The world is pretty much... fucked. Or to say it more accurately, is constantly being fucked by certain people/groups whose actions and choices have a larger consequence on the world we live in. The real problem is that we let them. The real question is "why?". As a teenager, before the internet what it is today, I believed that the main problem is that we are all too mired in the habit of being both apathetic and distrustful; but fundamentally, if we could , we would make a difference. We would buckle down, do the "right" thing, and correct for errors like a good and proper democracy should.... if only we had the knowledge and capacity. If only. The habit made a lot of sense in the past, since our capacity to be truly informed on what is going on, leave alone making a difference, would have seemed like a fantasy. But with the internet, and its nature as of today... and what one could project about it in the future to within safe limits, there is absolutely no grounds to think that we can neither be informed, nor make a change. People are quite aware of this fact, and there have been a lot of stupid "movements" created to create "change". For instance, the stupid "Kony" movement that achieved nothing other than causing a jerk off showdown in San Francisco, and the Indian "Jan Lokpal" movement, that sounds pretty nice if you know nothing, but then sounds disastrous when you realize that what is being promoted is a parallel government with an unregulated body with nearly unlimited policing powers... without the ability of the members being incriminated. So "movements" like these take off in the "shit not hitting the fan" parts of the world, which may or may not even have a clear purpose (which is a major drawback of the "Occupy" movement/s) , are not carefully structured, are followed by people who haven't bothered to get thoroughly informed, and that achieve nothing... on account of it really being a jerk off movement in disguise (as my description attests to quite well). It has taken the "shit hitting the fan" situations in Egypt, Libya and Greece to really make the ones in power... shit their pants. And the fact that it takes such extreme situations of do or die, before people really do, that makes it clear what the real problems are.
1) People are too damn selfish: Think of "the prisoner's dilemma", that classic game from game theory. People will always choose the route that maximizes their chances. Given two prisoners caught in a crime, one prisoner will sellout the other if he can get a better deal, and odds are both will try this resulting in an outcome that is not the most "profitable" to either. And people do unfortunately think like this most of the time in all applicable contexts. It's precisely this driving force that make corporations, bankers and politicians screw people over time and time again. Their personal interests trump those of the people they serve or cater to, the environment, and everything else. Sometimes this is driven by sheer greed, sometimes to be competitive as in a political and business arena. Most of the time, I guess, it's both.
2)We don't have a set of "societal ground rules", aka the diversity problem : We live in a world where people choose to make science a matter of belief, and belief an issue of principle. All of this being a consequence of the aforementioned selfish point, coupled to that wonderfully disastrous property in humans to choose comforting beliefs over facts. But choosing comforting beliefs over facts in one thing, insisting that it should be what EVERYONE follows is wholly another. This gets nicely and thoroughly exploited by corrupt politicians and interest groups. I forgot to mention our desire to belong in a tribe, but sure, toss it in. The point stays the same.
3)Empathy: We have a limited capacity for empathy. When we did belong in small tribes, as we did for most of the 200,000 years we've been on Earth, it was quite easy to care about and suffer the consequences of our actions on account of being tribe leader. We simply cannot expect the same concern, or more importantly... the same level of concern out of our present leaders - business, state or otherwise, following their actions. It's this that makes waging wars and screwing the masses quite easy. ( This by the way is not a wishful thought. It's based on a couple of studies done on apes , a very interesting one was done in 2008, where I first got to know of this, and there have been studies on humans as well. I will try to find the link to the 2008 study and other interesting ones, and add it to the comments. The point is - empathizing with millions is impossible, and being unable to do that and have that level of personal impact as a consequence of ones actions makes the actions far easier to perform. It's one thing to think of starving people in Africa and feel bad... it's another thing to experience it personally. )
Having stated these it seems pretty damn bleak. After all, I've really just said that human nature and limitations is fundamentally to account for our shortcomings as a society, and there is no magical technology, no fancy app, nothing at all that will make much of a difference. Even if we had unlimited resources, it wouldn't do anything. You'd think that if there was plenty of water to go around, there wouldn't be the middle east crisis. But unfortunately, our society is structured in a hierarchical way (a triangular one)*, so that people at the top will have more influence.... they again cannot empathize with everyone, and they will follow through on the prisoner's dilemma route and look out for number one. You will have uneven distribution, you will have conflict. Mind you, this will be even in a system where we had EVERYONE equal, and I mean equal in a very strict way - same skills, talents, intelligence, etc, all the properties that go into deciding where one lands up in this hierarchy. If you try to fit all these people in the system, some will end up in the lower strata and fewer in the upper. In this case, luck and chance will have a dominant role in deciding placement, as opposed to our real world situation of having a better degree, having more talent, having influence, kissing ass, performing sexual favours, and so on. So even in a world with perfectly "identical" people, we will require this hierarchy for corporations, institutions and so on... and you WILL have people in the bottom ( This, by the way, is a pretty good argument for requiring a safety net to provide "basic needs" to all people in a society.... but I won't get into that). You could now imagine a future where robots did all our work, there was no hierarchy anymore, we DID have unlimited resources. In this world, it may be possible to have everything "right". But seeing how this is certainly not going to be in the near or even distant future, a solution ought to be sought.
