While I agree the UN is "broken" (it doesn't meet its stated goal), I would not agree it is "useless". The UN provides a relatively neutral and safe space for representatives of nations to meet and establish the basis of communication. That alone is the first real step down the path of diplomacy.

It also provides a platform for different nations to cooperate on shared problems. The UN University, eradication of smallpox, defining human rights and so on are all good examples of this. The tough part of eradicating smallpox (after designing the vaccine itself) isn't getting people to go apply it. It's the logistics behind getting every person under every government innoculated within the accepted time period. The UN provides a platform for this.

The UN is, in a way, a forum for nations to meet and chat. That's important. I go to forums to meet with people before most major decisions I make. It's useful. It's not as useful as the guy who actually does the work, or the money that pays for it, but it's definitely a useful tool.

I would argue that the "ideal" UN would actually be bad. The UN right now lacks the power to enforce a position on other nations. Good! I don't want England and China deciding what should be the laws in the US, or deciding which government is good or bad. That's not their business. Government is not one-size-fits-all. The less effective the UN is at governing, the safer I feel.

Yes the UN is worthless at those things, because that is not what it was designed to do. That would be like saying my computer is useless because I can't drive it to work. the point of the UN is open comunication and promoting peace and goodwill between nations. Natins which include many dictators.

As to democracy being a natural state, no. Any government beyond tribal organization is inherantly unnatural.

And I think *most* people who didn't believe in democracy in the middle east thought the problem was one of culture and religion rather than race. Without a form of Islam which is open to secular governance it would have been impossible. The religious reformation that has been occuring in teh middle east for some time now which the West did not cover is one of the major missed background events to these events.

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED:

* to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

* to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

* to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

* to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

That is from the preamble of the UN Charter.

So it looks like the UN was created specifically for the purpose of ending human rights abuse, genocide, war, and tyranny.  It even gives the UN the ability use "armed forces" if it "serves the common interest".

What has happened is that the common interest is stability at the cost of human rights, freedom, and human lives.

By the terms of its own Charter I would say the UN is a miserable failure.  I could also mention the huge amounts of corruption and accounting "discrepancies" but that is dragging this argument on further in a place it doesn't belong.

The UN still has to exist in the real world. Given that limitation, it's done remarkably well.

And you all are WAY off topic. I would contend that if the UN doesn't have its own thread It now needs one.

Back on the original subject: While I agree that democracy and all other organized governments are not natural to humanity I would contend that the broad form of democratic governance practiced by France, the US, and some other countries is the closest to a natural system because it is at it's core an attempt to create a controlled and 'safer' form of anarchy where people are free to do as they please as long as that does not threaten others rights or safety. Thoughts?

In reply to Alexei Yaruk-Mundhenk (msg #27):

I would disagree.

The natural state of humanity, since the beginning of humanity, is to form hierarchical groups.  Whether this is based on hunting skill, spiritual attunement, age, or warrior skills doesn't matter.  The group forms around such people and treats them as their betters.  This group then protects everything they see as theirs from those they perceive as different from them.

And thus time marches on.

In reply to Tlaloc (msg #28):

True in so far as it goes, but incomplete. There have also always been those that refuse to acknowledge the authority of any save themselves who often have no desire to lead others ether. There are even those who actively resent any form of authority at all. This is why the base state of humanity is anarchy.

That said these people are in most situations a minority, the sheep are willing to be led and the wolves are willing to lead them, and thus this base state will resolve itself into some kind of government.

The point of democracy is to allow all of these people to live together in relative harmony and safety. "E Pluribus Unum", From many; one.

In reply to Alexei Yaruk-Mundhenk (msg #29):

I am not talking about individuals but the mass of humanity as a whole.  Often those individuals who do not conform or who do not abide by the rules of the group around them form their own groups.

An individual who walks away from society matters not to humanity.

I am not arguing the wonders of democracy or the fact that it elevates humanity as a whole.  What I am talking about is the natural tendencies of humanity since the start of humanity.  Democracy, even Greek Democracy, is a relatively new thing for humanity.

Oh, doubtless, in no wise disagreeing that it is very new in the grand scheme of things.

And it is the worst system ever devised, except for all the known alternatives.

I think something that needs to be asked here is what is the signifigance of a system of government being more or less 'natural'? I know some people use the term natural to refer to something uncorrupted, and presumedly holy, but from my perspective how natural a system of governance is has nothing to do with how desireable it is.

