"News that's not known, or not known enough."
Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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The relevant struggle by Herb Ruhs, MD Saturday, August 9, 2008 PERMANENT LINK People rage about how madmen assume power and make war, but what is more predictable than this historical process? It is not the madmen themselves who are to blame. There will always be megalomaniacal mass murders waiting in the wings of power. The problem is the system of power itself that provides
Anyone exercising any degree of concentrated power or influence is genuinely suspect. Our age has revealed that the relevant struggle is not between good power and bad power, but between power itself and every living thing on the planet. Herb Ruhs, MD Power itself seems to be winning. Helen & Harry Ah, this is the main illusion utilized by the magicians to provoke docility. Remember, we were told that history was over. Markets and the people who run them were now firmly in charge and would remain so, not just for a thousand years, but forever. Cue the spooky music. One of the difficulties presented by this discussion is that reality is so multifaceted. Through a given facet, through the propaganda image for instance, which though providing a very distorted view is an actual facet in the multifaceted gem we call reality, reality can be perceived directly in any fashion the viewer favors. Hence the I-Love-King-George faction stares compulsively through a facet that reveals to them the rightness of their oppressive views and seems to guarantee their success. But through other facets power just seems to be holding on to the tiger's tail for dear life. Hence the plots of so many fine ancient Greek and subsequent plays. It is so easy to lose focus and go aground on the shoals of semantics. What is losing, one way or another, through cataclysm or replacement, is the system of self-aggrandizing concentration of power. It will succumb from hubris just as all previous episodes of megalomania. True power actually does stem from the people, not from slaves, not from hostages, not from mercenaries, not from monopoly capitalism, not from superior weapons. The question is whether or not the people are awake enough to respond to the challenge of their oppression. The modern propaganda drugs are very effective at creating a malleable dream state. Take the red pill. The only question that remains paramount after ingestion is not whether power will win, but rather, will it take the people down with it. Power is toast. The people may yet survive. When we speak fearfully about these things we are speaking from a place deep inside that fears loss of rank in the group. Throughout our evolutionary history survival was in direct relation to rank. Groups that were cohesive socially were selected for or against groups that were neglectful of lower ranking but productive individuals, hence our mirror neurons and our innate sense of justice and compassion (when not obliterated by disease or trauma). Rank itself is not the issue. There are natural overlapping hierarchies that form the warp and weave of society. These hierarchical relationships become pathological for a number of reasons. Currently in the world, we are in a state of frozen fear in relation to those folks who embody these pathologies of power and believe in their right to abuse those below them. No-one wants to be abused by someone in a superior position, and if a system of mutual governance, of which current concepts of democracy are but baby steps towards, could assure freedom from abuse then only the frankly insane continue to abuse. We carry the toolkit for building such a healthy, safe environment right in our genes. We survived the ages as cooperators not exploiters. From prehistoric times, based on archeological evidence, we existed as bands of extendedly related families. We left evidence on our bones of our care of each other and protection of the weak. Evidence of death by violence exists at all times -- humans are hardly blameless. But, in general, archeological evidence for violence is slim until a few millennia ago, and a lot of evidence suggests that we led a much more healthy leisurely life than we now do. But what I am saying about "human nature" being rooted in social cooperation (the movie not the book) is also true of the entire living project. There is predation for sure, but the general plan is for interdependence, even with the predators. One way to look at our human predicament is that the species developed a dysplasia of the part of the gene pool that emphasized predation on one's own species. A kind of cancer growing in an otherwise healthy body that will soon kill it. The legal system, which would be analogous to the body's immune system, has been taken over by the cancer. A homolog for AIDS. Looks like it may take surgery. Support our victims.
Herb Ruhs, MD |
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