Lessons from Legotown: The Recurring Problem of Power

It often seems that no matter how advanced civilization becomes, we seem to fall back into the same patterns of behavior. In fact, we fight one particular battle over and over again, no matter the decade or century: The Haves vs. The Have-nots. Call it The Powerful vs. The Weak, The Elite vs. The Common Man or whatever name du jour a society may give the syndrome, humanity just can’t seem to rid itself of the conflict.

Here is a noteworthy study of children who created their own little civilization and the problems they encountered. I find it interesting that even children, who tend to be both imaginative and somewhat utopian, will exhibit behaviors characteristic to a dysfunctional society. It's also worth noting that the teacher's initial reaction was to remove the source of conflict. Ultimately, the Lego's were used as a model to study issues of power and to teach the children how to overcome its pit-falls.

One obvious concern is that solutions to the problematic dynamics of power and control are mostly likely rooted in perspective and/or bargaining position. How you view the issue is usually related to your position of strength or lack thereof, making common ground difficult to attain. What strikes me most is that we need to work these recurring themes out of our societal constructs or we will never really advance as a civilization, no matter what technologies are available.

Rethinking Schools



More perspective:

Ran Prieur



My question for ATS is how can civilization finally solve this problem of power? As the tendency to exercise control is inherent even in our children, I'm not sure sure we can.


Mod Edit: Big Quote – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 24-2-2008 by Crakeur]

It's hardly news that children behave selfishly, that they lust after possessions and control, or that they replicate in their dealings with one another the same patterns of behaviour we see in the doings of adults. You see much the same sort of thing with two-year olds, actually; I was treated to a demonstration at a friend's house quite recently.

Nor is it news - though it is very gratifying to be reminded of it - that small children are instinctive traders and negotiators.

I think the teachers at the Hilltop School demonstrated the wrong way to deal with what you call the 'problem of power'. Their assessment of the situation seems to have been strongly biased by their political beliefs; their response to it undoubtedly was. First they snatched away all the bricks to show the kids who really had power over the Lego supply*. Then they used that power as a means to force abstruse lessons in Socialist dialectics on their unfortunate charges. All very Soviet indeed, and as history has shown, that way of dealing with the 'problem of power' is hopeless.

Selfishness is an aspect of the instinct of self-preservation. The desire for control over others is too, but it is also driven by status competition, an instinct we share with most social animals including our nearest relatives. The lust for possession is also driven by status competition. Trading and negotiation are peaceful ways that we have learnt to manage those instincts as all social species must. They are not perfect but they work quite well, especially when used as part of the toolkit sometimes referred to as 'democracy and the rule of law'. Where free exchange and negotiation are thwarted or perverted by a ruling state or ideology, power concentrates in a shrinking minority and violence - of one sort or another - soon becomes inevitable.

The problem of power will always be with us, because humanity needs leaders, even when it thinks it does not; because the majority will always hand power to leaders and some leaders will abuse it. Changing this very basic aspect of human nature means radically changing human nature itself. You cannot do it by teaching children to argue like Hegel and you cannot do it through operant conditioning in the manner of Walden Two. You would have to reach deep into the human genotype in order to achieve the necessary transformation, and the product of it would no longer be human.

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*Demonstrating, in the process, the importance of keeping central banks independent of governments.

reply to post by Astyanax

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I agree with most of your points. Thanks for a very interesting and well-written post. My only question is whether you think our condition is terminal or is there hope for humanity in dealing with issues of power?

"You would have to reach deep into the human genotype in order to achieve the necessary transformation, and the product of it would no longer be human."

If not human, then what? Transhuman? Something else?

You might find this thread interesting:

www.abovetopsecret.com...'



[edit on 24/2/08 by kosmicjack]

reply to post by kosmicjack

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Yes, I came to your thread from that one. I'm not sure I can contribute anything to the discussion there.

To answer your question, I don't think the problem is terminal (though in the long run we are all dead) but I do think it will be with us for aeons to come. We may evolve out of it eventually, but would that really be such a good thing? It's a big, nasty universe. If all are doves, who will defend the cotes when the hawks descend?

There is a problem that occurs when no private ownership occurs that economists call the problem of the commons. When everybody owns a particular resource, as opposed to one particular person owning the resource, the resource ends up getting wasted. Everybody has an incentive to use the resource, but nobody has an incentive to put time, energy, and money into maintaining the resource. .

