On Medium: Democratizing Decadence: From Monarch to Liberated Everyman
Read on about whether democracy is wise or foolish in breaking nature's quarantine, by potentially corrupting us all with a king's power of sovereignty over ourselves.
''The idea was to overthrow inhumane monarchies and replace them with individualistic societies in which everyone would have the power of a king: we would have the right to rational self-determination and the freedom to do whatever we want if we don’t interfere with anyone else’s private kingdom. This is John Stuart Mill’s Harm principle, a cornerstone of classic liberalism.''
The power of a monarch cannot seem like this.
Unlimited power In relation to the other = / = Self-limited power.
''When the left-hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, you have a lack of coordination. Thus, animals typically have a single brain or control center, and this principle is extended to the social body.''
Your-example does not favor your argument in relation to the centralization of the power because the hierarchical nature of the human body is much more balanced than that of the politically centralized human society.
''That’s the essential meaning of “person”: we’re sovereigns, as in autonomous beings, capable of intelligently controlling our behavior by making wise, even idealistic choices; that’s largely how people differ from animals, we presume.''
''But neither can we argue with the predominant unintended effects; again, those are mass infantilization or decadence and the global destructiveness of the Anthropocene (overpopulation, global warming, and the sixth mass extinction).''
In fact, it is exactly the modern-liberation that has reduced the growth of the human population.
You are trying to make an association between social progress with the destruction of the natural-environments, since the crapitalism is the biggest responsible-for-the-late...
The essence of what you wrote is that:nothing works with harmony without balance. That is why I agree that (on avg) the individual's absolute liberation over everything that would fit him in evolutionary terms is wrong. However, even though female liberation has contributed to the fall in fertility rates, it is also true that most women in Europe at least would like to have an average of 2 children and that the increase in the cost of living in cities caused by endless greed of the capitalists is one of the strongest factors that prevent them from reaching that goal.
And you keep giging with naturalistic fallacy for sure.
I'm not sure you understand the main point of the article. The question is whether a liberated, democratic, capitalistic, and free-thinking society is wiser and more sustainable than an autocratic, conservative one. The suspicion is that evolution might effectively quarantine those who are naturally corrupted by their power, by confining them in dominance hierarchies to the minority at the top of the power pyramid. When everyone feels entitled to the power of a king, in a free, consumerist society, we unleash our selfish impulses, becoming infantilized and short-sighted so that in the long run, the inhuman social arrangement favored by conservatives might be more stable and conducive to life.
Yes, postindustrial, liberal societies decrease their populations by having fewer children, but overall the medical advances due to free-thinking societies has led to an unsustainable human population explosion.
Just look at when that population starts to grow. It starts in the 1700s and then spikes in the 1970s. The growth is due mainly to technological progress, which is the fruit of human liberation in political, economic, and cultural terms.
Demographic explosion happens when the mortality rates decreases significantly over fertility rates. You can't attribute to the demographic explosion in crapitalistic developed world what you call "human liberation" because women and other groups, and individual itself, just became more free from authoritarian conventionalism with cultural and judicial 60's revolutions. So from big part of demographic explosion period on developed world, "human liberation" has been mostly absent. It's historically innacurate blame it when british and german populations started to grew exponentially during the XIX century and this increase begun to slow exactly when at least, women, were relatively less harshly dominated by men (XX 20's to 50's period).
What you call human liberation seems a summarized and innacurate way to describe centuries of continuous worker exploitation and general opression against groups considered inferior and just very recently and not for overwhelming majority of people that the "technological progress" started to be democratically distributed and even with many regressions popping up everywhere. Maybe you are little bit more optimistic there while i'm not.
Yes, it's indeniable the improvement of standard living of most human beings but i'm not optimistic because lots of regressions have happened and caused not just by conservies, many of the worst has been commited and suppported by progs.
