Defeating Tyranny is So Easy
I have got a few disagreeing comments on my past articles where I have detailed the methodology with which tyranny can be abolished forever:
- https://steemit.com/philosophy/@profitgenerator/majority-is-always-right
- https://steemit.com/health/@profitgenerator/political-cancer
The criticism is welcome, maybe I haven't explained it well or they misunderstood me, so let me explain it again, as an ELI5 so that everyone can understand it.
Basic Philosophy
The basic philosophy is this. Evil exists forever. It can't be defeated, it's a fundamental part of reality. However Evil can be balanced out, and managed, in order to not get very extreme.
Many small evils will happen, but a large concentrated evil, doesn't have to happen. For example:
Murder will happen, in the future, 1 person here and there will be a victim, it's inevitable. You can restrict it, you can manage it, you can increase police efficiency, but that only decreases the probability of murder, it doesn't make it 0.
But that doesn't mean a holocaust should happen again. It should never happen again.
So while small murders will happen from time to time, genocide should never happen again. Of course we should work has hard as we can to reduce violence as much as possible in society, but occasionally, it is just inevitable, it's random.
So you get the idea, while evil can't be destroyed, it can be limited down to it's smallest form, and to happen as rarely as possible.
Tyranny
Tyranny happens when you have an unpopular ruler, and a centralized power-structure. It's just that simple:
- Hitler had only 39% support, of which only about 1-2% hardcore fanatics. While the Weimar Republic had a more centralized power-structure than even the German Empire.
- Lenin had only 11% support, he lost the election, but due to a coup, he gained power anyway, due to a centralized legislature.
Now this is not an endorsement for monarchy, a monarchy is bad too. But at least in a monarchy, the ruling house, has a kind of prestige that he doesn't want to ruin with unpopular policy. But in a representative democracy, there is nothing stopping a tyrant like Hitler to rise to power.
So a representative democracy is more centralized than a monarchy. That may sound weird, but it's true.
And if an unpopular ruler has a greed for power, and a centralized institution enabling him, then that is the recipe for tyranny.
Nobody liked Hitler, he was a pathetic loser, and a demagogue who appealed onto to mentally ill or severely traumatized people. Most people voted for him only because they thought it was a "strong man" who will fix things, or because they were coerced, and there was voter fraud too.
So even though 39% of the population voted for Hitler, only a few percentage of that were hardcore Nazis. Not even all party members were hardcore Nazis, they were either too stupid, or too carried on to join them.
After all why did Hitler keep the Holocaust secret? If all Germans agreed to Nazism 100%, then he would have made it public.
It is obvious that most Germans condemned genocide, that is why Hitler kept it highly secret, not even all party members knew about it. Only high ranking SS members, the concentration camp guards, and a few others.
So the only fanatic evil people, like Mengele and others, where a fraction of the Nazi Party itself. The real crazy psychopaths who did the atrocities, made up only a tiny percent of the population.
Of course the other Nazis were evil too, in the sense that they either agreed to the philosophy or they were enablers of it.
So if you really examine the situation, you may find 0.5% of the population, that are real crazy psycho evil people, another layer that agrees with them, and the rest of the people are enablers.
So as you can see, there are different tiers of evil. Concentration camp guards were hanged on the spot, while a Nazi mailman might be rehabilitated, after he saw the atrocities of the Holocaust.
So although both were evil, one actively participated in the Holocaust, while the other was just an enabler of it. Different crimes deserve different punishment.
The solution
The solution is very simple: D E C E N T R A L I Z A T I O N
All tyranny can be ended, if power is decentralized. Given how only 0.5% of the population are the true evil people, if we adopt a decentralized direct democracy model, where you need minimum 90% consensus to pass a law.
I can guarantee you, that tyrants will never get to power again. Nazis and Communists or other crazy extremists will never have power again.
