We each have a consciousness and inner life. We each know something about the lives of our family, friends, and acquaintances. And we each have some sense of society at large; what people are like in other parts of the world and other branches of society, what power structures exist, how things get done, etc. It's a moral sense of how things are and how they ought to be, which can also be called the public conscience or collective consciousness.
There is a chicken-and-egg dynamic to our sense of society. What society is like influences our thoughts about it, but our thoughts about society also influence how we act and therefore shape society itself.
Our sense of society is based a bit on our upbringing, formal education, and direct experience. Increasingly, though, our sense of society is based on the news and culture content we’re fed by massive media networks owned and curated by a small number of extremely wealthy individuals. Those few, super-rich people have interests wildly different from our own. Specifically, their interests are vacuuming up all our wealth, monopolizing 100% of our attention, blinding us to their evil, neutering our capacity to resist their control, and forcing us into endless, indentured servitude. (Really!) Of course this affects what they show us, and what they don’t show us. They don’t show us how to organize and resist their control, for example. Sneakily removing important topics and important moral perspectives from news and public discussion is one of the most effective types of mass manipulation. It’s hard for us to notice what we’re NOT seeing when we’re flooded with so much of everything else. So, what are some of those important topics and perspectives that billionaire media want to erase from the public consciousness? Here’s what I think is missing:
1. The essential moral and practical values of cooperation and sharing- The “game” of our economy is increasingly rigged in favor of the rich, but it’s important to the rich that poor people still struggle to play their game. We oblige by beating the hell out of ourselves and each other just to generate wealth that’s instantly siphoned upward, from the worker class to the owner/investor class. (We are trained to be hyper critical of wealth-siphoning by the government through taxes while being totally oblivious to wealth-siphoning by the rich through all their price gouging and other dirty tricks.) We are also supposed to assume the only reason we’re poor is that we’re not as hard working or skilled as those wonderfully rich people; the mavericks, the disruptors, the stable geniuses. Cooperating and sharing are big no-no’s. Like, what are you, a socialist, a communist, a WIMP!? Everyone knows the true American Way is to bully, cheat, and steal your way to the top of the pile. Forget those antiquated ideas about “the common good,” the only true solutions are individual solutions. Greed is good. Ruthless, selfish, competition is the way – GET WHAT’S YOURS. And who better to lead us than the greediest of the greedy, the champions of the game? What could possibly go wrong with putting pathologically selfish billionaire crooks into the highest seats of government power? (Everything could go wrong, of course. Everything HAS gone wrong.)
Downplaying the value of cooperation and sharing funnels us into seeing life as a “zero sum game” where selfish antagonism is the only way to success. We see the selfishness of society’s “winners” glamourized and fetishized and start thinking that’s the route we should follow, too, not realizing the near-impossibility of that route for anyone not born into wealth and privilege, given the rigged game dynamic. Plus, even if selfishness COULD get you from the bottom to the top, it would only be solving the problem for you, while making it worse for everyone you’d shoved down in your scramble to the top. Really, both individuals and the bulk of society are much better served when we cooperate and support each other, but rich people HATE it when we do that.
It’s sad because cooperation has been and continues to be the KEY to human survival in the long term. It’s the thing that helped our ancestors survive droughts, winters, ice ages, cave bears and lions. Cooperation is not only key to overcoming survival challenges presented by the environment; it’s key to overcoming the oppressive power of the rich over the poor; the excessive stratification of society that we’ve been prone to since ancient times. Of course, cooperation and sharing aren’t easy to get right. There are plenty of examples of societies that, in pursuit of drastically more equal sharing, flipped from a cruel hegemony of the wealthy over the poor straight into a cruel hegemony of former revolutionaries over everybody. Nevertheless, I contend that we need large measures of cooperation and sharing baked into all levels of our society for it to function properly, and I think this every-man-for-himself kick that we’ve been on (since the 1980s maybe? longer?) is self-destructive folly.
Some people are nervous about cooperation and sharing because they’re afraid of being taken advantage of. We worry that our contributions to the public good will be hoarded and wasted by lazy or unscrupulous people; people who are poor like us but less honest and hard-working. Of course, our fear of other poor people is intentionally boosted by rich people. They mix it with potent additives like racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc., generally getting poor white guys to side (against their actual interests) with the rich. It’s not unreasonable to worry about your generosity being taken advantage of. But if our view was less distorted by rich people’s propaganda, we’d see that THEY are the ones most guilty of hoarding and wasting the fruits of our labor, while not being compelled to contribute their share of taxes, clean up the societal and environmental damage they cause, etc. The concept of accountability is important for cooperation and sharing to work, and it IS present in our public consciousness. The problem is that our sense of accountability is hyper-focused on poor scapegoats and quietly steered away from truly culpable rich people.
