It is not at all in doubt that Marxism and it’s subsequent iterations seek to engineer Man and our society. They seek to take the realities of Mankind and to try to keep the good, whatever little there is, and to weed out through “social engineering” the less than desirable natures of Man the species and man the individual. It’s a fool’s errand, but fools will indeed go on about a fool’s business, now won’t they?
Such efforts are to determine a path Man must walk down and force him to remain on the straight and narrow and that is the antithesis of Man’s nature. Man is a free thinker. Our Founder’s knew that and knew Man would be happiest if allowed the freedom to excel. A minimum of laws and regulations was their vision. Enough rules to protect us from each other, but no more than absolutely necessary. Somewhere our government fell off that wagon and got full of itself.
To domesticate any animal requires changing their innate desires. To socially engineer Man is the same effort. Considering the difficulty in domesticating an animal, and their much smaller brains, how then difficult would it be to “domesticate” a Human or the whole damned lot of us? Some socialization is good, but how much is too much? The socialization of keeping us from killing one another is good, but as with many Humans, a little success leads some to illusions of grandeur.
Human society is not subject to a blueprint. We can lay out generally accepted rules, but we made the rules – there was no guidebook to being Human – we had to make it up as we went. Only Man is even remotely capable of acting in ways detrimental to himself for the sake of free will. An animal only acts in innate manners driven by instinct and basic learning. Except for perhaps the higher Apes, they cannot reason out a course to achieve a better outcome, and certainly NOT one based on any consideration greater than the need to eat and procreate.
It has taken us hundreds of thousands of years to get where we are. So if it has taken eons to get here, how the Hell then will the social engineer argue persuasively that we can alter Man’s natural drives, or that we should? Are such efforts healthy for Man? Man has natural tendencies that all animals are subject to. Survival and all that entails drives us in unconscious ways.
Ya know, to control territory and resources, to compete for the most suitable mate, to give our individual offspring a chance to rise above the others and win the struggle to survive and thrive? Animals do this naturally and even many flora will stake out a territory and are guilty of fratricide to see to it no other flora, their own species included, can supplant them. This is how all living things struggle to thrive against the odds.
How many are aware that the first efforts at civilized society rose from the knowledge that strength was power, and power is used to gain control of more resources, territory and yes, more power. Disparate individuals have little power, but an amalgam of individuals, a society if you will, can project much more power. So society came about because of the effort to organize into a group large and powerful enough to extend their authority. Interesting juxtaposition.
I am not in any way arguing for less society at all, but merely that social engineering types have so much farther to go then they have already come. Hell, Man is just barely past the domestication stage. Our brains are a blessing and a curse. We must struggle to not let our brains write a check our society cannot cash. I mean c’mon. We have tens of thousands of laws on the books and every year we make more and thousands of regulations to force adherence to the laws. So how’s it working? Our brains sometimes cause us to create problems that but for our ability at higher thought, would never present themselves.
Did the Hutus and the Tutsis kill each other over cable TV? No, they killed each other out of ancient grievances about resources – it’s what all wars and in fact all crime as Man labels it, is about. It’s why animals and plants kill anything trying to deny them their share. Such behavior, be it conscious or innate, are the motivations of all conflict. Let Man on the whole have to struggle for resources amongst each other and watch the results.
So if Man cannot let go of ancient grievance, is there any hope we will live like Marx philosophized we should? I’ll kiss your ass in the town square if we can pull it off. I’m pretty safe so far as ever having to deliver upon that promise. Anything else is philosophy, rainbows and unicorns. Man cannot be “domesticated” as it were. I feel any level of societal domestication thus far are the limits of Man’s willingness to be curtailed from our innate drives.
I mean on paper Marx is the bomb, I tell ya, the bomb! But in real life, given who and what Man is, Marx’s philosophy is overkill. I think it a very bad idea and perhaps an impossible one to boot to try and breed out of Man our natural instincts. A minimum of society is best for our species. Autonomy is our natural state, but for every ounce of “domestication” we sacrifice some freewill. Too little domestication is disorder, but too much is life-sucking. I prefer not to become desiccated – our juicy innards make us who and what we are.
So far freedom and individual autonomy have led to the greatest and most successful society Man has devised and yet still there are a cadre of wishful thinkers who fantasize Man can be engineered to be as they dream. It”s a fool’s errand. It’s nice to hope. I hope when I buy a lottery ticket I will win the SOB, but I do not place my future upon it. I admit I FANTASIZE about it, but such wishful thinking has yet to ever cause me to go out and buy that Ferrari. I’m smart enough to know the world will not be what I want just because I wish it so.
Isn’t it odd that some of the same people who will scream for more societal order is needed for Man will on the flip side lament that we domesticate and/or keep animals in zoos because it is not allowing the animal to live a “fulfilling life,” as if the animal has any sense of self fulfillment. Yet at the same time they will argue for more control over Man, the only species capable of predetermined course with a desired outcome at the end of the effort. We are the only creature to realize fulfillment on a rational and knowing scale, so seems hypocritical to me, or at least totally misplaced empathy.
I know how that “wishing in one hand and crapping in the other” thing works out. And nope, I did not read Marx to learn that. Oh, I have read good ol’ Karl for sure, but common sense taught me the realities. Marx taught me how to dream the impossible dream. Mom told me to keep my head in the game. Ya know, Momma only had the one child. She had more than sufficient time to make sure he wasn’t hoping to ride the Unicorn across the rainbow of love.
