Below is a piece I wrote earlier as my suggestion for fundamental social
laws for a society.
If there is interest I think it would be a good idea with a team to work
out some simple social laws that will be workable in a new civilization.
Specifically, what kind of legal system is needed in a new civilization,
how are disputes arbitrated, how are rules enforced, what is criminal
behavior and how is it dealt with?
Don't answer to the list, but drop me a note and we'll get together on it.
- Flemming
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FUNDAMENTAL SOCIAL LAWS
I believe that it is possible to formulate a few very simple, axiomatic
principles or laws that can work as ground rules for any kind of society.
They would form a foundation for civilzed co-existence and provide the
means for arbitrating any dispute.
Our current societies have a dizzying number of rules and laws, completely
incomprehensible as a whole, and full of self-contradictions and
exceptions. They seem to be mostly an accumulative pile of compromises and
short-sighted thinking, now acting as a neurotic social mind for our
society, used as a basis for manipulation of populations and for
self-serving interpretations.
I believe that truth is inherently simple, and that a sane society doesn't
need more than a handful of laws. Basic laws should be such that any person
can understand them and remember them in their entirety without difficulty.
They should have no exceptions.
I am not necessarily able to provide any definitive bid for what they
should be, but this is my current attempt:
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BASIC PREMISES:
- The human spirit is fundamentally and inherently benevolent.
- All manifestations of life are inherently interconnected and interdependent.
FUNDAMENTAL INTENTION:
- To improve the quality of life
FUNDAMENTAL RULE OF JUDGEMENT:
- The greatest benefit and the minimal harm for the widest domains of life.
FREEDOMS:
- Any person is free to think, feel, act and express themselves in
whichever manner they are able to choose with integrity.
- Any person is free to leave circumstances they don't choose to participate in.
LIMITATIONS:
- No person is allowed to deliberately and arbitrarily remove the
possibility for others to think, feel, act or express themselves as they
choose.
- No person is allowed to deliberately render common resources useless or
unavailable.
GUIDELINES:
- Strive to affect others in ways they can comfortably experience.
- Strive to be tolerant of any experience.
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It is not possible or desirable to have detailed rules about everything
that people should do or everything that they shouldn't do. Life is most
enjoyable as a spontaneous journey of discovery, pursuing one's own
uniqueness, exploring different angles of life.
We can not judge the relative rightness or wrongness of actions simply
based on what specific actions are done or based on the specific outcome.
The whole situation as it is needs to be assessed, and the intentions of
the parties involved need to be elicited.
Integrity is about the most important element in a set of universal social
rules. However, integrity is a concept that has been conspicuously absent
from the practice of law in recent times. It has become common to apply law
to get away with what one can, without regard to integrity.
Integrity could be said to be hard to define or vague or open to
interpretation. However, that is in part the point. We can not put on a
piece of paper specifically what action is a right one for everybody. We
are all different and different actions will be right for each of us at
different times.
We can set broad guidelines, broad but clear in their principles. The
application to specific situations would have to be done by real live
people dealing with the actual situation at hand.
Notice that several of the rules I proposed above have a balancing effect
in relation to each other. That does not mean that they contradict each
other, it just means that several sides to a situation always exist, and
they need to be aligned as best possible. A person is free to act the way
he thinks is right. However, that right is limited by the requirement that
he can not use his freedom to hinder the expression of that right for
others, or to deliberately harm others.
Rules like those given above are likely to appear threatening to some
members of our current society. Specifically, the lack of strict moral
controls might seem scary to people who themselves have difficulty
expressing themselves freely.
This is my first attempt at writing something like this, so somebody might
well point out some basic flaw. However, I expect that most of the
arguments against what I propose would be disagreement with the basic
premises, i.e. beliefs that people are inherently bad and not to be
trusted, and therefore one needs to protect what one has from the other
guys and try to hold them back.
- Flemming
o o
/ \------------------ Flemming A. Funch ------------------/ \
/ * \ World Transformation/New Civilization/Whole Systems / * \
/ * * \ ffunch@netcom.com / * * \
o-------o ------http://www.protree.com/worldtrans/--------o-------o
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