Quote from: johnwholesome on October 23, 2012, 10:25 pmFirst things first, there isn't "one" America. The range of cultures and landscapes going from east to west and north to south couldn't be any more diverse. America in New York is like a different galaxy than America in Cheyenne, Wyoming, or LA or Seattle. So, trying to describe it as one nation will invariably fail. Going back to politics, you can notice that by the country having traditionally red states and traditionally blue states.Conversely, growing up in America can range from "the best place in the world to be" to a nightmare matching Dante's Inferno. Smalltown America can be a beautiful thing, it can also be a nightmare, same applies for the big cities.+1Quote from: Schmuckk on October 24, 2012, 05:20 pmI don't see the American government as a omniscient, all powerful entity that operates completely independently from the wishes of it's governed. Whatever actions our government takes are a direct results of the sentiments that come from it's own citizens. An intolerant, oppressive state is always going to be empowered by intolerant, oppressive people. A government can't be inherently evil; it is only a concept. It has no mind of it's own, no real motive. It can be likened to a weapon to be wielded by the population's 51% to oppress the other 49 So when I take a look at my government and feel nothing but disgust, I remind myself that it is a result of generations of cowardly, intolerant voters who brought this on all of us through a general lack of responsibility, and an eagerness to benefit themselves at the expense of others.-schmuckI can't agree.It's not that having good people doesn't make a difference. It does. It's just that it entirely depends on what level of organization we're talking about. In a small corporation good people can be effective at causing positive changes, in a much larger one, less so. They sort of get averaged out. Fundamentally it's the system's structure that determines outcomes. Everybody is the product of the system, and if that system is configured incorrectly, then the results are plain to see. I don't think the Nazis or the Communists were especially terrible taken on an individual level. I just think their systems were configured in such a way that regular people did awful things to each other.A system can be good or evil, you're being far too relativistic there. A system *does* have a mind of its own. The market is an excellent example of such an 'extended phenotype'. Any collective does have an ethos, a spirit, a mind, a style, a paradigm, whatever you want to call it, and this is hugely influential. The atomic parts, the individuals have surprising little to do with the action of the collective. A small inclination or tilt on the part of a large group of people can cause unexpectedly large effects, take on a whole other significance.To me, the important thing is to figure out the correct configuration for society. Then we'll have the strong, intelligent, brave system participants you desire.I appreciate that the government is not a single entity, that it's a composition, a network, but it doesn't mean those network agents are the statistical average of the people within those agencies, I don't think social organization works that way. This is mostly because of the division of labor with ideas. If I take 1 physicist and put him in a building, he bounces his ideas off nobody but himself through introspection. If I take 10 physicists and put them in the same room, I expect to see a dramatic increase in the development of their ideas, not just 10x as much. Compilations of collective thoughts (memeplexes) accumulate in an accumulative manner, not an additive one. So an organization with twice as many members, is not twice as complex, but many times more complex.