A free society cannot be capitalist. Or one or the other. Because social justice we have that liberation but capitalism is here and there. Capitalism is a liquid authoritarianism, because it is relatively indifferent to cultural issues, it seems not authoritarian as irreligious fundamentalism, but it is. Authoritarianism is any interpersonal relationship that is not based on true dialogue, concession or conciliation between the involved parts.
Free speech seems extremely vague. What it is?? My right to say anything i want?? And so what?? Of course, a very authoritarian society (or "elite") cannot tolerate "free" speech but it still look, among the freedoms, the least and the most important. The least important because it rarely change anything positively. The most important because it separate explicit from implicit authoritarian societies. We live in implicit authoritarian societies. The most important is not the right to say what you want but a society mostly based on facts or truths rather than superstitions and semantic maquinations. We are being persuaded that capitalism is the best system to generate wealth but it is the worst to distribute it equally.
I disagree with you that human liberation make people more sort sighted than what they already are since ever. Civilization that's make most people docil sort sighted serviles. The difference today from 100 years ago is that people in that time were inculcated to "care" about their families than for themselves BUT in that time your family specially if you are a procreator was an extension of yourself in front of social abroad circles. We can reduce most of human needs in complex society to our vanities.
Demographic explosion was not caused just by medical advancement due free thinking. It's more complex than that. I understood what you mean. Well, based on this perspective you highlighted i can agree but it's doesn't mean it's better and indeed, your thought that everyone is living like a king and queen is far from reality. It's exagerated. But again i can agree that majority of human beings can't deal better with enhanced autonomy. Every day it's a time for us to see why. The best answer is always the balance. Recover part of "conservative" way based on imposed limitations to combine with current "progressive" dominant thinking that just everyone is reasonable enough to know what is better for them. A new and ideal way would personalizing it rather than over collectivize abroad-social expectations.
You're talking about a lot of things that I don't think are so irrelevant. I agree that capitalism isn't purely liberational or beneficial. I've written several critical articles against orthodox economics and the free-market ideology. But compared to feudalism, capitalism was a challenge against the aristocrats on behalf of the lower-class merchants and of Everyman.
That's just a point about the theory of capitalism, not necessarily the application. Capitalism can be applied in a neofeudal, plutocratic way which brings back forms of oppression, wage slavery, and so on. The Industrial Revolution had kids working as slaves in factories, just as Third World societies today supply cheap labor.
But you've oversimplified the main point of my article. I don't say Everyman today has the power of a king or queen, except in the psychological sense that we've all become "individuals" or sovereigns over at least our inner territory, our minds. In that sense, we're free-thinkers or we have the right to free speech (and by "we" I'm talking about the members of developed and postindustrial societies).
The critical point, though, is that Enlightenment hubris compels us to think we all deserve to live like kings and queens. Thus, we strive to become wealthy. That's the main point of work for most people, assuming we don't have our ideal job: we work to improve our lot in life, to acquire as much stuff as we can. We think as materialistic consumers just as the kings and queens did, except on a limited scale since we're in competition with millions of others, whereas there were only so many sovereigns and kingdoms to contend with.
But it's that invention of human rights or humanistic pride that turns us into zealous, entitled consumers and that threatens the ecosystems because of overconsumption. Indirectly, this "progress" leads to population growth which started during the Enlightenment and which in turn damages the natural environment, as set out in David Attenborough's documentary which I discuss through the link below.
''The idea was to overthrow inhumane monarchies and replace them with individualistic societies in which everyone would have the power of a king: we would have the right to rational self-determination and the freedom to do whatever we want if we don’t interfere with anyone else’s private kingdom''
Right in one of the first sentences you already committed mistakes like this. What i said, the typical monarch behavior, preferentially male, has been individually tyrannical, nothing near to the best concept for freedom you placed there. So it's would be the best if everyone behave like that specially those on the power.
''But it's that invention of human rights or humanistic pride that turns us into zealous, entitled consumers and that threatens the ecosystems because of overconsumption.''