2. Citizen empowerment- There’s a lot that poor people can do to make society better and advance their collective interests. In a democracy, that includes voting, but there’s a lot more beyond that. Also, as things like partisan gerrymandering, other dirty tricks of disenfranchisement, and big-money-supported candidates on both tickets become more prevalent, its harder for voting (by itself) to fix things. It becomes more important to protest, strike, show up at public hearings, organize at multiple levels, share reliable information outside of propaganda networks, etc. Rich people definitely don’t want us doing this. Like, on the corporate mega-media news channel they’re definitely not going to tell you where to show up for the protest against the corporate mega-media news channel. And while the algorithms of your billionaire-owned social media network may feed you a stream of rage-bait news tuned to your partisan sentiments to keep your engagement high, they’re unlikely to give you any useful instructions of how to effectively channel your rage. Just keep scrolling and they’ll keep getting richer.
3. The downsides of capitalism – None of the economic ‘isms is perfect. They all need to be martialed by rigorous democracy to keep from becoming awful. But the lens of billionaire media always omits or downplays the problems of capitalism, since billionaires are the ones that capitalism benefits most, even when it’s off the rails and everyone else is suffering – especially then. We’re allowed unlimited criticism of socialism, but the inadequacy of capitalism as the sole principal of society is like a forbidden topic. You could write a whole book on the downsides of capitalism (in fact Marx and Engels famously did) but nobody has time to read that so we can summarize the downsides as: 1) Extreme wealth and income inequality. 2) Environmental degradation. 3) Economic instability and boom/bust cycles. 4) Commodification of essential needs. 5) Labor exploitation and alienation.
4. Hope- It’s obvious that things are really bad and it would be dumb to imagine that they’ll just fix themselves. That said, hope is both necessary and warranted. I mean, think about how truly horrific things USED to be. Day 1 of America was mass murder and displacement of indigenous people. Then we had 246 years of slavery. Women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920. But throughout our ugly history, good people have gotten together, fought the oppressive powers for the rights they deserved, and often WON, succeeding in making our society much better for a much larger portion of the populace. There is ALWAYS hope, wherever we can see and bravely use our collective power.
I read on the Internet that you’re having a hard time. I
believe it because I have been alive since 1979 and even my “successful” life
has had lots of internal woe, scrawled across the pages of diaries
intermittently kept since high school. Life
is hard in the ways it has always been hard, such as the struggles of family
dynamics, school, work, forming friendships, finding romance, finding a deeper
meaning, coping with physical and mental illness, and facing inevitable aging
and death. However, life is also hard in uniquely modern ways, such as the
constant flood of misery, temptation, judgement, and deception delivered
through billionaire-owned social media networks to your very addictive mobile
computing devices.
Life is hard for women, too. You may not want to hear this,
or may not believe it, but it’s even harder for women than it is for you. This
is because women face all the timeless and modern hardships listed above, plus additional,
serious dangers and hardships from living in still-male-dominated societies. That
monologue about women’s plight in the Barbie movie nailed it.
This post isn’t meant to be a debate of who has it harder,
and I’m not trying to make you feel worse than you already feel about your male
struggles. It’s just important to remember that women are struggling, too, and its often because of us.
In your defense, there ARE some specific, extra struggles
associated with being male. I’m not talking about the risk of testicle injuries
(although that is a thing). I’m talking about social and emotional struggles. I
want to identify some of those struggles and address how we deal with them. How
we deal with them has implications not only for our personal happiness but for whether
we affect society positively or negatively. Some specific hazards and hardships
of the male circumstance include:
1.A ridiculous excess of sexual and romantic
desire. The male libido hits like a meteor at puberty and burns for decades. It
supplies a lot of anxious motivation and not a lot of satisfaction. The desire
for romantic love is another burning meteor, though that one at least has a
chance of finding a stable orbit. Developing positive, romantic and sexual relationship(s)
in real life IS worth working towards, after attending to the even more
important things like a roof over your head and a supportive network of friends
and family. However, if you’re trying to sculpt your real life to meet 100% of
your testicles’ ridiculous desires you’re in great danger of becoming a
selfish, awful, tragic person. Chasing too hard after impossible desires can
really hurt you, and others. For example, people who leverage money and power and/or
deviously manipulate others to meet their desires can end up as monsters like
Epstein and Weinstein. In addition to those infamous abusers of power, there
are legions of lower-profile predators and creeps who have hurt women, and legions of sad dudes who have hurt themselves by wasting all their money on porn, how-to-be-a-player
courses, strip clubs, prostitutes, etc. Don’t let yourself or your bros become those
guys. It’s part of the human condition that there will always be a large portion
of your desires that just can’t be met, realistically, ethically, or
financially. Some combination of acceptance, imagination, and laughing at
yourself will get you through.
