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IDEOLOGY AND ETHICS SURVEY SAMPLE ARGUMENTS |
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| 26. |
Why do civilizations tend to go through long historic boom-bust life cycles rather than steadily grow in wisdom and effectiveness? |
| (- 5) Genetic view: Man is not disconnected from nature, but rather is subjected to the very same evolutionary selective factors that affect other species in evolutionary sociobiology textbooks. Like other species, human societies accumulate genetic load (worthless, dysfunctional people). Just like the dodo bird became flightless in the absence of ground predators, civilizations create soft niches where the unfit can outbreed the fit. Greedy "captains of industry" also dilute the quality of populations when they decide to bring in lower quality people as their work force. Often cheap labor means people who tend to be more docile and less intelligent. They often become sources of added ethnic and racial friction. In addition, societies that allow niches that reward sociopathic behavior tend to accumulate parasites (criminals). According to certain sources, about 5% of the white population is sociopathic, and this has a significant genetic basis. Certain groups that heavily value deception, whether state-run organizations such as the CIA, or ethnic groups such as Jews, tend to attract and hold unusually rich concentrations of these types of individuals. Civilizations probably disintegrate due to a one-two punch process. The accumulation of genetic load not only decreases the ratio of producers to nonproducers, thereby dragging down overall social efficiency, but it also weakens the resistance of the society to the rise of sociopathic individuals and groups who increasingly plunder these societies from within. Over time the ability of civilizations to adapt, improvise, and courageously handle crises in a rational way disintegrates, so that when they get knocked down they tend to stay down. The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire illustrates these points, to the extent that we can see how the leadership of the society became increasingly rotten over time compared to the earlier period of the Roman Republic. Over time, Rome clearly lost much of its early underlying dynamism, innovativeness, and resilience. In fact, one can see this pattern in the long term life cycles of most civilizations. Many fallen civilizations, such as the dynasties of ancient Egypt, had to go through periods of chaos and extensive reorganization prior to experiencing any resurgences. It was common for ancient civilizations located in more temperate zones to resurge only after absorbing new blood from the southward migrations of more fierce, frost zone-sculptured gene pools who formed the new ruling classes. |
. . . | (+5) Environmental view: Leftists tend to have much more faith than rightists that civilizations can grow indefinitely through the learning process. To them, civilizations are about the strong helping, nurturing, and instructing the weak. In this model, civilizations become strengthened as they go from precedent to precedent, extending learning, the rule of law, and advanced culture over increasingly diverse groups. As civilizations grow, their laws and policies must become more complex. They require more mediation and increasingly sophisticated advice from wise men. Civilizations break down when their wise men make errors in reading the tea leaves of accumulated complexity, much like the way a hedge fund might blow up when its operators fail to read market turns. Also, leftists believe that people get greedy and form artificial class barriers to protect their interests and gum up the works of equal opportunity, mobility based on talent, and free trade. Combating these trends usually means more state police power to enforce fairness, practice equality, and teach men how to be good. This in turn usually implies more taxes to support more military, police, and bureaucracy, which puts more stress on the productive classes. If things reach a breaking point, the leftist dictator is often the answer. A major problem with this approach, however, is that the leftist dictator often undermines property rights and incentives necessary for entrepreneurs to create wealth. Because of this vicious circle, other leftists such as anarcho-libertarians advocate dismantling the state so that people can sort themselves out and rebuild productive communities on a local level. America provides an interesting historical example. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in the 1830's, he noted that America had 30 times fewer bureaucrats per capita than his native France and almost no central government by European standards. When they built new communities in the Wilderness, Americans left behind much of the governmental-regulatory baggage of Europe and seemed happier and more productive. However, there are major outcomes of real decentralization that many leftist anarcho-libertarians strongly dislike. When people truly decentralize, they tend to naturally sort their communities out by race and ethnicity, engage in decentralized forms of law enforcement (to include personalized revenge killing and vigilantism), and trade in free market currencies (typically forms of hard money tied to gold and silver). Therefore, leftists usually prefer that the state retain some kind of social re-engineering role. They also like to attribute successful resurgences to the role of egalitarian religious and political ideologies that motivate the masses. |
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