[Phil] The Rule of Comfort

There is a classic struggle that is far older than my life time in philosophy between the Rule of Might and the Rule of Law. The thumbnail version of this. The rule of Might is the rule of the strong. Whoever commands society with the biggest army, the most weapons and the most fear is the one who determines what happens. The rule of Law basically states that members of a society get together and decide the way things SHOULD be with laws, and then those laws are applied evenly to members of society.
I posit that there is a third state, and that it is really ultimately the glue that makes civilization work. It is the Rule of Comfort. Most people live their lives significantly on autopilot, establishing a set degree of patterns that they enjoy. When those patterns are disrupted, there is discomfort. Sometimes this is something they can do something about it, and sometimes there isn’t.

A lot of time and a lot of money have been spent studying people and what makes them tick. Sociology, Psychology and Marketing have made amazing discoveries into the nature of the human mind, and when combined with the advances in medicine that we’re making they’re going to be making even more. Fortunately, there is a lot of what makes humanity tick that is still an unknown X factor. It is why regimes that are corrupt or evil are toppled. Its why the Arab spring was able to happen. Its why the Berlin wall was able to fall.

The instant we have a perfect understanding of the human mind is the instant that a perfect tyranny will rise up to enslave it. There is actually some legitimate fear on the part of libertarians at the concentration of too much power in one place. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

People do not realize the consequences of the government obtaining all of the power that it is in the United States. One crisis after another accrues more power, and the government never gives it up once it has it. Right now, the people of the United States, despite all of their suffering, still enjoy tremendous wealth, prosperity and opportunity though that is slowly being taken away bit by bit.
Of course part of the problem is that the people can’t unite very easily. They are kept separated, in part by an artificial drama of conflict where often there is none, but also in part by diverging definitions of realities. Seriously, when you can’t agree on some of the most basic facts, how can you unite on a single principal?
One of the things I’ll be discussing in future entries are concrete ACTUAL methods and steps that can be used to fix things. They’re not going to fix themselves. The inertia is too strong. The same comfort that keeps Americans from pouring out into the streets in rage at what is being done by Wall Street and Washington is the comfort in Washington, in the Village (Corporate Media), and Wall Street itself. People blame ‘the system’ without attaching emotional value to it. It Is easy to have good will toward a brand but harder to have negative feelings to it unless it affects you personally.

People who had their lives ruined by BP in the oil spill may or may not ever forgive the company. But Americans who saw it on the television will quickly forget it within a few months. Their collective memory has been wiped clean, in part by the internet, and also the wealth of opportunities of distraction and also in part by the extra work they have to do each day to survive, and also in part by the shared apathy of their peers. Liberals and Independents are fractured. Conservatives are strong and motivated and focused, but only on destruction. They know that they want smaller government but aren’t really trying to work Liberals and Independents to establish common ground.

The Debt Ceiling is a crucible. But I would argue that the real crisis, the real changing of the rules will be something that no one expects. After all in Tunisia it was a fruit cart that finally set things off. I know people so I know Americans ARE capable of moving out into the streets…..but the threshold is much higher. And even if they do, there are so many traps designed to catch that anger once it occurs, pundits designed to blur the lines with talking heads, divergent reality interpreters who will state that what is happening is directly the opposite of what is actually happening that even should that ‘magic moment’ occur there will be no focus to it. More than likely it will simply be a series of riots such as what occurred in Los Angeles after Rodney King.

When I went on my mission to Venezuela, there was a coup attempt. I saw the way people acted and it was listless, and somewhat chaotic. One of the reasons I call civilization an illusion is because unlike say…a rock, civilization can stop being such at any particular time. But it is the most persistent reality we have, because we want it. We are biologically hardwired to seek the status quo. It is this basic desire for comfort that makes dictatorships able to do as much as they are. A true democracy requires a level of diligence. Ben Franklin was not lying when he said, “We have a Republic. Now let us see if you can keep it.”

Inertia is a tough thing. 200 years of freedom makes overturning it difficult without finesse, but at the same time that freedom can be overturned much quicker than you think, especially when the antibodies/immune system of society have been coopted in a poisonous reality. But that is the subject for another post.