Forum Post: The Survival Of The Shiftless

There have been in human history essentially two kinds of societies - those based upon idealism - and those based upon raw power.

This is of course to some degree an oversimplification, because idealistic systems also opperate in the real world and that neccessitates their weilding of power, but in general society has been based upon one of these forms or the other.

Kingdoms and tyrannys are the primary examples of sysytems based on power, and these are also probably the oldest human models for society. They are, in a sense, direct outgrowths of the primary model of existance on earth itself which is survival of the fittest. They came into being, not out of any preconcieved plan, but simply out of the nature of life itself and the fundamental elements of what it means to be human. They weren't concieved, they simply were; and perhaps these systems even worked well enough is small societies (in spite of the inevitable violence and power struggles inherent to them) because in small groups people know and are known by their rulers, a fact both moderating a rulers tyranny, and enabling a community to place effective limits on a rulers excesses.

The larger the society becomes, however, the less desirable this system of direct control becomes. As kings or tyrants become more and more removed from those they rule over, so their ability to see them as individuals receeds, and so grows their willingness to ingnore or sacrifice their subjects to their own excesses and wims.

Thus as society has grown and the complexity of society increased, people have sought new systems to make human life endurable, and at times even enjoyable for individual citizens.

Examples of such recent ideological societies are democracy, theocracy and socialism. All of these systems arose out of a desire for self-rule, and for a rule with some higher goal than simply the survival of the fittest; the arbitrary nature of tyranny. The underpinnings of such new societies are ethical in nature, and seek a means for man to exist with dignity and a degree of self-determination within the inherent confines of mass society.

We may argue the various merits and liabilities of all of these systems, but in a general way, the advantage of the first two systems is that they keep humanity tied (or chained) to the natural order. The rulers that arise are generally, for better or worse, strong; and therefore enfuse society with their vitality, charisma and strength and that is why for better or worse they stood the test of time. And yet humans aren't animals.

Because we aren't animals we have striven for something more than the law of the hyeana pack in relation to our conduct with one another, and for the means of creating systems that function efficiently enough to free us from want, to distribute goods with some degree of justice, and to live lives of spiritual meaning. Thus we have created these new kinds of states out of the impulse to better ourselves, and the lives those around us.

Yet there is another kind of society that arises from time to time, and has never long endured, and that is plutocracy. It has never long endured because it falls into neither of these catagories of effective human systems. It arises neither out of a genuine struggle for survival, nor out of idealogical aspiration, and of all these systems it is the weakest as a result.

Plutocracys in the past have always rapidly given way to tryranies, for the simple reason that the accumulation of wealth does not make one strong but rather weak, and therefore produces weak leadership - leaders who arise neither through a test of strength, nor through the temperance of nobler human aspirations. Plutocracy fails in both of these essential ways.

Therefore, it stands to reason that we must not allow our democracy to devolve into a system of plutocracy, regardless of what our feelings are about the accumulation of wealth mat be - not simply out of the higher calling of idealism, but from the sheer call of expidiency. A plutocracy is weak, and to allow it to become our system by default is (as had proven to be true in the past) simply opening the door to tyranny.