I personally don't think it's hopeless for us. There are certainly solutions, but none that can be very easily implemented in the present. Indeed, getting some of these solutions going would lead to a Catch 22, and may thus never get going ever. I would have provided my personal solution/s (which are only two really) , but because they'd be a tad bit controversial, and because I'm as tired of writing now as you are by reading what I've written... I think I'll save it for later, if the desire and/or necessity arises. This anticlimactic situation of course does allow you to imagine your own solutions, or to just disagree and say "we're all screwed". Either way... you can end the movie any way you see fit, the play will follow its own course anyway.
* You might be wondering whether any other hierarchy other than the "triangular" one is possible... maybe "rectangular" one. Surely, not every hierarchy will lead to this "dilemma". Well, that may be... but I think we are stuck with the triangular one till we get the robots to do our stuff and take over us. Here's why. You need a system that is going to be stable in managing a growing population, and that has to cater to the needs of as many people as possible. You've also got to take into account human limitation. It is impossible for a person to effectively manage more than a certain finite number of people. So you need all those farmers and hunters, the sewer cleaners and so on. You need them to be managed, and those managers need to be managed and so on. When you take all of that into account, irregardless if we have a plutocracy or any other system with some other object of value (even a barter system), you will end up with this peculiar hierarchy, and this peculiar hierarchy is going to lead to disparity. It's what ensures you get what you need on a daily basis without having to do all that hard work yourself. It's what makes your day possible and reasonably comfortable, and what allows us collectively to grow the population. To have a stable system that caters to our exponentially increasing population, this hierarchy is just going to crop up.
(A shout out to my friend Mriganko Roy, with whom I had a vodka induced conversation that led to this addition in the post)
UPDATE: I have added my "solution" to the "dilemma" (I couldn't resist). You can find it here : http://lupineloopine.blogspot.in/2012/06/worlds-dilemma-my-rough-solution.html
1) People are too damn selfish: Think of "the prisoner's dilemma", that classic game from game theory. People will always choose the route that maximizes their chances. Given two prisoners caught in a crime, one prisoner will sellout the other if he can get a better deal, and odds are both will try this resulting in an outcome that is not the most "profitable" to either. And people do unfortunately think like this most of the time in all applicable contexts. It's precisely this driving force that make corporations, bankers and politicians screw people over time and time again. Their personal interests trump those of the people they serve or cater to, the environment, and everything else. Sometimes this is driven by sheer greed, sometimes to be competitive as in a political and business arena. Most of the time, I guess, it's both.
2)We don't have a set of "societal ground rules", aka the diversity problem : We live in a world where people choose to make science a matter of belief, and belief an issue of principle. All of this being a consequence of the aforementioned selfish point, coupled to that wonderfully disastrous property in humans to choose comforting beliefs over facts. But choosing comforting beliefs over facts in one thing, insisting that it should be what EVERYONE follows is wholly another. This gets nicely and thoroughly exploited by corrupt politicians and interest groups. I forgot to mention our desire to belong in a tribe, but sure, toss it in. The point stays the same.
