Youths n Violence (2009) addendum

https://riswey.blogspot.com/2009/10/youths-n-violence-uk.html

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this was originally tagged onto the end of the above post.

understand that...Update 16/11/2022

One thing missing from this account is is that we are a illusion also. The above is slightly too centred on a population that is opposed to a leadership. What is more accurate is that leadership is a natural product of a society as much as an individual is.

People live in groups where they all interact. Even the recluse living alone in their home still interacts with the people who built their home through living there, and they must eat so interact we food growers and the many who work in that industry, and the people in the energy and chemical industry who enable that and fuel the supply trucks and fertiliser. And even the people in the council who plan the villages and maintain the roads upon which food is supplied. And so on. We are completely involved with other people at all levels regardless what we think. Our very existence right now is proof of other people, our own parents for example. So people living together and interacting is the start. From here we develop a social identity on one hand, and on the other we develop a leadership.

If we consider how we might  remove a leadership it can't be done alone. We need to encourage a mass of people to join us in over throwing them. And then what do we have, another group of people in charge. Leadership is always the interaction of people itself. It is not a separate thing.

Consider Iraq and how when the leadership were hunted down and executed by the US mafia, the country erupted into civil war. Without a leadership there was nothing to stop groups getting together and trying to rule each other. Eventually a stable, albeit weak, leadership was agreed on. For a leadership to work there must be agreement. Clearly the US never had the agreement of the people. I guess that is what happens when you invade a country.

Most famously in the UK the British people having tried a Republic decided again on a strong leader to keep the peace. The fear of Civil War, like Iraq, was still so great that they preferred a Monarch to returning to in fighting. This is an example of a Nash Equilibrium where the individuals do not try and steal power--knowing that will lead to war-- but prefer instead to take a second place and promote a single person to lead. That was they all lose equally and swap total power for lesser power but peace.

This type of Social Contract is exactly how the world works. It is not just a matter of the powerful taking charge, but that to take charge they need support, and that support comes from people who are prepared to equally follow in return for peace. Power by itself never creates peace.

Something the US fails to understand is that all countries that are at peace have achieved an equilibrium where leaders and led have achieved a harmony. The people are not so oppressed that they abandon peace for war, and the leader is suitably secure and supported not to become a tyrant. However of course it is not a misunderstanding, the US who studies all this stuff knows they can tip stable political systems out of equilibrium and into civil war. You see US CIA attempts at unrest all round the world from Hong Kong to Iran. All they need to do is create enough doubt in the leadership that the people start to think about war, and in turn the government is forced to become tyrannical to keep order. The irony of course is that the US is one of the most militarised and tyrannical countries on Earth with 1 in 150 people in prison. This far exceeds all the countries the US tries to make out oppose freedom like China, North Korea, Russia or Iran. By comparison these countries are free. But these countries have a much longer and more stable peace. The US is full of poor ex-slaves who do not agree with the system. But the point here is to start thinking of countries and governments as equilibriums of people rather than static groups of leaders separate, above and in control of the people.