ID:1360392
 
I know this sounds crazy, but bear with me on this plz.

I know for a fact that a community/government can live without laws and authority. But don't confuse this with strife/anarchy.

Envision this. Many of the laws out there are based on TRUTHS we perceive.

That's right - TRUTH. For example, Murderers are CLEARLY abusive with or without laws.

But what use is TRUTH alone when there are no leaders for such in the first place?

That's where DISCIPLINE comes in. Even without leaders and enforcers, the people would actually take initiative to act on justice in the first place.

SO... It's POSSIBLE to live without such - BUT... the real question is just how prudent and disciplined the people here are to act on such.
Look at Australia. They have no laws and they're doing just fine.
In response to Vrocaan
Vrocaan wrote:
Look at Australia. They have no laws and they're doing just fine.

what
After the response that your last philosophical post got, you're trying again?

My hat is off to your persistence, sir. You haven't lost that good old Developous spirit that I recall you had when you first joined this community.
I like this guy. All his topics are about cats.
What you've described is anarchy. A society or community without an enforced sense of Government, laws, authority etc.

Literally, that is the thing, you just described.
Develepous, the intellectual- at it once again. Brilliant idea, mate. This way, when an innocent person gets killed by 3 undisciplined teens, someone with -DISCIPLINE- will come to the rescue and turn them in. Why waste tax-payer money on a police force in each city when you already have untrained humans on every street, 24/7? It's ridiculous!

While all of the non-authoritative figures in society train and discipline themselves for the inevitable chaos, how about we just get rid of all the schools? An even bigger waste of tax-payer money. The kids could just teach themselves. I could go on but this guy already knows whats best for society.

Guys, I think he's full. Put him back in the cage.

Developous, have you met Dariuc? I think you two might hit it off.
Fuck the man! Power to the people! GUN RIGHTS!


Yeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaw!
In response to Ter13
Ter13 wrote:
Developous, have you met Dariuc? I think you two might hit it off.

LOLOLOL! Best comment I've seen in awhile!
This may be the biggest, most ground-breaking discovery of 2013 yet! Developous, how do you think this "lack of laws" system would work within "Phaze 2" of the Nexus? As well as your theorem on Ultimate Unification.
Nay, I disagree. Just like there are those you claim are 'disciplined', there is the reciprocal. Most people wont do something if they truly perceive it as the wrong choice to make. Those who aren't concerned with justice and fairness will do as they please and all the while believe nothing is wrong with that.

What WILL happen is a fight for power. Gangs will develop, and people will be forced to develop counter-measures in the form of gangs to stop them. So what will happen at first is a large control for power with large groups of people fighting over it.

Uncle Bill can't walk outside and take down a gang of 10 people loaded with guns, so who's going to stop them? Another gang.
The winner gang is in control, and thus is your new government.

Thats how I see it all working out :)
Yeah. I'm going to treat this one as a serious discussion, and give my thoughts on the matter. Bear with me.

Life (capital L) is inherently greedy. All Life exists simply to survive long enough to produce offspring. That's all any of it boils down to. Humans included (though we hide it under a bunch of crap we've invented, added "meanings" to life that aren't truly from the natural order of things)

As such, Life takes what it can, and does not care about the consequences to others or the world around it. Plants routinely choke out other plants around them by hoarding resources (they soak up the water faster, or their leaves spread out farther, to gobble up all of the sun, etc.), Animals eat other animals just because they require the energy. Animals fight over territory just to hold onto the resources in that territory. On and on and on.

Living things are hardwired to do nothing but take, with no regard to anything but themselves, with no regard for how taking things will harm others.

And people are no different, in our heart-of-hearts. We're all preprogrammed to take everything that we need, and often to take more than we need, by any means necessary. We do not naturally care about others (except maybe our offspring, which again, are the sole purpose driving everything else)

All of our "morals" and "ethics" (which form the basis of the majority of our laws) are actually unnatural constructs that our "advanced" intellects have invented for us. They are not part of the natural order of things.

Our "civilization", and the rules that govern it, is a system that we created ourselves, in order to keep our true selves in check.

We were able to finally understand not only that we need these rules for the common good, but that the common good even exists, and might be something we want to promote/protect.

Basically, the point is that without our laws and rules and the authority to enforce them, our true nature would explode forth. There would be nothing binding us from turning into the greedy animals that we truly are.
@Sayan: Except KNOWLEDGE. The problem is that in a lawless society, strife is rampant without the intellect to back it up.

The key to all the human emotions is LOVE. So, here's a few principles to help back that path up:

1. The sacrifice of oneself for the greater good is the most honorable action anyone can ever achieve.
2. The value of a human life is priceless.

Decide well how to translate these...
What is the internet other than a mirror into the whole world? Nothing.

I'm not attacking your user, you have that right. I'm not even attacking YOU if I can help it.

I care for TRUTH - regardless how painful it may be, either direction, and respect has nothing to do with this.

