RE: Solving the 'Power Over' Problem That Plagues Politics - Including All Forms of Capitalism & Communism
Agree with most of this but as a fan of Marxism I think it's important to separate the ideology of communism from what people have used it for. From my perspective, reality has most often offered a very right-wing perversion of communism. And while we should definitely be careful and learn from history I still believe it's not useless to "aim for the stars" in this case.
What I've learned is that great power comes with great abuse and the only way to liberate us from this is to improve and use trust technologies(basically the reason I'm on Steemit). Starting with the printing press I believe we've grown further away from state authority and I personally remember when I realized that basically my whole generation decided to not care about state law. Most people I knew downloaded a lot of mp3s off the early internet. We've also already come a long way proving the beauty of a sharing economy.
Now using blockchain and similar tech we for the first time have all the means for creating alternative societies on top of existing. This in theory means that communist as well as socialist and capitalist societies can all be created with "rules in nature" and therefore won't be defined by authority. Ironically I'm pretty sure the more socialistic alternatives will win this open market of societies. (because increased overall transparency makes people see theirs and others actions etc but this is another discussion.)
In conclusion, systemlessness isn't necessary to rid power imbalanses anymore. Or what do you think?
Thanks for your comment. I am aware that the implementation of communism was not much like the version that was sold to the people at the time. However, I am also aware that this was by design and that the original designers of communism were thoroughly corrupt and essentially from the same 'gang' as the barons of capitalism. I understand communism to be nothing more than a cleverly designed mind control stunt that was intended to act as a 'pressure valve' for those who were frustrated with capitalism to sign up to, thinking they were making a difference when in fact they were not.
I am not an expert on communism by any means - however I did study Russian history and the Bolshevik revolution for a year at college so have some understanding of it all. What matters to me is how power is allowed to be enacted within any system. One common definition of communism is:
The key here is in the 'organisation of labor' since typically this means a form of hierarchy. Can you explain how this organisation would take place without any form of 'power over'?
Thanks for the fast reply, really interesting topic! You're probably more educated than me on the history of communism. But even if say Marx was in the same 'gang' as the barons of capitalism I'm not convinced that his critique on it wasn't valid and important. Some would argue that today's democracy is cleverly designed to keep hierarchy in place but in the same way democracy probably isn't a bad idea in itself. If communism was used as a pressure valve, to me, would imply that theirs really something interesting there that people of power didn't want us to look more into.
For the organisation of labor we might have to stretch the definition as it seems to imply some authority organizing us to do things outside of our free will. My belief is that we can have organised labor by free will, given the right opportunities.
Do you think a small educated family on a lonely planet could achieve this kind of society? What I believe is that if they could, we should be able to with help of technology.
Today's democracy is absolutely a scam from start to finish. Direct Democracy is the only form of democracy that could even come close to being called 'fair' because everyone can vote on every issue - it does not use 'representatives'.. But even direct democracy is fatally flawed because it's outcome is that the will of some people is overpowered by the majority. Not only is this bad for the will, but it creates motivation for mind control to be applied to the majority to keep them controlled and able to be directed in a way that means that those who cannot be controlled by mind control can then be controlled by force of the 'democratic state'.
Yes, it is your own heart! <3
Voluntary organisation is the only form that can work, but to my understanding this is not what communism has ever been. I am no expert on the writings of Marx however.
A small, aware family would not have need of any kind of control or even a system, provided they are bonded by love in the heart and are willing to feel enough to know what the will of each other wants and needs. This is exactly the same for our giant family on our crowded planet ;)
Technology is always an outer reflection of our own inner capabilities - unfortunately we have lost some of our most powerful inner abilities and so we think that technology is more capable than we are.
Yes so the ideals of communism is basically love or at least disguised to look like it. And we've stopped looking for answers in that direction because of the bad "attempts" that we're really designed to fail.
We can forget the label communism for a while and focus on our giant family. If we lost those inner abilities from growing larger communities and needing hierarchy to organize. And if we don't want to go back to living in smaller communities, I think we need trust technologies to get a similar perspective back. Of coarse combined with heart since that must be the final motivation but what other ways do you see? I think communicating these ideas like you're doing here is really changing people, but what allows you to do so effectively(without authority crushing love using false symbols for it) is technology. And without us really pushing to create better trust systems, to me it seems like we're losing perspective and start moving in the wrong direction into a world of more inequality.
We're in a kind of hostage situation, otherwise we wouldn't have to focus so much on technology as our 'weapon'..
Your reply really helped to fill in where our definitions clashed a bit, thank you!
You are welcome!
My suggestion here is to notice that you are speaking of what you think, but not of what you feel. This is the standard approach in many cultures now, but the answers we need cannot be reached just by thinking. Without fully involving intuitive understanding will have to think 1000s of time harder than we would do if we correctly used feelings - since our feelings can provide many answers in a very precise way that thoughts alone cannot do. I am not saying that you are not feeling, but I am just pointing to the reality that nearly everyone has lost their real feelings and has been forced to become overly reliant on thinking.
The trust technologies, I feel, are intended to fill a gap in society that is partially related to the reality that there are so many of us that we can't all 'know' each other well enough to know who we are dealing with on a large scale. The idea of the technology, then, is to form a bridge among people who do not know each other. One problem with this is that when you are dealing with 'the unknown' (in the form of other people) you do not know just how 'bad' some of those people might be and thus you do not know the extent to which they may be lying to everyone else. The measures of trust, then, are always going to rely to some extent on the judgement of other people and it is judgement that is the cause of our lack of understanding. Judgements attempt to fill in the gaps with guesses and beliefs.
Fortunately, an attuned emotional body can know much more than our conscious mental minds typically do currently and so I recommend turning inwards to find that lost emotional understanding, rather than looking outwards to attempt to build a techno-map of something that is both constantly changing and also much larger than most of us appreciate at this point.... Namely, the collective and individual mind/will/soul/spirit/heart.
I highly recommend these books as being the best on this topic I have found - however, they are not for everyone.
I've been following your posts on and off before but I'm seriously impressed with your way to explain this. Perhaps because I've been touching on the same thoughts too..
Feels like I get pulled back and forth a bit as my spiritual side knows this to be so true and it's not possible to cover everything with technology anyways. At the same time I don't think I would have ever opened my eyes to this without being somewhat early on the internet and getting a larger perspective.
I'll look up the books and you'll probably see me in the comments again! ^^ Thanks again!
You are welcome - let me know how you get on with them if you do read them, they are unparalleled and very unusual!