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Benevolent Paternalism

Ultimate said:
My 'Benevolent Paternalism' is, in fact, meant to be a kind of socialism, but without the pretense that we can all be equal or that a society can function with no one in charge.
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cesare said:
I don't think it's nearly as strange a jump as you setting out the position that we don't live in a white dominated patriarchal system. But by all means, make your case.
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When did I say that?

The OP was talking in entirely abstract terms about imaginary states. He didn't articulate any kind of migration path from where we are now (which you can call white dominated patriarchy if it makes you happy) to his utopia; so the points you're making aren't relevant to his musings (which are fuckwitted).
 
Silas Loom said:
When did I say that?

The OP was talking in entirely abstract terms about imaginary states. He didn't articulate any kind of migration path from where we are now (which you can call white dominated patriarchy if it makes you happy) to his utopia; so the points you're making aren't relevant to his musings (which are fuckwitted).
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How are his musings any different to what we have already + added nice?
 
cesare said:
How are his musings any different to what we have already + added nice?
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They are utterly different; people are assigned a rank and station according to perceived capabilities, for goodness sake. It's science fiction, not political speculation.
 
Silas Loom said:
When did I say that?

The OP was talking in entirely abstract terms about imaginary states. He didn't articulate any kind of migration path from where we are now [...] to his utopia; so the points you're making aren't relevant to his musings.
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That much is correct. Thank you, Silas Loom.
 
Silas Loom said:
people are assigned a rank and station according to perceived capabilities, for goodness sake. It's science fiction, not political speculation.
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That's not quite what I'm saying. The bit about how the education system would work (which I think people are reading a bit too much into - it was meant just as an example) was meant as an alternative to the present education system where (in Britain at least) school leavers are divided arbitrarily into successes and failures according to their academic ability and their skill at passing exams.

Under my proposed system (which could also be used within the present system), students would be set tasks that involved using a variety of skills, and how they fare at these tasks would show their strengths and weaknesses: e.g someone might be found to be a good communicator but not so good at logical thinking. After several years, the school would have a general idea of what sort of skills each student had, and this combination of skills would then be matched to an appropriate occupation, although the student would have the right to reject this suggestion. The idea isn't to put all the decisions into the hands of the leaders, just to give people more guidence than they get now.
 
Ultimate said:
Thanks for those replies, especially Violent Panda's. It seems the dispute here between my suggestions and everyone else's dismissal of them is that you are envisioning a society like the present one, but without democracy. I'm envisioning something much more radical, the main advantages of which should be, as I said in my OP, social, economic and political stability.

My 'Benevolent Paternalism' is, in fact, meant to be a kind of socialism, but without the pretense that we can all be equal or that a society can function with no one in charge. There can be no such thing as social equality, and any society has to have a government of some kind. That is my starting point: if we have to have a govenment and a social hierarchy, let's turn it something good instead of seeing it as a necessary evil.
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You pre-suppose that government and a social hierarchy are necessary preconditions for a functioning set of social relations. They're only necessary if you consider them necessary/are unable to theorise around them.
As for social equality, thre can only be social equality. Without it, exploitation becomes so much easier that it in effect becomes a sine qua non of your society's ability to function.

I totally reject the ultra-cynical suggestions made above that all authority is inevitably oppressive. We can argue about the meaning of 'authoritarian', but 'paternalism' means using authority in a caring way - the idealised image of a father (though this also applies to a mother, incidentally).
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All authority does inevitably oppress. Even when it does not do so intentionally, it cannot avoid oppressing some group at the expense of another.

I didn't expect many people to agree with this idea - I know what this forum is like - and while even I aren't taking very seriously, I wanted to put forward a heretical idea and see what would happen. But I'm not trolling - I don't do trolls. I don't imagine for a moment these ideas will become a reality in the foreseeable future, and I'm not a campaigner, just an ideas person with a lot of imagination.
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In my (unfortunately broad) experience with "ideas people", they almost all forego a decent depth of research on their ideas. :)
 
ViolentPanda said:
You pre-suppose that government and a social hierarchy are necessary preconditions for a functioning set of social relations. They're only necessary if you consider them necessary/are unable to theorise around them.
As for social equality, thre can only be social equality. Without it, exploitation becomes so much easier that it in effect becomes a sine qua non of your society's ability to function.

All authority does inevitably oppress. Even when it does not do so intentionally, it cannot avoid oppressing some group at the expense of another.
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Well, I do consider government and a social hierarchy necessary, so I think we might have to just agree to disagree about that.

Social inequality isn't a political stance, it's a fact. People aren't and never can be equal. There are always going to be strong and weak people, and people with more dominant personalities than others, and most of them will inevitably achieve the higher social positions. It applies as much to humans as it applies to animals, where the stronger ones dominate the weaker ones.

It's also inevitable that if you're born into a family in the higher social ranks, you will have a head start over the others. We should accept these things as a normal part of being human. However, that doesn't justify the huge salaries that the most powerful people like banking executives award themselves and the poverty that some people have to endure. These are injustices that should be campaigned against.

