is another fallacy that leads to much suffering. How do we define it? We can use numbers, and metrics and "happiness surveys", and try to use left brain thinking to optimize for it, but ultimately "good" is in they experience of the individual conscious entity experiencing it. Trying to define it mathematically is taking away the agency and life of those who experience it, reveals a certain hubris and elitism that certain "experts" know what is best for everyone, for the "common good".
A book I recommend for those interested in what I'm saying is "The Most Dangerous Superstition" by Larkin Rose.
If you think I'm wrong, please continue to do so. I am supportive! I don't intend or expect to reach you.