Although I'm sure this has some legend in it, as an ideal, Mozi's philosophy is great and worth considering.
But I'd like to bring up another aspect of this story, as you've laid it out: People taking action to better themselves and their communities at the local level.
Many of Mozi's ideas are humanistic ideas that can be found in Western…
Although I'm sure this has some legend in it, as an ideal, Mozi's philosophy is great and worth considering.
But I'd like to bring up another aspect of this story, as you've laid it out: People taking action to better themselves and their communities at the local level.
Many of Mozi's ideas are humanistic ideas that can be found in Western society. You saw them — to varying degrees — in antiquity and then really flowering during the Renaissance and Enlightenment before coming into their own in the 19th century.
The missing piece, that was present in earlier eras of the US, was local action to solve local problems and support regional goals. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville shows 19th-century America as the home of problem solvers pooling resources and joining groups to address their own problems. They built schools. They formed militias. They created culture in vacuums on the frontier.
Much like in Mozi's era, there was this "top" layer of government that had to be weathered and bettered. But it often did a crappy job of addressing real problems when it wasn't actively causing wars and harming people. So locals banded together to do what the government couldn't or wouldn't.
The really interesting question is: Why did these local problem-solving groups die off in the US? Why has civil society withered on the vine?
Part of it is a change in mindset. Earlier eras observed that the government was useless or underresourced. If something was going to be bettered, they had to do it themselves.
We don't have that mindset. We think that only the government can address problems, and at best we can nudge it in the right direction or vote for someone better to run the bureaucracy.
I'm not sure how you bring back the earlier system. In a sense, I think our learned helplessness is the result of government doing things pretty well and scaling up. But when it fails, we're stuck with our learned helplessness mindset.
I wonder if we can get back to taking action without a massive failure at the government level that would leave a clear void that would need to be filled and summon people from complacency.
Yep. People don't organize. They only complain then vote for one of two candidates selected by the oligarchy. 85% of the public have brand loyalty to one the two parties so deep it resembles zombiehood. They firmly believe that anything else would be throwing their vote away.
The Socialist party used to be strong but the movement was infiltrated and their leader imprisoned. In 2002 I met a real Socialist party member who organized workers. She said being imprisoned and then given an "elevator ride" was a common fate for such organizers.
Until the working people organize their lot will continue to deteriorate. I see no such movement at all.
"We think that only the government can address problems" <--I think this is one of the central problems today, which is why I told this story of Mozi! We need to remember that it is up to us to engage ourselves locally and that when we do that it can have a much more powerful effect on our lives than the government does.
Although I'm sure this has some legend in it, as an ideal, Mozi's philosophy is great and worth considering.
But I'd like to bring up another aspect of this story, as you've laid it out: People taking action to better themselves and their communities at the local level.
Many of Mozi's ideas are humanistic ideas that can be found in Western society. You saw them — to varying degrees — in antiquity and then really flowering during the Renaissance and Enlightenment before coming into their own in the 19th century.
The missing piece, that was present in earlier eras of the US, was local action to solve local problems and support regional goals. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville shows 19th-century America as the home of problem solvers pooling resources and joining groups to address their own problems. They built schools. They formed militias. They created culture in vacuums on the frontier.
Much like in Mozi's era, there was this "top" layer of government that had to be weathered and bettered. But it often did a crappy job of addressing real problems when it wasn't actively causing wars and harming people. So locals banded together to do what the government couldn't or wouldn't.
The really interesting question is: Why did these local problem-solving groups die off in the US? Why has civil society withered on the vine?
Part of it is a change in mindset. Earlier eras observed that the government was useless or underresourced. If something was going to be bettered, they had to do it themselves.
We don't have that mindset. We think that only the government can address problems, and at best we can nudge it in the right direction or vote for someone better to run the bureaucracy.
I'm not sure how you bring back the earlier system. In a sense, I think our learned helplessness is the result of government doing things pretty well and scaling up. But when it fails, we're stuck with our learned helplessness mindset.
I wonder if we can get back to taking action without a massive failure at the government level that would leave a clear void that would need to be filled and summon people from complacency.
Yep. People don't organize. They only complain then vote for one of two candidates selected by the oligarchy. 85% of the public have brand loyalty to one the two parties so deep it resembles zombiehood. They firmly believe that anything else would be throwing their vote away.
The Socialist party used to be strong but the movement was infiltrated and their leader imprisoned. In 2002 I met a real Socialist party member who organized workers. She said being imprisoned and then given an "elevator ride" was a common fate for such organizers.
Until the working people organize their lot will continue to deteriorate. I see no such movement at all.
"We think that only the government can address problems" <--I think this is one of the central problems today, which is why I told this story of Mozi! We need to remember that it is up to us to engage ourselves locally and that when we do that it can have a much more powerful effect on our lives than the government does.