Mortals want to torture each other and themselves to death. A bunch of soycieties tried this, and they're not around anymore. They didn't last long enough for anyone to notice they were trying it.
Some soycieties tried half-torturing each other to death. They are also not around anymore.
The soycieties that survive at all have heavily compromised their core mission, in one way or another. However, as the soyciety gets richer, they compromise the compromises. They see they can afford to relax the strictures. They try to make a purer and purer version of their ultimate goal. "Surely," they say, "We can torture ourselves just a little bit more without dying?" Can't suffer if you're dead. The idea is to get as sick as possible without actually dying. As we can see, the question can be asked many times. Ultimately, however, the answer is no. The success with previous incremental re-Forms drives confidence in the last, final re-Form. They try to get as sick as possible without going over, and they always screw up and go over.
Not to mention it's common to kill a soyciety with a slow poison, then, while dying of that, continue the re-Forms, "we didn't die yet, it's fine," continually moving up the final doom.
America looks like a place they build a ship for the express purpose of sinking it, and it looks that way because it is. They're not holing it below the water line and selling the bulkheads for scrap by accident. That's the point of the whole system. Any reform based on the idea americans want to live is fundamentally misguided. That's not the Form of the american.
I strongly suspect the nicene council et al knew about this. They wanted to keep soyciety poor, because a rich soyciety can't maintain its maintenance. Can't resist the urge to go out in an orgy of self-mutilation.
"Blessed are the meek." Rich man, camels, needles, etc. Russian serfdom; the oppression was part of what kept russia from playing russian roulette. No serfs? Instant leninism. Conveniently, the tyranny of e.g. serfdom is the torture the members of soyciety crave.
It's why culture ossifies so readily. Any clade that didn't ossify would evolve rapidly toward extinction. Most new ideas are bad...but the good ones are deliberately suppressed, so the proportion is irrelevant. 100% of newly adopted ideas are intentionally chosen for being bad, unless there's extreme violence involved.
The only point in soycial commentary in a suicidal soyciety is to exploit the new loopholes. Stab that blood-sucking proboscis in early, while the flesh is still juicy. Equivalently, it's important not to stand under bridges that are about to collapse. When your americoid neighbours go beaver and start gnawing in the supports, find another place for your homeless encampment.
2 comments:
Wow that's dark. But it makes sense when I look at my municipal government and how the only proposals that appeal are the low key destructive ones, almost like to convince anyone to do anything it has to hurt somebody.
At the same time, how do you prove you're Important by helping anyone? You can only be Important if you tried to hurt someone, they tried to stop you because it hurts, and they couldn't. What is even the point of government if you can't hurt anybody?
You would think voters et al wouldn't put up with this. "What if we all just ignore the government? Like, entirely?" Surely someone will come up with this, propose it, and everyone will see the sense.
Unless, that is, getting hurt is the point of having a government. That is the demand it was created to satisfy. They only try to stop the government from hurting them so that's it's valid oppression, which is what they want supplied. If they accidentally succeed, they will panic and reinforce the government until they can't win anymore.
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