1984: 2 + 2 = 4 == Political Freedom
In George Orwell's 1984, the character Winston Smith comes to the conclusion that in his totalitarian society, the freedom to say the above mathematical truth without negative political repercussion is the genesis for all subsequent political change. It's a statement that is independent of personal subjectivity; an objective truth of the world around us and indeed the exercise of realizing this allows us to realize that we exist in a world separate than ourselves and this is also true for other people. The other type of relationships which also form another equally important environment as well as this physical "reality" is our Social environment or relationships with each other.
Objective Reality: Pythagoras' Theorem: The Square of the Hypoteneuse
Various "Group Cohesion" rituals (submission to the dominance of the group) are based on suppressing the tendency in individuals to promote the ego's agenda, our survival instinct as per our "will to survive" and our desire to benefit ourselves and also our kin. A major feature of this system is Social Status in dictating the TYPE of interaction between individuals which is conducive to avoiding the clash of individuals' egos leading to physical violence with one another. Such interactions invariably can be boiled down to Dominance-Submission in Social Status Interactions and attempts at interchanges between these social roles.
Perhaps Ricky Gervais' The Office is an instrumental example of the comedy involved in this pervasive form of human interaction? I often found the office environment especially dull in the type of predictable communication that takes place between different people role-playing and attempting to continually out-rank each other. Looking at this from a research point of view Uniforms: A Certificate of Legitimacy, we can see that people "comply" very strongly to the symbols of authority:-
University of Warwick Study: Compliance to Roles of Authority
Reading recently King Arthur: The True Story, it reminded me of J.R.R Tolkien's theory about some stories that act like an allegorical "Soup" from Leaf And Tree. There is a basic stock to the story from which different people at different times throughout history add their ingredients or "lumps" into the soup that becomes the story we know of today. Such narratives for example ancestor worship which beget some of the "stock foundations of modern religions" which invariably across the world all add this to other parts of the "stock" such as Creation Myth Stories. For example the stories of Abraham are full of geneological tracings back to "direct relationships" with God ("Good").
"Legitimacy is a ‘…a psychological property of an authority, institution, or social arrangement that leads those connected to it to believe that it is appropriate, proper, and just’. Thus viewed, legitimacy is the belief that the law and agents of the law are rightful holders of authority; that they have the right to dictate appropriate behaviour and are entitled to be obeyed; and that laws should be obeyed simply because that is the right thing to do."(Although the legend/myth/history of King Arthur points to an deeper level of legitimacy than merely the literal imposition of "divine right"). A more historic though equally dramatized story by William Shakespeare is Richard III.
Fact or fiction: the Machiavellian rise to power & short reign of Richard III
Interestingly Richard III is particularly depicted with villainous attributes by William Shakeaspeare, and as last of the Plantagenets before the Tudor succession of "Royal legitimacy" began, perhaps William Shakespeare was currying favour with the powers of the day in order to successfully hold his plays and be well received publicly and politically via such propaganda easing the thorny issues of legitimacy? Such seems likely when a fuller more historic picture is produced such as from The Richard III Society - A Brief Biography and Introduction to Richard's Reputation it seems a significant misattrubution of Richard III's character has been achieved by Shakeaspeare directly related to the issue of legitimacy and the new authority of the new King.
This theme of the interchange between Authority and Legitimacy appears to arise in another form in Dr. RAE North's The Many And The Few book. What appears to have been necessary propaganda during World War II's The Blitz and Battle Of Britain by the RAF to encourage people (bombing reporting changed, emphasis on the bravery of the RAF) what subsequently has been discounted is the efforts of so MANY people.
Necessary propaganda for it's time, but now national narrative that undermines The Many?
And this is directly relevant to today: We are governed by a few over the many. Fitting this into a general schema:-
- Governance Type 1: One-Many: Divine / Metaphysical Legitimacy and hence Authority (Islamic Civilization)
- Governance Type 2: Few-Many: The "Capable" Few Legitimacy and hence Authority (Western Civilization)
- Governance Type 3: Many-Many: Real Democracy Many Legitimacy and hence Authority (Globalization)
Legitimacy Theory: Cognitive, Moral and EXTERNAL Pragmatic underpinnings
In the Western Civilization, by contrast, the notion of divine rule has passed, it is too subjective a relationship: The basis of nations has shifted emphasis of power from family or tribal units towards individuals (citizens) and the state/nation. The overhead of group cohesion of tribal units is less and hence the secularization of politics from religion and perhaps the trend of less violence in the world that Stephen Pinker describes in The Better Angels of Our Nature correlates positively with as per Democratic Peace Theory or as per Amartya Sen:-
''No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy,'' [This, he explained, is because democratic governments] ''have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentive to undertake measures to avert famines and other catastrophes.''National symbols and democratic electoral voting systems now provide legitimacy of rule of law and authority of government in the exectutive and legislative functions of governance of the people. I remember reading a report from one of the Global Bodies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP):-
Development Index Map from 2010
You can see above a general pattern: Type 2 Governance appears to lead to higher measures on the multiple indexes of development of societies across multiple data sets. If we look at the tragedy of Paris this week, we can at least take solace and comfort in perceiving these two very broad and very general patterns between the two types and KNOW we are progressive and such actors of terror are regressive and they are merely pawns of greater trends of violence due to out-moded and pragmatically poor results of governance.