2.The sense of entitlement and deficit of responsibility
that come from living in a patriarchal society. Patriarchy is a social system
where men hold primary power, dominating roles in political leadership, moral
authority, social privilege, and control of property. There are different
degrees of patriarchy, but the USA is still strongly patriarchal according to
every economic and social thing we can measure. Males get a lot of perks and
privileges that women don’t get. For example, expectations for responsibility are
MUCH lower for boys and men than they are for girls and women. Cartoon
characters illustrate this well. We think boys like Bart Simpson, teenagers
like Beavis and Butthead, and men like Homer Simpson are endearingly hilarious
in their bad behavior, while their female counterparts Lisa Simpson, Daria
Morgendorfer, and Marge Simpson have to be responsible all the time.
Rarely
having to clean up our own messes, consider others’ needs, or pay the full
price of our transgressions means males in a patriarchy grow up without
developing the full responsibility and moral skillsets that all humans should
have. Or we’re slow to develop them. We think we’re special good boys and nice
guys when actually we’re morally stunted jerks who can’t deal with real life
and who put a huge burden on others. We have this immature fantasy that at some point we'll slay a dragon and be adored and in the meantime we can't stoop to do our own laundry or vacuum the floor. That’s the bad edge of the patriarchy
sword. Here’s a personal example: I grew up thinking of myself as a super
special nice guy who could do no wrong, and I persisted in that view even when
I was being selfish and ridiculous in early relationships. This doomed me to
hard lessons and delayed social/emotional maturity, and of course it was hard
on whoever I was dating.
3.The toxic competitiveness dynamic. Guys
experience weird pressures and expectations from living in societies that
over-inflate the importance of male “greatness” and hierarchical position. You’re
supposed to be a big hero, or a big stud; the brightest peacock in the flock. Someone
is always trying to make you feel bad and insecure for not being man enough,
and they’re selling you muscle growth powder, penis enlargers, get-rich-quick schemes,
etc. They say it’s not enough just to be a good person and good team player. The
message is that 99% of men are worthless, ugly, too-poor, and too-short and
wimpy, and you’re going to be miserable and loveless unless you can dominate
all the competition and become some kind of warlord pimp Adonis. Now it’s true
that there is some disparity in the amount of attention paid to flashy versus
average guys, and some women have terrible, superficial tastes in men, just as most
men have terrible, superficial tastes in women. It’s also true that there is
some real unfairness in terms of the genetic cards we’re dealt, which I
addressed in the 2010 post “Ugliness, Fairness, and Happiness.” But the world is not
nearly the all-or-nothing, winners-dominate-losers kind of world that the
manosphere influencers say it is. The “nice guys finish last” thing is not true. There are many ways that a not-so-flashy guy can find his niche in the
world through cooperation, kindness, consistency, etc. You can flavor your niceness with a little pizazz without going to the extremes of being a macho jerk. The natural way to do it is to lean into the things you're good at and see where they lead. I got a lot of mileage out of windsurfing and science as a bachelor, and those are things I liked doing anyways. Compared with the warlord
pimp Adonis, who will be hated by most people and likely deposed quickly by the
next aspiring warlord pimp Adonis, a humble good guy will develop a stable network
of people around him who actually appreciate him and will help and support him
as he has helped and supported them. Another reward of developing your goodness
rather than striving for greatness (a.k.a. clout), is that it makes a better
world for EVERYONE, not just you.
Conclusion: The unfairness of the world is real, but the manosphere’s
advice for how you should deal with that unfairness is terrible. Their advice
is like, “You have to seize power for yourself by becoming a dominant, aggressive,
alpha male. Showing any empathy or kindness towards others will just make you a
loser.” Every man competing to be an alpha male, and ignoring essential-to-the-fabric-of-society things like cooperation and niceness, is a recipe for both personal and civilizational disaster. In fact I think idolizing and enabling alpha male types has contributed a lot to the dysfunctional, right-wing, authoritarian oligarchy we have today. For all but a very few well-positioned billionaires
and political elites, the optimal strategy for the self is actually to be LESS selfish;
to create a fair, egalitarian society through cooperation, niceness, and
holding abusers and exploiters to account. Working TOGETHER we can ALL get ahead.
One of the most inspiring among these is Martin Luther King Day, established by a bipartisan bill in 1986 to honor slain civil rights activist Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK). MLK was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia and murdered on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. We celebrate MLK day on the third Monday of every January.
The main reasons I think MLK day is so inspiring are:
1. Because of Martin Luther King’s amazing leadership of a huge and successful movement to gain civil rights for black Americans and end (legal) racial segregation. King also worked tirelessly against the oppression of the poor by the rich (e.g., he supported organized labor, tenants’ rights, etc.) and he was a global peace activist who opposed the Vietnam War. He wasn’t perfect (nobody is), but in all our history he is unquestioningly among the Americans who have done the most to help other people and improve society, joining a legacy also full of the great abolitionists and suffragists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
2. Because our embrace of Martin Luther King’s legacy shows that we are capable of recognizing and rejecting the evils of our past and becoming a better, more egalitarian society. MLK was a Baptist minister, and for all my skepticism of religion I am still incredibly moved by the spiritual aspect of his humility and self-sacrifice. At the broader scale, our nation’s struggling transformation from enslavers and oppressors to protectors of freedom for all is our truest enactment of this ideal of spiritual change and betterment.
