So I have been winding down the past 15 minutes or so to get myself ready for bed, when I started thinking about government. In particular, I was thinking about how there's many different types of government, and that no one government is right. Moreover, I was thinking about how it's possible to have no government at all! I came to these conclusions when I thought "what is the role of government"?
To this, I conclude that government's role is to facilitate the cohesion of members of society. When I thought more about it, it made me think, "isn't it possible to not have a government and still obtain cohesion?" To this, I believe it's possible. Effective communication is key. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm being anarchistic.
From government, I started thinking about how humanity has a habit of classifying things, in particular, I started think about unilinear social evolution, compared to multilineal social evolution in anthropology. Unilineal evolution, now defunct, stated that all evolutions of government follow the same path. From foraging, to big-man, to centralized authority, etc., and stratified the same way. Multilineal evolution, on the other hand, stresses that government can take many differing forms, and uses examples of large societies that lack centralization to prove their claim. Instead, a group or elaborate social structure (like cross-cutting ties) can maintain the cohesion.
I would like to go one step further, and explain that more is possible than either group labels. In particular, I think we should put down these silly labels and look at things for what they are.
and that lead me to conclude that a lot of the studies going on at the University level, anthropology, philosophy, chemistry, and so forth, are so... out of date now. They utilize Old Greek ideas of "it's either this or that, but not either, nor neither" to classify and structure things, it's ridiculous. Furthermore, the use of this system causes prejudicial stereotyping of things, which we all know is detrimental in the long run.
As an example, let's use music genres. Most all of us know about the major genre groups, such as rap, metal, rock, pop, R&B, and so forth. These are all easy ways to label and categorize music. But what happens when we mix, say rock with rap (Rage Against the Machine is an example of this)? Well, people say it's "rock-rap", which kind of goes against the whole idea of classification altogether, since genre's are meant to differentiate one another. Indeed, one only has to look at the genres of techno songs alone to realize that, gee, maybe there's so many different types of genres (chillout ambient psy, anyone?), and so much mixing of the genres, that it may behoove to stop trying to differentiate songs into genres and instead let song types mingle together (gee, kind of like letting people of different races come together).
In fact, this whole idea of "logos", which we find to be prevalent in fields like anthropology, is a bit misleading. Breaking and grouping things, making them "this or that, but not both or neither", makes us lose sight of what the essence or reality of the object is.
Now, as I think about it, we can never truly know whether we really know what an object really is or not. I can see an object, but what I'm really doing is detecting light hitting my eye after (what I believe is) reflecting off the object. I'm not actually "seeing" the object. Furthermore, I can't really "feel" an object. I can, however, obtain sensations from processed signals from nerves, of which I cannot be certain about, either.
This fits in just nicely with decategorizing objects, not being certain about an object. Using a name for things creates fallacy by causing prejudices. Whether that's important or not is up to you.
Furthermore, I can go further by stating that an object is always changing over time. Wasn't it Heraclitus, then, who said that one can't cross the same river twice? The objects changes over time, and so do I. With two objects constantly changing (of which I cannot be too sure), one cannot be absolutely certain about anything. And that's fine. Your coffee table may be here now (though you would never know with your limited point of view), but the sucker is changing, and so are you! (is it still a coffeetable, then? Are you still you?)
and what is truth if there just is, anyway? what makes one truth (if it exists, and indeed it does as an idea in my head, I think) more important than another? Frankly, I'd rather hear my grandmother tell me a story than learn about what's actually going on in an atomic bomb (which we'll never be certain of, anyway). The connection I'm getting to my grandmother, plus the story, I think, is a better bargain to me than atomic ideas running through the brain (which probably have inherent flaws littered all over the place)
I don't believe in robots. I don't believe in people. I ain't no humanist. I'm just me. just like there just is. And we're all changing.
I'm really excited at the possibilities when I break down the walls of seclusion. I think my greatest joy will be the day I destroy philosophy. Stop the poor ideology from poking our children's eyes out. Nothing better than freedom, I suppose.
Ah, the dangers of names.
In Other News, Life is Great Right Now. Thanks for Wondering!
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