Category: Bullshit Institutions

Putting the reigns of government into the hands of one person is bullshit.

 

It seems almost to be common-sense not to give political power to a single individual.  Such an individual is prone to look out for his own interest.  He can be bribed, and he can be threatened. Yet, almost the whole world keeps doing it.  And the hope is that the next person will be some kind of savior.  Never happens!  Combine this adulation of a leader with mass democracy, and you get a semi-literate Bush, then a suave snake oil salesman, Obama, and now a spoiled child, Trump.  And in Russia a rogue dictator, Putin.

What is needed is a new Constitution with the executive exercised by a collective body of at least two persons.  Below are links to Wikipedia describing such collegial executive bodies.  The best present example of such a collective executive is Switzerland.

Collective Heads of State

Liberal-Democrat vs Conservative-Republican?

Have you been bamboozled into using the categories of liberal/Democratic vs conservative/Republican? These are really two factions of the game of oligarchy! They prescribe the choice of alternatives. For example, they both support the institution of a President, and you can choose which oligarch to be President. I, on the other hand, support the Swiss 7-member Federal Council. And I can go on with other measures which would be a critique of the U.S. Constitution, which is the oligarch rule-book of the game they are forcing us to play.

When reading attempts to distinguish Democrats from Republicans, the rational conclusion is that they tend to blur. The current issues which “seem” to separate them are: abortion, gun control, and climate control. I call them distractions. Why? Well, for one, the possibility of getting a chunk of free subsistence land, is not deemed a discussable issue.

Think of our political situation in this way. We are all required to play a game — let’s say football.

In this game, we have all sorts of choices, e.g., whether to throw the ball or run with it. The Democrats are all for throwing the ball; the Republicans are for running with the ball. These options are distractions from the question whether we should even be playing football. After all, in football, there are injuries and fatalities. I would prefer to play ping-pong in which, to my knowledge, there are no fatalities.

The political game is constituted by the U.S. Constitution (the rule book). Let’s play a different game. The one we are playing has too many fatalities and injuries.

The same goes for Ukraine, Ukraine has a very bad Constitution which allows for all the corruption we are witnessing. What is the better game? Nestor Makhno tried to play it. It is called Anarchism, or federalism based on small-scale communities practicing direct democracy.

Imagining Self-Governance against Predatory Capitalism and a Centralized State

Below is a collection of videos from a talk on Self-Governance given by Cindy Milstein of the Institute for Anarchist Studies, author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations (2010), and Stephen Shalom, a professor of political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey, author of, among many articles, “ParPolity: Political Vision for a Good Society” (2005).



8



Technology Trap

I was fascinated by the series “Connections” (1978), especially with the first episode “The Trigger Effect” which started with the Blackout in New York on Tuesday, November 9, 1965. This was particularly interesting for me because at the time it started I was in a graduate philosophy class at City College of New York. It was late in the afternoon, getting a bit dark; so we had the lights on. At some point the lights flickered and we waited to see what would follow. Well, they kept on flickering when the professor decided to dismiss the class, and just then the lights went out — everywhere.

I think that this episode, “The Trigger Effect,” had a lifelong influence on me by its depiction of the fragility and vulnerability of our technologically dependent world. In my actual experience of the blackout, I saw that there were no lights anywhere except for car lights. At some point I started to see some people with candles, and because there were no traffic lights, I saw some grid-locks with cars. However, what was happening in Manhatten did not enter into my consciousness until the next day with news reports about how people were stuck in subways and elevators, and the problems with electricity in hospitals, refrigerators, and gas pumps. This was my transient, one day experience of the blackout.

The episode “The Trigger Effect” depicts an imaginative scenario in which the blackout is a permanent state.  And it depicts not only what I actually experienced, but it depicts what would and must follow if there were no public electricity — period.

In the “The Trigger Effect,” it is portrayed that as you leave the city, you should look for a farm, and start farming. But, in reality, you may be thrown into the wilderness, and what you need is a knowledge of wilderness survival skills.

I have always been drawn to the problem of survival in the wilderness, a situation which is recreated by Bear Grylls in the popular TV episodes Man vs Wild. He is literally dumped into a sea, a river, a mountain top, a forest, a desert, and such, and his task is to survive for a week while making his way to civilization. He is recreating situations where a person survives a plane crash, a capsized boat, or even just getting lost while hiking. To survive, he has to utilize, to an extent, the kind of information which is taught to Boy Scouts. He has to know what his problems are, and solve them. One main problem may be hypothermia, and one obvious solution is to build a fire. In one episode, he solves this problem by removing the innards of a dead carcass and crawling into it. His task is to survive while getting out of the wilderness. Here is one of the many episodes, survival in the jungle of Belize (notice: he comes into the jungle with a long-sleeved shirt, pants, boots, a knife, flint, and a water container strapped over his body. He also knows he is in Belize and that the coast is to his east):

In other situations, someone may want to live in the woods, like Henry Thoreau. But unlike Thoreau, who brought supplies and materials into his cabin on Walden Pond; in the following episodes, Tom McElroy shows us how to survive for a week in a relatively hospitable environment. Notice he goes into the woods with only pants, a shirt, a tee shirt, no shoes, and a knife.

There is also the predicament of a castaway, such as Robinson Crusoe in Daniel Defoe’s novel. In the novel, Crusoe has access to the tools and materials of the wrecked ship, including some food; so, his task is to set up a relatively permanent shelter while hunting and gathering food, and eventually he comes across another human being, Friday. The novel is based on the real character, Alexander Selkirk, who was marooned on an island all alone, as portrayed in the following video:

Perhaps the most popular semi-survival show was Survivor, which ran for many seasons. It combined the problem of survival in the wilderness (with an initial provision of some tools and food) with a competitive social interaction, in which members were voted out until a winner emerged as the sole “survivor.” It was a copy of the Swedish TV series: “Expedition Robinson” (1997).