Philosophy exercise: call for critiques

[grysar]

So, regyt once told me that philosphy was a meta area of study, that it explored and discovered caves/topics like politics, biology, economics, and moved on while those less meta subjects explored their own cave in depth. I'm not doing full justice to the eloquence of the metaphor, but I think that gets the point across.

In that case I believe this is an exercise in philosophy. I propose, against all comers, an analytic system for understanding effective human action. Specifically for describing codes, honor, moral systems, political systems, economic systems, religions, and the like. I do not seek to describe the actions of animals, unthinking objects, computers, or any other entity that doesn't meet my human-centric definition of self-consciousness.

Namely:
All these systems humans follow hold two opposing but also reinforces forces: power and principles.

Power is both creative and destructive. It gives us drive and is tested in the forge that is reality. Thus it changes as the world changes, for the power of a cave man is not the power of a modern human. It can be internal: sharpness of mind, force of will or strength of body. It can be external: weapons, money, technology, God or gods. It can even be a fundamental rejection of the world and a realization of some truer plane.

Principles are rules, conscious or unconscious. They are restrictions on the means we can employ. They are not goals in and of themselves, except that some goals deny us certain means or demand we use others. They are law, the golden rule, cultural mandates, and the like.

Both of these aspects are necessary. Moreover in an effective system they both must be balanced. Power needs the channel of principle or it will become corrupted: see absolute power or hedonism. Principles alone will lack the ability to achieve their goals or they will stagnate without the renewal of power.

As you get into complex economic or political systems the model can be applied, but complex systems will often have multiple sub-systems that need to check and mutually reinforce one another.

So here are my contentions:

1. This model is quite helpful in understanding what makes an effective system.
   
2. This model can be applied to any of the systems I've described above.
   
3. This model can not be simplified to contain only a single force and it need not be expanded to contain three or more.
   
4. This model is a better window for understanding these systems than other dichotomies: individual/society; order/chaos; good/evil; good/bad; rationality/emotion.
   
5. Any effective system must have both of these aspects and they both must be strong forces in and of themselves.
   

So, I need a quick nap and I'm also smug, so I'll skip the examples for now. I invite anyone to challenge any of my contentions or any other contentions they think are implied. And if you provide me a system, I'll give my breakdown.

Addendum due to Ard's threat of violence. (Note, there's lots of variety, I'll just go with a common one I think of.)

System	Power	Principles
Christianity (old school)	God	Strict code of sacrifice and golden rule.
Buddhism	Enlightenment/Seeing through illusion of reality	Rejecting atachment.
Capitalism	Self-interest; hard work; competition; entrepeneurship	Basic market rules: no violence, no monopolies, etc.
Theoretical communism	Hard work; power in the hand of the workers; collective effort	Work all you can; don't take more than you need.
Totalitarianism	Centralized power without restrictions; government can guide colleective energy of entire society; shaping of individuals to best serve countries need	Unquestioning devotion to leader; leader servers interest of people
Democracy	Power is in people's hand	Must accept results of elections; follow election rules; majority must try to serve interests of all
Utilitarianism	All means are available when appropriate	Means/ends together must server greater good
Natural law	Core desires and needs of humanity	Don't infringe on other's core needs in most cases
Kantian	Moral strength; positive example influences others	Don't do anything that you aren't willing to have someone else do
Nihilism	Rejection of no-win world	Don't give a shit.

Comments

[kagami.livejournal.com]

LJ sucks. I've lost my argument twice now >.<

Ok, I don't feel like typing all that stuff out a third time, so I'm just going to put down a quick summary of my thoughts:

Power and principles aren't necessarily opposed. Principles can provide a motivation for using power:

i.e. Princple: Americans should vote. Why? Americans have the power TO vote, and therefore are obligated to use it.

Power can provide motivation for acting on principles, too:

i.e. Liu Bei is a man of virtue. He does not agree with Cao Cao, who wants to conquer China. Liu Bei is the king Shu and a legitimate heir to the Imperial throne. Therefore, Liu Bei acts on his principles and fights against Cao Cao because he is in a position to do so.

I had more than that, but I'm not typing it all out again :P

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Let's see, I think this is the easiest to answer so I'll start here.

To take your vote example, yes, American's should vote. The government would presumably work best if all citizens worked together to make an informed decision. However, many Americans do not vote. Why is that allowed? Why do we not choose, as some countries do, to use various sticks and carrots to guarantee a much higher turnout? It's because another freedom in our state is to choose not to participate, to remain ignorant. to invest one's time elsewhere. The power of freedom as we interpret it as an associated principle to not use our government to get the maximum utility from the power of citizen's democratic participation. There's perhaps more to be studied in terms of the way one principle is associated with a competing power.

I do not disagree with the idea that power can provide motivation for acting on principles. As I stated above, they can be both opposing forces and reinforcing forces. This is why I said principles can channel power. They limit the range of options, but within that range the power has greater purpose and force.

[kagami.livejournal.com]

LJ didn't wanna let me respond. Meh.

Well, um, I think I may have misunderstood what you meant by "two opposing but also reinforces forces". I took this to mean simultaneously, and thus was trying to prove that this wasn't always the case (though it's not impossible, but that's a different discussion).

Anyway, since you're not disagreeing with what I'm saying, there's not much of an argument ^^

[grysar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the controlling and reinforcing both take place, but they don't take place in every single case. Thanks to your comment I'm are of the need to clarify that.