It's not that I hate governments - it's just that I have a rather cynical view of them. There's a gaping flaw in our current model of democracy - or rather, a lesson which people often learn subconsciously, but which needs to be explicitly incorporated into the workings of government. The lesson is - always distrust the people who govern you. Never give them the benefit of the doubt - ever. Failure to do so invariably results in either:
- Dictatorship/Oligarchy/Plutocracy, or
- An all powerful bureaucracy.
My views on this are heavily influenced by Chapterhouse: Dune - see the discussion between Lucilla and Great Honoured Matre(the 'Spider Queen')...
BTW, I have similar views on laws - or rather the stupid view that goes 'The letter of the law must be observed.' Such a statement doesn't aid justice - it turns it into a side issue. As Dune's Bene Gesserit say, the problem with laws is that they have no human understanding...
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Popup comments are up - nice idea, BTW. Really improves things.
I would hazard a guess that if any of us were in the goverment or in 'power' we would have made the same set of mistakes.
Its only possible to fix the system by mastering it first...unfortunately we rebel against a system we don't even understand - often too easily.
How true...but there may be solutions to that. The Dune solution - the one used by the Bene Gesserit sisterhood - is to concentrate power in the hands of a 'Mother Superior', who is continuously monitored by Proctors - Sisters whose function is to watch those in charge like hawks. They have the power to impeach the Mother Superior, if necessary.
It's pretty obvious this system would fail if we tried it - one impeachment would follow another, with people simply chasing power. The Bene Gesserit don't suffer this because (1) they're perfectly loyal to their Sisterhood, and (2) because they have access to millenia of ancestral memories, giving them unbelievable insight and wisdom. A far cry from those who run our planet...
These Proctors are also the bedrock of the legal system - they're a bit like a jury, with one difference - they are not bound by laws. They can choose the punishment to fit the crime without having to bother about legal wrangles. As they put it, the important thing is not justice but fairness. Those upon whom judgement is passed must feel the fairness of it.
Just remembered an interesting Dune quote: "The ancients used to say that power corrupts. The truth is a little more subtle - power attracts the corruptible."
So I doubt we'd ever end up in power - AFAIK, neither of us is corruptible in that sense :-)...
Interesting. There is a similarity with the governance at a Greek City State called Sparta - very interesting people, with some wierd laws, if you get a chance read up on them. Incidentally they had 2 kings.
Yeah, I know about the Spartans - pretty interesting people. There's that interesting bit in their history about how 300 of them held off the entire Persian army at Thermopylae. There's still an inscription carved there to commemorate the fallen heroes...
Robert Heinlein often writes SF involving future societies similar to or inspired by the Spartans...he's pretty good, you should try reading some of his stuff...
Incidentally, the Romans had 3 leaders at one point - they called them triumvirs - hence the English word triumvirate.
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