From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jun 15 2002 - 16:16:21 MDT
On Sat, Jun 15, 2002 at 02:11:52PM -0700, Phil Osborn wrote:
>
> The NAZI's tolerated the jokes, knowing that they did
> nothing, except perhaps relieve tension. I understand
> that a similar attitude prevails in China. You can
> say virtually anything, but try to DO anything....
Which in the long run may be the undoing of many regimes. When the jokes
and cleverly hidden satire start to form a coherent counter-narrative
ideologically driven regimes are in trouble: when people no longer
believe in the ideology the only thing holding together the system is
the coercive or institutional force - otherwise it would be
self-reinforcing by people seeing the dominant ideology as "good" and
practical. While coercion and institutions are still powerful, they are
not immune to the corrosive effects of disdain and that people feel they
have a moral lease to cheat the system if they can.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:48 MST