Global hegemony

[Walsingham]

I've not read the books, but that doesn't sound very plausible. How would thi sdemocracy hold itself together and prevent breakaway regionalism. There's always some dingbat in a town somehwere who wants to lead the free republic of Cirencester or whatever.

[Blank]

True, but in the book,

most of the world powers end up being led by rational people (the kids who were in the Battle School, which was a place which took all the prospective great generals as kids in order to fight off an alien thread). However, these kids grew up and were all subconsciously hungry for power, they were selected in part to the Battle School for this reason too. They get persuaded to spare the bloodshed of the 3 big worldpowers duking it out, and go away to space colonies while at the same time giving their power over to the hegemon, since they trust him.

 

 

It is true that there will always be some breakaways, but the leaders in the book were able to almost completely unite their respective nations.

[metadigital]

That is completely implausible. Nice fantasy world, but it neglects the other Golden Rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules. In other words, power corrupts.

 

I'm starting to think that anarchy is a better idea than some super-sized centralized democracy. Smaller, chimposphere-sized groups governed as democracies (or even communes) and these all have formal relations with the each other.

 

The total administration overhead couldn't be any larger than the extrapolated mess from any country-sized administration.

[Fenghuang]

Heinlein much?

[Blank]

That is completely implausible. Nice fantasy world, but it neglects the other Golden Rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules. In other words, power corrupts.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That rule is simply an observation of the actions of notable* rulers in history.

How do we know that the person wasn't corrupt before they received power? Post hoc reasoning Meta? I expected more from you...

 

*(these corrupted rulers are notable because they received power and used it in a bad way, but those rulers that aren't notable are the ones who received power and didn't do much with it. I am wondering what would happen if we knew of all the rulers in history and compiled them into lists of: corrupted and uncorrupted. People in the middle would be judged by what their actions were for the most part, corrupted or uncorrupted.)

Edited April 25, 2006 by Blank

[Walsingham]

I am certainly of the opinion that the corrupt seek power, rather than power corrupts. _I_ for example, am an angelic loser... :D

[metadigital]

That is completely implausible. Nice fantasy world, but it neglects the other Golden Rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules. In other words, power corrupts.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That rule is simply an observation of the actions of notable* rulers in history.

How do we know that the person wasn't corrupt before they received power? Post hoc reasoning Meta? I expected more from you...

 

*(these corrupted rulers are notable because they received power and used it in a bad way, but those rulers that aren't notable are the ones who received power and didn't do much with it. I am wondering what would happen if we knew of all the rulers in history and compiled them into lists of: corrupted and uncorrupted. People in the middle would be judged by what their actions were for the most part, corrupted or uncorrupted.)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

While it is patently obvious that those who seek power ought to be the last to get it (I submit Exhibit A: politicians), I fail to see how "removing" those unsuitable for rulership would be an effective method.

 

For a start, the correlation of power to corruption is so high that the people who did well for their subjects are the exception (go on, start your list ... anywhere). Just look at the Holy Roman Emperors and Vatican Popes for a start, and they were men of God.

 

Secondly, removing all the people who would become corrupt once given power would novem-decimate (nonagintanovem-centum? nongentinonagintanovem-mille?) the population.

 

Thirdly, owing to the the dynamics of power politics, there is no way to assure that, given a new group where the most suseptible to corrupting power are removed, the new group will not spontaneously spawn new megalomaniacs, who see their chance now they are the most able to take control ...

[Dark_Raven]

I am certainly of the opinion that the corrupt seek power, rather than power corrupts. _I_ for example, am an angelic loser...  :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey how about that absolute power.

[metadigital]

I would just like to say that hegemony is one of the coolest sounding words.

[Calax]

you realize that bean is a Mormon right?

 

well... orson is a born again mormon and often gives his characters mormon traits. Especially in "folk of the fringe" where he's got the mormons in utah living in a utopian society while everyone else decends to barbarism of a sort.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ha, you realize that you sound as if you've never read the book, right?

 

Bean didn't have a religion, and if he did, it would've probably been Catholicism, since Sister Carlotta was a mother to him when he was young, and although he didn't care about it then, he eventually appreciated what she did for him when he got older.

 

On a side-note, although Orson is Mormon, I rarely saw him try to slide his religion into his books. All I saw was that Ender's mother was Mormon. However, in Speaker for the Dead, the book is heavy with Catholic characters.

 

Just because Orson is Mormon, don't mean he automatically puts his religion in le books. He's an author, not an evangelist. Some can do both at the same time, but he aint seemin to be doin that, he's just a good author from what I can tell.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Correct, Bean DOESN'T have a stated religion but the fact that he felt COMPELLED to have kids and save even the fertilized eggs that were not to be born are easily pointed out to be mormon characteristics (or extremly Conservative Christian).

