Ask yourself "Why do we depend on leaders in the first place?"

[johnlucas]

I decided to make this post separately as its own topic.
Originally it was a reply to Armstead in his topic Why bother? They're all screwing us over. from January 17, 2014.

I titled it Ask yourself "Why do we depend on leaders in the first place?"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024345076#post192

I wanted to give him a real answer not some rah-rah Democratic Party cheerleading because I don't see much use in that.
The Democratic Party is merely a vehicle to achieve the aims of Utopia, where Civilization protects & benefits each & every member that composes it.
Some people get confused & forget that the Democratic Party is just one vehicle of many.
They begin to sound like Kim Wayans' portrayal of Benita Butrell from In Living Color...
..."Don't nobody better not saying nothin' bad 'bout Miss Jenkins!"

No, I wanted to transform his thought on the entire subject.
Maybe our system is not enough. Maybe ANY government system is not enough.
Maybe our whole tendency to look to leaders to enhance our lives is counterproductive.
Yeah, birds flock behind the lead bird when they migrate. There's always some kind of chief or Alpha or king or whatever ruling some group. It seems as natural as breathing & taking a dump, doesn't it?
But Civilization by definition is a rebellion AGAINST Nature & maybe just maybe we need to question our natural dependence on leaders.

I have observed human nature & I think I have come up with a set of unmistakable universal truths about who we are & how we operate. We're special but we're not THAT special.
There are things that apply to every single member of humanity.

Take a listen to the following words & let me know what you think.

*************************************************************************

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024345076#post192


Why do people want to be LED anyway?
That's the inherent problem right there.
They expect someone they exalt on a pedestal to be concerned with the troubles of those on the dirty ground.
That's not realistic & never was.

There's 2 truths you must know about human beings.
#1: People are Selfish.
#2: People are Lazy.

And another truth is that Thank Goodness for #2 or there would be even MORE suffering on this planet from the hands of humankind.
Most people don't have follow-through & that probably protects us from the fallout of #1.
When people are selfish, people can be dangerous. That's what leads to evil. Putting self above all others always.
Energy is limited so people at most are not as destructive as they can be.
Most people don't have the energy & dedication to become the BTK killer.
Usually most people will do is spout nasty words at you or give you nasty looks.
Only with the energy derived from passion & the heat of the moment do you see people's nasty nature develop further.
That's why separation works best to defuse fights. Energy decreases & they're too tired to close the distance.
Without that laziness, you'd have more BTKs & Son of Sams running around.
Ambition is DANGEROUS when it is not tempered or offset by something else.
The truth is Laziness is a Virtue.

Those 2 rules apply to EVERY human being: me, you, & every other one of those 7 billion plus.

I'm gonna apply a 3rd truth to this maxim.
#3: People are Weak.

And THIS rule is the ONLY reason we have anything good in human society.
Our individual abilities are limited. You can only go so far with your 2 hands & 2 legs.
I don't care if you're a Mensa genius or the World's Strongest Man.
A baby is absolutely selfish from birth. He/she demands you put everything down to serve him/her.
But because babies can't really do much but cry really, we don't notice this seed of evil.
Once the baby gets more mobility & ability, that selfishness, that evil seed becomes MUCH more noticeable.
That's why they call them the Terrible Twos.

It is at THAT point that a baby must be taught to consider others with regard & respect.
Otherwise the kid becomes a monster. Lord of the Flies is real.
Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball, got it exactly right when he made the Kid version of Majin Buu the most dangerous.

When we teach kids to respect boundaries all we're really doing is creating selfishness parallels.
Parents are just old babies who want the new baby to adhere to the old baby's selfishness.
Selfishness comes to a standoff between beings & we learn to perform exchange as things equal out.
The new baby has to respect the old babies' rules but the old baby promises to take care of the new baby's needs.
And it is a tug of war match of control all the way through as one selfishness collides with another selfishness over the years of both "babies" growth.

