Systems of Government (Part 3)

Communism: See Christianity, early church, Acts of the Apostles II:xliv-xlv and IV:xxxii-xxxv... as Marx did.

Communalism: A kind of mutualism based on communes; that is, separate self-sufficient communities working tangentially together if at all. Hence commun-al-ism.

Communitarianism: A desperate attempt to continue complicating the issue by mashing communes into communities and asserting that this is not communism but libertarianism writ large. Or something like that. It reminds me of a moonbase in which everyone uses comm units to network.

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I suspect the problem is communication.

Systems of Government (Part 2)

Fascism: taking 'spare the rod, spoil the child' to its logical conclusion — a bundle of rods and no innocent children.

Plantar Fascitis: being caught flatfooted and looking vaguely fascistic.

Systems of Government (Part 1)

Democracy: a system of government in which the most convincing win, whether they are good or not, right or not, smart or not. Also, a meritocracy in which being convincing is meritorious.

Republic: a system of government in which the public elects representatives only to find that these best represent only themselves. Duh.

The Paradox of Representative Democracy

The Tragedy of the Commons is an ancient concept of democracy that was first stated in its modern form in 1968. The key idea is that the more individuals have a 'share' in a polity, the less each individual thinks of the commonality they share. It has worked itself out in many ways, and all of them have the vague stench of unethical behaviour justified by division of moral burden.

And that's how modern democracy works. If you have many stakeholders, each is an advocate for a single view or set of ideas. They see the rest as competitors and can only gain power by advancing their own stake. They assume that the rest will be automagically handled. So eventually either extreme polarisation or extreme gridlock occurs.

The only way out is to oscillate between extreme poles and zero displacement. It's exactly how a sinusoidal wave looks. There is dynamic stability in such motion. But humans being human, political forces try very hard to keep the wave at the extremes to avoid gridlock or power-sharing.

The paradox of representative democracy is that it works best when not working, and it governs best when it seems ungovernable. Indeed, it might work because it shouldn't work at all, and only selfishness and power-thirst from its proponents keeps it going.

Replies from the Temple Oracles

I've spent many years researching Atlantean education. The most useful thing that the Temple of Learning did for me is that they began to put their archives online in 1997. Speeches by the hierarchs, replies in the Chamber of the People, words dispensed to the media, and so on.

But there is a game we researchers play. It's called "Spot the Answer" and it is very hard to play, because you are up against the cryptic oracular (as opposed to vernacular, I suppose) of the Temple of Learning.

What happens is this. Once in a while, a Representative of the People will ask a question about educational statistics. The High Priest of the Temple of Learning, having received the question weeks before, has a response prepared. But it is one that has gone through the oracular system of the junior priests, hierophants, sycophants, whatever phantasmal entities live in the ecosystem below him.

So the question might be: "Were the results of the last examination satisfactory?"

And the response might be: "They were neither better nor worse than those of the year before. Here they are, that you might see for yourself."

Now, one might fault the questioner for asking a question that prompted an irrelevant response (or semi-relevant response). However, sometimes the question too is altered in the interests of not providing an answer in the response.

It is true that the Temples of Atlantis are now more open to the people. But this openness is one akin to that of a large department store, which having more space, decides to put all its stock on display.

There is no new stock, and sometimes there are no directions (although one generally knows what stock is on which floor). The most irritating thing is asking a question like, "Where do I find cotton shirts?" and receiving the response, "Shirts we have many, and cotton we have much, and we will show many things to you, for lo and behold there are indeed many wonderful things and we will list them for you, but cotton-picking is not our forte."

You can imagine my dismay when many asked the question, "When can we withdraw our Completely Protected Funds?" and were told, "As you age, so do you receive. Yet not all that glisters is gold, and not all that is yours is yours. But be happy, O people, that what you thought was yours is given to other people to be theirs and not theirs at the same time."