Of course, our nation’s transformation is incomplete, tenuous, and imperiled. WE MUST NOT FALL BACK INTO THE EVILS THAT KING HELPED US OVERCOME. We are at dire risk of doing just that now because of the fascist regime that has risen to power here.
The regime’s rise owes to the awkward but dangerously successful political marriage of blue-collar white people and the ultra-wealthy elite. This awkward marriage was the “southern strategy” that Nixon’s republicans began in MLK’s time and which lead to Reagan and eventually to the Tea Party and Trump. Trump’s MAGA regime is now the apotheosis of the southern strategy; enthroning a gold-draped billionaire while deploying armies of poor goons to terrorize perceived enemies. The only philosophical tenet uniting the extremely wealthy and the aggrieved poor is the horrible idea that some people have a right to dominate others. This is the polar opposite of the loving, egalitarian society that MLK dreamed of. MLK’s dream is the clear vision we need to fight the fascist corruption taking hold. (And that is why modern propagandists perennially seek to co-opt, distort, and denigrate King’s legacy. Watch out for them.)
3. There’s a third one and it’s a tough one for me. It’s King’s courageous practice of non-violent resistance, refusing to meet hate with hate. He said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” To win freedom for oppressed black people in America he had to touch a spark of love and sympathy in the hearts of largely indifferent white people. While his movement eschewed the strength of arms it grew in the power of moral righteousness enough to finally turn the tide of public opinion. Maybe that is not always possible, but it was so, so beautiful and I want that more than anything for America again today.
I think we need to be more careful about how we evaluate the realness of "problems" and how we evaluate the goodness of "solutions." To facilitate that I came up with a "real, exaggerated, fake" ranking system for problems and a "good, poor, bogus" ranking system for solutions. I've applied it to four topics I care about, assigning percent values based on my own personal opinions of the problems' realness and solutions' goodness. I made the graphs in Excel. Probably no two people will ever agree on the exact rankings (I even went back and forth with my own rankings for a while), but I think the concept could be useful for framing discourse.
As we lurch into this gruesome new chapter of American history,
we’re throwing around a lot of words that end in -ism, -archy, and -ocracy. However,
most of us (myself included) don’t know the words’ meanings as well as we
should, resulting in some misuse and misunderstanding. To help myself and
others organize the words, I’ve made a list. The definitions are copied from
the dictionary at https://www.merriam-webster.com/
with no changes other than formatting, but I added my personal commentary and
interpretation below each definition. Note that a lot of these terms legitimately overlap, like monarchy is a type of autocracy. So this isn't an, "if it's one thing it's not the other thing" situation.
Section 1: isms
ism [as a word by itself] (noun)
1: a distinctive doctrine, cause, or theory
2: an oppressive and especially discriminatory attitude or
belief
*We don’t’ use “ism” by itself very much. However, it’s
interesting that it has two possible meanings: 1- A system you follow, like capitalism and Buddhism, which could be good or bad. 2- A negative attitude. The negative definition of ism comes from its use in
words like racism, sexism, and ageism. (See definition 1c of the -ism suffix.)
-ism [as the ending of a word] (noun suffix)
1a: act : practice : process (e.g., criticism, plagiarism)
1b: manner of action or behavior characteristic of a
(specified) person or thing (e.g., animalism)
1c: prejudice or discrimination on the basis of a
(specified) attribute (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism)
*The 1a and 1b kinds of -ism words aren’t particularly
relevant to economics and politics, but the 1c kinds of -ism are. For example, propaganda
produced by fascist demagogues (more on them later) provokes racism, sexism, anti-intellectualism
and other isms to misdirect working-class anger away from the ruling class and towards
scapegoat groups. Not all prejudices have -ism words, though. For example, homophobia
and transphobia (prejudices against gay and transgender people) don’t have ism
words. Xenophobia (fear of foreigners) has a similar meaning to nativism, although
we don’t use either of those words very often. We usually just describe that
attitude as being “anti-immigrant.”
-ism [as the ending of a word] (noun suffix)
2a: state : condition : property (e.g., barbarianism)
2b: abnormal state or condition resulting from excess of a
specified thing (e.g., alcoholism) or marked by resemblance to such a person or
thing (e.g., giantism)
*The 2a and 2b type of -ism words aren’t usually relevant
to economics and politics, but the 2b type can come up indirectly such as in
discussions of whether an ism like narcissism (an excessive sense of one’s own importance often coupled with an inability to
understand and care about others) is a problematic trait in a leader.
