[extropy-chat] Anarchy + Transparent Society + Bushido = Survival

[The Avantguardian]

--- ben <benboc at lineone.net> wrote:

> The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > I would expect a society where everyone carried
> weapons to work very
> > politely.
> 
> 
> Is this a testable hypothesis?
> 
> Do we have any examples of such societies, past or
> present?

Yes. Yes, most of Japanese history before their defeat
in World War II by atomic deus ex machina. Bushido
kept law and order amongst the armed samurai. It was
the cornerstone of civilization during periods of
great political upheavel and instability and was why
Japan never suffered a dark ages as had Europe despite
numerous wars.

Bushido was an evolved behaviorial code that allowed
for civilization in Japan to flourish, despite
numerous wars and political instability in the cause
of consolidating political power in a centralized
Japanese government. Bushido's ideal of the highly
educated and philosophically inclined warrior-poet had
a civilizing effect on Japanese society even in the
midst of war.

Samurai would behave with honor, discipline, and
rationality toward one another even when while serving
opposite political factions. For its simplicity, it is
a highly effective means of preserving the rule of law
whilst allowing for numerous individuals to wield the
power of life and death over others. And it is
empirically proven IMHO.  

> What about gang societies in certain cities?

Gang members would derive immense benefit from the
practice of Bushido. It would allow them to become a
force of social justice instead of being the scourge
of civilization. Unfortunately most gang members would
probably not be able to cover the intellectual
overhead for Bushido. Although adopting Bushido would
certainly motivate a great deal more of them to pursue
higher education.
 
> Or is that a bad example, because the gang members
> are all 'bad guys'?

Morality is necessarily culturally relative. Bushido
is beautifully adaptive to this situation because it
calls for each individual to decisively make
appropriately subjective moral judgements and then act
on those decisions no matter what the personal cost.
In many instances, for example when a superior would
order a samurai to perform an act that would violate
their individual moral code, the samurai commited
sepuku, ritual suicide, instead of doing something he
knew was WRONG.  
 
> Would such an armed society /require/ everyone to be
> armed? Whether they
> wanted to be or not?

No. Indeed it need not be everybody in society. In
Japan it was a specialized warrior-caste. But I do not
see why it would necessarily have to apply just to
some socio-economic elite. So why not everybody? 

> I suspect it's not that simple.

Well like I said, Bushido requires education so it
would certainly raise the bar for weapon ownership.
Keep in mind anybody in Japan could have weapons but
they were no match for the Bushido practicing samurai
and so were never really an issue. You commited a
crime in the presence of a samurai and you were
summarily dealt with on the spot.


Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"In Emptiness exists Good but no Evil.
Wisdom is Existence.
Principle is Existence.
The Way is Existence.
The Mind is Emptiness."

- Miyamoto Musashi, Kyoto period Samurai.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com