As for your claim that all authority inevitably oppresses, I don't know why you think that. If you're right, then the only conclusion is that oppression is inevitable. But that doesn't excuse the violence faced in some countries by people campaigning against government policy. Are you suggesting that a society where no one has any authority over anyone else is possible?
 
Ultimate said:
Social inequality isn't a political stance, it's a fact. People aren't and never can be equal. There are always going to be strong and weak people, and people with more dominant personalities than others, and most of them will inevitably achieve the higher social positions. It applies as much to humans as it applies to animals, where the stronger ones dominate the weaker ones.
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That's no different to claiming that certain races will rise to the top and can't ever be equal. There are always going to be strong and weak races, and races with more dominant personalities/higher intelligence than others, and most of them will inevitably achieve the higher social positions. It applies as much to (blacks/browns, etc) as it applies to animals, where the stronger ones dominate the weaker ones.

You strike me as very young and naïve. Please go read some history.
 
Yuwipi Woman said:
That's no different to claiming that certain races will rise to the top and can't ever be equal. There are always going to be strong and weak races, and races with more dominant personalities/higher intelligence than others, and most of them will inevitably achieve the higher social positions. It applies as much to (blacks/browns, etc) as it applies to animals, where the stronger ones dominate the weaker ones.

You strike me as very young and naïve. Please go read some history.
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Absolute rubbish. There's no evidence that some races are stronger or more intelligent than others, except in the military sense. And how can a race have a dominant personality? Only an individual can have a personality. If one race dominates another, it's because the dominating one is larger in number and / or has more sophisticated weapons. As for you telling me to read some history, I don't know what history you've been reading, but I do know that you're talking complete twaddle.
 
Ultimate said:
If one race dominates another, it's because the dominating one is larger in number and / or has more sophisticated weapons.
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Accidents of geography, usually.

I'm baffled by the desire of people here to accuse you of racism. Your argument is a vast, beckoning open goal, and instead Urban is queuing up to take speculative potshots at a basketball hoop thousands of feet in the air.
 
DotCommunist said:
you are trying to sell one nation toryism to a crowd of leftists. Ergo you will not be met with much save derision.
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Not sure what you mean by 'save derision', but if you mean support for my views, then no, I don't imagine for a moment it will get much support. But I'm not trying to sell one-nation Toryism.

I'm not as right-wing as I appear to be here. If I was, I wouldn't have bothered joining this forum. I position myself on the left, though I've never strongly identified with any political group. I've dabbled with anarchism and Marxism before, and although I remain sympathetic to some of the things they say, I think overall their ideas are utopian.

The real purpose of this thread was intended to stimulate a philosophical discussion, not to promote a one-person manifesto. It hasn't worked very well because people are focussing too much on a few very narrow aspects of it, and as Silas Loom says, the bits about race are completely irrelevant.

The architect Will Allsop was similarly misunderstood when, to start a discussion on architecture and urban planning, he proposed a hypothetical plan for a new kind of city called Coast to Coast, which would be built along the M62 corridor, joining up various cities across the North of England. Some people read his piece and got the wrong idea, objecting that they didn't want more urban sprawl, and Allsop had to explain that the city wasn't meant to be actually built, it was just an intellectual model. So is this.

I hope that makes it clearer where I'm coming from.
 
I think you're a bit foggy on different notions of equality. Equality is not about people being of the same height, IQ or bank balance. Nice that someone puts their head above the parapet in terms of saying something a bit different, though - it's nice to have a different variety of dystopia to mull over... :)
 
Ultimate said:
Absolute rubbish. There's no evidence that some races are stronger or more intelligent than others, except in the military sense. And how can a race have a dominant personality? Only an individual can have a personality. If one race dominates another, it's because the dominating one is larger in number and / or has more sophisticated weapons. As for you telling me to read some history, I don't know what history you've been reading, but I do know that you're talking complete twaddle.
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Thanks for completely missing the point. The point was that ruling classes always have a blind spot. In many cases its race. It's also a lack of connection to the world they've created that they expect others to live in -- after all, any ruling class worth its juice will exempt themselves from the rules as the first order of business. This all results in Potemkin villages for the rulers and oppression and poverty for the ruled. So I'm not so much accusing you of racism as accusing you of not understanding the implications of your proposed system.

Anyone who proposes systems like this needs to live under them for at least 20 years before expecting the rest of us to heel to. So I propose an experiment. I'll be the benevolent ruler, you be the ruled. I'll only expect 15% of your pay for taking on all the work of making your decisions for you. If you break a rule, you owe me another 10%. A second offense is 20%. A third, and I lock you the hall closet for while till you know how to act. What you do you think? Is it a deal? It's all for your own good.
 
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Yuwipi Woman said:
Anyone who proposes systems like this needs to live under them for at least 20 years before expecting the rest of us to heel to.
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Yes, now I come to think off it, was Ultimate going to be living under this system or in charge of it?
 
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