Why do we still follow ideals that served a society built thousands of years ago?
Following the evolution of human species we see that from early years there was a need for certain rules in place. Eg we needed a fair trade system. It was unfair to trade a cow with a few grains of rice or wheat. So currency came up and thus the beginning of the whole economic system. Moving forward to today, after having been through many economical crisis, political changes from tyranny to oligarchy to finally democracy we can say that we are at a quite high peak of our evolution.
Over the years though, the whole economic system itself evolved to what is today. A system that categorizes and labels people based on their income which immediately creates inequality. Consequently, inequality creates hatred between those privileged and those not privileged which is completely based on luck (eg someone born in Switzerland vs someone born in Ethiopia or Nigeria).
The question is why as a whole species we follow regulations that were created to serve the needs of an older society? My thinking is that even if the whole economic system collapses that will mean nothing to our viability. If this is true then immediately a really high number of professions become unnecessary and therefore need to be removed from the system.
Automation can take over in many professions, we can change entirely the way we work (proven by recent virus pandemic), even the days we work and global economy can easily sustain it (80trillion for 7 billion people) with the absence of pointless professions people can really focus on burning matters such as poverty, major diseases, overpopulation, space exploration and alternative energy sources or even alternative planets to live in. I'm sure if all the people working pointlessly in customer service jobs or as waiters/tresses were to shift their focus in actual important matter we would reach to a solution way faster than we are currently doing.
So why have we become so passive? Why have we accepted that this is the way things are supposed to be. Who said that we need to work 5 or 6 days per week? Who said that people need to get married? Why don't we break down the whole economy? It's easy. Just stop showing up for 1 month. Politicians have no power. Their power is just an illusion deriving from our numbness. So what keeps us down and why do we still accept it?
Over the years though, the whole economic system itself evolved to what is today. A system that categorizes and labels people based on their income which immediately creates inequality. Consequently, inequality creates hatred between those privileged and those not privileged which is completely based on luck (eg someone born in Switzerland vs someone born in Ethiopia or Nigeria).
The question is why as a whole species we follow regulations that were created to serve the needs of an older society? My thinking is that even if the whole economic system collapses that will mean nothing to our viability. If this is true then immediately a really high number of professions become unnecessary and therefore need to be removed from the system.
Automation can take over in many professions, we can change entirely the way we work (proven by recent virus pandemic), even the days we work and global economy can easily sustain it (80trillion for 7 billion people) with the absence of pointless professions people can really focus on burning matters such as poverty, major diseases, overpopulation, space exploration and alternative energy sources or even alternative planets to live in. I'm sure if all the people working pointlessly in customer service jobs or as waiters/tresses were to shift their focus in actual important matter we would reach to a solution way faster than we are currently doing.
So why have we become so passive? Why have we accepted that this is the way things are supposed to be. Who said that we need to work 5 or 6 days per week? Who said that people need to get married? Why don't we break down the whole economy? It's easy. Just stop showing up for 1 month. Politicians have no power. Their power is just an illusion deriving from our numbness. So what keeps us down and why do we still accept it?
Comments (9)
The law can't force you to do any of that stuff.
Once a guy asked a similar question to the Prime Minister of Canada. (Trudeau the Elder and Wiser.) His reply? "Guy, go ahead. Do it. I won't stop you."
why as a whole species we follow regulations that were created to serve the needs of an older society? I challenge you to show there are regulations to enforce lifestyles.
1. There are no regulations that say you must work 5 or 6 days per week.
2. There is no regulation requiring anyone to get married.
3. There is no regulation that forbids he breakdown of the economy**.
4. There is no regulation to keep us down and there is no regulation for you and for us to accept it.
** There is a set of complicated and intricate regulations, which together stops us from breaking down the economy, and each of which is insignificant in and by itself, but is powerful only in accordance with the enforcement of the other seemingly powerless and limp regulations in the set.
You might as well ask why lions do not give up meat. Common ideals are not independent from us, they are us. The idea that we can tear up a culture and start again is the acme of hubris. Humanity is not perfectible; the trick is knowing when things are as good as they're going to get and then stopping.
We forget that we are just the latest iteration in an unbroken chain of life that began evolving 4.5 billion years ago. The idea that we can reinvent ourselves and escape this legacy is absurd. It doesn't matter how much technology we have, we are limited by our imagination and that is very limiting indeed. Look at the entire sweep of political and economic history; it can be summed up as "Who gets what and who decides?". We are still trying to answer this question.
Ideally a person would be moral enough on their own free will or personal accord that mere "fear of the law" would not be the sole thing stopping them, but in the worst case of individuals, I believe that's all that they respond to; that seems to be the basic legal or moral philosophy. (Much as the philosophy of the law holds individuals personally accountable for their actions, rather than attempting to "reduce" it to other causations or determinisms on the basic of other axioms, which thankfully is nonsense as far as the legal and moral philosophy is concerned; even if wrongdoers do have "other problems", such as mental problems or bad influences, the law distinguished between evil premediated behavior, intentions, and so on and merely "having problems").
If your argument had merit, then you could argue that one could just make murder or rape legal and it "wouldn't change" anything; I don't buy that.
(For example, most popular science media or proganda on TV is oudated, 19th century information and learning axioms, much as "science", as in Francis Bacon's scientific or "inductive" method has been around since the 16-17th century).
Even comparatively "new" enterprises, such the web or social media, the "Information Age", or the video game industry and its massive popularity today as a hobby for both men and women (despite having like many "new" things been viewed as a fad during its early days), still iikely have roots in "older" things; such as competitive "mental" games like chess, poker, etc being precursors to "video games".