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How (modern) society has overcome violence as the dominent means of ensuring compliance and replaced it with decades of social norms and training and to be fair

How (modern) society has overcome violence as the dominent means of ensuring compliance and replaced it with decades of social norms and training and to be fair material reward (go to school, learn, work hard, don't kill anyone), this is "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled". Convincing billions to co-operate based on rules. It's incredible

isoprophlex 3y ago
There's the occasional relapse tho...
krapp 3y ago
Violence remains the dominant means of ensuring compliance, the "supreme authority from which all other authority is derived." Social norms are backed up with a threat of violence from the community. Civil society and its laws are enforced with violence from the state. Religious authority is enforced with the threat of divine violence. Even familial authority is very often enforced with violence from parents. Of course, not all violence is physical. The real change has been the transition from the common application of physical violence to emotional and psychological violence as our societies become more abstract and removed from the cold brutality of nature and subsistence living, except in "extreme" cases. Also the "greatest trick the devil ever pulled" was convincing people he doesn't exist. Slaves pick your food, sew your clothes and mine the rare earth minerals in your electronics. Vast engines of automated slaughter put meat in your stores. Every advertisement is mind control and every news story is psychological warfare. Every cop is a thug, every judge a sadist, every CEO a sociopath, every politician a psychopath. "People sleep peacefully in their beds only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf," as George Orwell said. And they do, cruel, wicked violence. Your hands are soaked in blood, the roads are paved with bones, and the skies are blackened with ashes from the ovens of Moloch. But you don't see it most of the time, it's hidden away from you, or it's intangible. That's the trick the world learned from the Nazis, how to manipulate and control mass perception through modern media, and by extension to normalize the violence that drives modern society. You can just play Candy Crush, pay your taxes, be nice and not kill anyone and pretend the devil isn't real.
- automatic6131 3y ago
  Most of what your talking is gross exaggeration. Exaggeration to the point of falsehood. Even the kernel of truth of underpaid, subsistence workers producing a lot of our food and machines, to call the rest of it what you have is just false.
  - throw310822 3y ago
    I don't agree with everything in it and how absolutely it is presented, but upvoted it for the sheer power of the prose.
    - highstep 3y ago
      you must be a be fan of chatgpt :)
      - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
        if chatgpt wrote that then I for one welcome my angry, passionate, articulate robot overlords. Yes we hide a lot of ... oppression/violence/unfair business practises ... under the supply chain. But hell i think the electronic ledger and RFID will be amount the most transformative technologies our children will see.
  - walleeee 3y ago
    Precision is important. Hyperbole doesn't help anyone, but neither does calling the comment entirely false. Underpaid subsistence workers do produce a huge portion of goods consumed in western nations. Engines of automated slaughter do put meat in stores. Advertising cares not an ounce for your wellbeing, food conglomerates employ chemists to optimize not for health or flavor but how compulsively you want to eat their products, game studios and social networks employ psychologists to most effectively addict you. Mindlessly consuming the news is a great way to get psyopped. Note that I have dropped the universals (e.g. "every", "all") because they weaken the argument by opening it to pedantic attacks, but the above is largely true. The "every X is a Y" is more fraught. Police are too often predisposed to violence and abuse, many politicians are sociopaths, surely. Selection effects are real. But there are reasonable people too. The more important point, which the comment misses, is that nobody is really in charge. Yes, there are "smoke-filled rooms" where conspiracies are hatched, but modernity is too large and complex for complete centralized control. The dominant forces today, I would argue, are distributed algorithms composed of flesh and blood human beings, their ideas and social fictions (which comprise institutions), and a vast array of machines. This vortex, this enormous, evolving structure of incentives and infrastructure, has its own autonomy. This is Moloch, and it doesn't even require active malice on any particular person's part. Paperclip maximizers are not just a thought experiment, we are surrounded by them. We are in them.
HPsquared 3y ago
Centuries of Genghis Khan style "submit or perish" probably has a certain "domesticating" effect on a population. The more rebellious ones don't last long in that environment.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  The region my family is from was directly ruled by "submit or perish" types (it was historically common in the marginal regions of Inner Asia). Plenty of rebellions, peasant revolts, and clan feuds have happened over the centuries. Also, what you described is basically psudeoscience and veers very closely to eugenics (the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable)
  - myth_drannon 3y ago
    He described Homo Soveticus.
  - NotSuspicious 3y ago
    Ignoring whether or not this specific situation is true, describing how different environments select for different traits is not pseudoscience; it's the foundation of evolution.
    - ilkke 3y ago
      Are you suggesting that we should disregard if this specific situation is true, but that it is possible that some populations are genetically evolved to be more servile?
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Could be genes, or memes, or both (or neither).
baybal2 3y ago
[dead]
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Actually, if you look at history, there were often extended periods of peace during stable empires. For example the Pax Romana during the high Roman Empire. During these periods of imperial peace, warfare is mostly confined to the frontier regions or where the empire abuts another empire. One could argue that we are in a similar time now. The USA basically has a de-facto empire over the Americas and Western Europe. The Middle East is a frontier zone. Ukraine abuts a former empire (Russian/Soviet) trying to regain its former glory. Taiwan abuts China which is trying to establish its own hegemony in its region.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > often extended periods of peace during stable empires Peace as in no major wars, sure. But plenty of hyper-local conflicts (think clan feuds, hyperlocal peasant revolts, etc) would happen all the time before the expansion of state power in the 20th century. Hell, when my great-grandfather was born, they were recent settlers in a region of Northern India that was completely depopulated of the indigenous population during the British conquest of the Sikh Empire. Where my great-grandfather's family was from was filled with multi-generational clan feuds, the occasional peasant revolt against the govt tax collector, and the occasional millenarian revolt. You wouldn't read about most of this stuff in your high school history textbook or on History Channel, but it would happen with consistency. I can guarantee with a fact that this same story existed in every single country before the 20th century and the rise of the railroad, canned food, and the telegraph. Before those 3 technologies arose, power projection was difficult, and "empires" were in reality a mixture of local fiefdoms (literally) who pledged feality to some guy in a capital far away. To use the classic Chinese and Russian quote - God and the Emperor are far, but I am here [0] [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_is_high_and_the_emperor_is_far_away https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_is_high_and_the_emper...
- type0 3y ago
  > The USA basically has a de-facto empire over the Americas and Western Europe A country that is a bully to others is not the definition of empire. This isn't even loosely comparable to a real former empire like British Empire and yes "Soviet Empire". China is slowly becoming an even bigger bully in Asia and Africa, but that doesn't make it an empire either.