Weakness, the lack of power, the inability to do something, forces us to come to parallel with each other.
It forces us to exchange favors & services with each other creating the social fabric.
The more powerful an individual becomes within a group, the less incentive a person has to want to come to parallel.
They can wall themselves off in their own little bubble & ignore the needs of the others.
This is what privilege is all about.

When we exalt, raise up, pedestal-on-high an individual over us, WHAT IN THE HELL DO WE EXPECT???
There HAS to be a weakness tying that person's needs to the needs of the others or they just won't GIVE a "flock"!
Those who we push up on ivory towers to lead us DO NOT & CANNOT relate to our lives.
Their existence is totally different than ours, their day-to-day interactions are totally different than ours, & they will become different than us because of it.
That's why it's hard to make friends with people too far out of your economic class.
That's why it's hard to make friends with ANYONE too different than you.

We NEVER grow out of our own selfishness really.
It only becomes tempered & offset thanks to laziness & weakness.
If we relate to anything outside of ourselves, it is only because it reminds us of ourselves.
That's why a jackrabbit named Bugs Bunny walks upright on two legs, holds his carrot with his opposable thumb, & talks.
That's why each & every alien in the Star Trek series is some variation on a humanoid.
The aliens of the Alien series repulse us BECAUSE THEY DON'T remind us of ourselves. They look like roaches.

Even though Self is most important to any person, Self Outside Of Self will also get due consideration.
This is why the parent/child bond is the hardest to break (each child is 50% of each parent, a literal Self Outside Of Self).
This is why the Family/Friends bond is the second hardest to break (True Blue Friends are in effect Chosen Family AKA Physical/Ideological Self Outside Of Self).
This is why the Social Circle exists.

The Elite have reached parallel with each other. Ultimately they want it all for themselves alone but they agree to share & exchange power amongst each other because they recognize themselves in each other.
In effect this causes them to see the other human beings outside of this circle as NOT human beings.
We got 2 legs we walk upright on, 2 hands with fingers & thumbs, we can talk, but we're not really PEOPLE.
That's why the words Employee, Worker, Servant, Serf, Taxpayer, Constituent, Soldier, Defendant, Plaintiff, Citizen, Commoner, Layperson, Perp, Inmate, Parolee, Consumer, Demographic, Dependent, & many others like that exist.
We are considered FUNCTIONS not PEOPLE. We are FUNCTIONS in a social/mechanical/political machine designed to serve the selfishness of some overpowered old babies.

We become the 3rd type of human relationships: Service to Self.
This is erroneously called a Lovers' Relationship & erroneously thought to only deal with intimate/sexual relations between people.
It should be called a Lusters' Relationship because it is all about "I want, I want, I want".
Lust does not always concern sexual matters, remember that.
You remember terms like 'a lust for adventure', 'a lust for life', right?
This is the weakest human relationship because it is always one-sided. There's no equal exchange going on.
One person spends his/her life, time, & energy in service to another without much return for the favor.
Once the serving person has fulfilled his/her usefulness, that person is unceremoniously discarded & ignored by the one he/she served.
You're just a tool, you're just a function.

This is how those who lead others & are exalted above others will begin to see those not like them.
If they have no connection to you & they are made more powerful as you use your power to exalt them, they will not recognize you as more than a mere function of a machine.
Why in the hell do we expect this reality to change just because we can supposedly pick our leaders?

Good in society is ALWAYS MANUFACTURED.
Good in society is ALWAYS MANIPULATED.
It is a complex TRICK to get people to come to parallel with each other & exchange the favors that make sure that EVERYBODY'S needs are taken care of.
There has not been ONE, NOT ONE society on Earth then AND now, that has mastered this trick yet.
That includes the supposedly United States of America.
With every Revolution on Earth it seems that we only trade one set of bad leaders for another.
We're never gonna get what we need depending on a leader.

