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Talkin' 'bout a Revolution
Jul. 11th, 2009 10:44 amA little while ago, I had one of my longest running questions answered, pretty convincingly. Since I was a kid, I knew myself to be a rebel, problems with authority, the whole nine yards. And I was never really sure where this tendency might take me in my future career path.
Some time later, I found myself annoyed with the United States Government, and it never occurred to me to wonder exactly how deep that annoyance might run.
The unasked question was this: given the power to do so, would I be seriously interested in overthrowing the government of the place I live, and building something different?
When it finally occurred to me to ask this out loud to myself, the answer became self evident. To justify that much design and engineering hassle (never mind the necessary homicide) I would need to invent something better than what is: so much better that the ends would justify the means. And while I think I'm pretty damn smart, I haven't thought of anything *that* good yet. I kind of doubt I ever will.
This doesn't mean I ever intend to be a fully law abiding citizen (whatever that means. I suspect it means a political eunuch.) There's a considerable difference, though, between deliberately breaking the rules, and denying the authority of an institution to make those rules. When Socrates swallowed that hemlock, he was telling us that the state's authority was the same as the state's existence. If his own continued existence was to be at the expense of the state's authority, then he would choose the state's existence over his own.
(any state asserting that its own existence is synonymous with its own authority is certainly in trouble, but that's not the most interesting struggle to me right now.)
I want the same thing for the state that I would want for myself: constructive resistance.
With that distraction out of the way, I've still got a great deal of attention for changing things. My definition of a successful revolution, is a change in the way political power is used on the ground. The Big Three nightmares that keep me up at night, all were successful in their own way, they ultimately changed the way power was used. But the Bolsheviks, French, and Chinese all payed such a high price on the ground, I would have had to ask myself, how much is this change worth in human lives?
The industrial revolution is more the kind of change I'm thinking of. Actually, I don't think it really ended with the War between the States, I think we're still experiencing it.
Feh. My mind wants to go a dozen different directions at once, so I need to cut this short. The specific change in the way I think power wants to be used, has one defining characteristic. As long as news traveled more slowly than bullies, violence has been a force multiplier. In a well-wired world, violence is a force reducer. Anyone who can come up with a less violent way of meeting human needs, (all else being equal) is going to have an advantage over the more violent solution.
Of course all else is never equal, and you need to define human needs and violence before this idea can find any traction. But I think it gives people a lot more room for self expression than the paradigm we've lived with for so long.
Some time later, I found myself annoyed with the United States Government, and it never occurred to me to wonder exactly how deep that annoyance might run.
The unasked question was this: given the power to do so, would I be seriously interested in overthrowing the government of the place I live, and building something different?
When it finally occurred to me to ask this out loud to myself, the answer became self evident. To justify that much design and engineering hassle (never mind the necessary homicide) I would need to invent something better than what is: so much better that the ends would justify the means. And while I think I'm pretty damn smart, I haven't thought of anything *that* good yet. I kind of doubt I ever will.
This doesn't mean I ever intend to be a fully law abiding citizen (whatever that means. I suspect it means a political eunuch.) There's a considerable difference, though, between deliberately breaking the rules, and denying the authority of an institution to make those rules. When Socrates swallowed that hemlock, he was telling us that the state's authority was the same as the state's existence. If his own continued existence was to be at the expense of the state's authority, then he would choose the state's existence over his own.
(any state asserting that its own existence is synonymous with its own authority is certainly in trouble, but that's not the most interesting struggle to me right now.)
I want the same thing for the state that I would want for myself: constructive resistance.
With that distraction out of the way, I've still got a great deal of attention for changing things. My definition of a successful revolution, is a change in the way political power is used on the ground. The Big Three nightmares that keep me up at night, all were successful in their own way, they ultimately changed the way power was used. But the Bolsheviks, French, and Chinese all payed such a high price on the ground, I would have had to ask myself, how much is this change worth in human lives?
The industrial revolution is more the kind of change I'm thinking of. Actually, I don't think it really ended with the War between the States, I think we're still experiencing it.
Feh. My mind wants to go a dozen different directions at once, so I need to cut this short. The specific change in the way I think power wants to be used, has one defining characteristic. As long as news traveled more slowly than bullies, violence has been a force multiplier. In a well-wired world, violence is a force reducer. Anyone who can come up with a less violent way of meeting human needs, (all else being equal) is going to have an advantage over the more violent solution.
Of course all else is never equal, and you need to define human needs and violence before this idea can find any traction. But I think it gives people a lot more room for self expression than the paradigm we've lived with for so long.