isoprophlex 3y ago

There's the occasional relapse tho...

krapp 3y ago

Violence remains the dominant means of ensuring compliance, the "supreme authority from which all other authority is derived." Social norms are backed up with a threat of violence from the community. Civil society and its laws are enforced with violence from the state. Religious authority is enforced with the threat of divine violence. Even familial authority is very often enforced with violence from parents. Of course, not all violence is physical. The real change has been the transition from the common application of physical violence to emotional and psychological violence as our societies become more abstract and removed from the cold brutality of nature and subsistence living, except in "extreme" cases. Also the "greatest trick the devil ever pulled" was convincing people he doesn't exist. Slaves pick your food, sew your clothes and mine the rare earth minerals in your electronics. Vast engines of automated slaughter put meat in your stores. Every advertisement is mind control and every news story is psychological warfare. Every cop is a thug, every judge a sadist, every CEO a sociopath, every politician a psychopath. "People sleep peacefully in their beds only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf," as George Orwell said. And they do, cruel, wicked violence. Your hands are soaked in blood, the roads are paved with bones, and the skies are blackened with ashes from the ovens of Moloch. But you don't see it most of the time, it's hidden away from you, or it's intangible. That's the trick the world learned from the Nazis, how to manipulate and control mass perception through modern media, and by extension to normalize the violence that drives modern society. You can just play Candy Crush, pay your taxes, be nice and not kill anyone and pretend the devil isn't real.

