Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the fatal flaw in all systems of human collaboration is our flawed nature. This applies to political, economic, and social systems. While our flawed nature is destructive of humanity, it’s not our fault that we have it. We are the product of millions of years of survival by tooth and nail. A paradigm where one only need to outrun the next guy to avoid being a meal. The result is we have an innate survival instinct that served us in caveman days, but is ill suited for us now. We don’t live by tooth and claw anymore. We live by intellect, social ability, and skills. In our paradigm, that egotistic feature instilled in us by nature damages our prosperity, health, and relationships. Many simply can’t help themselves. This shows us that controlling our nature is of paramount importance.
No technological civilization filled with barbarians could survive long. The chaos would topple any scientific regime. So we can say that for a technological civilization to build up, the people need to calm down. We might further say that the more civilized the people are, the greater heights of technology and science those people could achieve. Our flawed nature is a limiting factor to how high our civilization can rise. The more our flaws are allowed or encouraged by double standards, the lower the static level of our science and technology. If people were to become barbarians, the static level could drop below our current technology. If that were to happen, you can count on disaster being visited upon us… by ourselves. Like a kid with matches.
There’s a reason we don’t allow children to use firearms unchaperoned. The reason is because they haven’t the wisdom, or civilization, to use them wisely. The same goes for driving, drinking, and smoking. People who are ill-equipped to handle a right or privilege are denied them… until they mature enough to handle them safely. That some of us, even once having reached the age of maturity, still can’t handle them, is the result of our nature working against us. Some people eat too much, others are narcissistic, some are psychopaths, many are wrathful, etc… the flaws we carry are as multitudinous as we are. We can’t help it, because millions of years of reptilian brain training the id is difficult for the ego to overcome. History has shown that people who are mature can handle these things though.
Governments are simply a group of people. Therefore all governments have the same problems as people. They lust, like to gamble, can’t get enough, etc… just like individuals. Because all collections of people, are people. Therefore governments, corporations, and any group of people will exhibit all the flaws of humanity… more than an individual. A single person maybe an alcoholic, kleptomaniac, or pervert… but that’s usually it. A group of people will have all of the above and more. Assuming any group will be made up of only mature, self controlling, and civilized people is wide eyed. Put bluntly… it’s stupid. So we can expect governments, corporations, etc… to have all the flaws people have. This leads us to conclude that people in groups must be controlled at least as harshly as individuals.
Sadly the modern paradigm is that groups have distributed blame so people in them avoid punishment. Individuals, however, are held to the law by an iron fist. The result of this paradigm is that groups allow their ids to go wild. Even as individuals without the protection of a group are punished severely. That’s why corporations get billion dollar fines but no one is punished, politicians get away with the most heinous of crimes, bureaucrats lie under oath as part of the job description, courts seek juristocrasy, and even HOAs become little tyrannies. Because groups are people who are protected from punishment. The answer to this perverse incentive is to hold people in groups responsible for the actions of those groups. That’s the corrective action that would solve our human nature predicament.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
