Mumble Mumble

So π-day came and went---Classic Pecan Pies and a Banana Almond Brittle pie was obtained from Windowsill Pies, and everyone loved it.

I'm playing with the King's Flute Choir again, and this time it is a concert that is happening at the end of the month. Rehearsals are happening, and I've discovered that given the gruelling work week, my body simply refuses to handle the non-stop flute/dizi action that starts from 1800hrs on a Saturday and ending at around 1600hrs on the Sunday following as it physically needs rest/activities that are less... cranial in nature.

And I think that's about that on ``updates from the life of MT''.

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As I was sitting in a taxi moving from church to the rehearsal space with The Big Flute, I realised with a new level of clarity and appreciation on just how each of us are a part of the society that we live in, no matter how isolated we may feel at times. All the rules and laws are arbitrary, and we all contribute our part to society because it is only through the actions of the individuals who do something (hopefully productive/useful) that allows the society to exist in the first place.

There aren't any ``universal'' rules that are set down in stone for the average person---when we are first introduced into the society, we do so from our parents, be they the birth ones, or the foster-equivalent. We accept tacitly the roles that need to be played to keep things working well enough for everyone, and then as time evolves, we develop our own sense of what is right, what is wrong, what should be banished, and what should be preserved. And at the end of our [working] lives, our job as direct contributors to the running of society is done, and society thanks us through the retirement process, where the burdens and responsibilities are lessened for us to allow some time and space to cherish the moments made possible through the effort we expended for the forty to fifty years of [working] life that we put in.

That is, until greed kicks in, and some people realise that with everyone conforming to the rules of society (both written and unwritten), they can be non-conformant to extract some benefit. Some might even realise that the more preposterous their actions taken to be non-conforming, the more likely they are to get away with it, for the simple reason that society as a whole has no idea how to correct for deviations beyond the small, where regular censure and perhaps incarceration (i.e. adult time-out) are sufficient for the vast majority of people.

And that is the problem we are facing worldwide.

The US might just be a more... recent and highly visible version of it, but throughout history, we see these behaviours popping out here and there. Society is seemingly tolerant of the aberrant behaviour... until it suddenly doesn't, leading to an uprising from the masses, either in the form of large amounts of disruptive civil disobedience (i.e. the intentional stoppage of playing their roles in society), or even violent confrontation like revolutions/guerilla attacks/assassinations.

The old me would be more pro-establishment and think that all these people who went on strikes, or demonstrated civil disobedience in general, or even go for armed uprising are just not seeing the big picture---in terms of utilitarianism, they are causing vast negative expected values due to grinding the machinery of society to a halt. The old me would say that the establishment may have its faults, but really it is all that stands between the the chaos of anarchy, and the order of society that allows it to function properly.

Present-MT thinks otherwise---the establishment is no better nor worse than the people that they are meant to help instil order. The establishment is yet another role that is being played by people who want to help society set up order, to make the rules of society a little more explicit to better integrate the much larger population sizes we see now than in the past, all without degrading into a bureacratic navel-gazing exercise.

In other words, the establishment exists because the population wills it into existence, and not the other way around. This is what it means when sayings like ``the government serves the people'' and ``servant-leader'' comes into play.

``MT, what about feudal systems where the feudal lords rule over the people?''

The feudal lords only ruled over the people because the latter allowed them to do so, either implicitly by allowing matters of state (i.e. wrangling territorial boundaries, defense) to be handled by the lords, or explicitly by joining the lords' establishment to contribute labour of any sort (like clerical duties, soldiering, diplomats). If and when the feudal lords fail in their primary role of establishing safety and stability of the territories, the people under them do eventually overthrow said lords, sometimes with drastic outcomes.

But that's deviating a little from what I was grokking on that taxi ride.

The thing is, society is. What it is is largely dependent on what the people want it to be. Our more recent versions of democracy (and democratic processes) are attempts to capture this concept of ``what the people want it to be'' in a way that scales out to the millions of people that make up that society that caters to both the lizard brain (via simplicity), and the human brain (via a reasoning about the sense of fairness).

So when the outcome is different from what ``you'' want from these processes, it does not mean that the other people have ``made a mistake''. It is perhaps that they want something else, and perhaps they value that more than you value that.

``But MT, in the long run---''

In the long run, we're all dead, and believers join God. What is this ``long run'' that everyone likes to appeal to? Five years? Ten? Twenty? One hundred?

Who the hell thinks that far? Who the hell can think that far? Any plans that one can make are bound to require a revisit ever so often, especially at that time scale, since needs and wants always change.

But this is not fatalism. While the society's general direction and wants are guided heavily by those who live/contribute to it, there is still the individual choices that can be made. One does not abdicate one's exercise of free will just because ``the other side made a mistake''. Decide what you want, and then take the necessary action. Live your life the way you want to live it, and bear the consequences of such choices.

Just don't go around doing personal attacks for the different things that others may want.