The textbook example of the problem comes from Medieval Europe, where were common pastures. The common pastures were overgrazed and were not maintained. When people began taking individual ownership of the common pastures, the pastures were properly utilized. They were not overgrazed. Owners of the pastures put time and energy into improving the pastures and overall agricultural output increased.

This is not to say that private ownership does not bring its own problems. There should be, however, some ideal middle ground between private ownership and common ownership. This regime could be a form of private ownership with communal responsibilities, or communal ownership with individual responsibilities and benefits.

We would not need to completely revamp our property ownership to reach this middle ground, as property ownership entails some degree of communal responsbility. Perhaps there should be more communal responsiblity, but communal responsibility does exist. Property owners pay taxes on the value of their property which go at least partially towards government programs that benefit everyone. Laws and regulations also limit property owners from using their property to harm the community. For example land owners have to follow anti-pollution laws.

The property ownership scheme that exists in the West can aslo be characterized being slightly communal, and conveying communal benefits and responsibilities. It is obvious that the prevalent property ownership laws convey communal responsibiliites. There are numerous laws that prevent the community from interfering with private property. There are however a few instances where the community gets some of the benefits and rights of private property. For example, private property can be subject to an easement where the community is allowed to get the benefit going across a piece of property. The community is allowed to use private property in emergencies. The property can also be confiscated by the community via emminent domain if the property is needed to serve the public good. (Of course, the concept of "public good" has been stretched in recent years, but that is a different topic.)

The very near future will, I think, see the coming of another form of intelligent life on earth: machines. That will give us something to compare ourselves with. Some might say there'll be nothing to compare: since these machines will be made by us, they will inevitably be made in our image. I don't think that is correct. For one thing, we could not design and build the first intelligent machines without the aid of other, somewhat less intelligent machines (just as the most powerful of today's computers could not be designed and built without the aid of other, somewhat less powerful computers). Succeeding generations of intelligent machines will be built by the first: voyez, machine reproduction.

Intelligent machines will come in many forms, and these forms will be subject to the same evolutionary forces that currently drive the development of dumb machines, and propel computer evolution at many times the speed of the organic kind: in a word, market forces. It will not be long before natural selection* turns intelligent machines into beings very different from their creators.

Will they have other ways of dealing with the problem of power, or will it not exist among them at all? We tend to think that machines, being unemotional, would construct a neat, rational kind of society in which all decisions are made for the best ('the best' being determined by powerful simulations and calculations). I think this somewhat naive. In real situations there is often no best decision; only a choice of bad ones. Machine society, too, must have its interest groups, its contending factions. And why should machines not develop emotions? We, too, are machines, albeit enormously sophisticated and autonomous ones, and we have emotions. They are part and parcel of the way our intelligences function. It may be that no moderately advanced intelligence can exist and lack the capacity for emotion.

I think that in the end machine society will have the same problems of power faced by animal societies. Because, you see, the problem of power isn't just a human problem: chimps, dogs, chickens and a host of other creatures have it too.
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* I believe the term is appropriate.

A very good point. Thank you. I would like to hear your thoughts on this thread.

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

reply to post by kosmicjack

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I looked at the thread you linked to. A world without fear? No can do.

I'm afraid my answer to this must be the same as my answer to your earlier question. You cannot eliminate fear any more than you can eliminate competition for status and power. These are basic instincts; without them we would not be human. We probably wouldn't even be animals. Most likely, we would cease to exist.

reply to post by kosmicjack

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I looked at the thread you linked to. A world without fear? No can do.

I'm afraid my answer to this must be the same as my answer to your earlier question. You cannot eliminate fear any more than you can eliminate competition for status and power. These are basic instincts; without them we would not be human. We probably wouldn't even be animals. Most likely, we would cease to exist.

such experiments are by default useless, because they're inherently biased. most if not all artificial 'resources' are introduced from the outside, the remaining task is distribution, which is causing all these problems in the RW.

to put it bluntly, collapse is a more or less natural correction which inevitably happens when (re-)distribution becomes the dominant theme, like today. it is destructive rather than constructive and history knows how to deal with failed civilisations.


there's a difference between being selfish (ie. not sharing) and being agressive (ie. taking from others). the fact that this very important distinction is currently blurred to the point of being apparently unnoticable only aggravates the problem. needless to say, being agressive alone will not suffice to survive on the long run, even if it will cost many peoples lives, but killing does not feed, clothe or move you, does it?