-ism [as the ending of a word] (noun suffix)
3a: doctrine : theory : religion (e.g., Buddhism)
3b: adherence to a system or a class of principles (e.g., stoicism)
4: characteristic or peculiar feature or trait (e.g., colloquialism)
*The type 3a and 3b -ism words, which include capitalism,
communism, fascism, etc., are the main ones that come up in economic and
political discussions. Some are defined below.
Populism
1: a political philosophy or movement that represents or is
claimed to represent the interests of ordinary people especially against the
Establishment
2: general concern for ordinary people
*Populism can be a good way of motivating people to fight
against real injustice, like when you need an angry mob with torches and
pitchforks to oust an evil king. But populism can also describe the technique
of stoking public anger and directing it towards selfish ends, such as putting
yourself in power. This is how a “demagogue” uses populism. A good example of
unscrupulous populism/demagoguery was when Donald Trump lied about the 2020
election being stolen and rallied an angry mob to storm the capitol on January
6th, 2021 as an attempt to subvert democracy and stay in power. Populism is one of the ingredients in the next ism, Fascism.
Fascism
1: a
populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that
exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized
autocratic government
headed by a dictatorial leader,
and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by
forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of
strong autocratic or dictatorial control
*In World War II, the Axis powers (the bad guys; Germany,
Italy, Japan, etc.) were all lead by fascist leaders. Fascism is a “far right”
political philosophy with extreme social and economic conservatism,
authoritarianism, nationalism, sexism, and nativism. Fascists get into power
with promises to strengthen the nation or glorify a chosen race or religion,
then they greatly empower a small group of rulers or a dictator, brutally
oppress all opposition, and ultimately lead the whole nation and themselves to ruin.
There has never been a “good” fascism. In the video below, American economist
Robert Reich assesses whether Donald Trump is a fascist. Spoiler alert – Yes,
100%.
Nationalism
1: an ideology that elevates one nation or
nationality above all others and that places primary emphasis on promotion of
its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations, nationalities,
or supranational groups
(like the European Union or the United Nations)
2: support for and promotion of the political
independence or self-determination of a nation or people
3: a nationalist movement or government
*Nationalism is related to patriotism (which I talked about
in a previous blog post https://jimbodouglass.blogspot.com/2018/05/patriotism-good-bad-or-its-complicated.html),
but it’s an excessive, aggressive type of patriotism full of hate for other
countries and often racism and nativism. I think the American Republican party’s “tea party” wing, which has morphed
into Donald Trump’s “MAGA” movement, is a form of nationalism. "White nationalism" is an explicitly racist form of nationalism that has also come to the fore with the tea party and MAGA.
Colonialism
1a: domination of a people or area by a foreign
state or nation : the practice of extending and maintaining a
nation's political and economic control over another people or area
b: the policy of or belief in acquiring and
retaining colonies
*Usually we think of colonialism as the expansion of
European countries’ global influence from the 1400s to the 1900s; part of
history but not part of the present. For most of my life (1979 – ), when we
talked about colonialism it was about the problematic legacy of colonialism.
I.e., how past colonialism contributed to economic and political problems in
colonized countries that persisted even after most of the countries freed
themselves from their colonizing powers. However, a glance at the modern world
indicates that colonialism is disturbingly still active, such as in the
invading and conquering of other lands and peoples practiced by Russia, Israel,
China, etc. I think Donald Trump’s outrageous talk about annexing Greenland, Gaza, etc.
is an ugly attempt to resurrect colonialism. Colonialism caused centuries
of strife. Let’s not do it again.
Imperialism
1: the policy, practice, or advocacy of
extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial
acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life
of other areas
2: imperial government,
power, or authority: an imperial system
*Imperialism is similar to colonialism. I think the word is
just more focused on the colonizing power and its ruler, who could be an Emperor-
(Emperor- 1: the sovereign or supreme male monarch of an empire).
Another related ism word is Expansionism:a policy or practice
of expansion and
especially of territorial expansion by a nation. China’s territorial expansion
in the South China Sea and activities in other parts of the world could
probably be classified as imperialism / expansionism. Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine could be, as well. The last time the US acquired new territory was in
1947 when it claimed some Pacific Islands we had occupied during WWII. However,
because we still have so much territory and exert so much economic and military
pressure around the world we probably fit in the empire / imperialism category,
too.
Capitalism
: an economic system characterized by private or
corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by
private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that
are determined mainly by competition in a free market
*Capital means stuff you can use or sell. Capitalism means
he who has the stuff gets to decide what to do with the stuff, like whether to
sell it and how much to sell it for. Many people like capitalism because it
seems to provide a lot of choices and opportunities and reward hard work and
ingenuity. In theory, capitalism rewards the greatest contributors to society with
the most wealth while punishing foolish and lazy people with poverty. Some
people think capitalism is fair and works well, while others are skeptical. I’m
one of the skeptical ones because I think what the system rewards is not always
hard work and ingenuity, but often hereditary wealth and the ruthless
exploitation of others. What capitalism punishes is not just foolishness or
laziness, but also honesty, generosity, and the misfortune of being born to
not-rich parents.