 

While orsons characters are generally catholic it doesn't mean that their primairy value system isn't mormon based. Heck the entire thing with (forget her name... she goes into the enders sister clone) and the OCD people has some fairly heavy mormon aspects to it. If you notice most of the women in the series are subservant to their husbands heck for the piggy's the women become blind as bats and even dumber and MULTIPUL females live with one male....

[Walsingham]

I am certainly of the opinion that the corrupt seek power, rather than power corrupts. _I_ for example, am an angelic loser...  :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey how about that absolute power.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

If love were an absolute power why is it I know so many men who have pined away while possessing it in abundance? Surely they should've been shooting lightning from their fingertips or something?

[metadigital]

Different type of power ...

[Dark_Raven]

Absolute power as in godlike.

 

Women have a power over males. Silly boys will do whatever we want, when we flaunt this power.

[Surreptishus]

Absolute power as in godlike.

 

Women have a power over males. Silly boys will do whatever we want, when we flaunt this power. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

***SEXIST COMMENT ALERT***

***SEXIST COMMENT ALERT***

***SEXIST COMMENT ALERT***

[Dark_Raven]

Point not found.

[WITHTEETH]

Absolute power as in godlike.

 

Women have a power over males. Silly boys will do whatever we want, when we flaunt this power. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ROFL!!!!! This is why you got to smack them once a week.

 

Yes, men have brute strength, females have war machines and badunka-donks To bad society is still trying to keep their "assets" underwaps.

[thepixiesrock]

What's that CD? Sexist comment? I'm on the case!

[Blank]

Point not found.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Your reference to a general truth disturbed him so much that he lashed out by saying it was sexist.

[thepixiesrock]

I'm not going to say I'm disapointed in you Blank, but I am.

[Craigboy2]

Power politics would have us believe that nations are locked in an endless struggle for regional and global dominance.  The US policy for permanent global dominance, which I believe will be played out in the coming decades, will attest to the strength of this belief among leaders.  However, one cannot but help wonder why global hegemony is so important.  Certainly, the feeling of insecurity - of not wanting to become a victim of global forces - is a rational justification for grand mastery.  With that, I can sympathize. 

 

However, surely those who desire absolute power over the world can see that the imperial apparatus necessary for that level of control would be more likely to create instability than promote peace and prosperity.  When you forcibly take control of another people's destiny, exploitation is the natural result: the hegemony of any singular state for its own benefits will inevitably result in imperial inequity, which in turn sews the seeds of rebellion and necessitates a neverending string of preemptive strikes in order to keep the enemy from growing.

 

On the other hand, economics would have us believe that the quest for global hegemony is a quest for limited natural resources.  This philosophy would certainly fit with the Iraqi War.  However, possession of natural resources like oil in this day and age seems rather pointless, as the projection of resource consumption indicates that any such attainment would be strictly temporary, and cannot be sustained.  Moreover, one cannot imagine a stable world in which one nation would be allowed to simply extort resources from another.  A return to the days of imperialism would mean forgetting decades of exploitation; I do not consider this sort of amnesia a plausible outcome.

 

Postcolonial discourse suggests that the nature of all empires is to further the goals of a specific ethnic group, whose quest for dominance is the age-old, genetically coded desire to become the "master" race (whether through exterminating and enslaving "lesser" races as the Nazis attempted, or through the much simpler task of exploiting them economically).  Therefore, the ascension of the US and Europe is a codified attempt to assert Western dominance, which is defined as the triumph of the Caucasian, property-owning male.  The issue here, however, is that a world in which the Caucasian male dominates cannot be sustained, and is indeed not imaginable, since the average person would have little to gain from "racial superiority" barring exploiting/enslaving other races, which gets us back to the original problem of instability.

 

One last argument remains - which is that global hegemony is simply the apparatus through which an elect group of society, ie those who hold political and economic power, protects their personal priviledges.  That is, global hegemony is not a national goal but one shared by a group of individuals who managed to convince the nation otherwise.  I cannot speak for the accuracy of such statements in respect to modern politics, but it seems to be true insofar as the beneficiaries of war have traditionally been restrictive.  One would think that the US would never fight a war that would place it in such dramatic deficits, but there you have it.

 

My question, as stated in the title, is as follows: what's the point of global hegemony? What is its ultimate end explained in the sense of a vision for the future? If living conditions in the US compared to Europe/Japan is of any indication, global dominance is not necessary for the maintenance of priviledge, and at any case militarly dominance certainly has little to do with it.  So - what's the point?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So you can always say to a citizen of another country that your dad could kick their dad's ass.

 

Note: Replace dad with country

[Blank]

I'm not going to say I'm disapointed in you Blank, but I am.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

YEAH!? WELL I BET YOUR SPELLING TEACHER WOULD BE DISAPPOINTED* IN YOU!

[Fionavar]

Well I believe that the world powers have determined that it's time to pack up the pillows and sleeping bags and move the troop back to the the big city ...