Brazilian mata atlântica was significantly destroyed by portuguese colonizers i mean during slavery period... You are trying to create a causality between the emergence of human rights and ecological destruction... why not capitalism?? Or the essence of conservatism, materialism??Also most of american green areas were destroyed way before the emergence of civil rights... I agree only that more people with reasonable consuming potential, bigger the product market but people are mostly obedient, they don't invent over creative production. Most of them just follow the wave conformity created by their masters.
What's the mistake I was supposed to have made about how modern society used kings as models of freedom? I didn't say that was my ideal or "idea." I said that was the modern idea of democracy, to give everyone the right to be free to pursue happiness, to live like a king (if they can come to afford it).
I criticize those modern conceptions in lots of articles. But while there are downsides of individualism, democracy, capitalism, and so on, they also have some advantages over medieval feudalism. It's not a black or white matter.
There are interesting thoughts which are not exactly true. That's one. It's not even close. Kings comparably have extremely luxuriant lifestyle starting from the fact they don't need to do anything relevant to be gratified they just need to be. I understood what you mean but it's not very similar. And modern society, specially in crapitalistic developed mostly western world, has been decided that the best way to multiply profit is treating middle and working classes (90% of population) little less horribly than in the early crapitalism. The way you write some of these thoughts look binnary and not a complex nuanced done. These sentences are saying for itselves. Human rights have nothing directly to do with environmental tragedy. I think i don't need reargue why. Crapitalism no has downside as modern democracy. The second is a very good option to build a society but only if human beings don't sucks miserably what they actually do. But capitalism is basically an idiocracy in which those who manage and controle society are basically composed by infantilized short termist selfish kind of human. It's essentially wrong. It's essentially anti philosophical because it's results inevitably in social parasitism.
''Science, INDUSTRY, CRAPITALISM, and democracy liberate everyone, not just the most powerful members, giving the majority the right to rule.''
ReplyDeleteWHAT
''The idea was to overthrow inhumane monarchies and replace them with individualistic societies in which everyone would have the power of a king: we would have the right to rational self-determination and the freedom to do whatever we want if we don’t interfere with anyone else’s private kingdom. This is John Stuart Mill’s Harm principle, a cornerstone of classic liberalism.''
ReplyDeleteThe power of a monarch cannot seem like this.
Unlimited power In relation to the other = / = Self-limited power.
''When the left-hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, you have a lack of coordination. Thus, animals typically have a single brain or control center, and this principle is extended to the social body.''
ReplyDeleteYour-example does not favor your argument in relation to the centralization of the power because the hierarchical nature of the human body is much more balanced than that of the politically centralized
human society.
''That’s the essential meaning of “person”: we’re sovereigns, as in autonomous beings, capable of intelligently controlling our behavior by making wise, even idealistic choices; that’s largely how people differ from animals, we presume.''
So most human beings are not full''persons''.
''But neither can we argue with the predominant unintended effects; again, those are mass infantilization or decadence and the global destructiveness of the Anthropocene (overpopulation, global warming, and the sixth mass extinction).''
ReplyDeleteIn fact, it is exactly the modern-liberation that has reduced the growth of the human population.
You are trying to make an association between social progress with the destruction of the natural-environments, since the crapitalism is the biggest responsible-for-the-late...
ReplyDeleteThe essence of what you wrote is that:nothing works with harmony without balance. That is why I agree that (on avg) the individual's absolute liberation over everything that would fit him in evolutionary terms is wrong. However, even though female liberation has contributed to the fall in fertility rates, it is also true that most women in Europe at least would like to have an average of 2 children and that the increase in the cost of living in cities caused by endless greed of the capitalists is one of the strongest factors that prevent them from reaching that goal.
ReplyDeleteAnd you keep giging with naturalistic fallacy for sure.