*Capitalism is also unstable, because the more stuff you have, the more power and
influence you have, and you can use that to get even MORE stuff and MORE power,
in a kind of snowball effect. Money and power are linked to real things on the
planet that are limited in supply, like land and water, so as a few people
acquire massive amounts through the snowball effect, there’s less for everyone
else. Over time, in what some people call “late-stage capitalism,” most of the
stuff and most of the power end up controlled by just a small number of people with
big business monopolies – an oligarchy. Most economists think that capitalism
needs to be regulated in some manner to prevent that total monopolization of
money and power, but it’s hard to get the regulations to stick because those
with money and power are good at influencing the political process to escape
regulation.
Communism
1a: a system in which goods are owned in common and are
available to all as needed
1b: a theory advocating elimination of private property
2a: a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and
Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the Soviet Union
2b: a totalitarian system of government in which a single
authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production
2c: a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the
state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably
2d: communist systems collectively
*This economic ism has some aspects that are appealing in
theory, like the emphasis on empowering workers, sharing resources, and taking
care of all people. However, it is typically coupled with one-party totalitarian
/ authoritarian political systems more concerned with state power than with human
rights and civil liberties. The track record of the world’s communist countries
is mostly bad, with lots of political corruption and bureaucracy, economic
woes, human rights abuses, etc. Today Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, and North
Korea are the remaining countries classified as communist. They vary in how
much government ownership and economic control they have. China has a lot of private
sector business activity so it’s kind of a blend of socialism and capitalism.
Socialism
1: any of various egalitarian economic and political
theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and
administration of the means of production and distribution of goods [Egalitarianism is the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.]
2a: a system of society or group living in which there is
no private property
2b: a system or condition of society in which the means of
production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory that is
transitional between capitalism and communism (see communism sense 2c) and is
distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
*Socialism is where organizations and infrastructure are
funded and managed by the government, and the government provides various
services and help for people. It’s like the economic part of communism, but not
including the one-party authoritarian political system that usually goes along
with communism. To avoid the negative association with communism, some
countries with socialism specify that theirs is democratic socialism;
that there are still elections and multiple, competing political parties.
*The
dictionary definition of socialism makes it out as an all-encompassing system
for a country, but I think it’s more common for countries to have a mixture of
socialism and capitalism. In the USA, for example, we call our economic system
capitalism but we actually have a lot of government-funded and managed
(socialist) institutions like our military, police, schools, transportation
systems, etc. I think it’s good that we have a mix, and that it makes sense for
some things to be run by the government and some things not. Other modern
democracies usually have socialized medicine; not-for-profit healthcare
provided by the government. I wish we had that here, because I don’t think our
for-profit healthcare system is effective, except maybe for rich people.
Authoritarianism
1: the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to
authority at the expense of personal freedom.
2: lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others.
Totalitarianism
1: centralized control by an autocratic authority
2: the political concept that the citizen should be totally
subject to an absolute state authority
*Authoritarianism and totalitarianism are about absolute power.
What the leader says, goes, without question. These are dangerous / untenable
isms because no human leader has ever been or will ever be wise enough or good enough
to wield absolute power for the benefit of all. Leaders at all levels, from
teachers to police chiefs to presidents, must be accountable to the people they
lead. In authoritarianism and totalitarianism they are not, so abuses of power
inevitably occur.
Officialism
: lack of flexibility and initiative combined
with excessive adherence to regulations in the behavior of usually
government officials
*This one isn’t commonly used. I’m only including it here
because it’s used later in the definition of bureaucracy.
Section 2: Ocracies
-cracy [as the ending of a word]
1: form of government. Also : state having such a form
2: social or political class (as of powerful persons)
3: theory of social organization
*Cracy traces back to the Greek word “kratos” which means strength
or power, so the -cracy words describe forms of societal power.
Democracy
1: government by the people : rule of the
majority, such as
1a: a form of government in which the people elect
representatives to make decisions, policies, laws, called also representative
democracy
1b: a form of government in which the people vote
directly against or in favor of decisions, policies, laws, etc., called
also direct democracy, pure democracy
2: a country, state, etc. whose form of government is democracy : a political unit that has a democratic government
3a: an organization or situation in which everyone is
treated equally and has the right to participate equally in management,
decision-making, etc.
3b: political, social, or economic
equality : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class
distinctions or privileges
*Demo means people or the populace, so democracy means a
society where the power comes from the general population. I think that’s cool.
Kleptocracy
: government by those who seek chiefly status
and personal gain at the expense of the governed
also : a particular government of
this kind
*Klepto comes from the Greek word for thief, so kleptocracy
basically means being ruled by a thief or a class of thieves. We’ve definitely got
elements of that in our society today. Whether people are cheating or stealing
to get into power is debatable, but once in power they are certainly using
their positions of power to steal from the populace through insider trading,
cryptocurrency scams, awarding contracts to cronies, etc.
