This stream is moribund. Kumar has done a pale imitation of the excellent job done by the illustrious Faultline.
Today, out for a walk around the neighbourhood, about 7 kilometres, including a stroll up Mount Hobson, an extinct little volcanic cone, which includes great views over Auckland, the Waitemata harbour and the great spread of suburbia, I did my usual pondering of whatever came to mind.
One of the things I like to think about on such strolls is the broad sweep of human history, which is partly prompted by the remnants of Maori habitation on such volcanic cones. Maoris lived on mountains for defence. They did significant landscaping, building terraces, kumara pits, palisades. All of that life style has gone, 150 years ago it was in decline.
Already I'm old enough to see swathes of what was old, and even what was new during my life time, being removed to make way for the latest version of communal life. I'm the modern Maori. My life 50 years ago barely exists today. Another 100 years and there won't be much around.
I sometimes wonder what will replace the vast acreage of suburban life as time marches on, relentlessly and mercilessly.
One of the options for something to happen is a marauding invading conquest of total power such as what Genghis Khan did and all sorts of human alpha male conquests have done every generation through human history until quite recent times and even now in places like Rwanda.
I wondered what would be a good idea if I had full scale totally unmitigated totalitarian power to do anything I liked. I've never thought along those lines before, being happy to just go with the flow of everything as I find it and doing what I can to make things better for me and everyone else, on average.
It was tough to come up with good ideas.
Sure, one could force a large and well courtiered harem, with any number of concubines of a willing nature by making it sufficiently attractive by enslaving sufficient attendants for the harem to be a great place to choose to live. Note that this train of thought was specifically to exclude the concept of ethics or any bounds whatsoever.
That harem train of thought ran out of steam after say 1000 willing females and umpty thousand offspring, [I didn't really get up to that number - just to point out that the number is more than none but certainly not unbounded]. The idea didn't seem to lead to anything useful other than being an active form of garden variety ram, elephant seal beach master, or boss lion in a pride. It would result in more of my DNA being around, but there's already tons of the stuff "out there", distributed through 6 billion people. So adding a minuscule extra amount seemed to not be other than an ephemeral self-indulgence for a super megalomaniac unbounded by anything.
In an evolutionary sense, that would of course be a good thing and it's how we got to where we are. But human evolution has moved on to something more than red in tooth and claw DNA propagation and Google and cyberspace is a manifestation of that something, albeit only in zygote form. Modern humanity is about synergy and co-operation, globalisation, scientific and consciousness development into the realm of neural networks of people and machines.
One could cook and eat as many people as one liked. That idea didn't get far because protein supplies would hardly be an issue and I imagine fish probably tastes better anyway of the animal type foods.
Houses are just weather-proof places, so taking over all those wouldn't be much use. They'd fall into disrepair even with everyone being a slave. A few ultra mega palaces including huge airport runways on the roof could be convenient for flying to warmer places during winter. But I haven't even got a boat because it's easier just to rent one if I want one and I don't even bother doing that.
A related idea is having $10 trillion to spend. I'm not even sure what to do with my existing stash, other than to continue to invest in things which should be excellent additions to life and return a maximum profit. It's certainly enough to buy the creature comforts I fancy. I could go and get a new car tomorrow [delivered without me having to go and get it]. That would save me having to get a warrant of fitness twice a year instead of once a year. Big deal.
Anyway, I ended up as a failed megalomaniac. I have some ideas which I'm so confident of that I'd be happy to force, but I'd soon run out of ideas that I thought really so good that I'd force them into being. There wouldn't be any fun or point in simply bossing people around. That would be like pulling the wings off butterflies and not satisfying for a top gun megalomaniac.
It puzzles me why people would seek total megalomania given how limited we are individually, biologically. It seems that there's a Peter Principle en.wikipedia.org underpinning the process in which each living thing goes for broke up to the limit of their potential. The bumping against all other living things and the natural world defines each individual's limits and pushes the process to its teleological conclusion out there in the mists of the future in the physics of possibilities of consciousness.
I chose here to think out loud, because Kumar seems to have been a megalomaniac and has created his total power base, with nobody home and no development of consciousness. He has leveled the village and taken over all he surveys, replacing it with nothing. Perhaps that's the Peter Principle outcome of successful megalomaniacs.
Because bad things can only exist AFTER good things exist, megalomaniacs can only exist while there is something else to be megalomaniac against. Because living things each want to exist, in the normal realm of human life and our vast array of interactions, in the end, when the Third Reich is NOT going to reign for much more than a decade, mostly in desperate straits, let alone 1000 years, those who want to live combine and the megalomaniac is shown his Peter Principle limit, which is upside down like Mussolini, or self-poisoned like Adolf and many of his henchmen.
Societies can go a longgggg way down, before the process runs its course, such as in Zimbabwe, but it will run its course, whether by internal revolution, population depletion to low levels, or being taken over from the outside [the response to collapse of weak/failed/shrunken/impoverished/destroyed/megalomaniac/ societies].
Kumar rulz!!!
Mqurice
Pssst, that new movie coming out, "Fitna" should be fun. Megalomaniacs will NOT like it. Megalomania is the downfall of Islam - it's a built-in failure mechanism. Megalomania was suitable for 3000 years ago, 2000 years ago [maybe] but was losing steam 1000 years ago and by the 20th century was getting a very bad rap. Kumar threatened me with my downfall some time ago. Downfalls are interesting things. Adolf had one. Saddam had one. The USSR had one. Mugabe has had one in all his surroundings though he is now still megalomaniac of a very small and shrinking pond. |
