Don’t worry about the title. We mostly talk about TV shows. But a little about government. And medical technology. And probably other things. I’m tired, and don’t recall. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
William — is there anything you like about big government? –Anonymous
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Will, can you define “government” when you say “human beings don’t need government”? ‘Cause when I think of government, I think of something inherent in human interaction. Whenever a group makes decisions, the decision making process is their way of governing themselves. So for instance in my drumming group, we have no leader at the moment. We take turns being “practice lead”–the person who determines what we’re going to work on, how much time to spend on a particular thing, etc. That, to me, is a form of government.
A rough definition of “government” as I’m referring to it in this podcast might be: a system of codified authority, rules, and individual and social controls that’s invoked specifically when an individual or faction resolves to assume directorship over a group of individuals *after* said group has surpassed that threshold in number of members that marks the transition of a group from one that can function by the principle of consensus (or, at least, by the strongest sense of “consent”) to one that must rely upon some coercion to maintain the “structural integrity” (for lack of a better term) of the group.
That is, the definition I’m using excludes the use of the term for groups that are smaller than a particular threshold. While I think sociology has proven this threshold exists, I’m fairly certain it has yet to be empirically defined. (But it can be, I think, with proper, repeatable experiment.)
Also… I’m not saying that a small tribe, say, can never be said to have a government. I’m only clarifying my use of the term in this podcast and similar other contexts (I imagine I’ve used the term the same way in previous podcasts, for example). As you’re demonstrating by your comment, definitions for terms such as “government” can be tricky.
I guess I think it’s appropriate to say here that, while it’s true that forming organized groups is a part of human nature — not something humans “need” or “want”, but just something about humans that “is” — it doesn’t follow that large-scale human organization is just an extension of this natural human tendency, or that the value of the natural human tendency remains constant as one “scales up”. Sociology shows us that, in fact, as a group’s size reaches a certain number, a kind of “phase transition” occurs and the group transforms into something that can’t really fairly be equated with smaller-scale counterparts… the small doesn’t really serve as an analogy for the large, or vice versa. Which is why it’s helpful to have unique concepts for what we mean by small-scale organization vs large-scale organization — they operate according to very different principles.
We see people confuse these all the time, though, sometimes on purpose to confuse issues. How many huge corporations defend their “free enterprise” rights by comparing themselves to a mom-and-pop store down on the corner? But part of the problem is that we lack the proper language, I think, to talk about these things without confusion. “Business”, for example, is a term that encompasses small businesses, large businesses, and multi-national corporations. If one stands up to “defend business”, then one might be tempted to think that the defender sees all of these entities as somehow equivalent, even though they clearly aren’t. The term “government” is another example, as there are many contradictory ways in which the term is used.
It can be rather frustrating for a person whose casual conversations about such things are recorded one a week. 🙂
Ah well, sorry it’s frustrating–useful clarification though. What I take from your reply is that the key here is not government, but size of population. Above the threshold, coercion is necessary, below the threshold it is not (though nothing about the small size determines that there would not be coercion–it’s just not inherent).
Indeed.
In fact, many of the criticisms of various forms of government are rendered irrelevant where the group adopting that form of government is relatively small. Communism, for example, is particularly well suited for small, consensual groups, where many of the problems that plague state-level communism don’t even enter into the picture. Or a small group can, through consensus, have one strong, centralized leader calling all of the shots, where the pitfalls of state-level dictatorship never emerge. Or, again, the small group need not have any kind of government, preferring to act spontaneously and organically in all events.
Small groups have lots of workable options. 🙂
While I’m still behind and hardly in a position to complain; a special episode would’ve been nice for episode 200. Maybe you should plan something for episode 300?
I’m really sad that I missed Dav of Id’s gaming con in Oct and one of these days I’ll get around to figuring out when he’s running the next gaming thing in the area.
Your speaking of Fiasco, reminds me of another odd/indie RPG. Have any of you played Dread ? I got a chance to play this at ICON this year and it was a hella good time.
Muppets: I watched the pilot as well but only the pilot. It felt like the humor was mean, which doesn’t work with my nostalgia for the show original show from my childhood.
Killjoys: Really? We started this a while ago but haven’t finished it yet. Do you think it’s better than Dark Matter?
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: I liked the book quite a bit and I’ve heard from other fans of the book that most of them really like the show as well.
Dr. Who: Tom Baker (#4) was the doctor of my youth and my original favorite. I grew to tolerate Tennant but never liked him that much. I expected to hate Smith, but grew to love his portrayal of the Doctor. I was personally hoping for a female doctor, but have been enjoying Capaldi’s acting but the writing they’ve been giving him… isn’t good.
GM Horror Story: If you were apologizing mid-rant, I don’t know that you could truly categorize that incident as a GM Horror Story.
Dragon Age: Isn’t that Dragon Age Keep? Also, I’ve tried going back to do additional playthroughs of the same game (for me it was Mass Effect) but I just get so massively bored with doing that sort of thing as I know too much about the game. How do you keep it interesting? Side note: I, not too long ago, completed my first play through of Dragon Age Origins & Awakening, but I liked playing as a mage (expect when my party keeps running into the blast radius of my AoE spells).
Big Government: Hmm, this sounds like entirely too complex an issue to truly discuss via comments on an old podcast.
Missing things that never existed: Yup, kind of like how I miss the 5th season of Firefly.