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I think humans have evolved to need rulers and hierarchy to look up to to some extent. Look at what happened to Americans -- once the UK royalty was gone it wa

I think humans have evolved to need rulers and hierarchy to look up to to some extent. Look at what happened to Americans -- once the UK royalty was gone it was replaced with celebrity. It's just human nature.

dfraser992 4y ago
[flagged]
- barrysteve 4y ago
  This is one of those comments that won't age well. Reducing evolution and time down to a steady state worldview, doesn't work.
- educaysean 4y ago
  My guess is that you consider yourself to be a part of that select group of "aware" individuals. How extremely human of you.
- liamwire 4y ago
  ‘Only this in-group are actual humans’ is dangerous rhetoric. See dehumanisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization
jollybean 4y ago
The Queen is not a 'ruler' though, she's a figurehead. Which is fully appropriate where it exists. I would be 100% against the US having a 'Constitutional Monarch' but I'm 100% in support of the UK Constitutional Monarchy, given that it has come from their long established culture, nearly a 1000-year-old 'contiguous-ish' institution. FYI in 1258 the Monarch signed documents which required him to 'Confer with Parliament' when changing rates of taxation. That's only 40 years past Magna Carta, and the first reference to 'Parliament'.
- elcritch 4y ago
  I think the British Monarch could in _theory_ have some political power as parliamentary bills go by the monarch for approval. The Queen always approved them of course. The romantic in me likes to believe the Queen would step in if the British parliament tried passing some truly terrible bill. Basically acting as a last stop gap of human and British sensibility. Though with Queen Elizabeth II gone I'd have less trust in the judgement of a monarch. Part of me does wonder if US politics would've been much different with a ceremonial figurehead. And that'd be a fun alt-history where a great-great-grandchild of George Washington is the ceremonial head of the US government and has to deal with intrigues of Washington politics while just wanting to live quietly on the ancestral Virginian home.
  - jollybean 4y ago
    The power of the Monarch is kind of real actually, particularly because of the way Parliaments are created and dissolved etc.. There is no clear '4 years to election' as they have in the US. In my home country, Canada, it gets dicey as we wonder sometimes just what the 'Governor General' (Queen's rep in Canada) will do. I don't think the Queen is going to be interjecting on any 'legislation' unless there is something fundamentally unconstitutional about how it was passed; but there's definitely some question marks about 'how and when government falls and is formed' - and especially, how 'minority governments' are formed. If there's no obvious winner, then minority situations form, and it can get weird. That's still a thing. I suggest the US would have been a better country were the American revolution to not have happened. Sounds totally crazy, but true. I think the US would have healthcare, be a bit more socially minded, slavery would have ended a lot sooner, and the US still have all of the 'good parts' (except a cool national anthem).
    - iainmerrick 4y ago
      I don’t think that’s really a thing in the UK. In every election for over a century, when there are disagreements (and there have been many), the parties thrash it out and pick somebody to be prime minister, and that person drives to the palace for the Queen to make it official. It’s entirely ceremonial and I haven’t heard of any instance at all where she was actually involved in the decision. There has been a lot of speculation over the years about whether Charles might be a more activist monarch, but I’ll be really surprised if he actually tries to exercise any of his theoretical powers. He might be a bit more outspoken in public, and do a lot more lobbying in private, at most.
hnbad 4y ago
It isn't just human nature, though, is it? Celebrities don't wield any power comparable to that of rulers or monarchs. We allow unbounded accumulation of wealth but that's a facet of our political and economic system. Most social animals imbue their elders with some level of authority but this is easy to explain as an evolutionary habit to make use of lived experience and thus, hopefully, expertise. It's obvious why you'd ask the person with the most experience or the best domain knowledge for their assessment or even to lead you in that domain. It also makes sense to appoint a leader during times of war when the battlefield requires split second decisions that don't allow for consensus seeking. But human nature is cooperative if nothing else. We resort to exclusion, hierarchy and domination/obedience only under duress, which our current system helpfully maintains perpetually.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  LOL. Is that why you have president dynasties? Clintons, Bushes, Kennedys?
  - hnbad 4y ago
    Yes. Our political and economic system maintaining duress perpetually is why the US has those, not human nature. It's also how we got monarchies, which modern capitalist systems evolved from.

