Nearly all schemes for uplifting society fail because the originators make the error of thinking that society is a manufactured thing, which can be altered by changing the process of how things are done. Most people see social order, economic growth, education and prosperity as being unobtainable unless engineered into existence – usually, by the government or the organization sponsoring a scheme for progress. This is one of the Big Myths.
These believers demand that each of us be deeply and forever in debt to the state or the sponsoring organization carrying out the process. They dogmatically believe that each of us owes these secular creators everlasting thanks and offerings – and they scold everyone who refuses to accept such an open-ended claim.
This is the Big Myth: To complain about paying taxes – and, worse, to actively oppose or reject the manufactured process – is selfishly resisting to give what is owed by each of us puny beneficiaries for the state’s or secular creator’s beneficence, magnificence, and grace.
Another Big Myth is that government carries out the will of the people as long as its top officials are chosen by majority rule. This niave faith in majoritarian democracy is a mistake because there is, in fact, no “will of the people.”
If, as individuals, we each have a sentient mind with our own hopes, fears, dreams and preferences, how do we become “the people” – as politicians like to refer to us?
“The people” is not a sentient creature with a mind and hopes, fears, dreams and preferences. Naturally, individuals can come together to make a group, but this does not transform the group of people into a giant individual equivalent to each of the flesh-and-blood men, women, and children who make up or comprise the group. It doesn’t mean that two or more individuals cannot agree upon an objective and goals to pursue together.
For centuries, individuals have pooled their resources to create communities, build roads and highways, and organized ways to defend ourselves (or even to attack others). But all this is a form of democratic decision-making, a “best means” way for registering the preferences of each individual in a way that results in an acceptable collective decision.
But this reality does not mean that the results of the democratic decision-making process reveal that “the people” have a will that is in any way similar to the will that is possessed and exercised by each individual. All that even the best collective decision-making process does is to discover a compromise outcome that is acceptable to each member of the group.
Supposing that the results of majority rule express the will of this collective creature – creates the false and dangerous impression that if any individual objects to a majority-rule outcome, this individual is attempting to elevate his paltry self over a will not only as real as his own but also greater because it is that of many individuals. But, again, “the People” is not a being with a mind or a will. It follows that no method of collective decision-making, not even the most ideal form of democracy, reveals the People’s will.
That which is unreal cannot be revealed.
And the most pernicious of all Big Myths is that the economy and society – or, at least, any economy that is productive, and any society that is good – are the conscious creation of the state or the collective control that leads to enslavement and human misery.
Society is not a manufactured process that can be controlled and managed.
It is a living entity, comprised of sentient individuals each with his or her own mind and preferences and fears and hopes. And for too long, the reality is that Paris has treated citizens as its resource.
The Paris leadership should remember that community growth will come from Paris being a resource for its citizens.
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