Philosophical Misdirection

Looking at a particular Mancunian's blog, I realised that my ideas on the governance of Atlantis had actually changed over the years. At the end of the last millennium, when I became a Master of (certain unspecified but useful) Arts, I published these thoughts as part of my thesis. Then, I believed that Atlantis was governed by Machiavellian pragmatism; old Nick had described his vision of both principalities and republics in a way consonant with what we know of Atlantis.

Of course, Atlantis, infected by a need to attach its anchor to a more perdurable rock, has in the last decade or so claimed the blessing of Master Kong, he of the scholarly bent and crystal-clear ethical arguments. In this regard, I am quite certain that the claim does not match the facts. Master Kong distinguished between right conduct and gainful conduct; the Thunderer and other Atlantean rulers and priests have never done so. When I say this, I am certainly not saying that Atlantean rulers run around garnering bribes and filthy lucre (although they are very well paid); rather, I am saying that they do not distinguish, on one hand, between conduct that produces practical and useful outcomes for the state; and, on the other, conduct that is morally and ethically unquestionable according to Master Kong's reasoning.

So, if Atlantis is neither an adherent of Master Machiavelli nor of Master Kong, what philosophy is it that drives the island state?

I suspect it is really a sort of Neo-Platonic Republicanism. I will not elaborate much further, except to say that the cardinal features of the Atlantean city-state can indeed be found (in great and mordant detail) within the pages of Plato's Republic. Atlantis is not founded on rational (and perhaps cynical) political pragmatism; neither is it founded on a code of morality and ethics. It is really founded on the proto-Fascist jokes that Plato embedded in his dialogues.

How do we know? Well, think about the breeding programme of the elite that Socrates talks about in the book. State-engineered and state-sponsored education leads to state-engineered and state-sponsored marriages to produce eugenically and philosophically qualified guardian-warriors for the city-state. There are many other examples. It is actually a very entertaining book, especially when you realise that this might not have been a manual for how to run a city-state, but a cleverly written pamphlet on how not to do it.

I must confess, however, that I do think all three of these philosophical models have something to contribute to Atlantis. In fact, I sometimes wish that the philosopher-kings of the city-state had actually thought through the materials from which they claim inspiration. Nobody ought to be running an elite based solely on what that elite thinks is elite; that is the way to groupthink, and then decay.

When City & State Are One (Part I)

I have always found it easier to write of Atlantis than of Temasek. When one writes of Temasek in this day and age, there is seldom an emotional or cultural resonance of any kind. However, when one writes of Atlantis, one thinks of a great island kingdom, a regional trading centre, a technology hub, all put together by a kind of Hellenic republicanism headed by priests and sorcerers. And in a day and a night, as the many dire predictions and admonitions say, it can be consumed and destroyed by fire and the sword. "The work of generations can be destroyed in a day," as some would-be famous philosopher once wrote.

It's no secret that Atlantis, in any era of the imagination or of fact, is one of the last surviving city-states, a city whose borders are the same as those of the state it represents. But this gives those who analyse it both problems and opportunities.

In most countries, the political arena of the school is not so openly conflated with the political arena of the state. With an Atlantean city-state, this is inevitable; not only does the state drive the school curriculum, but what happens in the most instrumental schools can also drive the machinations of state. The College of Wyverns is an example of this.

The College is an unusual gladiator in the political arena. As has been mentioned before, the Pyromancers' Guild (whose sigil is that of a flaming torch and a book) and the Imperial Institute are the agencies of choice for the development and grooming of the Atlantean priesthood.

Yet, whenever examples of innovative and enterprising practice are raised, it is the graduates of the College who stand in the place of honour; Chief Liturgists, Great Generals, Lords of the Realm, Merchant Princes — all are Wyverns, and proud of it. I have estimated that whereas 95% of candidate priests are Pyromancers or Imperials, the 5% that are not make disproportionately greater contribution in this age.

This may yet continue. Or it may not. The curse of the Atlantean city-state has always been hübris, and it is sometimes hard to tell where pride in excellence ends, and overweening arrogance begins.

'Inspiration' (Part II): Psychobabbleon (And On, And On...)