As far as I can tell the most natural state of existance for human beings is tribal groups with a war leadeer, his enforcer shaman, a healer, where women frequently die in childbirth and where men spend whatever time is not taken up by survival fighting with other tribal groups over which set of men gets to rape the other. Not what I would consider a highly desireable way to live.

It would seem, thread hijacks aside, that most are in agreement on the brutal, natural state of humanity.

Well, if we're all agreed, then it falls to me to disagree, otherwise, it'll be boring.

I say humanity's inherently good. That's why we're capable of setting aside our immediate self interest and form societies for collective benefit.

In reply to Falkus (msg #34):

Disagreement it is then!

I disagree since the act of forming a society is to safeguard one's own interests.  A selfish act that is merely disguised as selfless act.

Not to mention that good/evil isn't a part of this.  Nature is not good or evil, it is just doing what must be done to survive.  The selfish motivations of one person can generate good outcomes for many.  The selfless motivations of one person can generate misery and death for many.

If humanity were inherantly good, we would have no need of civilization.
And therefore would not have formed civilization.
Which would be bad.

In reply to silveroak (msg #36):

Or would it? The natural world pure and unsullied inhabited by just, honorable, kind and loving humans: Sounds a half step away from heaven to me.

Do they have winter where you live?
In the natural world the average human lifespan is about 35.
I'm 38.
With diabetes, which would be a death sentance without civilization.

I will have to agree with ol' Silveroak on that one.

I would have to say that without humanity's tendency to form groups, tribal structures and civilization we would have been extinct a long time ago.

I am a nature lover.  I love the beauty of its harshness and its violence.  There is no such thing as peace in nature since it is constantly attempting to improve itself and test what remains.  The brutality of it all is inspiring.

Democracy is an attempt to transcend our natural instincts.  To consider the voice of the weakest amongst us.  That is not at all natural.

   No, its not. And that is why it stands apart as the best system of governance yet devised.
   Even if you know nothing about the mathematical sciences of game theory It can be boiled down into the simplest of terms: When everyone wins... Everyone Wins. Therefore the best mode of behavior to adopt is one that ensures maximum benefit for the maximum number. This includes the poor, the deviant, the insane, and the outcast. These groups have been traditional destabilizing influences upon all known societies, but as we have observed in our own history the more you can stabilize their lives the less they will be inclined to destabilize others, and therefore, again by helping them you help yourself.
   It is very true that selfish actions which masquerade as selfless ones are a primary means toward progress, because when you peal away the layers it turns out that almost any selfless act is self serving in a back handed way. What people fail to realize is that most overtly selfish acts do not have the same back handed inversion, rather the opposite, they serve that persons interest in the short term but down the road are bad for everyone including them.
  The issue is that by long standing instinct we don't think long term, since a plan of five years duration is of no use if you are eaten by a bear tomorrow, but increasingly it is necessary to think about more than the next twenty minutes or so or else very bad things happen to you and everyone around you. Democratic systems are designed to do that, by holding officials accountable for the consequences of things they may have done years or even decades in the past.
   So in summation, yes, democracy is quite unnatural, and for good reason.

In reply to Alexei Yaruk-Mundhenk (msg #40):

Even in a democracy their are losers.  That is why systems break down.  You always have the unfortunates who believe that they are losers because the system, or The Man, keeps them down.  It never occurs to them that they are losers because of their own actions and choices.  We are an envious creature and we believe that conspiracies abound around us.  There is always something outside our control that is messing with us.

And that is why democracy breaks down.  It is natural to have losers and it is natural for them to blame everything but themselves.  There will always be those who believe that everything is wrong because nothing is perfect.  You cannot "stablize" humanity to the point where you no longer find those losers.

It is the concept of perfection that messes up humanity.  The attempts to create Heaven here on Earth are the most brutal periods of history.  Democracy is the best system so far but it requires mature creatures to keep in balance and we, as a whole, do not have that maturity.

   This is unfortunately true, but one of the brilliant features of the design is it is intended to be self correcting, and at least thus far has been able to do so. Yes there will always be malcontents, yes there will be suffering, until the day that humanity completes its ascension into the numen there cannot be heaven on earth, but if we aim for heaven and avoid tripping over any straws we will at least land among the stars.

It seems there is a misunderstanding on the meaning of the term "natural". If by "natural" one means biological, then democracy isn't indeed natural. But if by natural one means "in the nature (=deep aspiration) of" then democracy is a very natural step for the human species.