So there, Now you know. I would do the right thing, even if it brings us to ruin.
Developous, you should join the website reddit.
I would do the right thing, even if it brings us to ruin.

The nature of morality, is that it necessarily dependent upon situational cues to be assessed as either beneficial or detrimental.

By definition, an action that results in the greatest possible harm, is not a "morally right" action. As such, the idea that one would do the right thing, bedamned the consequences, is of itself, self-refuting.

That is, unless you believe in objective morality (which you probably do, given your demeanor). Unfortunately, the deck of reality seems, currently, to be stacked against objective morality, and moral relativism appears to be the most reliable answer at the time of writing.

The key to all the human emotions is LOVE

Love is meaningless. It is a biochemical adaptation beneficial to reinforcing gregarious, unitary familial groups.

Unfortunately, love does not seem to function nearly as well as fear and hatred. People typically fear what they do not know. Fear leads, eventually to hate.

When one considers that all of human society is based on grouping together for protection, and one also considers the enemy we seek to protect ourselves from --each other, you find the true root of human behavior:

Aggression. Aggression is what drives human beings onward. It's the beat of the drum by which technology and civilization march. Love? Love is an opiate that temporarily distracts us from our factory job making bombs and exploiting the spoils pillaged from whomever's land we stole.

Human tribes banded together at first to protect themselves and provide for themselves as a group, finding solitude and safety from nature. Nature's indifferent hostility, however, a chaotic and simplistic force, was easily overcome by small groups of hairless apes.

As we grew in number and knowledge, we were able to harness greater and greater tracts of land and resources of the earth to our advantage. We then turned on one another. Tribes, separated by distance, culture, and time, knew not the motivations of one another. Out of greed, fear, and self-interest, each tribe attempted to force its will upon the other. Until competing interests create tension that cannot be broken, and then there is war.

War, hatred, fear. Yardstick of human civilization. Only when a common peril is evident, do disparate tribes band together. Even then, only until the defeat of the mutual enemy.

And what did love do all this time? It fell on deaf ears. Love is the safe harbor human beings retreat to in order to beat back the darkness of the world about them.

Love is the drug we crave, always scrabbling to get our next fix so that we may forget, if only for a moment, the fear and doubt of every other moment of our lives.

Love is more socially engineered mass delusion than the key to all of human emotions.
Love is no less important than HATE. In religious circles, in fact, its MORE important.

Without those common goals, and a sense of personal welfare, empires wouldnt've been developed in the first place. Those people cared enough for their own beliefs, just as I care for such as well.

Even I'm guilty of hatred, suspicion, and mistrust, admittedly. But the point is justice. Love teaches us to do the RIGHT thing to do - regardless how painful it may be. And who is anyone but a fool to refuse TRUTH regardless the situation?

(wow- I'm amazed I came up with that on my own. Now that's definitely wisdom. Further, I suspect this is academic level knowledge - instinctually gained.)
Right on, Ter.

I've said already that Life is greedy and selfish, but why is that? The simple fact is that Life exists for one and only one purpose; to make more Life.

The single most important goal of every living being, in fact, the one goal that overrides all others, and that all others only exist to support, is procreation.

We survive (including doing all of the things that we need to do to do so) all simply so we live long enough to make offspring (and in fact, most species ddie soon after accomplishing this goal; hell, humans begin a precipitous decline in health right after they leave their prime reproductive years.

So anyway, long story short, we Live to make more Life. And all else that we do is in support of that.

So a living being naturally considers NOTHING except for what will keep them alive, and to accomplish reproduction (including, for some species, the time it takes after birth to ensure that the offspring can survive).

So Life will take whatever it needs. Any resource it demands (and usually more than its share, just to be sure). Plants will choke out all others in their path if need be. They'll grow taller to grab up the most sunlight. They'll spread their roots to soak up the most water. All of this without a single care for their neighbors that are dying because of it.

Well, animals (including humans) are no different. If there's something we need, we will take it regardless of who it hurts, as long as it means we live another day to reach our goal.

But humans have made this even worse. Because aside from needs, we invented all kinds of wants and desires. We have all kinds of unnatural wants that we apply the same greed and selfishness into acquiring.

If left on our own, we would eat each other alive.

So, we need structure to keep us from doing so. "Morals" are one such structure. Morals are just the set of unspoken rules that are necessary to maintain the balance, to keep the greed of the individual from destroying the whole species.

It became advantageous to group together (as Ter points out), and we eventually came to view others in our group as extensions of ourselves, rather than "other". It became off-limits to harm those around us (either directly, or by taking their resources) because they are now seen as necessary for our own greater good. It becomes much easier to fluorish and reproduce within a local group, so by supporting such groups, by indirectly reinforce our reproductive capability.

So in the end, even the concepts of "love" and "greater good" only exist for ultimately selfish reasons, themselves. We are "good" to those around us because it benefits us.
In response to Developous
you just keep on believing that. i'll be over here in reality whenever you come looking.
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