What's Wrong With Enlightened Autocracy?

[jimwell]

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The wisest thing is to let fools govern themselves and suffer their own karma.

Yes. But the few wise people are still part of the fools' society so they also suffer the same karma. It's a tragedy. 

[UnbornTao]

5 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

@UnbornTao At least something he and Arthur agreed on.

[Hardkill]

14 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

How would this wisest person gain power? He cannot be elected because the electors are not wise and selfless enough to elect someone wise. Which means he has to seize power through strongarming and/or manipulation, which a wise person would never lower himself to do.

And even if he somehow magically got power and ruled perfectly for 50 years. What happens after he's dead? Where does the next wisest come from and who will agree to it?

The problem is that foolish people think that fools are wise, and elect accordingly. And a wise person cannot lead fools who see him as a fool.

The wisest thing is to let fools govern themselves and suffer their own karma.

Wasn’t Marcus Aurelius an enlightened autocrat?

What about the brilliant, wise, benevolent, selfless, and extremely successful Queen Elizabeth I of England from the mid 1500s to the beginning of the 1600s?

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, jimwell said:

Yes. But the few wise people are still part of the fools' society so they also suffer the same karma. It's a tragedy. 

The wise know how to avoid fools and how to avoid suffering.

8 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Wasn’t Marcus Aurelius an enlightened autocrat?

What about the brilliant, wise, benevolent, selfless, and extremely successful Queen Elizabeth I of England from the mid 1500s to the beginning of the 1600s?

No

[Topspin715]

I've been thinking abt this a little bit and you would need to install an entirely new form of government that would succeed our current form of democracy.  Depending on how things go in the United States in the next couple of decades, this type of thing is possible but would require people to get together to do it.  I don't think it would be autocratic in nature, but it would involve a very different power structure that would not depend on the people using a voting mechanism to elect their representatives because that isn't working so well.

 

The original federal government was set up in the 18th century by a bunch of founders who were relatively very enlightened for their time.  But the institutions weren't built to be sufficiently flexible and they're breaking down now.  

In Spiral Dynamics terms, what would a government look like if it were run by people who were of stage turquoise consciousness yet prepared to serve the first-tier survival needs of their people.  Our current government was set up by largely deistic rationalists (stage orange) but is being overtaken by reds and radical greens.  We need to install new balancing mechanisms. 

Edited May 14, 2022 by Topspin715

[Philipp]

there is value in democracy itself.

I can value that I have a voice and that we as a people are autonomous and not ruled by someone.  

 

[bythos]

How would you ever grow if your daddy always makes all the optimum decisions for you? If you have never suffered your bad choices and your delusions? How would you ever truly learn anything?

No matter the form of government, the people will always be the cogs that make the machine run. If the people are corrupt and they are always looking for a chance to bend or break the law, it does not matter how well oiled the machine is or how the designer of the machine has done a perfect job. Who is going to enforce the law on the corrupt people anyway? The autocrat alone?

[Bobby_2021]

On 5/14/2022 at 0:43 PM, Leo Gura said:

The wisest thing is to let fools govern themselves and suffer their own karma.

Realistically, people rarely suffer the karma of their foolish governance.

The normie masses suffer from foolish policies.

The rich & powerful, who often frame foolish policies can simply buy a passport to any place they want.

They don't have to suffer through the consequences of their karma. Maybe their next generation does. But who cares. 

[BlueOak]

We like wisdom that agrees with us. We rebel or strain against the wisdom that disagrees with us.

Defining wisdom, or what is best for a large group of people would be impossible for one person. The most conscious (and qualified) being on the planet would tell you something like, we resist that which is different to us. This is partly because we have strong self-identities. While that individual would not, everyone he or she was governing would have. That natural push and pull is part of what makes life work.

One way to do as you describe is with a varied council of teams, which make up individual services. Team of educators, Team of economists, Team of environmentalists. To take this further than I can adequately describe, they would need to be interlinked for cooperative reasons but still responsible for their own sectors.

This way when one team has failed on a task, constructive rebuilding can be done within that sector, rather than throwing out all the successful governing sectors and having a huge unpredictable shift. A populist would say the people would elect those teams, an authoritarian might say I'll select those teams.

Parties are more a hindrance than a help, they bring all kinds of baggage. Figureheads are not much better. The system I describe is not perfect I can see the holes in regards to budget, how that is decided, or how to respond to a crisis effectively, but it is not insurmountable. There can be policies in place to respond to crisis and every team can have a say in the budget. Personalities will still get in the way here, but it's so much better than what we have currently where it's all image-based arguments, or people voting against parties out of loyalty or past reasons. Rather than practically selecting which person does which job well, and taking the best specialists that we have to do them.

The complete opposite to this would be to have electorial systems that have enough parties in them to represent every electorate, I am talking a dozen, and to have systems that encourage all of those voices to be heard equally, and govern effectively as a group.

*To put aside my ego. I will say the upside to parties is that loyalty can get people interested in their governance, although it may be in a way I don't connect with, to some it's like their local sports team. Before you dismiss that entirely any way to get people interested in bettering their communities somehow shouldn't be ignored.

Edited May 15, 2022 by BlueOak

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Realistically, people rarely suffer the karma of their foolish governance.

The normie masses suffer from foolish policies.

The rich & powerful, who often frame foolish policies can simply buy a passport to any place they want.

They don't have to suffer through the consequences of their karma. Maybe their next generation does. But who cares. 

The rich cannot run away from their own foolishness.

[Rokazulu]

No individual on Earth would be fit for such a task.
Authority over anyone is a flawed premise created out of an anarchy within a divided self.

An Autocracy within the self has to be obtained for all.
For we all are interconnected neurons, each imbued with a unique role.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Rokazulu