Kakistocracy
: government by the worst people
*The root of this one is the Greek word kákistos, which
means worst. (I thought it was going to be something to do with caca, a slang word for poop, but no.) It definitely seems like we’re in a kakistocracy now, with
incredibly selfish, cruel, and incompetent people grabbing power or being appointed
to positions of power. Like our crazy corrupt Lee County, FL Sherriff Carmine Marceno, who is almost getting chased out office by the locals but has his eyes on ascending into national politics, like many others in our system (e.g., his hero Donald Trump) who have miraculously seemed to fail upward.
Aristocracy
1: government by the best individuals or by a small
privileged class
2a: a government in which power is vested in a minority
consisting of those believed to be best qualified
2b: a state with such a government
3: a governing body or upper class usually made up of a
hereditary nobility
4: a class or group of people believed to be superior (as
in rank, wealth, or intellect)
*In Greek, aristos means best, so this originally meant
government by the best people; the opposite of kakistocracy. However, over time
we accepted “rich” or “noble-born” as a proxy for best. So now aristocracy means
rule by snooty rich people. I wouldn’t be opposed to a government led by the
actual best people, i.e., the most selfless, kind, brave, and intelligent
people, but I am strongly opposed to rule by the rich or hereditary “nobility.”
Plutocracy
1: government by the wealthy
2: a controlling class of the wealthy
*Ploutos is Greek for wealth, so plutocracy basically means
rule by the richest people. Because of the huge increase in absolute and
relative wealth of the richest people in the USA, they have gained a ridiculous
amount of power over our ostensibly democratic government. Just look at how stacked with billionaires the bleachers at Trump’s inauguration were. I think plutocracy
sucks for everyone except those very richest people, and we need to bring down
the super wealthy for democracy to work like its supposed to again. I don't think any individual in a country needs to have 100 or 1000 times as much wealth as an average individual in society. Even 10 times as much wealth as a normal person is getting excessive, in my opinion, so I think 10x should be the max. (Don't ask me how we would achieve that, I'm just brainstorming here.)
Autocracy
1: the authority or rule of an autocrat [a person (such as
a monarch) ruling with unlimited authority]
2: government in which one person possesses unlimited power
3: a community or state governed by autocracy
*Auto means self, and an autocracy is government where all
the ruling power is concentrated in one person (king, dictator, etc.) Autocracies
vary by how evil the autocrat is, but generally the autocrat is pretty evil and
the autocracy is awful for the average person in society. The saying, “Power tends
to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” which came from Britishbaron John Dalberg-Acton is apt when it comes to autocracies. Being able to do anything and get away
with it seems to bring out the worst in people, and the worst kind of people
are drawn to acquire autocratic power. E.g., Trump very clearly seeks to gain
and exercise the absolute powers of an autocrat. See kakistocracy again.
*It comes from the Greek “archein” (to rule) so it means a
form of rule.
Monarchy
1: undivided rule or absolute sovereignty by a single
person
2: a nation or state having a monarchical government
3: a government having a hereditary chief of state with
life tenure and powers varying from nominal to absolute
*Monarchy is a type of autocracy where the all-powerful individual passes the power on hereditarily to their offspring. We don’t have it in the
US, yet, although we have a penchant for supporting family dynasties in
politics, and Trump certainly seems to want to be a king with his gold
hair and gold toilets and everything. Monarchy sucks. We had a whole
revolutionary war about this. Please, please let’s not go back to monarchy.
2: government characterized by specialization of functions,
adherence to fixed rules, and a hierarchy of authority
3: a system of administration marked by officialism, red
tape, and proliferation
*We usually focus on the negative aspect of bureaucracy, like in definition #3. However, the other definitions of bureaucracy
are a good reminder that bureaucracies can serve important purposes in a society,
ensuring that things get done in an organized, lawful, manner. Government
organizations like the EPA, NASA, etc. are bureaucracies in the sense that they are mostly staffed by experts who were
not elected, per se, but who were hired because of their qualifications and demonstrated
abilities. People celebrating the actions of “DOGE” and other “anti-government”
elements of the new Trump government are tragically unaware of the important
ways our much-maligned federal bureaucracies actually maintain the lawful and healthy
functioning of society. The functioning of bureaucracies can be improved by
carefully cutting and stitching like a surgeon, but what’s happening now with
DOGE, etc. is hacking away with a chainsaw, creating extreme dysfunction that
will be very hard to repair.
