this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Asklemmy
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The biggest issue I see is self serving fuckwads don't go away. They'll import themselves a la Putin if they think they can get away with it. They'll create their own institutions a la the Mafia if there's nothing else.
The second problem is there are large groups of people who want to be under some Authority to the extent they get populist / fascist stuff going or invent ones like in Religion.
I just don't think people "freed from institutional authority" are inherently going to not just recreate it, probably worse...
Over the short term (in an historical sense), that's certainly the case.
I just mentioned on another post that I liken it to individual growth. Just as individuals can and often do mature to the point that they no longer need or desire a mommy and daddy, so too can our species as a whole mature. And I believe that, if we don't destroy ourselves along the way, we not only can but will.
But even if we don't destroy ourselves along the way, yes - that's still many, many, MANY generations away.
All of that is the fruit of people living for generations under oppressive hierarchical power structures.
Just like we can’t say humans “naturally are greedy” we also can’t say they “naturally will give themselves over a ‘populist leader’”.
In less hierarchical societies, people naturally are more skeptic of authority and populism.
Like when the North American native peoples of the North East first encountered Europeans, and couldn’t possibly understand how the sailors had “bosses” who “told them what to do”. The idea of following a leader like that didn’t make much sense to them at all.
Jumping in with a curiosity question. Can you give an example of an effective, non-hierarchical, society. Particularly one able to remain stable above Dunbar number for humans (around 150-200 members). I've not heard of any groups that have remained stable beyond that, which don't lean on the "super-tribe" mentality (with it's inherant us vs them). That tends to collapse towards authoritarianism of some sort, at least when something of value can be extracted from it.
The Zapatistas in Chiapas. The Hill peoples in eastern India. Rojava in Kurdistan. The vast majority of native peoples in Asia and the Americas before colonisation. The pirate societies, and related to that the Zana-Malata of Madagascar.
I suggest you to also read some of the articles and books by David Graeber. Like any. Egalitarian societies were his specialisation.