As Trivandrum pointed out, the bowels of that ancient city and one-time Babylon of the West have vomited forth a great edict concerning what they used to do and now swear never to do again... indulging in bureaucratese. The reason that this particular piece was so inspirational to so many is that this great city was once the headquarters of the largest corporate dominion ever created by humans.

Oh, do not blame the Americans; they are but a young and benighted nation compared to that great Lion of the Sea!

Unfortunately, I have yet to think of a version for the education sector that won't be immediately recognizable as proceeding from the mouth of... urgh. Let us not think about it, but pray. I shall leave this as a stub for now.

Human Rights & Government

Having a chat the other day with the Hierophant, we went over some old ground. I realise that I've not actually explicitly said much about basic human rights, except perhaps in places like here, where the context was how human professions cater to the support of human rights.

Let's apply some simple reasoning based on human politics. This isn't new, and many people have wandered down these roads before, so bear with me (and that includes Wolfberry, whose study of the law is related). I'm not considering moral issues via a religious perspective per se.

All political states consist of people and subsist in people. Without people, there would be no state. Since the first implicit duty of a state has to be self-preservation (or it wouldn't exist to have any other duties), the state has a duty to preserve its people. The main duty of law is to regularise and/or formalise the transactions between people for the good of the state.

This means that basic laws deal with the support and maintenance of basic rights. As I've said before, one plausible definition of a basic human right is the maintenance of a condition that, in general, all humans are born with and that a human would be considered deficient if born without. The most obvious right, and the most basic, is therefore the right to supported life outside the womb. If life exists on birth, the right to have it continued is paramount.

This is why there are laws and social barriers against killing in general, indiscriminate killing, and deliberate killing. There should also be laws against negligence or other behaviours that result directly in death.

The next step down is to have laws which protect the individual against physical incapacitation. The individual can't really be protected against the state of which he is a part, but the state can be protected against individuals who have become renegade elements. Law, after all (and in the long-term view), is created and sustained not by individuals, but by social groups (and at the political level, states).

At some level however, the choice becomes one between protection of all individuals and discrimination between some individuals and others. This was the choice that faced Athenian democracy — pure democracies discriminate as little as possible, while republican democracies discriminate 'for the greater good'. In the former, a distinguished physician would be treated with the same weight as a peon; in the latter, the rights of the physician would be considered to some extent superior to the rights of the peon, or might be better defended, or might have laws defending certain things the physician might be able to do (or not do) as opposed to the things a peon could do. There are no pure democracies.

This means that the duty of government essentially is to enforce (and secondarily, maintain and/or support) interactions that are beneficial to survival of the state in a form which allows for continued enforcement of interactions that are beneficial to survival of the state...

The more private an individual's behaviours and the less they have to do with interacting with other people, the less important they should be to government. Reading a book of any sort should therefore not be as constrained by government as sharing the contents of that book in such a way as to provoke disruptive behaviour against that government. In this, I do not make any judgements about the type or kind of government involved; I am only saying that this is the perspective a rational government should have.

Following this logic, growing of cannabis sativa for personal research (and consumption) is a 10,000-year-old hobby that has had little negative impact on some states. However, the dissemination of the plant to others is a legitimate concern for some governments, since it is an interaction between individuals within the state. This is why the possession of small amounts of certain drugs for personal use is considered allowable or less of an offence than the possession of larger quantities beyond the typical amount an individual would be expected to use. Trafficking in such drugs is most definitely a province of government, whereas personal consumption is normally (but not always) only indirectly so.

That said, some governments also consider it their duty to protect individuals from themselves. This is probably based on the idea that not all humans are able to determine whether something is good for themselves or not. This is a terribly grey area. For example, what if the government of a state decides that any other form of government would be fatal to the continued optimal behaviour of the state? That opens the door to restricted participation in the governance of the state.

As you can see, once we stray away from basic human rights and start considering second- and third-order interactions and beyond, the law rapidly convolutes and metastasizes into something rich and strange. It is a wonderful world we live in.

