Do people need a ruler or rulers? - something unsettling...

[Rebelde para Siempre]

Most of the time, when I look at the nature of people I base it on scientific fact. Therefore I believe that the human condition consists partly of instinctive behaviours and drives that we evolved.

Looking at the fact that humans are pack animals, do you think we really need a leader? Sometimes it seems that people really need someone to make their decisions for them, rather than be capable of making their own choices (the reason for representative democracy now?).

So ideally in a communist society, there is a direct democracy, but what I am try to ask is - Can people really make decisions for themselves or do they always instinctively search for a leader to follow?

Just something I have noticed... it's a bit unsettling

(Edited by Rebelde para Siempre at 2:49 pm on Feb. 17, 2003)

[Larissa]

Maybe some people do not feel confident enough to make their own decisions or maybe some people are kind of "lazy" and prefer to rely on others.

I can only give you a sad example of what happens in my country. Many people rather complain than propose solutions. If the government is horrible then they blame anyone else, and the majority says "I didn't vote that president" (So, how did he win???).

(In Argentina, unlike other countries, voting is mandatory)

It's like if these people had nothing to do with involving themselves and participating in its own country's politics.

I don't know why some people still believe they need a leader or ruler. Yet, some others believe they are leaders or they consider themselves the "best option" to rule a country, and thus they run for president...

This si too simplistic, but it happens more often than I would like to.

[Pete]

Some people, like Hobbes, it seems want someone else to be in power only if they gain heavy influence...turning leaders in to puppets.

[redstar2000]

Consider cannibalism. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans sporadically and often ritualistically ate one another. (We know this because we've found human bones with human teeth marks.)

Then, sometime shortly preceeding the development of literacy, humans decided to stop doing that and erected some fairly strong "taboos" against it.

Now it is quite rare...not completely unknown but nearly so.

Bourgeois sociologists insist that all human societies must be hierarchical...consisting of leaders and followers. "Evolutionary biologists" agree...suggesting that following leaders confers a reproductive advantage and is thus an inherited characteristic. (Only the crude suggest a "followership" gene.)

The answer is, of course, that we are not "prisoners" of our biology if we choose not to be. If we decide to "train" ourselves not to follow leaders but to critically examine reality and make up our own minds...then we can do it. Any human of normal intelligence can do it.

So I think there will come a time when being referred to as a "follower" will have the same social implication as calling someone a "cannibal"...something disgusting and perverted and, oddly enough, inhuman.

For unlike all the other products of evolution, we humans alone have the ability to shape ourselves according to what we think is desirable.

And "followership" is, after all, just a kind of slavery without any certificate of ownership or bill of sale, isn't it?

:cool:

[Rebelde para Siempre]

redstar2000,

maybe so, but on observation of today's society and people's current behaviour it seems that they are happy and maybe dont want to change.

[redstar2000]

Yes, RpS, today "people are happy and don't want to change." Well, actually, you'd have to qualify that quite a bit. Some are quite happy, some are content, some are discontented, and some are really pissed!

Some desire small changes, some are for medium changes, some want huge changes. Safe to say, there will be struggle.

It would be interesting if we had written records about the period when cannibalism disappeared as a common human practice. How were people persuaded/coerced into giving it up? Was there a long slow transition: cannibalism is a holy ritual --> cannibalism is ok -->cannibalism is kind of dumb -->cannibalism is wrong -->cannibalism is disgusting and perverted...etc.?

Or did some charasmatic Chief or Shaman just up and say one day: all the neighboring tribes practice cannibalism, but we, being truly human and not sub-men, will no longer do so?

Most likely a mixture of the two. So it will probably turn out with "followership". If we formally establish a framework of communist participatory democracy, that won't make people participate...but it will suggest a kind of disparagement towards those who don't, as if the "follower-types" were slightly retarded in some fashion.

And then time will do its work.

:cool:

[ravengod]

i think the need for a ruler is inherent to human nature
that s why even acnibals had leadres
and all canibalism was ritual
according to leaders' capability of meantaining tradition
leaders are not necessary however
as long as they represent people they are ok
but this representation theory is quite paradoxal
we won t ahve leadres when we will all be able to cooperate in the full meaning of the term
leadership is just the expression of the jungle law:the best survives
until then leadership is necessary for coherence and coordination