06-27-2020, 11:46 AM
(06-26-2020, 03:08 PM)Isoko Wrote: This happens to all democracies eventually. If the rot grows too deep, they become like Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire that switched to long term Caesarism. If it is just a crisis but society itself relatively intact, then the Caesarism runs on the scale of Lincoln and Churchill, that is short term affairs.
All social orders are prone to rot -- social, economic, and moral. It is true for democracies, but even more for despotic and totalitarian regimes. you might be interested at some point in reading Toynbee's monumental A Study of History that documents the history of the world with the civilization as a unit. Societies emerge from barbarity in a pioneer phase in which people easily establish informal institutions that cost little to maintain yet achieve much. Over time, complexity increases to the extent that it overpowers the ability of the common man to deal with it. In come the experts, and in a short time the experts become an exploitative elite that, although losing its creative talent, is able to enforce its dominance that allows it to abuse and exploit the masses. In the end the elite frustrates all efforts to reform a rotten order. Even if the elites are able to do inpressive things they have made talent for doing anything else superfluous. The system consumes its old resources in rearguard efforts to preserve itself, but for a society in that stage the game is done.
Quote:Looking at the current prognosis for the West, I would say that we are in for a long period of Caesarism these time around. The societies in these countries are starting to fragment and slowly collide into major civil strife, meaning that this is going to be a long, drawn out affair requiring strong leadership in order to turn society back around again into something more functional.
We could be. The corruption of democracy is the first step to despotism such as Caesarism. I don't see the rot so set in that it can be undone without Caesarism. On the other hand, when representative institutions of government represent wealth and bureaucratic power (think of Mussolini's Corporate State so designed), it practically takes a Caesar to at best slow the rot. Solving inequality at the expense of political freedom and freedom of cultural creativity is a raw deal for a society.
Quote:Now whatever happens after the Caesar period, whether classical democracy returns to full point or the eventual civilisation collapses is another question entirely.
It may not be classical. Note well that we have three trends going that can make a mess of everything:
1. the prospective end of scarcity in which methods of command and control associated with the Industrial Era are no longer effective.
2. The Singularity, when machine intelligence surpasses that of the most creative and intelligent people.
3. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) , which stands to cause great food shortages and mass uprooting and dislocation of hundreds of millions of people.
I look at the maps of projections of AGW, and I see the worst effects coming into play around 2100.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.