I'm not sure you understand the main point of the article. The question is whether a liberated, democratic, capitalistic, and free-thinking society is wiser and more sustainable than an autocratic, conservative one. The suspicion is that evolution might effectively quarantine those who are naturally corrupted by their power, by confining them in dominance hierarchies to the minority at the top of the power pyramid. When everyone feels entitled to the power of a king, in a free, consumerist society, we unleash our selfish impulses, becoming infantilized and short-sighted so that in the long run, the inhuman social arrangement favored by conservatives might be more stable and conducive to life.
DeleteYes, postindustrial, liberal societies decrease their populations by having fewer children, but overall the medical advances due to free-thinking societies has led to an unsustainable human population explosion.
Just look at when that population starts to grow. It starts in the 1700s and then spikes in the 1970s. The growth is due mainly to technological progress, which is the fruit of human liberation in political, economic, and cultural terms.
https://qz.com/1216675/much-of-the-modern-world-is-explained-by-one-population-spike/
Demographic explosion happens when the mortality rates decreases significantly over fertility rates. You can't attribute to the demographic explosion in crapitalistic developed world what you call "human liberation" because women and other groups, and individual itself, just became more free from authoritarian conventionalism with cultural and judicial 60's revolutions. So from big part of demographic explosion period on developed world, "human liberation" has been mostly absent. It's historically innacurate blame it when british and german populations started to grew exponentially during the XIX century and this increase begun to slow exactly when at least, women, were relatively less harshly dominated by men (XX 20's to 50's period).
DeleteWhat you call human liberation seems a summarized and innacurate way to describe centuries of continuous worker exploitation and general opression against groups considered inferior and just very recently and not for overwhelming majority of people that the "technological progress" started to be democratically distributed and even with many regressions popping up everywhere. Maybe you are little bit more optimistic there while i'm not.
DeleteYes, it's indeniable the improvement of standard living of most human beings but i'm not optimistic because lots of regressions have happened and caused not just by conservies, many of the worst has been commited and suppported by progs.
DeleteA free society cannot be capitalist. Or one or the other. Because social justice we have that liberation but capitalism is here and there. Capitalism is a liquid authoritarianism, because it is relatively indifferent to cultural issues, it seems not authoritarian as irreligious fundamentalism, but it is. Authoritarianism is any interpersonal relationship that is not based on true dialogue, concession or conciliation between the involved parts.
DeleteFree speech seems extremely vague. What it is?? My right to say anything i want?? And so what?? Of course, a very authoritarian society (or "elite") cannot tolerate "free" speech but it still look, among the freedoms, the least and the most important. The least important because it rarely change anything positively. The most important because it separate explicit from implicit authoritarian societies. We live in implicit authoritarian societies. The most important is not the right to say what you want but a society mostly based on facts or truths rather than superstitions and semantic maquinations. We are being persuaded that capitalism is the best system to generate wealth but it is the worst to distribute it equally.
I disagree with you that human liberation make people more sort sighted than what they already are since ever. Civilization that's make most people docil sort sighted serviles. The difference today from 100 years ago is that people in that time were inculcated to "care" about their families than for themselves BUT in that time your family specially if you are a procreator was an extension of yourself in front of social abroad circles. We can reduce most of human needs in complex society to our vanities.
Demographic explosion was not caused just by medical advancement due free thinking. It's more complex than that.
DeleteI understood what you mean. Well, based on this perspective you highlighted i can agree but it's doesn't mean it's better and indeed, your thought that everyone is living like a king and queen is far from reality. It's exagerated. But again i can agree that majority of human beings can't deal better with enhanced autonomy. Every day it's a time for us to see why. The best answer is always the balance. Recover part of "conservative" way based on imposed limitations to combine with current "progressive" dominant thinking that just everyone is reasonable enough to know what is better for them. A new and ideal way would personalizing it rather than over collectivize abroad-social expectations.
You're talking about a lot of things that I don't think are so irrelevant. I agree that capitalism isn't purely liberational or beneficial. I've written several critical articles against orthodox economics and the free-market ideology. But compared to feudalism, capitalism was a challenge against the aristocrats on behalf of the lower-class merchants and of Everyman.