dfraser992 4y ago

[flagged]

barrysteve 4y ago
This is one of those comments that won't age well. Reducing evolution and time down to a steady state worldview, doesn't work.
educaysean 4y ago
My guess is that you consider yourself to be a part of that select group of "aware" individuals. How extremely human of you.
liamwire 4y ago
‘Only this in-group are actual humans’ is dangerous rhetoric. See dehumanisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization

jollybean 4y ago

The Queen is not a 'ruler' though, she's a figurehead. Which is fully appropriate where it exists. I would be 100% against the US having a 'Constitutional Monarch' but I'm 100% in support of the UK Constitutional Monarchy, given that it has come from their long established culture, nearly a 1000-year-old 'contiguous-ish' institution. FYI in 1258 the Monarch signed documents which required him to 'Confer with Parliament' when changing rates of taxation. That's only 40 years past Magna Carta, and the first reference to 'Parliament'.

elcritch 4y ago
I think the British Monarch could in _theory_ have some political power as parliamentary bills go by the monarch for approval. The Queen always approved them of course. The romantic in me likes to believe the Queen would step in if the British parliament tried passing some truly terrible bill. Basically acting as a last stop gap of human and British sensibility. Though with Queen Elizabeth II gone I'd have less trust in the judgement of a monarch. Part of me does wonder if US politics would've been much different with a ceremonial figurehead. And that'd be a fun alt-history where a great-great-grandchild of George Washington is the ceremonial head of the US government and has to deal with intrigues of Washington politics while just wanting to live quietly on the ancestral Virginian home.
- jollybean 4y ago
  The power of the Monarch is kind of real actually, particularly because of the way Parliaments are created and dissolved etc.. There is no clear '4 years to election' as they have in the US. In my home country, Canada, it gets dicey as we wonder sometimes just what the 'Governor General' (Queen's rep in Canada) will do. I don't think the Queen is going to be interjecting on any 'legislation' unless there is something fundamentally unconstitutional about how it was passed; but there's definitely some question marks about 'how and when government falls and is formed' - and especially, how 'minority governments' are formed. If there's no obvious winner, then minority situations form, and it can get weird. That's still a thing. I suggest the US would have been a better country were the American revolution to not have happened. Sounds totally crazy, but true. I think the US would have healthcare, be a bit more socially minded, slavery would have ended a lot sooner, and the US still have all of the 'good parts' (except a cool national anthem).
  - iainmerrick 4y ago
    I don’t think that’s really a thing in the UK. In every election for over a century, when there are disagreements (and there have been many), the parties thrash it out and pick somebody to be prime minister, and that person drives to the palace for the Queen to make it official. It’s entirely ceremonial and I haven’t heard of any instance at all where she was actually involved in the decision. There has been a lot of speculation over the years about whether Charles might be a more activist monarch, but I’ll be really surprised if he actually tries to exercise any of his theoretical powers. He might be a bit more outspoken in public, and do a lot more lobbying in private, at most.

hnbad 4y ago

It isn't just human nature, though, is it? Celebrities don't wield any power comparable to that of rulers or monarchs. We allow unbounded accumulation of wealth but that's a facet of our political and economic system. Most social animals imbue their elders with some level of authority but this is easy to explain as an evolutionary habit to make use of lived experience and thus, hopefully, expertise. It's obvious why you'd ask the person with the most experience or the best domain knowledge for their assessment or even to lead you in that domain. It also makes sense to appoint a leader during times of war when the battlefield requires split second decisions that don't allow for consensus seeking. But human nature is cooperative if nothing else. We resort to exclusion, hierarchy and domination/obedience only under duress, which our current system helpfully maintains perpetually.

cloutchaser 4y ago
LOL. Is that why you have president dynasties? Clintons, Bushes, Kennedys?
- hnbad 4y ago
  Yes. Our political and economic system maintaining duress perpetually is why the US has those, not human nature. It's also how we got monarchies, which modern capitalist systems evolved from.