At the risk of opening a can of worms: this is a paradox well-known to Christianity. Jesus teaches us to include the marginalized, to love our “neighbor” without limits. But then Jesus also gives instructions about when to remove people from the community and, of course, expected people to stop being assholes if they truly want to follow Him (Jesus called this “repentance” and “sinning no more”). The assholes made use of the the inclusiveness bit and managed to overrun the Church while also pushing the marginalized out.
Tolerance of intolerance, etc
What if the problem is the assumption that problems can be solved with rigid rules, universally applied without consideration of context? What if the problem is the assumption that rules make something objective?
There’s no universal definition of “asshole”. That’s okay; you can still have “Don’t be an asshole” as a rule, because the interpretation of rules is inherently a subjective act. You can either subjectively interpret this rule, or you can subjectively interpret a convoluted system of rules designed to exclude assholes in an “objective” way, and fail at both excluding assholes AND being objective.
There’s no universal definition of “asshole”
For me it’s like porn, satire, good jazz, dark magic and espionage.
You know it when you see it.
It’s why true anarchy and communism are pipe dreams. They all hinge on the assumption that assholes who lust for power over all else stop existing, as well as the idiots they charm with their charisma.
Those people are like a glioblastoma (unsurvivable brain tumor). Sure, you can get rid of the bulk of the tumor, but it’s little tendrils remain and it’ll come back eventually
What’s to stop you from excluding assholes from shared spaces in anarchy and communism? They’re free to have their own asshole patch, ofc, but in a society…
May I propose The Great Pacific Asshole Patch?
The problem is that they’re never satisfied with just their little patch. They want everything.
Well they’re going to have a bad time relearning the same lesson over and over then.
They have a great time until the very end. It’s the rest of the world that has a bad time.
this is inherant in all human systems, not like capitalism is immune either
I think the theory is that capitalism pits the unbearable assholes’ psychotic ambitions against one another and allows the normal people to reap the benefits of their relentless competition, while a functional democracy regulates the economy to prevent any one particular asshole from gaining too much power and enforces regulations to handle the externalities, and that in a functional democracy nobody who is too much of an asshole can ever get too powerful.
Of course, all of that presumes a functional democracy and… well… [gestures around broadly]
it also assumes none of the unbearable assholes get together and worm their way into the government so they can dismantle it from the inside
[gestures around broadly]
the solution is sunshine laws, careful admittance and a requirement to participate in education and governance by all members
aka just look at all the things project 2025 is attacking and do the opposite
The solution is sunshine laws
For anyone dumb like me: sunshine laws and sun down laws are very different. Sunshine for transparent governance, sun down for racist bullshit.
haha didnt even think about how close those two are
Ano vs año in Spanish
Hermits have it right apparently. Given those logical extremes, the third option of simply having no groups and becoming hyper-independent is THE way to go.
it’s great until you run into a bear
