For thousands of years humans have looked to a future where things get better for the majority, and yet it never does; science and technology improves, education spreads, productivity improves, resources abound, and yet ever more do the horrible wars continue – with the senseless slaughter of scores of civilians including children – unabated since time immemorial, poverty endemic, access to healthcare, housing and more continues to elude many, even in countries like the U.S. which have the highest concentrations of wealth among individuals; all sorts of problems persist, same as millennia ago, as if things never changed.
Right now, even with remarkable advancements in science and technology unfolding before our eyes, it fills many, not with hope, but with despair and fear of a more marginalised and economically frustrating future; how is it possible, that advancements should rather (and ever it does) bring people worry and not hope?
It is because we are failing to pay attention to, and fix, the areas really needed and responsible for helping us build better societies; governance and development planning.
Whenever we think of solving society's problems, we think in terms of technology and, then, economics, but economics especially does not concern itself so much with solving as it does with studying and analyzing.
Fields like governance and development planning are where real development and management of society occurs. They are also responsible for directing and harmonizing advancements and understanding or expertise in various other fields (from science and technology to psychology, education and more) to this end; i.e. improving society.
Yet, as other fields like the sciences continue to advance at an astonishing pace, governance and politics in particular remain pretty much in the stone age; in spite of all the scholarship in those fields, our (or at least the majority's, including most authorities') understanding of it remains rudimentary at best – heavily flawed with bad conceptualisation on basic concepts – built on the wrong foundations; a problem not too uncommon in the humanities and social sciences in general, and which it's scholars will not own up to. Without proper systems for governance in place, planning also suffers.
So, we are never able to apply our successes and expertise in science and technology, psychology etc. to create change for the majority in society, because the vehicle through which we will do this (i.e. governance) is mostly broken; and has been broken for thousands of years; we don't know this, because we change its colors or looks and think we have changed the vehicle itself.
- If we will properly solve poverty, it sounds like an issue of economics, but it's actually a problem of governance and planning; economics just offers the analyses or science for understanding phenomena in there.
- If we will develop education, healthcare delivery, better social interaction etc., we can't leave that to technology. Governance and planning brings the relevant expertise together, and channels them sensibly to solving and managing human problems and society.
- If we will solve wars, we can't leave that to technology or economics; it's a problem of governance.
It takes all of us recognizing this, to take steps to fix governance, which will in turn fix politics and planning alongside that, to then help bring everything together.
The world will never get better until we fix governance.
byu/chuckerchale inFuturology
12 Comments
Because what counts as good governance is subjective.
In America there is a huge divide over if the state should even promote equality or not
I would suggest not letting this kill your soul, and also not giving into the complacency of “well, it’s still a lot better than before”.
We *DO* have SO much more than we’ve ever had before, but as you said, some very important parts are either out of reach of many of becoming more and more taken away, all in the name of profit and consolidation of wealth.
There are MANY scary things happening in the world, however there have always been so, we’ve just never been so informed about them, as well as so fixated (mostly in the name of profit) on the negativity as we’ve ever been before.
War is certainly scarier than ever, and there are some significant threats to the very core of life on our planet.
The most wealthy and powerful in the world are undoubtedly out of control, and that seems to be worsening.
All of that said, don’t let go of positivity and appreciation of the good things in *your* life, as well as the good things we still have in society.
If all we focus on is the bad parts of life, it becomes harder to argue that there is a better way, that there is more that is worth promoting than senseless acquisition of wealth and power.
Hold onto and promote the good things in your life, as they will always remind you of what is worth fighting to retain and grow.
Anyway, thanks for this thoughtful post.
Define Good Governance™. What is the structure of the system that would disseminate prosperity to the body politic? How could we best democratize the technological advancements we make so that they do not simply aggrandize the next generation of oligarchs and aristocrats? Is it even possible to create a system that would not eventually be captured by those representatives of the industrial barons that organize our economy? Are we simply beholden to hierarchy, and the efficient social latency that mode provides? Can we achieve Good Governance™ without first correcting the constituent ignorance and propagandist organs that countervail against that future? It’s that structure even possible with our current technology?
I think this is just how advancement in culture looks like at this stage. We’re not in sci-fi automated Gay Luxury Space Communism just as we don’t have flying cars or replicators. Democracy is still a fairly early invention after all. And it’s not easy to advance further because we can’t experiment in a lab like we can with new inventions, we can’t definitively conclude something, but most importantly, the ones who have the power now and unwilling to part with it are the ones with the means to get us to the next stage where they’ll have relatively less power.
And politics and market economics is also just a lot more complicated. If you look at something else than the sensationalized video you linked that is pure affectation with very little solid argumentation that tries to give itself credibility by having a very british narrator, you’d see that a lot of current problems are more of a convoluted mess with a lot of moving parts with real people’s lives at stake, than the simplified version it presents. Consider [this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCPN8HxBTZk)instead.
The problem is not a lack of structure, communication, rules, regulations, or laws. The problem is, as always, human nature.
To put it very simply, until we can successfully teach people to control themselves emotionally and operate more with logic, we will continue to have problems with human behavior, which is at the root of all evil.
Human behavior is full of pride, greed, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth, leading to the acutest and most chronic of miseries.
All war, all injury, all crime, all hatred, all poverty, all deprivation, and all wealth and overabundance stem from one or more of those seven behaviors, on the part of both the oppressors and the oppressed.
Humans are the problem.
We have to choose better leaders. I have been working on a platform to inform people and help to choose better leaders to make world better places. Would love your contribution to this open source project politicalawarenessplatform.com
We need to start treating shitty government officials and corrupt billionaires the way the french treated them during the revolution.
You will never get governance until it works for all equally not just some.
Yeah the problem is clearly structural, but good luck if you hope people will unite against it on their own. Something big has to happen for these things to change
Are you a bot? Or an experimental account? Your posts feel like generative AI output.
It is impossible to solve this distribution of wealth problems. The nature of humans is to be greedy, resentful, indifferent and at some point even the most empathetic person can get corrupted.
The only solution I see is somewhat possible in the next 10 millennia (if we still exist) is to be under the control of an AI or Superior being that prevents human greediness to affect this distribution of wealth.
Humanity as a species is simply too immature still. Just because we invented planes and phones don’t make us universally intelligent or responsible.
I doubt we’ll ever even get to that point, really. Not unless we embrace some rather radical ways of looking at and living life. Such as embracing genetic-engineering, or tech singularity where we merge people and machines.
The base human can only go so far, and nature is combating us every step of the way, trying to drag us back into it’s forests and caves.
As far as i’m concerned, my dumb opinion is that humanity will either return to monke at some point, become stupid animals, as we were arguably meant to be. or we will abandon our humanity as we know it to move beyond what nature intended and we will seize control over our own destiny, no longer beholden to the flawed designs of nature or the universe.