3)Empathy: We have a limited capacity for empathy. When we did belong in small tribes, as we did for most of the 200,000 years we've been on Earth, it was quite easy to care about and suffer the consequences of our actions on account of being tribe leader. We simply cannot expect the same concern, or more importantly... the same level of concern out of our present leaders - business, state or otherwise, following their actions. It's this that makes waging wars and screwing the masses quite easy. ( This by the way is not a wishful thought. It's based on a couple of studies done on apes , a very interesting one was done in 2008, where I first got to know of this, and there have been studies on humans as well. I will try to find the link to the 2008 study and other interesting ones, and add it to the comments. The point is - empathizing with millions is impossible, and being unable to do that and have that level of personal impact as a consequence of ones actions makes the actions far easier to perform. It's one thing to think of starving people in Africa and feel bad... it's another thing to experience it personally. )
Having stated these it seems pretty damn bleak. After all, I've really just said that human nature and limitations is fundamentally to account for our shortcomings as a society, and there is no magical technology, no fancy app, nothing at all that will make much of a difference. Even if we had unlimited resources, it wouldn't do anything. You'd think that if there was plenty of water to go around, there wouldn't be the middle east crisis. But unfortunately, our society is structured in a hierarchical way (a triangular one)*, so that people at the top will have more influence.... they again cannot empathize with everyone, and they will follow through on the prisoner's dilemma route and look out for number one. You will have uneven distribution, you will have conflict. Mind you, this will be even in a system where we had EVERYONE equal, and I mean equal in a very strict way - same skills, talents, intelligence, etc, all the properties that go into deciding where one lands up in this hierarchy. If you try to fit all these people in the system, some will end up in the lower strata and fewer in the upper. In this case, luck and chance will have a dominant role in deciding placement, as opposed to our real world situation of having a better degree, having more talent, having influence, kissing ass, performing sexual favours, and so on. So even in a world with perfectly "identical" people, we will require this hierarchy for corporations, institutions and so on... and you WILL have people in the bottom ( This, by the way, is a pretty good argument for requiring a safety net to provide "basic needs" to all people in a society.... but I won't get into that). You could now imagine a future where robots did all our work, there was no hierarchy anymore, we DID have unlimited resources. In this world, it may be possible to have everything "right". But seeing how this is certainly not going to be in the near or even distant future, a solution ought to be sought.
I personally don't think it's hopeless for us. There are certainly solutions, but none that can be very easily implemented in the present. Indeed, getting some of these solutions going would lead to a Catch 22, and may thus never get going ever. I would have provided my personal solution/s (which are only two really) , but because they'd be a tad bit controversial, and because I'm as tired of writing now as you are by reading what I've written... I think I'll save it for later, if the desire and/or necessity arises. This anticlimactic situation of course does allow you to imagine your own solutions, or to just disagree and say "we're all screwed". Either way... you can end the movie any way you see fit, the play will follow its own course anyway.
* You might be wondering whether any other hierarchy other than the "triangular" one is possible... maybe "rectangular" one. Surely, not every hierarchy will lead to this "dilemma". Well, that may be... but I think we are stuck with the triangular one till we get the robots to do our stuff and take over us. Here's why. You need a system that is going to be stable in managing a growing population, and that has to cater to the needs of as many people as possible. You've also got to take into account human limitation. It is impossible for a person to effectively manage more than a certain finite number of people. So you need all those farmers and hunters, the sewer cleaners and so on. You need them to be managed, and those managers need to be managed and so on. When you take all of that into account, irregardless if we have a plutocracy or any other system with some other object of value (even a barter system), you will end up with this peculiar hierarchy, and this peculiar hierarchy is going to lead to disparity. It's what ensures you get what you need on a daily basis without having to do all that hard work yourself. It's what makes your day possible and reasonably comfortable, and what allows us collectively to grow the population. To have a stable system that caters to our exponentially increasing population, this hierarchy is just going to crop up.
(A shout out to my friend Mriganko Roy, with whom I had a vodka induced conversation that led to this addition in the post)
UPDATE: I have added my "solution" to the "dilemma" (I couldn't resist). You can find it here : http://lupineloopine.blogspot.in/2012/06/worlds-dilemma-my-rough-solution.html
No comments:
Post a Comment