Item — HN Reader

> Here's the problem: you can't.

It is not possible to "enforce" a "value system". True.

But we can have a value system we share that benefits us all. We can work together to improve our welfare as a whole.

> Ultimately the only defense we have is to not give other people such power.

That is untrue. We must have webs of trust, and within those webs there are power hierarchies. The trick is that those hierarchies must not be arbitrary nor permanent.

This is a problem that has been wrestled with, and solved, several times in human history. Any human structure is vulnerable to outside attack, and most (all?) vulnerable to internal decay, but they can be established and are worth establishing.

An example I can think of are the Republican Militias as described by George Orwell in Road to Catalonia, and activist groups I have been involved with here in Aotearoa.

Nothing lasts for ever - that does not mean we cannot work together for good things.

In one group I was involved on we used to have monthly meetings, by phone, of the organising committee. We had thirty members (all activists running hot with their own opinions), made decisions by consensus. I was on that committee for five years and we went over our allotted two ours twice: Once by ninety minutes (that was a day!) and the other time by five minutes. Nobody ever felt unheard - that mattered to us.

It is possible, people have been doing it forever, the good things we make are vulnerable but we should still aspire to and achieve them

3 comments

> It is not possible to "enforce" a "value system".

That's not what I said. What I said was that you can't enforce a value system "that benefits us all"--because "us all" will never agree on what value system that should be, at least not once you get beyond small groups of people. But of course you can just declare by fiat that your preferred value system "benefits us all", and ignore objections, and if you have enough brute force at your disposal, you can enforce it. You just won't be enforcing a value system that actually "benefits us all".

> We must have webs of trust

Yes.

> within those webs there are power hierarchies.

Only if you let that happen. But in a sane web of trust, you don't--because in a sane web of trust, everybody understands that power--in the sense of someone you trust doing something that harms you, simply because you're unable to prevent them--is a betrayal of trust.

> This is a problem that has been wrestled with, and solved, several times in human history.

I disagree. I certainly don't see the Republican Militias in the Spanish Civil War as solving this problem.

> that does not mean we cannot work together for good things

Of course we can. But our ability to do that without violating any trusts is limited, often very severely, by how many people we can get to agree with us, without any force or coercion being applied, on what "good things" to work together for. Unfortunately utopian dreamers and "revolutionaries" throughout human history have failed to recognize this basic fact, and their attempts to make a better world have always resulted in mass suffering and death.

Have you ever been sailing on a yacht with friends?

There is s hierarchy. Generally in my experience it is the person on the tiller who will bark commands as the boat moves across the wind.

A hierarchy, temporary, amongst friends.

Everybody gets good things.

> Have you ever been sailing on a yacht with friends?

Yes. A small group of people, who know each other and want to be together. Sure, works fine.

> Generally in my experience it is the person on the tiller who will bark commands as the boat moves across the wind.

Yep. I've been that person. I've also been the person who had to get out of the way quickly when I heard "coming about!" so the boom wouldn't clout me on the head.

> A hierarchy, temporary, amongst friends.

Yes: temporary, for a specific purpose where one person is obviously in a position to give orders that the others should follow. The friends don't have to agree on their entire value system or philosophy of life. They only have to agree on who's in the best position to warn everyone of an impending event that they need to know about.

And amongst friends, who aren't going to bicker over all this because they're there to have a good time with each other, and there are no conflicts of interest.

What does any of this have to do with the thread topic?

> we can have a value system we share that benefits us all

If "us all" is a small enough group, sure. It doesn't scale, though.

It is not possible to "enforce" a "value system". True.

I think that organized religion wants to say a few words here.