But if we don't, then there is nothing stopping another demagogue tyrant from getting power. In fact government power nowadays is so centralized, that the next tyrant will be 1000x worse than Hitler.
So I hope society can wake up to the dangers we are facing, and I hope we can stop tyranny in time.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
Interesting.
My thought is that there must be a way to dilute the evil, rather than try to change the amount of it. If a balance must always exist between what is good and what is evil, then evil cannot be allowed to concentrate itself and overcome the good.
I agree, it's tough to imagine what that would entail. There will always be psychopaths and war-minded people, who feel good while others are suffering, especially when there's a profit to be made off the suffering.
There needs to be a better identifying system in place, to put a spotlight on these people who have the capacity to cause harm and profit from it. The problem today is with corporations caring more about their bottom line than they do the people they will negatively affect making that money.
We have the capacity to dilute the evil and direct it. We're just made too busy toiling through life, serving our distractions and managing stress just so we can make it to our next paycheck. Most people in this world are to distracted by the nonsense in the media, and too indoctrinated by what they've learned getting to adulthood to be forces for good.
The movie The Matrix is spot on when Morpheus said, "You have to understand. Most people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured and so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it."
I have brought up the wrongs with this world, and have gotten replies back like, "So, what?", "What's wrong with that?", and "How is that a problem?"
"Just go with the flow."
Sorry, but if the flow leads me into a slaughter house I'd rather take the unbeaten path.
Changing minds is where the battlefield is.
Exactly. Decentralization does exactly that. You can't change the amount of poision in the cup, but you can pour that cup into the ocean, and the effects of the poision will become negligible.
I absolutely agree with your assertion that evil is a fundamental, inextinguishable quality - regardless of precisely how one defines evil. I disagree with your argument of scale where you suggest evil at higher scales will be constrained by democracy. A place for evil must be made there too or it will build up like a pressure until it exceeds the mechanisms restricting it and the system explodes. I like your statistical approach to leveraging the percentage of evil against itself - mechanisms that use features of evil to affect it are good tools.
This is a hard problem. In a way, dealing with evil is almost like the fate problem. No matter which path you choose, you will arrive at the same destination - the same state - the same amount of evil. It poses the question: "If you can't eliminate or even reduce the amount of 'evil' in a system, why try to do anything?" It is like we can only change the shape of evil but not the volume. I visualize the interaction between 'good and evil' as a Lichtenberg pattern - fractal across scale. All we seem to be able to do is channel it. Pressed into this framework, your solution is a theory that posits that the best way to channel it is to break it up into it's smallest parts and prevent them from joining. Totally valid theory. It seems to me to be an arrangement similar to a storm cloud with individual droplets holding charges - right before a lightning bolt is released. I think we need to introduce the concept of an 'evil' sink - similar to an electrical ground. I'm not sure what that actually would be in terms of people and actions. When Tesla and Edison began understanding electricity to that level, harnessing it to do work followed shortly after.
Well I don't see evil the same way. I am a subjectivist, so I believe evil is only a subjective perception.
Sure many people can agree on common things that are evil (murder, theft, rape,etc...) but in the eyes of nature they are all meaningless. So I don't see and good vs. evil conflict in the cosmic scale. This is only a problem in the human society.
Because we may look at Hitler as the greatest evil on Earth. But if an asteroid would come, and wipe out half of humanity, would we view that asteroid as evil as Hitler?
You can only personify humans, and attribute characteristics to humans, but I doubt anyone would find an asteroid evil. Nor does the asteroid care whether it destroys an entire civilization or just wanders around in space.
So if evil is just a conflict in the human mind, then we need to focus on ourselves, and work together to make society better. And that can be achieved. Evil won't be eliminated, because theft and murder will happen eventually. However it can be restricted to a much smaller scale.
Just as lightning strikes many times, but it only rarely strikes humans. If we adapt to danger, then danger can be shrunk to a manageable level. It won't eliminate danger, but it will make death from murder as likely as death from lightning strike.