Re-engineering society.

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

[Pebble]

[The Dharma Bum]

Really, the only use for coercion is to violate axiom number one: "I. Every person born on Earth is an equal co-heir of the commonwealth of Earth"

If one does not agree with this truth, then coercion, and trickery, is going to be necessary to keep the great mass of people from your throat. Which of course is exactly why you are saying what you are saying is necessary. But you aren't really thinking this through. It is only necessary to maintain the existing power structure, which is quite far from meeting the requirements of even being a viable society (completely non-sustainable model), much less the only possible viable society.

If you don't own a sizable interest in the productive capacity of society (ie one of the 1%) and support this power structure you've quite simply not awakened to the fact that your own interests are to be negated and replaced with interests of those that control society.

Coercion, and trickery, is necessary to maintain industrial capitalism, but that is it. It's inimical to a free society.

Humanity has been in the process of re-engineering society for the last few centuries, we call the beginning of this process the "Enlightenment". What I am saying is that humanity has yet to reach the top of the mountain, and are currently backsliding.

Let's stop the regression into a tyrannical model and go for the higher ground. That's my basic message.

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

[spacemonkey]

[Pebble]

[The Dharma Bum]

I understand that you believe coercion is necessary for a "free" society. But you haven't said why this would happen. You have to prove your point. .

You mention reducing conflict, but coercion does not do that at all. Coercion is conflict in itself. It creates a conflict between the individual and the rest of society. Which explains the highest rate of incarceration in the US, a supposedly free country. The effort to coerce US citizens into clean living has created a violent mess that has caused the deaths of 10,000s of people. So, as is is readily observable, coercion does not have the effect you claim it does at all. It clearly has the opposite effect in some very high profile examples that can be shown.

Your problem is that you make the incorrect assumption our society functions properly, and then you use that as your context by which to judge. The fact is our society is dysfunctional. It's not orderly and it creates misery for most of the people on the planet. If you want an accurate measure you need to take the objective facts into consideration and not just how you feel about things.

Think of society in terms of how you relate to your family. Do you hit your wife if she doesn't do what you would like her to do? Do you force her to do things? Or do you sit down like adults and come to a rational decision? If you can't convince her to do something it's probably not something you should be doing in the first place.

Clearly coercion would not create order in the way you think it will in social groups. It has the opposite effect, which my examples show.

[spacemonkey]

Some groups are just better at working things out then others. Alot of countries pre date America by a long way, but have remained basically static in leader citizen relationship. America is like a great human experiment to include all who want it and puts human rights and freedoms at the pinnacle. That led to top dog status fairly quickly, and we did have our bumps along the way. However in recent years those rights seem to have been under fire. and the great experiment continues. If it fails, its because we made it fail, If it suceeds its because we made it suceed. But one thing remains fairly constant. The hairless apes that wind up in positions of power by whatever means, always seem to suffer from dilusions of Godhood eventually. Hairless apes do not do well as God.