On 04/06/2016 12:50 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> For those interested in authoritarianism, my favorite read is a classic
> published in 1993 ("The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power"). I'd call
> authors Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad spiritual realists. The book is
> mind-blowing. I thought they were fearless when they later took on Buddhism,
> but I don't think they ever published the essays (I have a copy.)
That's an interesting looking book. This review makes me want to read it:
http://www.johnhorgan.org/the_anti_gurus_15278.htm
On 04/06/2016 02:01 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Trade a pope for a supreme court justice for a Nobel Laureate at some level
> it is all the same. Everyone has a price. defining `price’ broadly. Sure I’ll
> pull from the right on that list if push comes to shove. But I’d also say
> authoritarian leaders, or those that like people like them, want some agility
> in their authoritarianism. They want to see the exercise of Power; they don’t
> want to be bogged down in procedure. Get those leaders and the led together
> and sometimes they’ll get behind some strange rituals.
On 04/06/2016 09:19 PM, Carl wrote:
> Well, constitutions are tools of the current narrative. Consider Article 9.
> It's pressed into service depending on the story various authorities wants
> to reify. One can consider what's on the paper and say oh that's pretty
> cool, but....
Right. Both you and Marcus point out that any system can be gamed. And the
winners of that game end up being the authority. And Marcus points out that
even the authoritarians want the authority to be dynamic in at least some sense
(each authority and authoritarian may want a different kind of dynamism, but
that's OK). But the primary issue is, I think, not that an elite set of gamers
exists (or will obtain eventually). The primary issue is the _size_ of the
elite, either in absolute terms and/or in proportion to the rest of the
population (including other species and the planet).
David Deutsch made this vague statement about good explanations being "hard to
vary", in the sense that if you've got it right enough, precise enough, etc.,
then changing any given part of it, probably breaks it. You can't willy nilly
change a good theory. You have to do it intelligently. The same would be said
about an authority that was derived (as directly as possible) from the world,
rather than being _imposed_ on the world.
Currently, any constitution is more "derived from the world" than any Monarch
or Genius because our scientific understanding of the mind is paltry. So, a
constitution, being a concrete artifact, allows _anyone_ who can make
inferences from that artifact to play. Constitutions allow for a large elite
class because they're artifacts in the world. If we could continue this
process, making our constitutions more and more "of the world", then it could
allow for larger and larger elite classes until, perhaps, the difference
between those that can _use_ the law and those that are abused by the law is
simply one of choice. If you put in the hours, you too can be a law user.
--
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⊥ glen ⊥
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