The man in high castle and politics

 To describe the basis of a political system we can use a simple model: the lord in the high castle and the peasants on the fields.

Peasants pay their taxes in kind to the Lord. Lord and his knights protects them from invaders, hangs thiefs and solves disputes like a judge.

But one day the lord thinks:

I am safe here in my castle why I should bother to risk my life against raiding hordes? Why I should chase bandits on the hills ? Why I should hear complains of small people ?

I can stay here drink wine and listen songs. I will take my cut, if peasants won't give it to me I will take it. What they gonna do ? Storm the castle? Ha, good lock with that 

So the Lord doesn't judge issues, the wicked is not punished, and is getting rich and honest people are getting poor.

Poor people became bandits, but is no one to apprehend them.

Enemies seen the weakness of the country raid it every year.

People pay their taxes by inertia, then they pay less because they have less money and they don't understand for what they are paying for.

The tax income is dwindling, castle must be renovated, the Lord sends his knights to extract more.

I time resentment grows and peasants are not using the violence between them , are using against knights.

Now the knights don't fight in the castle protected by walls, fight in the fields, in the forests against rioters.

Violence multiplies , life of the knight is riskier. Some think: Why risk my life ? I can work from someone else. Other more ambitious, thinks he can be a better ruler. 

Knights finally cave in, the rioters storm the castle, the Lord flees or is killed, people rejoice.

Someone takes the castle, reorganize the knights and the cycle restarts.

In what phase is your country?

The fotbal and Goldberg

 In George Orwell's novel 1984, the population performed a hate ritual: they gathered in public and cursed the enemy of Big Brother: Goldberg.

Where we gather now and shout our hate towards others?

In stadiums.

How to create an evil society

 If people are competitive they will form an hierarchy.

Imagine that you are in an firm.

First rank of the hierarchy will be those who are skilled at their jobs: foremen.

The next rank will be of those who have social ability, who mend conflicts: team leaders.

Then will be those who know politics who forge alliances and bring resources.

In an competition if all skills are equal, the chance and cheating will win the game.

In sport cheating will not bring you far because you status is challenged with every competition, so you have to cheat everytime and this will be noticed 

In politics you have to cheat once to gain power and eliminate your rivals.

I think more you add a level in hierarchy, more you make chance and cheating more important.

More higher the hierarchy is more power it has and more imoral things you have to do reach the Iron throne, and the organisation will become more evil.

With the exception of North Korea, Cambodia most of the evil countries were empires.

Another thing that increases the chances of an evil is haste:

Few years ago the following experiment was done: half of participants were told to go in a build to fetch something and other half were just simply to go.

On their way a confederate fake it that it needed help. Those who had the task to fetch something barely noticed him, the others who were just walked him, help him.

Our chase to get goal blind us from the needs of others.

Football is about tribalism and chaos

 11 players face another 11 players and we elect the team and form a tribe.

Entire nations are organizing around the chaos on the field. 

The spectacle outside pitch is more interesting than the game.

The fans are committed and the organizers are corrupt,like in real History or a real religion.

No surprise that we have a religion of Maradona.

Irrational by design

 The irrationality of a group belief doesn't split the group it reinforce group cohesion.

The sacrifice you make to go against the popular trend makes an member of the group more loyal,if the group performs it's function.

The irrationality of old Religions and irrationality of the extreme left who deny biology are a feature not a bug, they keep the group united against other.

Believing in irrational is a loyalty test.

PS. You would think that America will be free from old gods and irrational beliefs.

After all you don't have an inquisition in America to check your correctness of faith. If you disagree with the elders you just move west.

But what we notice is quite the contrary: an explosion of cults, and irrational beliefs.

To the old Religions some new were invented.

In the old world religion reinforced ethnic identity being Catholic in Iberia meant to be Spanish or Portuguese. Being Orthodox in Balkans meant to be Greek,serb or Bulgarian. The religious Identity reinforced solidarity between different polities.

In US it seems that religion reinforced the in-group solidarity

I think America worth studying to learn more about human nature. The freedom there allowed expression of some characteristics that were repressed by tradition in old world.

What I don't like at modern visual art

 I think the modern art erases the individual.

Old western  painters when they painted a bouquet of flowers, painted every flower, making each one more individualised, more expresive.

After first world war, the personality of subjects was smudged into abstract prototypes.

This is more visible in communist art, where even the individual expression of artist was diluted.

The missing piece

 When the hunters wandered through forests, they be one attentive when birds went silent. A predator was approaching.

When Europeans made the first globes, they noticed blank regions in the Earth, that they stirred their curiosity.

When first periodic tabel of Mendeleev was created, scientist rushed to fill in the empty boxes 

When Craig Venter sequenced the human DNA, would discovered that it didn't know a lot about many unknown DNA chains.

Be watchful of what is missing.

RIP Craig Venter.

Here his last interview:

https://youtu.be/Zxg38eUL5IY?is=y8GeGIwWo_ROUNjh