A TV discussion counter-posed violent mankind with peaceful civilization, making this seem like an irreconcilable antithesis. However, it was mankind that built civilization and it is civilization that contains the seeds of its own conflicts. We have to criticize the specific ways in which our own societies are organized, not just blame humanity as a whole. If we can recognize potential peace in mankind as well as causes of conflict in our own civilization, not just in those of our "enemies," then we might work towards a resolution. Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic Institute does address sanity on both the individual and the social levels but is overwhelmed by massive socioeconomic changes. However, psychotechnic science survives and succeeds later in this future history. Poul Anderson is the only sf writer among whose works it is possible to compare several alternative future histories.
15 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And "peace" in this world will be possible only because of the existence of the State, in whatever form. That institution with a monopoly of the means of violence.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
No. There can be conditions in which there are no longer any means of coercion. Primitive people killed each other because they fought for food. That can be made unnecessary. So can every other cause of conflict. When public representatives are elected, accountable and recallable and no longer command bodies of armed men trained to obey orders, then there will be no State. There will certainly be social organization to address any problems that arise but we will no longer be under the supervision of a full-time police force or army.
Paul.
Paul: no, primitive people fought over a lot of things, not simply (or usually, for that matter) food.
Hunter-gatherers were usually well-fed -- that's why they were so much taller than the succeeding farmers. Farmers are more numerous than hunter-gatherers and breed faster, but they're also considerably less well-nourished and more prone to famines.
The proximate cause of most killing at that stage is the abduction of females, in fact, followed by territorial clashes and tit-for-tat blood-feuds.
Only the threat of violence by the State ends this sort of clashing and feuding.
It's the default state of human beings, and whenever a State collapses, it starts up again.
But abduction of females also becomes redundant in civilized societies. I certainly do not want States to collapse but I think that we can need them less and less and then not at all.
Kaor, Paul!
How many times do we have to tell you? People don't need to be starving to quarrel and fight, anything can and will do to start fights!
And I don't one bit in stuff like "recalling" of politicians. The Democrats used to yowl a lot for that kind of junk in the US. Guess who fought hardest to oppose recalls when they were tried? Drum roll: the Democrats!
Incorrect, without the State people will fight, quarrel, and kill each other. The horror story called Haiti is what happens when even a bad state fails to preserve some kind of order and collapses.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
How many times do I have to tell you that, as fighting for food can be made redundant, so can other causes of fighting? I mean a different kind of society, not a continued squabble between Republicans and Democrats. I do not mean the state failing or collapsing overnight. I mean the state becoming redundant when causes of conflict like vast imbalances of wealth no longer exist - when technologically produced wealth is abundant and equally shared.
Paul.
BTW, I know that there are problems with what I am saying! But I do not think that you are even addressing what I am saying. Especially not if Haiti, a bad state failing, is taken as an example of what civilized societies should be able to do with advanced technology in future.
Free enterprise and money will be redundant when it is no longer necessary to buy or sell anything. Supply and demand will not exist then any more than laws against speeding on motorways will exist when there are no longer any cars or motorways. Things that we take for granted exist only in certain conditions and the conditions change and can be changed. The only thing that is certain is that the way things are now is not the way they will always be. We do not have to restrict access to air now and we should not have to restrict access to anything in the future.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree with practically everything you wrote above, because your hopes are unrealistic and do not conform to how real people behave. Above all you cannot remove the interior flaws, propensities, drives, urges, etc., that makes humans so often quarrelsome and violent. So I don't believe in your "different" kind of society.
Nor do I believe in your "economics," which is sheer unrealism. All economies, to work, needs demand and supply for supplying the signals needed for producing goods and services. "Money" is just a convenient shorthand for that signaling. The mere fact all humans are different in talents, abilities, vices, virtues, circumstances of life, etc., inevitably means there will be "imbalances of wealth." And for someone to have great wealth is not a bad thing: it provides a source of capital for investing in new technology, inventions, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I disagree with everything that you have written. You completely fail to understand that the technological capacity to produce abundance changes everything. Either that capacity will continue to be used destructively as at present with fighter planes, nuclear stockpiles etc or it will be used to transform society in ways that would previously have been called "Utopian," just as our present everyday use of communications and transportation technology would have seemed magical or god-like to pre-industrial generations.
Human beings are not violent when there is no cause or reason for them to be violent. This is a matter of material and social conditions, not just of inner drives. We can have potential dispositions that are never actualized. There will be no imbalance of wealth when there is abundance for all. We need investment in new technology now but not in the future when there is self-reproducing and self-improving AI tech that can be used to enhance every human life. We will not need signals to produce goods and services when all physical needs are guaranteed and when human actions can be motivated by curiosity, creativity and community.
Paul.
Paul: no, abduction of females (sex-trafficking) still happens all the time.
Only vigorous police work keeps it under control. When state power is reduced it flares up again -- like feuding and bloody revenge.
I.W.H.B.D. -- It's What Human Beings Do, absent coercive control.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! Which is why I dismiss hopeless, dangerous, impossible Utopian fantasies.
Ad astra! Sean
Sex-trafficking happens now but need not happen in the saner society that we can build - which does not mean reducing state power and leaving everything else unchanged.
Kaor, Paul!
And I have zero belief in your unrealistic hopes.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But we can improve society. Most people in a civilized society never even think of trafficking in sex. The conditions that make sex trafficking unthinkable can be extended so that every single individual is born into and grows up in such a milieu.
Paul.
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