However, there's a cautionary tale: We don't appear to as yet hold a vision of current trend that is possible towards Type 3 Governance (Many-Many) which it seems is "container" tag or description of use connecting the process of Globalization and interconnectivity between nations and the effect of this on our Type 2 Governance such as the UK's "Representative Democracy".
Pete North: What is David Campbell Bannerman smoking?
An example of the politician projecting dominance and hence not listening
This may not be the best example, as twitter is notoriously shallow for communication, but I tend to see the dominance behaviour in many such as DCB, Daniel Hannan, Ruth Lea, Dominic Cummings and of course in David Cameron. Apparently Arron Banks also does this: Most people do: But do they also allow themselves to listen? Our government has had 43 years to use their capacity to understand and educate this understanding to people in the UK: They have not listened and have concerned themselves with the apearance of legitimacy only as per previous blogs: Argumentum Ad Infinitum or Pattern Recognition or Our Government: No ifs, buts or maybes."UPDATE: I challenged Bannerman on these points. His response was repeated obfuscation with totally irrelevant points, followed by blocking me. I suspect he just doesn't understand the point at all. These people are not up to the job of running the leave campaign."
What our government has done is effectively take 43 years worth of membership and cram all of that, all the undemocratic major Treaties (x7) into the voting public making a single day's choice x1 on the upcoming EU Referendum day.
That is the most damning illegitimacy of our government: The Few-Many Relationship In Action.
We have detailed The Great Deception of our Government and David Cameron over the EU as well as the failures of our Government to promote prosperity, namely they lack Pragmatic Legitimacy too which must be down to a lack of Cognitive Legitimacy. Peter Hitchens makes the point that democratic legitimacy, the system itself is a set-up for such people:
Peter Hitchens: Does our government have any right to rule us?
Coming back to David Cameron's democratic legitimacy: The Harrogate Agenda: An Opportunity For THA:-
Dominance-Submissive Interaction In-Built into our politics = No Communication because there is no listening pressure; only dominance projection
"Direct election would correct a manifest unfairness in our current arrangements, exemplified by Prime Minister David Cameron who gained office by virtue of 33,973 votes in the 2010 general election. All those votes were cast in the constituency of Witney, which boasted 78,220 electors. The rest of the nation was not allowed to vote for the man. He may have been elected as an MP, but he was not elected as prime minister through a general franchise.In George Orwell's 1984 quote:-
Furthermore, when Mr Cameron holds office on the back of 10,703,654 Conservative votes, from an electorate of 45,844,691, his franchise represents only 36 percent of the votes cast and less than a quarter (23 percent) of the overall electorate. In any election, the PM hardly ever reflects the choice of leader for the nation."
- Type 1: "True":
2 + 2 = 4 ;2 + 2 = 5 - Type 2: True: 2 + 0 = 2 (Spin) => True: 2 - 2 = 0
- Type 3: True: 2 + 2 = 4 (Apparently only if governments are made up of the governed themselves... and hence listen to themselves)
Looking at that above index, nations that score highly appear to be well ordered, organized and in general employ greater democracy such as Norway (strong grass-roots movements) and Switzerland (direct democracy). If we start with 2 + 2 = 4 a basic truth in our communication, and we avoid the dominance of politics by "The Few" aka The Establishment, then we may find that comunication is opened up and stronger Cognitive application to our national decision making is effected... this cannot be done in the EU by the way:
Our dispute with the EU cannot be resolved
The British Model = Cameron = Our National Politics low quality = Not Listening
But first we have to understand Legitimacy and it's relationship to Dominance before our "leaders" start listening to "We The People". We have a plan FLEXCIT, and there are many other Brexit plans all inferior cognitively, but if your leaders are not listening then we have the illegitimate liar David Cameron and his warmongering, recession-inducing "leaders" leading us into a series of future unfortunate events: Strategy week: the politics of expectation
We have a choice who to listen to as per White Wednesday:-
Listening & Legitimacy: I don't think either Leave.EU/Vote_Leave or BSE listen given they're made of the same people as Cameron and Osborne.
In my opinion the stronger triangulation for any voter to think about is this: Which "triangle" holds Greater Cognitive Legitimacy and consequently can also exhibit Morally Greater Legitimacy (attempting to work honestly and present results as they are)? Can we suppose that those two combined will yield Greater Pragmatic Legitimacy, too?
Freedom is the freedom to BE ABLE to say... and be heard.
