h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Quote of the Month: September 1999
from The Paradigm Conspiracy

Pain and Power-Shifting Assumptions: Struggling with the Control Assumption

" Controlled worlds, as opposed to worlds with self-responsible people, don't work. Seventeen century philosopher Thomas Hobbes described control worlds as culminating in a war of each against all, each entity trying to maximize his or her share. Buying into the assumption himself, the only solution Hobbes saw was intervention by a "Leviathan", an all-powerful dictator. But we've tried that solution more than once. With a Hitler or Stalin, who spared nothing in the quest for absolute control, pain goes through the roof, and social order goes out the window. After decades of a foreign policy obsessed with military control, many nations are faced with mind-boggling debt levels, covert criminal operations, past decides of mutually assured destruction defense systems, and future decades of space weaponry against ... whom? All the while, real life-and-death issues go unaddressed. Government by control creates government in chaos. Taoist Lao Tzu predicted this long ago: "Too obvious a growth in laws and regulations, and too many criminals emerge." The control assumption creates worlds out of control."

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