Rehabilitation

Today I saw a marvellous spectacle which quite displaced my flow of thoughts on examinations for a while. So this is a post that has nothing to do with being an examinee. Rather, it has to do with a flow of a different kind.

As I was walking up the hill, I realised that the last few days of loud machines and aromatic diesel fumes had been because of something called (according to a large blue official-looking sign) the 'Sewer Rehabilitation Program Phase 3'. Not only that, but the agency responsible for it was named the 'Water Reclamation Board'.

I was alternately amused and horrified — amused at the thought of the criminal sewer undergoing interrogation, debriefing, and rehabilitation in some isolated waterway; horrified at the thought of what the juxtaposition of 'sewer rehabilitation' and 'water reclamation' meant. Did it mean that once-criminal sewers had been purged of their water, which in turn was to be given back to society as in Frank Herbert's Dune sequence? Or did it mean that the sewers were being converted to marinas? Or what?

Life is wonderful when you stop to sniff the diesel and read the signs.

Blast From The Past

On the management system in the Ministry of Education:

I found the professional officers to be generally hardworking and devoted to their profession as teachers. The standard of integrity was high. But the management system was dreadful - there is no other word for it.

There were two main areas of weakness in the style of management, or 'management culture' as the systems engineers call it. I will describe the first as the cult of obedience and the second as the cult of secrecy. I do not know for sure how and why these weaknesses arose.

In its crudest form, the cult of obedience expresses itself in giving unquestioning obedience to superiors and demanding the same of subordinates. Any departure from this conduct is regarded as tantamount to disloyalty.

Perhaps the cult of obedience comes naturally to teachers who are accustomed to obedience from their pupils. Perhaps under the stress of having to carry out many change in past years, the professionals had to suppress or ignore dissenting views of subordinates so that the work could be completed in time. Whatever the causes, the cult of obedience is bad management practice. It stifles initiative among subordinates, encourages servility, gives rise to the formation of cliques and promotes favouritism. Most damaging of all, it is impossible to attract talent to an organisation which engages in such practices or is believed to do so...

I now turn to the cult of secrecy. Its origin is even more difficult to explain than that of the other. Many instances have occurred of subordinate officers being denied access to documents on grounds of secrecy. In the cases I have examined, I could find no justification for the withholding of information...

In education what is the need for secrecy? I can't think of any, except in the area of staff personal records where confidentiality must be preserved for obvious reasons. As regards plans, policies, intentions, problems of implementation and thinking on these matters, the greater the volume of informed opinion the Ministry receives and the more aware people are of thinking in the Ministry, the more beneficial will be the outcome.

This is because all parties involved - ministry officials, school principals and teachers, parents and the objects of our endeavours - the pupils - are agreed on one objective. This is to give our schoolchildren the best education we can provide and they can acquire.

We may not be agreed on what is meant by 'best education'. Even if some kind of agreement is reached, we may still disagree on how to achieve it. But this is an argument in favour of open discussion, not of secrecy.

On 22 February 1981, Singapore's then Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee inaugurated the Schools Council at the Singapore Conference Hall. What you have just read is an excerpt from his speech on that occasion, taken from Wealth of East Asian Nations: Speeches and Writings by Goh Keng Swee, Singapore: Federal Press (1995), 215-217.

I knew Dr Goh as a very intelligent man, though perhaps not always complete in his wisdom. I remember that when I was a little boy, he asked me, "So what do you want to be?" I told him, "A teacher." He laughed and said, "Not an easy job. Read a lot and think about what you read." I was later to discover, of course, that this was but the first part of it.

I ended up reading a lot more than I thought I would. In the course of my research more than thirty years after my first meeting with Dr Goh, I came across the paragraphs which form the first part of this post. They are much quoted by visionary leaders such as Mr Lim Siong Guan, a former head of Singapore's civil service. They are part of the corpus of the intellectual tradition of a young nation, and with other words of that benign and admonitory ilk, will stand the nation in good stead for years to come.

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Note: Dr Goh, the Gnome in these writings, died in May 2010. A longer excerpt from this speech can be found here.