DeleteThat's just a point about the theory of capitalism, not necessarily the application. Capitalism can be applied in a neofeudal, plutocratic way which brings back forms of oppression, wage slavery, and so on. The Industrial Revolution had kids working as slaves in factories, just as Third World societies today supply cheap labor.
But you've oversimplified the main point of my article. I don't say Everyman today has the power of a king or queen, except in the psychological sense that we've all become "individuals" or sovereigns over at least our inner territory, our minds. In that sense, we're free-thinkers or we have the right to free speech (and by "we" I'm talking about the members of developed and postindustrial societies).
The critical point, though, is that Enlightenment hubris compels us to think we all deserve to live like kings and queens. Thus, we strive to become wealthy. That's the main point of work for most people, assuming we don't have our ideal job: we work to improve our lot in life, to acquire as much stuff as we can. We think as materialistic consumers just as the kings and queens did, except on a limited scale since we're in competition with millions of others, whereas there were only so many sovereigns and kingdoms to contend with.
But it's that invention of human rights or humanistic pride that turns us into zealous, entitled consumers and that threatens the ecosystems because of overconsumption. Indirectly, this "progress" leads to population growth which started during the Enlightenment and which in turn damages the natural environment, as set out in David Attenborough's documentary which I discuss through the link below.
https://medium.com/the-apeiron-blog/hubris-and-alienation-the-roots-of-the-environmental-crisis-28c589ad00c9?sk=1a06b5b72ebd8df39ba91abe2fa3c401
''The idea was to overthrow inhumane monarchies and replace them with individualistic societies in which everyone would have the power of a king: we would have the right to rational self-determination and the freedom to do whatever we want if we don’t interfere with anyone else’s private kingdom''
DeleteRight in one of the first sentences you already committed mistakes like this. What i said, the typical monarch behavior, preferentially male, has been individually tyrannical, nothing near to the best concept for freedom you placed there. So it's would be the best if everyone behave like that specially those on the power.
''But it's that invention of human rights or humanistic pride that turns us into zealous, entitled consumers and that threatens the ecosystems because of overconsumption.''
DeleteBrazilian mata atlântica was significantly destroyed by portuguese colonizers i mean during slavery period... You are trying to create a causality between the emergence of human rights and ecological destruction... why not capitalism?? Or the essence of conservatism, materialism??Also most of american green areas were destroyed way before the emergence of civil rights... I agree only that more people with reasonable consuming potential, bigger the product market but people are mostly obedient, they don't invent over creative production. Most of them just follow the wave conformity created by their masters.
What's the mistake I was supposed to have made about how modern society used kings as models of freedom? I didn't say that was my ideal or "idea." I said that was the modern idea of democracy, to give everyone the right to be free to pursue happiness, to live like a king (if they can come to afford it).
DeleteI criticize those modern conceptions in lots of articles. But while there are downsides of individualism, democracy, capitalism, and so on, they also have some advantages over medieval feudalism. It's not a black or white matter.
There are interesting thoughts which are not exactly true. That's one. It's not even close. Kings comparably have extremely luxuriant lifestyle starting from the fact they don't need to do anything relevant to be gratified they just need to be. I understood what you mean but it's not very similar. And modern society, specially in crapitalistic developed mostly western world, has been decided that the best way to multiply profit is treating middle and working classes (90% of population) little less horribly than in the early crapitalism.
DeleteThe way you write some of these thoughts look binnary and not a complex nuanced done. These sentences are saying for itselves. Human rights have nothing directly to do with environmental tragedy. I think i don't need reargue why.
Crapitalism no has downside as modern democracy. The second is a very good option to build a society but only if human beings don't sucks miserably what they actually do. But capitalism is basically an idiocracy in which those who manage and controle society are basically composed by infantilized short termist selfish kind of human. It's essentially wrong. It's essentially anti philosophical because it's results inevitably in social parasitism.