Posted: Jan 21, 2014 9:50 am
TMB wrote:Tuco, you said,Animal Farm.
Put 3 year old kids in pairs. Give one of them, in each pair, 10 chocolate tokens. Tell them, the one holding the tokens will need to divide them between the two in pair, however, they will only be allowed to keep the divided chocolate if both agree with division made by the one initially in possession. Its likely that some ratio(interval), kids in pairs to agree on, will emerge and if so the question is: What made the ratio to come about, respectively what made the kids to agree on such ratio? Power corrupts from its nature, the human nature or the nature of the hairless apes. Not always and in exactly same volumes, but it tends to.
You are making a moral assumption that unequal division of resources is corrupt in this example just as Orwell did in Animal Farm. Is it because we do not have to argue the case that unequal treatment is morally bad, despite the fact it is so prevalent. Where is the rational process that defines what makes something bad, and so self evident it does not need to be justified?
If you read my post again with this in mind you will see where I am coming from. I am trying to step back from the moral assumption of badness that is associated with power, and look at the social forces that created this moral assumption and firmly indoctrinated it into human society. Aside from the fact that inequity is prevalent and many if not most people seek inequity (advantage) for themselves yet all agree they inequity is morally bad – ie. Corrupted and the mechanism of power allows this to be so.
Not quite.
Your initial post assumes that "power corrupts" is a moral statement. My example demonstrates several aspects of the so called human nature without resorting to value based judgement - moral statements. In other words, I was not making moral assumptions, I was describing how humans tend to be.
You went to define power while labeling corruption as immoral.