The Bit of the Iceburg that is not the Tip of it

First a comment I recieved:

Matthew said...
But I digress, Individualism seems to be the answer... (what was the question?)

Left on my last post from Japan. Firstly matthew is right, even though this comment isn't a preposition of any kind, what I mean is that without checking I probably didn't put down what 'the question' is. The question is vague though. I find questions far more instructive and impressive than answers. Telling someone the answer is never as skillful as asking the question that allows them to figure it out for themselves.
Why the fuck do tourists from sunny places (the southern hemisphere right now) come to Bangkok now, in the Chinese Lunar Festival?
See that's a question that is prompted by the fascinating aspect of Thai culture that is tourism, much more fascinating than buddhism here.
Anyway, before leaving Japan, and much before conceiving of the glory of De La Land, my waxing philosophical was bearing fruit flavored 'individualism' and to my surprise and horror, I was starting to actually discover that anarchism isn't just for dumb ass-aged skateboarders who entertain themselves by getting beat up by "fascist" riot police who attend events largely to save taxpayer money from shouldering the cost of repairs for damage done to private property. That sentance was too long so I just gave up on it.
Anyway, anarchism seems to suggest that 'people don't really need governance at all' and I believe now that, whilst there's obvious pitfalls to having no law enforcement and so fourth, I do believe a society could be weened off most forms of governance except where standardisation naturually bears fruit.

I feel like a penguin, or maybe something cooler like a Polar Bear, yeah, they are big efficient individuals, anyway. I feel like this polar bear, let's call him Derek Kaiser, because that's a pretty cool name, anyway Derek Kaiser the Polar Bear has been milling about on top of this Iceburg doing nothing much, just checking out the ice and now, suddenly derek kaiser has covered the whole above the water scene and decides to jump off. Refreshing. Now Derek turns around and head under the water glimpses the spectacularity of the bit of the iceburg that isn't the tip.
That's my metaphore for where I feel like I'm at right now, and I think it is one of my best ones ever, largely because of the mystery and romance of Derek Kaiser the polar bear. Maybe one day, scholars will refer to this as my 'Derek Kaiser' moment.
But to be fair, it probably should be referred to as the less cool but pretty cool name 'Noam Chomsky' moment.
Noam has a subsection in a chapter of his book 'hedgemony or survival' where he explains some useful truisms - and one of them added the half, or rest of the pie/iceburg/threeway that I couldn't articulate nor neatly construct, and that is Universalism.
Universalism is the basic truth of morality, that we return the same courtesy to others that we expect from them. Religions claim to have invented this, and many embellished so as to make it more convoluted, less just and should just do the individualism thing and let people's innate morality guide them. The ten commandments (the words so important they are the only part of the bible god saw fit to write himself) are a good example of bolliksing up a simple concept.
But thats it, and the question? the question is: how do you give people free will without them exploiting eachother?
To give one example it is self set pay. Self set pay sees like it is an insane proposition, because you are running McDonalds and you tell some 16 year old kid he can set his own wages, and he modestly pays himself 10 billion a year. So obviously a company has to set the wages for them, right? wrong.
The situation fails above because the employee doesn't associate the good of the organisation with his own personal interests. Now this may sound like the 'trickle down' approach of capitalism which Noam Chomsky describes here:

"...so long as power remains privately concentrated, everybody, everybody, has to be committed to one overriding goal: and that’s to make sure that the rich folk are happy -- because unless they are, nobody else is going to get anything. So if you’re a homeless person sleeping in the streets of Manhattan, let’s say, your first concern must be that the guys in the mansions are happy -- because if they’re happy, then they’ll invest, and the economy will work, and things will function, and then maybe something will trickle down to you somewhere along the line. But if they’re not happy, everything’s going to grind to a halt, and you’re not even going to get anything trickling down.

But what I mean though is that it is very different for someone to reach into a dark mystery box and remove a section of cake that nobody else sees and yet they consume. And someone surrounded by their peers going up to slice themselves a piece of cake that is in plain view and everybody sees exactly how much they are taking.
And that's the essence of self set pay, it works if everyone knows how much money is in the bucket and how much everybody intends to take out by individuals.
Mark Twain has a quote I think, but I can't find in my searches now, truth is he has a lot of quotes but it is something to the effect that 'it takes relegion to do wrong and feel right' but that is the fundamental property of the two major obstacles to progress we have, that are realy two sides of the same coin. That is, Nationalism and Religion.
Religion I have covered till I'm blue in the face, nationalism I usually cover on Australia day, a sickening day for me only worse for the Today Tonight features on 'Australianism' the week before it. But Nationalism is probably the more instructive concept. Because everyone can agree that Nations are made up by human beings, some like Mexico have mythos in their foundings, the dream of the snake being caught by an eagle standing on a cactus in the middle of a lake. This would be more convincing if Mexico hadn't been founded by the Spanish on an already existing nation, so devine dream or no, Nations I hope we can all agree are man made.
Yet there is such effort in reinforcing 'national pride' and 'patriotism' and making up abstract values that are supposed to be miraculouly intrinsic of the people who just happen to be born there.
It and religion and class and any number of irrational beliefs serve one purpose, to segregate. To make 'us' into 'us and them' and they are usually encouraged from all sides. Hence segregation is the opposite of Universalism. An example of Universalism is Victoria and NSW, I would say that NSW hosts superior armed forces to Victoria, yet Victorians as far as I have observed do not fear immenent attack from NSW, invasion and conquest threatening 'the Victorian way of life' and 'the Victorian dream' and this is simply because we don't consider ourselves that different from the people in NSW. I would argue that being born in Sydney does seem to miraculously make someone a complete fucking twat but not from birth, just as I do believe that being born in Melbourne does make someone pretty fucking arrogant, like me.
But the point is that we don't fucking worry about the wrongs someone might do against us, or do wrong to people when we actually identify with them.
That's Universalism, people are all different, but I'd be surprised if many victorians apart from me seriously wished harm on Sydney, nor wasn't impressed and envious of Sydney's fireworks displays. I only wish harm on people in Sydney by the way, when I am in Sydney the rest of the time I'm happy to just let them be. I don't know what it is, maybe from watching the Sydney entrants in reality tv programs such as 'my restaurant rules' and that one about renovating apartments.
But that's the principle premise to actually conduct yourself immorally whilst having no internal conflict, you have to believe that the rules that apply to you, do not apply to someone else. Universalism is the simple process of merely saying, rules are universal or they are not rules at all. That is it is no more wrong or less wrong to attack the head of state as it is to attack anyone else in the world.
Accept this and this alone, and everyone can simply and adequately govern themselves with only a very small minority of anti social disorders that may need some external management.
And aha! suddenly I break my own rule, someone with a chemical imbalance in their brain is not my morale equal. Well no, just like someone religious I believe is not my moral equal, because there is something that impares them from functioning on reason.
Now people say reason is so cold, so machiavellian, and that is why Derek Kaiser the Polar Bear has to swim around some more. Thailand for example is warm, lovely, everyone is friendly here and particularly pious. And yet Thailand is also the country where people hobble their children to create a source of income, whilst the capital sports 320 or so I am told, Buddhist temples, and the are pretty lavish for the most part too. And that to me seems cold.
It's why my next anticipated reading is 'the selfish gene' because I nead to understand and find basis for my belief that similar to self set wages it can be demonstrated that morality is no accident of human evolution, that altruism is mutually benificial. I believe this for now, without understanding it, there are examples like semco, and the limited scope experimentations in democracy. Countries that seem to look after their societies by allowing them participation and a certain amount of power to determine the nations agenda seem much better off than countries where the governments manage the people for their own good.
Keep reading.