If top of the society is immoral psychopaths with power, and most of the society is composed of people with good intentions, then there is not much hope for "beta uprising" until things go way beyond point of recovery, because powerful psychopaths will not let their power get taken away.
Not sure if this is just evolutionary biology, but this cycle of psychopaths at the top has been going on since when, at least ancient Egypt. And in all these thousands of years, the system that enables this cycle got way more reinforced than it got dismantled.
So is it maybe better idea to put benevolent people's energy towards designing and preparing a new societal system that will have built-in mechanisms for preventing corruption and malevolence? "prepare" as in get ready to implement for when the current messed up system is about to grind to a halt and collapse? Well, it would be best to figure out how to go full Benevolent Theseus™ by replacing parts of currently failing system with the corruption-proof ones.
What are some resources related to this topic? Recearch on societal dynamics, designing political systems, examples of similar revolutions that already happened, etc. Post any links that you consider relevant
I can respect that y'all kind of hate my kind here and I'm going to use this comment to share only the most unobjectionable works that even the most anticommunist liberal should find completely and utterly appealing
Fully Automated Luxury Communism is a book about how we have all of the tools at our disposal right now to automate at least 50% of the work that we have to do to stay alive, and thus get rid of that work as a tool of coercion and exertion of power.
How Capitalism Ends is about how the power got to the concentrations it has today, where we can expect it to go by extrapolating that tendency, why there was no other way it could have gone, and what we can do now to start building the next thing.
These are two very good and easy starts to starting to think about this problem. I'm happy to field questions about the works or anything else related.
According to Walter Scheidel's The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, the answer is revolutionary violence.
It's a fascinating read. I very much recommend the chapter covering the Black Plague. Seems rather relevant nowadays.
Employers lost no time pressuring the authorities to curb the rising cost of labor. Less than a year after the arrival of the Black Death in England, in June 1349, the crown passed the Ordinance of Laborers:
Since a great part of the population, and especially workers and employees (“servants”), has now died in this pestilence many people, observing the needs of masters and the shortage of employees, are refusing to work unless they are paid an excessive salary. . . . We have ordained that every man or woman in our realm of England, whether free or unfree, who is physically fit and below the age of sixty, not living by trade and exercising a particular craft, and not having private means of land of their own upon which they need to work, and not working for someone else, shall, if offered employment consonant with their status, be obliged to accept the employment offered, and they should be paid only the fees, liveries, payments or salaries which were usually paid in the part of the country where they are working in the twentieth year of our reign [1346] or in some other appropriate year five or six years ago. . . . No one should pay or promise wages, liveries, payments or salaries greater than those defined above under pain of paying twice whatever he paid or promised to anyone who feels himself harmed by it. . . . Artisans and labourers ought not to receive for their labour and craft more money than they could have expected to receive in the said twentieth year or other appropriate year, in the place where they happen to be working; and if anyone takes more, let him be committed to gaol.
The actual effect of these ordinances appears to have been modest. Just two years later, another decree, the Statute of Labourers of 1351, complained that said employees, having no regard to the said ordinance but rather to their own ease and exceptional greed, withdraw themselves to work for great men and others, unless they are paid livery and wages double or treble what they were accustomed to receive in the said twentieth year and earlier, to the great damage of the great men and the impoverishing of all the Commons and sought to remedy this failure with ever more detailed restrictions and penalties. Within a generation, however, these measures had failed.
NoBoDy WanTs tO WoRk!!! lol.
Stop caring about intentions. Stop giving the stupid a free pass. Treat stupidity as a type of malice, and act accordingly.
I believe that this alone should be enough to address the sykos on power. Easier said than done.
Who decides what is stupid and what isn't? There better be a good, clear, obvious, and universal objective method of identifying stupidity if you're going to treat it as malicious.
That's part of the deal: you don't need to. Once stupidity and malice are taken as morally equivalent, it becomes morally irrelevant to decide if someone's actions are motivated by one or another.
My point is that people give a free pass to actions harming the others, as long as they're seen as "unintentional"; for example, the "powerful psychopaths" OP talks about often rely on it. And yet nobody knows someone else's intentions, we know at most what others do and what they say.
So for example. Your business relies on blood diamonds? You're financing terrorism and should be treated as such, regardless of your intentions. Your corporation employs slave work? You shall be treated as a slaver, committing crimes against humankind.
You do need to take into account if someone is able to be held responsible for one's own actions. But we already do this anyway, so no change.
Bonhoeffer says stupidity is a social thing. I mostly agree. Things didn't turn out well for Bonhoeffer. Shoveling against the tide is exhausting.
I tend to agree with him and I think that the society where he lived is a great example of what happens when we let stupidity go rampant: Nazi Germany was a stupidocracy.
This is called "technocracy", and while it's cool on paper, it leads to a disconnect between the people in charge and the actual problems of the people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement
Yup. Look at how the best-and-brightest theory worked out in the mid 20th century--e.g., the Clintons. Technocracy doesn't work.
Agreed. The GiEC did an amazing job all these years. Too bad no one is listening to them.
The fact that a vast majority will ignore this discussion, is the same reason why most people will not organise towards a cause.
I have little hope in individuals.
Given up entirely, or are you hoping we all join a hive mind to solve our problems?
If CBT and DBT were taught to kids in school... man, what a change that would make. To be taught at a young age how to control thoughts, cope with stress, face emotions, communicate effectively.
Morality is shaped by your material conditions, that is, the society, culture, religion, thinkers etc. that comprise the place you were born and taught, calling the bourgeoisie immoral psychopaths doesn't really do anything. The way to deal with this is to toss morality aside and see the relations of power for what they are, exploitation of a class by another, as have happened for basically the entirety of human history.
This claims for a solution then, ending the exploitation which necessitates ending the division of classes by preventing that a ruling class comes to existence. This is basically the premise to communism.
The problem with waiting for the current system do collapse is that Capitalism has shown to be much more resilient than expected. The contradictions of capital are intensifying still to this day and more and more people are noticing it, but it is to be expected that the capitalists will do anything they can to keep the machine working.
Trying to change the system from within doesn't really work, like you said, the ruling class is not gonna let their power get taken way. One example of this is what happened on Chile with elected socialist president Salvador Allende 50 years ago.
A change this big in society doesn't happen peacefully, it will need a full out revolution that will lead to "injuries". It is unfortunate and me and, I think, everyone would like it to not be this way, but it is.
Here are some resources for anyone that wants to start learning:
In English:
Socialism for Absolute Beginners by Second Thought
Why Social Democracy Isn't Good Enough by Second Thought
Will Life Be Better Under Socialism? by Hakim
"Socialism always fails" is a stupid argument by Hakim
How Capitalism sells poverty as modesty & why equality isn't a practical goal. by Yugopinik
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/
In Portuguese (subbed in english):
Comunismo: princípios básicos e guia de leitura / Communism: basic principles and reading guide by História Pública
i think studying spirituality and doing meditation can bring us together, that is the only way we can understand all human and living being are same there is no difference between us (on spiritual level off course). There is too much discrimination in this world, rich vs poor, white people vs darker color people, america vs china vs russia, straight people vs LGBTQ+ community, communist vs capitalism vs socialism, vegan people vs meat lover, religion vs atheist.
spirituality can solve things which religion couldn't.
