Jani Moliis Jani.Moliis@formin.fi
Jani writes:
This would be the place to jump again to the governmental level, as an individual can do little for all the others. Much as it has been accepted that governments can and should take care of nations, the same thing could be held applicable to the entire world. Citizenship is the last form of feudalism, giving other people benefits by birth which others are not entitled to. How's that different from a caste system?
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Corbett replies.
I separated this passage out of Jani's recent reply since I think it is a new thread, one I'll entitle discussion of a world government.
I'll separate it into three claims and address each, no so much to disagree with him as to try to ask some questions, see if I'm understanding what he's saying and point us toward future discussion.
This would be the place to jump again to the governmental level, as an individual can do little for all the others.
Corbett comments:
As I understand this Jani is not suggesting that no one can help AN OTHER. Rather, he is suggesting that no one person can respond to the totally of desperate need in the world. That's certainly so.
While even if many individuals jump in and address desperate problems of need, the needs will always outrun the approach by means of basic charity, the corporal works of mercy as they are often called.
This is because many of the problems which cause acute misery are seen on this argument as systemic problems, that is, problems of the structures of society and not by nature or individuals.
Thus we move to point two:
Much as it has been accepted that governments can and should take care of nations, the same thing could be held applicable to the entire world.
Corbett comments:
That is, the wisdom that attacks basic charity as a mode of solving problems now also attacks nation states. As the world become more economically and politically global, individual nation states have less and less power, and then the very problem with individual action -- limited power and scope -- can be said of nation states as well. The problem must be dealt with as a global issue a sort of ONE GOVERNMENT for the world.
Citizenship is the last form of feudalism, giving other people benefits by birth which others are not entitled to. How's that different from a caste system?
Corbett comments:
The point here, I take it, is that no nation should have the right to carve out some space of the world as it's own and to then make only its own (current) citizen the citizens.
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I do have some concerns with Jani's analysis.
While I would accept that many of the factors which hold people down are systemic -- social structures which are in place in cultures and governments, I have FACTUAL disagreement with the theory of human psychology behind this view. Individualists are often likely to err on just how much power a person has to act on his or her own in the face of social structures. I plead guilty of often leaning in that direction. On the other hand, the common views of those who hold views like Jani's often simply assert with virtually no evidence at all and choosing to ignore counter-evidence of actual human cases, that people never have freedom to resist social structures which are in place.
The facts of human psychology seem to lay in between either radical view. To whatever extent people have the human possibility to act against social shaping and social structures, then to that extent they participate in their own oppression.
This view is, of course, anathema to the modern liberal, but I've seen no evidence which shows it to be mistaken, no matter how unpopular it is.
Secondly, and this on Jani's side -- no matter what the will of individuals are, forces are mounting and technologies that go with it -- toward more and more globalism. The economy leads the way with economies that are virtually uncontrollable by any nation state even the current world super power the U.S.A.
I think the signs are there that globalism, moves more and more toward one world government, are very likely to occur in some form or other in the 21st century. It won't be without a terrible struggle on the part of nation states, and particularly those like the U.S. with the most to lose, but I just can't see how the nation state structure can survive.
We have to remember that this dominant world model is a creation of relatively recent centuries and that 600 years ago the world was run on different fundamental forms of social organization, and before that yet others. It is certainly likely that someday the nation state dominance will be broken and it does seem to me that global rule by government and economy suggests itself as some that may well dominate the 21st century.
I am not an anarchist despite my radical individualism. I want and need a minimalist government. Most of my life has been spent trying to create spaces where I can be left along by government in the areas where it wants to intrude on my life, and the shift in my lifetime to stronger and stronger nation states has been exactly the opposite of what I would want. The global state and economy are even more detestable to me than the nation state for precisely the reasons I have stated in opening this forum. But, I am prepared to face the reality that hate it as much as I may, I'm very likely to be on the losing side of this one! If that is so, then the task of my remaining days is to create the greatest number of escape hatches from the clutches of globalism and freedom of thought and expression are at least not only still possible, but at least for the time being, even more enabled than ever before by the technology of cyber space. How long that freedom of space will last -- well, that's anyone's guess.
Bob Corbett
Bob Corbett corbetre@webster.edu
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