Humans have this strange ability called "reason" that pushes them to go beyond the mere biological/survival-oriented lifestyle of all animals. In the beginning we formed bands to facilitate survival, just like many animals do. Then, once those bands provided for the basic needs of light - food, shelter, mating - we started to explore and analyze the world around us, manifesting a quality that is absolutely unique to humankind: curiosity (There is no such thing as curiosity in the animal world). This led humankind to various interpretations regarding the nature of the world, how it came to be, who created it, how it works, and with the discovery of religion came the discovery of morals and ethics and the concepts of good and bad (and this occurs extremely early in human history). Namely, we are not just to ensure mere survival of the kind, we are to act according to social norms who exist for their own sake, yet another invention that does not exist in nature (all other "social" behavior in biological nature is meant to ensure survival of the fittest as well as survival of the group; it serves no other purpose).
From there evolves the capacity to reflect on those norms and notice how they sometimes conflict with personal "interest", i.e. desires, wishes, likings etc. Democracy is the very fist attempt at reconciliating social and personal interest, nothing more and nothing less.

That democracy has its limitations, which are showing clearer every day, does not change the fact that it is a natural (= corresponding to the species' mindset and behaviour) evolution of human society. The "losers" of the democratic system are merely a sign that the system is not perfect and improvements are required. The solution, however, does not lie in a regression to more basic social systems or even to biological common ground (because that would only mean more of the same, starting from scratch over again) but in a more complex, higher organized system that has yet to be defined.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:26, Tue 15 Mar 2011.

I could possibly agree with this...


Disagree with this fairly strongly.  Many animals most certainly demonstrate curiosity (chimps, whales, dolphins, dogs, elephants, just to name a few, but there are many more).


I would argue morals and ethics predate religion, though the origins of each are probably linked.  People (and some animals for that matter) have a instinctual feeling of "hey, you're not supposed to do that!" as a reaction to certain acts that doesn't require religion.  This is, at least to a degree, an evolutionary trait.  Certain types of cooperation are mutually beneficial, so it's evolutionary beneficial for humans to feel an instinctual sense of what's good/bad in relation to those types of actions.  Hence, feelings about fairness, theft, etc., can come about through evolution.  I'd argue that religion developed in part to explain/justify those natural instincts, rather than the other way around.  Though once religion was in place, people started using it to create non-instinctual moral codes as well.


I think this may be a bit of an overstatement, or an understatement, depending on just what is meant.  I'd say our social behavior is biological in nature, but that there are aspects of it that are sort of side-effects that don't have strong evolutionary effect.  But the same is also true of animals as well.  Their social behavior is ultimately biological in nature, but not all instances of social behavior are directly beneficial.


This I can agree with, though with emphasis on the "reflect" part, rather than the conflict.  Animals also experience conflicts between their social instincts and their individual interests instincts.  We're may well be unique in our ability to ponder the conflict (though even there it could be a difference of degree rather than type--I would only be mildly surprised if chimps or dolphins could ponder it to a limited degree, for example), but we're not unique in having to experience and react to the conflict.


I'd say all previous social structures were probably also attempts and reconciling social and personal interest as well, though perhaps less intentionally so.  Hamurabi's laws, for example, were an attempt to strike a balance between them to a degree.  Democracy may be the most successful so far, though.


But by this definition, won't any system ever invented by humans, by definition, be "natural?"  Perhaps not if no one implemented it, but if it's in use, it's sort of automatically corresponds to our mindset and behavior, no?  Not that that's necessarily a problem with your response, more one of the original question, I'd say, since "is democracy natural" seems to mean different things to different people, judging by the responses.

I think we agree on the most parts, however there are a few minor details I do not agree upon.



Animal curiosity is motivated by purely biological motives, or, at best, for amusement. It has little to do with curiosity as a motivating force for knowledge. I don't see animals actively seeking knowledge.



Morals and religion are basically the same thing. The only difference between them is the particular telos.



Part of our social behavior is biollogically-driven, like the animals, but the best part of it, the part that evolved from our mind, is not biological. It is first normative, then progresses on to self-assessing, then to sharing/communicative etc., each new step building upon and thus including all its antecedents. Hence, we still display purely biological social behavior, because it is the most ancient and primal one, but it is definitely not the end of the story.