automatic6131 3y ago
Most of what your talking is gross exaggeration. Exaggeration to the point of falsehood. Even the kernel of truth of underpaid, subsistence workers producing a lot of our food and machines, to call the rest of it what you have is just false.
- throw310822 3y ago
  I don't agree with everything in it and how absolutely it is presented, but upvoted it for the sheer power of the prose.
  - highstep 3y ago
    you must be a be fan of chatgpt :)
    - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
      if chatgpt wrote that then I for one welcome my angry, passionate, articulate robot overlords. Yes we hide a lot of ... oppression/violence/unfair business practises ... under the supply chain. But hell i think the electronic ledger and RFID will be amount the most transformative technologies our children will see.
- walleeee 3y ago
  Precision is important. Hyperbole doesn't help anyone, but neither does calling the comment entirely false. Underpaid subsistence workers do produce a huge portion of goods consumed in western nations. Engines of automated slaughter do put meat in stores. Advertising cares not an ounce for your wellbeing, food conglomerates employ chemists to optimize not for health or flavor but how compulsively you want to eat their products, game studios and social networks employ psychologists to most effectively addict you. Mindlessly consuming the news is a great way to get psyopped. Note that I have dropped the universals (e.g. "every", "all") because they weaken the argument by opening it to pedantic attacks, but the above is largely true. The "every X is a Y" is more fraught. Police are too often predisposed to violence and abuse, many politicians are sociopaths, surely. Selection effects are real. But there are reasonable people too. The more important point, which the comment misses, is that nobody is really in charge. Yes, there are "smoke-filled rooms" where conspiracies are hatched, but modernity is too large and complex for complete centralized control. The dominant forces today, I would argue, are distributed algorithms composed of flesh and blood human beings, their ideas and social fictions (which comprise institutions), and a vast array of machines. This vortex, this enormous, evolving structure of incentives and infrastructure, has its own autonomy. This is Moloch, and it doesn't even require active malice on any particular person's part. Paperclip maximizers are not just a thought experiment, we are surrounded by them. We are in them.

HPsquared 3y ago

Centuries of Genghis Khan style "submit or perish" probably has a certain "domesticating" effect on a population. The more rebellious ones don't last long in that environment.

alephnerd 3y ago
The region my family is from was directly ruled by "submit or perish" types (it was historically common in the marginal regions of Inner Asia). Plenty of rebellions, peasant revolts, and clan feuds have happened over the centuries. Also, what you described is basically psudeoscience and veers very closely to eugenics (the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable)
- myth_drannon 3y ago
  He described Homo Soveticus.
- NotSuspicious 3y ago
  Ignoring whether or not this specific situation is true, describing how different environments select for different traits is not pseudoscience; it's the foundation of evolution.
  - ilkke 3y ago
    Are you suggesting that we should disregard if this specific situation is true, but that it is possible that some populations are genetically evolved to be more servile?
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Could be genes, or memes, or both (or neither).

baybal2 3y ago

[dead]

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

Actually, if you look at history, there were often extended periods of peace during stable empires. For example the Pax Romana during the high Roman Empire. During these periods of imperial peace, warfare is mostly confined to the frontier regions or where the empire abuts another empire. One could argue that we are in a similar time now. The USA basically has a de-facto empire over the Americas and Western Europe. The Middle East is a frontier zone. Ukraine abuts a former empire (Russian/Soviet) trying to regain its former glory. Taiwan abuts China which is trying to establish its own hegemony in its region.

alephnerd 3y ago
> often extended periods of peace during stable empires Peace as in no major wars, sure. But plenty of hyper-local conflicts (think clan feuds, hyperlocal peasant revolts, etc) would happen all the time before the expansion of state power in the 20th century. Hell, when my great-grandfather was born, they were recent settlers in a region of Northern India that was completely depopulated of the indigenous population during the British conquest of the Sikh Empire. Where my great-grandfather's family was from was filled with multi-generational clan feuds, the occasional peasant revolt against the govt tax collector, and the occasional millenarian revolt. You wouldn't read about most of this stuff in your high school history textbook or on History Channel, but it would happen with consistency. I can guarantee with a fact that this same story existed in every single country before the 20th century and the rise of the railroad, canned food, and the telegraph. Before those 3 technologies arose, power projection was difficult, and "empires" were in reality a mixture of local fiefdoms (literally) who pledged feality to some guy in a capital far away. To use the classic Chinese and Russian quote - God and the Emperor are far, but I am here [0] [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_is_high_and_the_emperor_is_far_away https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_is_high_and_the_emper...
type0 3y ago
> The USA basically has a de-facto empire over the Americas and Western Europe A country that is a bully to others is not the definition of empire. This isn't even loosely comparable to a real former empire like British Empire and yes "Soviet Empire". China is slowly becoming an even bigger bully in Asia and Africa, but that doesn't make it an empire either.