If top of the society is immoral psychopaths with power, and most of the society is composed of people with good intentions, then there is not much hope for “beta uprising” until things go way beyond point of recovery, because powerful psychopaths will not let their power get taken away.
Not sure if this is just evolutionary biology, but this cycle of psychopaths at the top has been going on since when, at least ancient Egypt. And in all these thousands of years, the system that enables this cycle got way more reinforced than it got dismantled.
So is it maybe better idea to put benevolent people’s energy towards designing and preparing a new societal system that will have built-in mechanisms for preventing corruption and malevolence? “prepare” as in get ready to implement for when the current messed up system is about to grind to a halt and collapse? Well, it would be best to figure out how to go full Benevolent Theseus™ by replacing parts of currently failing system with the corruption-proof ones.
What are some resources related to this topic? Recearch on societal dynamics, designing political systems, examples of similar revolutions that already happened, etc. Post any links that you consider relevant
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Getting rid of apathy is the most important step. Too many people say “I’m not interested in politics”.
Politics is everything, it shouldn’t be considered as a legitimate choice to stay away from it.
Holy shit, I wish I could upvote this more than once.
In the US we live in a participatory democracy. If the citizens of this country don’t actively participate in how the government functions, then all is lost.
One of the biggest tools that fascists use to subvert the will of the people is turn off various groups from caring about what is going on. They spread misinformation about this and lies about that. They act like things can get fixed with a snap of a leader’s fingers, but that’s not how reality works, so they complain about why we still have problems.
With that comes endless conspiracies and in general a mistrust and break down of government. And it all kind of steamrolls because the fewer people who follow the news and politics closely, the easier to let corruption go unchallenged.
I have to say, I’m pretty sure the US approach of seeming hyper democracy (voting for the local garbage men boss, sheriffs, etc) is actually detrimental to democracy in practice. You’re flooded with choices that you can’t reasonably be expected to be able to actually make an informed decision about. Simply because of time constraints, you can’t study garbage policy issues 4h a day, every day, after work.
Maybe don’t take your knowledge of US politics from TVs and movies. It’s not that complicated and that’s one of the reasons why there are political parties - it is pretty reasonable to assume that if one is registered as a Democrat then they follow most democratic party ideals. And if they are registered as a Republican, then they are a worthless piece of shit. It makes picking your candidate easier even ot is an imperfect system.
So what is the point of voting, if the candidates are pre selected like that anyway? It’s no different from voting, say, the city council once and then letting them decide.
The current system is the simulation of a democracy.
This is a question too complex for a Lemmy thread, here are some thoughts.
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Being a net positive will make things better, per difinition. That’s what everyone of us can do, regardless of what you are doing. Of course this requires a reasonable process of deciding what’s right, so take a look at the next point.
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Think. To think is naturally the greatest skill of any human. Our intelligence has been key since we started civilisation. Think about everything, be critical about any ideas. Only ideas supported by facts can be good ideas. This is how you find the stuff that makes your life worse. Does your city need to be designed like this? Does a omnipotent being make sense? Do I need to slack off today?
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Unrelated, but working together with others is beneficial to everyone. Cooperation is what got us so fary and what will bring us beyond the stars. One thing I want to point out specifically is that world federalism, albeit hard to achieve, is a worthwhile end goal.
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Stop caring about intentions. Stop giving the stupid a free pass. Treat stupidity as a type of malice, and act accordingly.
I believe that this alone should be enough to address the sykos on power. Easier said than done.
Stupid people will treat that as hostility and shut off their reasoning. That’s unfortunately how humans work - question their beliefs, and they will believe even harder and attack you for even hinting that their beliefs are wrong.
Sects are the obvious example of that behavior, but on smaller scales, we are all a bit like that.