We must somehow manipulate not just American society but EVERY world society to see Self Outside Of Self up & down the line.
We must realize the fiction of national borders & see each other as an Earth society.
We must become Family, familiar with one another. We must have ties with one another to ENSURE that we stay family.
We must counter & offset not only our own inherent selfishness but make it fashionable for OTHERS to want to do the same.
You're not gonna get it on an individual basis. You need numbers. Lots of numbers of people doing the same thing to stand a chance.
But remember that People are Lazy so you will have to find a way that this can be done EASILY with as little energy given as possible. That or you must find a way to energize people for a constructive purpose (much harder to do).
Media is a great way to have people come on board with a message without spending too much energy.
Yes, it comes down to marketing. You gotta sell it. It must hit emotions over logic because people ain't really logical.

Any advancement we ever got in this miserable existence on Earth was because it was manipulated into being.
Elite means Few & physics is always a numbers game. They're too weak to do it by themselves without others' help.
They're too weak to keep it TO themselves without others' help.
If enough old babies who come to parallel with each other outnumber another set of old babies who came to parallel with each other, the smaller set of old babies will either give up some of the MINE MINE MINE to soothe & placate the bigger set of old babies...
...or they might just include the bigger set of old babies inside their circle.

We think we did good when we got the New Deal in 1930s. Hahahahahahahahahaha!!
Man, that was just a bribe! That was a token of concession. Those old babies just gave up a little piece of the MINE MINE MINE.
Once they gave you a few toys from their playpen, you walked away satisfied while they still kept most of the toys.
Those things were conceded to cool down a Revolution.
Same thing happened with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
They knew if Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Native Americans, Women, Gays, Peaceniks ever started seeing themselves on the same page, they would come for the toys in the playpen.
They defused a potential revolution by conceding legal civil rights for Blacks.
Neither time did we get what we were supposed to get.

If we can't achieve the best solution that I outlined earlier where all people on Earth recognize Self Outside Of Self with every other, then we just gotta do second best & force concessions from that small but exalted set of old babies.
It's simple physics. One needle isn't gonna scare a bed of needles.
But one blunt massive block will scare the hell out of that needle bed.
A massive blunt block can hammer down those needles, those nails.

Pinning all hopes on one leader is fighting a bed of needles with one single needle.
And it's easy to lose needles between your fingers.
Betcha won't lose that block so easily.
The hardest part is only in building that block.

Think deeply about what I just told you here.
Barack Obama is not gonna save us & neither is Elizabeth Warren nor Hillary Clinton nor even Bernie Sanders.
Only US will save US.
John Lucas

[frazzled]

1. I don't

But I do depend on living in an organized society. Things need to be accomplished if we live together in a society, and having it organized has always worked better than having no organization (read: anarchy). Even the most remote tribes in general have some sort of organization.

So if I want an electrical grid and safe food and some degree of protection from fire and crime, and ways to travel (safely) and gain access to other parts of the country and world, and to live in a civil society that both protects my rights and affords rights to others so that they are not so miserable that they make me miserable --I can't do all this myself.

So I participate in what we call a democracy here. And that means electing representatives. No one of them, even the ones I vote for, can achieve everything. They can't definitively end poverty forever or make every kid smart or reverse climate change overnight. They can only keep chipping away at the problems and hopefully keep moving in the right direction. And so I make decisions about which ones might be better chippers than others. And I don't expect any of them to be my "leader" or absolve me of my responsibility to take actions. I expect them to represent my interests in various ways in the complex dealings that running a vast and complicated society requires. Because I can't build a road or airport, and I can't fund all the elderly people, and I can't educate all the children. We have to do it together. And, no, I don't depend on "leaders": I depend on those of us who vote for the representatives who can help do all this stuff the best, with all the messy failure that entails.

[johnlucas]

2. But that's just the thing. Do they really represent you?

What I talked about covered an organized society.
But why we do think putting somebody as a leader, as a representative as you put it, really achieves this?
That person you put in place to represent you CANNOT represent you. By definition they can't.
That's the problem. That's the conundrum.

