Every time I am faced with some version
of environmental conspiracy theorist's or religious Armageddon I have
to remind myself why such nonsense is common today.
We are living
in an era when few, if any, people have a genuine experience of human
political association. Most people have experiences of school (top down
authoritarian hierarchy) or the corporate work world (another top down
authoritarian hierarchy). Very few people work in the PTA and similar
self organizing groups...very few.
It hasn't always been this way. In the pre-urban industrial world there were myriad local rural social clubs and many larger organizations such as the Masons and church assemblies. After the civil war there were robust self-organized clubs: the Elks, Eagles, Odd Fellows and Rotary.
To belong to any club meant learning how political association works. Two simple rules: (1) it is hard to organize people to do anything...anything other than to come to a party with free drinks; (2) only nice cooperative people can get others to help them.
Understanding those two rules means that people who have political association skills know that conspiracies are nearly impossible to organize and that humans are inherently more like the Irish and French than anything else... they will only act in their own behalf most of the time.
Most Americans have never had the experience of political association, clubs are gone, we watch TV... so they don't really know how people in groups behave. They have absurd world views like conspiracy theorists and enviro-Armageddonists.
It hasn't always been this way. In the pre-urban industrial world there were myriad local rural social clubs and many larger organizations such as the Masons and church assemblies. After the civil war there were robust self-organized clubs: the Elks, Eagles, Odd Fellows and Rotary.
To belong to any club meant learning how political association works. Two simple rules: (1) it is hard to organize people to do anything...anything other than to come to a party with free drinks; (2) only nice cooperative people can get others to help them.
Understanding those two rules means that people who have political association skills know that conspiracies are nearly impossible to organize and that humans are inherently more like the Irish and French than anything else... they will only act in their own behalf most of the time.
Most Americans have never had the experience of political association, clubs are gone, we watch TV... so they don't really know how people in groups behave. They have absurd world views like conspiracy theorists and enviro-Armageddonists.