My interpretation of history is rather that social structures prior to democracy were exclusively normative in nature. Hamurabi's laws are such an example of purely normative social construct: when you do A, then B happens, and nobody wants to know why you did A in the first place, and nobody reflects on the law.

* * *

So, now on to the more important part (in my opinion, at least):



Wow, wow, not so fast! Don't forget you're analyzing this point using your modern or postmodern mindset, which allows reflection and thus "sees" infinitely more than a premodern one. One of the main characteristics of premodernity is the lack of reflective capacity about normative contents, at least for the broad mass (exceptional individuals who were well ahead of their time always existed, but they are not socially relevant). Thus, social forms in a premodern environment come from a shared "gut feeling" and are absolutely natural, i.e. they fit exactly the premodern society's mindset.

It's a different thing when it comes to modernity and postmodernity. The modern mind has the ability to reflect on normative contents and does so, thus resulting in a new form of social order called democracy, which was, as it emerged for the first time, quite natural. But now that we've spent some time in this system we start to see the cracks, and we will need to come up with a new, better one soon or risk regressing to a previous stage. That's both the power and the danger of modernity: we can design a new system that can transcend and include everything made before, or we can use of reflexive ability to implement aa gruesome dictatorship, much more destructive than the previous ones because it would be a dictatorship imposed on a modern and postmodern mindset. And that would NOT be natural; it would be a perversion of modernity: instead of progressing and abandoning old structures like we have made for eons, we would voluntarily get stuck into a structure we already know doesn't fit.



Well, the first thing to do when you answer a question is to state how you understand the question in the first place, otherwise it's Babel tower all over again.
This message was last edited by the player at 09:53, Wed 16 Mar 2011.

I would say our curiosity is also motivated by biology, but that doesn't take anything away from it.  But to say animals don't seek out knowledge seems very strange to me.  Watch an animal come into contact with something new.  I would say (some) animals most definitely seek out knowledge.  Their understanding of that knowledge may be more limited than ours, but they still, at times, seek out new information.


I'd disagree.  Saying it's not biological is to assume some non-physical thought process or something supernatural.  Thoughts occur in our brains, and our brains are biological organs. Our "higher" thoughts are not "higher" because they're non-biological, but because they're deeper, more important to us, etc.  You could say some of our behaviors are more than biological, that they involve more than just biology, but that's different from saying they're non-biological, or don't involve biology.


You don't think anyone reflected on Hamurabi's laws?  I'm fairly certain people did.  Probably quite a bit, I would guess.




Yeah, have to disagree fairly strongly with all this.  Premodern people weren't all that different from us today.  If you took a child from 40,000 years ago and raised them today, no one probably be able to tell the difference between them and anyone else alive today.  And likewise for taking a modern person back 40k years ago.  What is different about us today is not our ability to reflect, but our opportunities to do so.  The reason we "see" more than premodern people did, is that we've seen than they have.  I think you are proposing a fundamental difference between premodern humans and ourselves, whereas I think the difference is almost entirely situational.  We are different because we have experienced different worlds, not because we are fundamentally different creatures.



I'm not sure what's unnatural about going back to something in the past.  We have not always and at every step of the way abandoned old structures and "progressed."  We have moved with fits and starts, accumulating and losing knowledge and experience all the while.  There may be a general trend towards what we call progress (though, there might be a chicken-and-egg problem there--do we consider it progress because it's the way we've generally been moving over the ages?), but we haven't been moving in the same direction at every given instant in time.

Alright, the word "non-biological" was poorly chosen. I meant beyond biological, as you accurately corrected.



Not the ones under this law, I'm pretty sure of that. Or they reflected on it and found them OK. My postmodern mindset is not compatible with laws enforcing physical punishment and/or not worrying about the motives, but that's just me...



Yes and no. To activate a certain mode of thinking requires the right environment, granted, but it also requires personal ability (or else why do you think we still have religious or political fundamentalism in our modern and postmodern world?). But that doesn't change my conclusion. In premodern times, the environment was not present, so the reflection didn't occur, except in the few individuals who 1/had the ability of more complex thought and 2/had the time and opportunity to consider another social system / other values using this complex thought. That would be a fairly limited amount of the population.



It's not that it's unnatural, it's just a huge waste...



Uhh... show me one example where a society retreated to a previous social mode (e.g. democratic to pyramidal, or pyramidal to imperial, or imperial to tribal), barring intercultural conflict?