Difference between revisions of "The Sovereign Individual"
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*Corruption, moral decline, and inefficiency appear to be signal features of the final stages of a system. | *Corruption, moral decline, and inefficiency appear to be signal features of the final stages of a system. | ||
*The growing importance of technology in shaping the logic of violence has led to an acceleration of history, leaving each successive transition with less adaptive time than ever before. | *The growing importance of technology in shaping the logic of violence has led to an acceleration of history, leaving each successive transition with less adaptive time than ever before. | ||
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| + | == Excerpts == | ||
| + | p132, With democratic decision-making, the nation state could exercise power much more completely over millions of persons, who could not easily cooperate to act collectively in their own behalf, than it could in dealings with a much smaller number who could more easily overcome the organisational difficulties of defending their concentrated interests. | ||
Revision as of 03:59, 3 June 2010
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Some summary points to keep in mind as you seek to understand the Information Revolution:
- A shift in the megapolitical foundations of power normally unfolds far in advance of the actual revolutions in the use of power.
- Incomes are usually falling when a major transition begins, often because a society has rendered itself crisis-prone by marginalising resources due to population pressures.
- Seeing "outside" of a system is usually taboo. People are frequently blind to the logic of violence in the existing society; therefore, they are almost always blind to changes in that logic, latent or overt. Megapolitical transitions are seldom recognised before they happen.
- Major transitions always involve a cultural revolution, and usually entail clashes between adherents of the old and the new values.
- Megapolitical transitions are never popular, because they antiquate painstakingly acquired intellectual capital and confound established moral imperatives. They are not undertaken by popular demand, but in response to changes in the external conditions that alter the logic of violence in the local setting.
- Transitions to new ways of organising livelihoods or new types of government are initially confined to those areas where the megapolitical catalysts are at work.
- With the possible exception of the early stages of farming, past transitions have always involved periods of social chaos and heightened violence due to disorientation and breakdown of the old system
- Corruption, moral decline, and inefficiency appear to be signal features of the final stages of a system.
- The growing importance of technology in shaping the logic of violence has led to an acceleration of history, leaving each successive transition with less adaptive time than ever before.
Excerpts
p132, With democratic decision-making, the nation state could exercise power much more completely over millions of persons, who could not easily cooperate to act collectively in their own behalf, than it could in dealings with a much smaller number who could more easily overcome the organisational difficulties of defending their concentrated interests.