Anarchy
1a: absence of government
1b: a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the
absence of governmental authority
1c: a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete
freedom without government
2a: absence or denial of any authority or established order
2b: absence of order : disorder
*An- means without, so anarchy means without rule, or without government. It might be
possible to have a small, informal society without leaders or hierarchy, and it
could be nice. But I think even the mellowest commune still has to adhere to some
group norms of reciprocal altruism and stuff. I don’t think anarchy or
super-minimal government is a viable option for the large and technologically
advanced societies of today. When governments collapse, like in Haiti, it tends
to be a nightmare of warring gangs of criminals, starvation, disease, etc. – not
a utopia.
Oligarchy
1: government by the few
2: a government in which a small group
exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. Also : a
group exercising such control
*The root of this word is the Greek “oligoi” which means
few. In marine biology there’s a group of worms called oligochaetes because
they have few bristles (in contrast with polychaete worms, which have many
bristles). Another marine science term with oligo in it is oligohaline,
describing waters of low salinity, like where an estuary is transitioning to
fresh water. Anyway, oligochaetes like to live in shitty water quality conditions,
and oligarchy is a shitty form of rule by a wealthy minority who favor
environmental deregulation to advance their industrial and development schemes,
which lead to poor water quality and a prevalence of oligochaete worms feasting
on sewage and filth where more diverse sea bottom communities once thrived. So it
comes full circle. Federal legislators Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio
Cortez are doing a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour of rallies now, which I think is
well aimed at oligarchs (e.g., Trump, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg) and the
weaknesses in our system (weak campaign finance laws, etc.) that have allowed
them to take control. I think democracies can easily degrade into oligarchies as the political system
is increasingly corrupted and controlled by the wealthiest people and the power
of the general populace is weakened. So we really do need to fight HARD against
that trend to restore and maintain a healthy, lasting democracy.
Patriarchy
1: social organization marked by the supremacy of the
father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and
the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line
broadly: control by men of a disproportionately
large share of power
2: a society or institution organized according to the
principles or practices of patriarchy
*The Greek patriarkhia means “ruling father,”
so the etymology of this one is clear. Parents in general (mothers and fathers)
are important in caring for and educating kids, and family units are like
micro-societies from which the broader structures of society are built. Fathers
and other males can be positive contributors to families and society. For
example, I love and appreciate my dad, who is kind, caring, and responsible and
worked hard to support our family not just financially but also by being
involved and emotionally supportive. Men should participate in families and
society. However, it’s extremely harmful for society when men dominate, depriving
women of their share of power. Some negative familial and societal consequences
of patriarchy include: 1) Worse ideas and less qualified people prevail, on
average, because women and their ideas are not given a fair chance, 2) There’s
an unfair distribution of work and rewards, where women have to do more work
but men get more praise and pay, 3) Unfair/impossible expectations and
standards for women, mainly oriented to pleasing but not threatening men, while
men get a pass, 4) Male criminals (rapists, abusers, etc.) protected from
consequences, 5) Money and resources are disproportionately directed to issues
appealing to men even when women have more urgent needs. This is by no means a
comprehensive list. The recent “Barbie” movie did a good job pointing out the pervasive harms of patriarchy.
3a: a form of government in which absolute
power is concentrated in a dictator or a small clique
b: a government organization or group in which
absolute power is so concentrated
c: a despotic state
*This word fits in with the family of words describing strict
rule by a small group of people (plutocracy, autocracy, oligarchy, monarchy, authoritarianism,
totalitarianism, etc.), but it implies an even more extreme concentration of
power, in just one person. I included the definition of dictator below to make
it clear.
Dictator
1a: a person granted absolute emergency power
1b: one holding complete autocratic control : a person with
unlimited governmental power
1c: one ruling in an absolute and often oppressive way
2: one who says or reads something for a person to
transcribe or for a machine to record: one that dictates
*1a, 1b, and 1c are the politically relevant dictator
definitions; 2 is a rarely used term for someone who is literally speaking words
to be recorded. I would say that Trump is a “wannabe” dictator because he wants
absolute power but doesn’t quite have it yet. He seems to creepily idolize
actual dictators like El Salvador’s self-described “coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele,
and of course Russia’s autocratic leader Vladimir Putin.
Tyranny
1: oppressive power, especially: oppressive power exerted
by government
2a: a government in which absolute power is vested in a
single ruler, especially: one characteristic of an ancient Greek city-state
2b: the office, authority, and administration of a tyrant
3: a rigorous condition imposed by some outside agency or
force
4: an oppressive, harsh, or unjust act : a tyrannical act
*A tyrant is a cruel and oppressive ruler, so there’s no “good”
tyranny. In the American Revolution our founders used the word tyranny a lot to
describe the oppressive nature of the British Monarchy they were fighting to escape.
I see the word tyranny being used a lot to describe cruel and oppressive aspects
of government. Sometimes it’s used fittingly, and other times overly
dramatically. Keep your eyes out for tyranny, and resist the hell out of it, please.
I'm a marine biology professor at Florida Gulf Coast University. My professional page is here, my personal blog is here, and my no-longer-maintained science blog is here.