Only YOU can represent you.
It's pretty much lotto. We're hoping that the one we pick just might win.
Time & time again we're surprised at the outcome when we put people onto these pedestals called President, Senator, Representative, Governor, Mayor, Alderman based on a bunch of words they speak.
Talk is cheap. Anybody can say anything. And human beings are born liars.
They have no skin in the game & because of that you're relying on the chaos principle & its resulting dumb luck that the elected leader will do what's best for you.
The checks & balances game didn't go far enough.
There's no real penalty when those exalted leaders do stupid things.
They're made immune to the consequences of their actions by their lofty position.
They're really not worried about calls to the Congressman & letters to the President. Why WOULD they be?

I'm not blaming you for not knowing a better way to have an organized society.
That's why I made the post. How do we find the way?
We don't have to settle for messy failure. There's a better method but we have to figure out what it is.
This post is supposed to serve as a brainstorming session.

One thing we have to do is admit that this system just don't work!
That's the first step. We have to say "This system sucks. End of message."
The American system is NOT the best system or it wouldn't have the crappy results that it does.
It might not even be a good system & we have to be brave enough to consider that.

We know monarchy sucks & we see that democracy/republic/whatever it's called sucks.
So what's the better system? I devote my life to finding this answer each & every day.
For one, I realize the myth of the value of money & am trying to figure out a way to subvert this bad game so that it benefits those without the playing pieces.
Can we have a society exist in a superseded way over the old society?
Can people remain in the homes they have now but be independent from the old order?
Where they can exist on the same land but not be touched by the enforcers of the old order?
As if the new society is a hologram or a mirage over the old one?

Either way, the whole thing about representative leaders looks outdated. No matter what title they're called.
Can human beings function without a chief? That's gonna be the lasting question for humanity in the years to come.
John Lucas

[frazzled]

3. Nothing is perfect

If you're looking for utopia, I can't help you.

[johnlucas]

4. That's just it. Civilization exists for the purposes of finding Utopia.

Civilization's very existence is ONLY for the purposes of finding Utopia or else there's no point to it.
If we're not dedicated to finding Utopia or at the very least the next best thing to it, we might as well revert to the Law of the Jungle. No sense in being a poser, right?

Isn't one of the catchphrases of this country called "A More Perfect Union"?
Doesn't that sound like a motto dedicated to achieving Utopia or the closest thing possible?

Saying nothing's perfect is a cop-out.
Yeah I know nothing's perfect. Every bit of matter & anti-matter in this universe is incomplete.
There's always something it lacks.
But that doesn't mean we should give up & not at least go for 2nd best.
That doesn't mean we should give up & not at least go for 925th best.
Let's at least try to get Good if we can't get Perfect.
Let's at least try for Decent before we try for Good.
We're not even Decent yet!

Anybody in the business of going for an organized society has the DUTY, not the choice, the DUTY to take this Civilization experiment further.
To perfect the imperfection as much as they can in ways great & small.

Why?

Because there were those before us who did these very things for us.
We're the recipient of past perfection attempts on this Civilization experiment.

But I understand that #2 truth that People Are Lazy.
I'm not surprised that folks won't even try. It's natural. Takes a lot of energy to do this.
That's why I simply ask for folks to just consider the notion.
Small energy to do that.
But just by that simple shift in thought the change will have begun.

"Is Civilization's entire existence formed for the sake of finding Utopia?"
"Yes."
And there's your first step. The other steps will follow in like pattern.
John Lucas

[flying rabbit]

5. Thank you for a very

interesting post.

[Delphinus]

6. There is a lot to this

and I have to admit that when I read your first sentence, why do people want to be led, I immediately thought of God and religion.

I need to digest this a lot more before I can comment further - thank you for making me put my thinking cap on.