Introduction
The fundamental concept of government, which the founders of the American structure of government believed, was summed up in the well known, and oft quoted, statement "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (About Toxins of Power).
The founders of The United States knew, perhaps intuitively, that "something was wrong" when people were exposed to too much power, because "bad things happened" to the people, the citizenry, in those circumstances (ibid).
Their hypothesis and analysis eventually led to the formulation of a treatment scenario, which was essentially to dilute the exposure to that "something" which was called "power", by spreading the power amongst many people, rather than to overly expose any one person (The Constitution Is Quite A Medicine).
The graphic above shows the fundamental structure they developed, which had the basic, underlying intent to not allow too much exposure to power by any one governmental person or department.
They never considered it deeper than that on any official level, leaving any deeper contemplation to the future citizens of the nation, who would sit in the seats of power down through time, or who would cast their votes for or against those sitting in those seats of power, their votes perhaps being their periodic comment on how the treatment was progressing.
The Toxins of Power Blog has a series of posts that do look deeper into that founding concept, deeper into its emotional, psychological, and even health implications, to eventually link it recently to germ theory: "Microbes may indeed be subtly changing our brain early on — and for what purposes we cannot yet say" (Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power, quoting The American Society of Microbiology).
Today, for your convenience, we are going to fuse a few Dredd Blog posts with a few Toxins of Power Blog posts, to give a more in depth overview of The Germ Theory of Government in a single post.
Is Our Government Still Power Sick?
The development of the two fundamental classes in The United States, recently referred to as the 1% and 99%, have many people wondering why the original treatment has not worked (The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy).
Obviously, somehow, the notion of "we the people" has evolved into a reality of "wee the people", because the 99% are now subservient to the 1% in ways that were never intended to be (Wee The People).
On this blog, in a series of posts, we have theorized that social dementia within the 99% as well as social dementia within the 1% is one root level problem caused as a result of propaganda (Etiology of Social Dementia).
The Germ Theory
The "germ theory" originated years before the U.S. Constitution was written, but did not have official acceptance in establishment science and medicine until a century after that Constitution had been written (What Is Pseudo Science?).
The post What is Pseudo Science? has an interesting quote concerning one Dr. Semmelweis, who circa the mid 19th century, had lowered deaths of pregnant women in his practice to near zero, while at the same time the general patient population of other establishment doctors had a much greater number of per capita deaths in their practices.
The good doctor Semmelweis thought it proper to share his new found remedy with his peers in the medical community:
Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings.
The good, bad, and ugly |
It was beneath the dignity of those establishment doctors to "give in" to a notion that germs were spread by doctors from patient to patient, because they did not have clean hands, especially since every good scientist in the kingdom "knew" that germs "spontaneously appeared" out of thin air whenever and where ever they wanted to.
So in their exceptional hubris they had Dr. Semmelweis committed to an insane asylum, where he died of a disease caused by germs, as did untold numbers of pregnant women who were patients of these exceptional establishment doctors of that time (Terrorism We Can Believe In?).
Thus, it behooves us to look at the new scientific discoveries mentioned in the Introduction section above.
We must know scientifically what "germ", if there is one, has caused the failures in our society, through the corruption of power, if we ever hope to solve that problem, or to put it another way, to "cure" that disease:
"Our results suggest that during evolution, the colonization of gut microbiota has become integrated into the programming of brain development, affecting motor control and anxiety-like behavior"(Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power - 2, quoting The National Academy of Sciences). Do we, then, need a vaccine of modern epic proportions which all those who sit in the seats of power must be inoculated with (V: The Evolution of the Vaccime)?
The "Clean Hands" Doctrine
It is interesting to note that there was a principle in the law of the time of Dr. Semmelweis, specifically in the courts of equity, known as the "clean hands doctrine" (Wikipedia).
Anyone who was suing someone in equity for any alleged equitable wrong was required to have "clean hands" to bring that complaint.
If they had taken part in causing the particular wrong alleged, then they were not allowed to prevail because they had "unclean hands".
Another notion of "clean hands" was expressed a thousand years or so earlier than that by one Pontius Pilate (The Elections of Pontius Pilots).
Are we in good hands with Oil State? |
It is time for modern cultures and civilizations to consider better ways to prevent government officials from becoming rogue destroyers of the lives of the people they have sworn to be loyal to.
But it is also time to do it in a decent and moral way, yes, in a way that is a real cure in place of violent or callous reactions that only emulate unsophisticated historical behavior that has not worked (The State of the Onion Script).
Transference: Government Becomes Parent
One step in that direction, in addition to scientific research into the
toxins of power so as to learn how to properly neutralize them, is to forgo the transference of parental concepts and emotions into governmental bodies.
After we have grown up then left our parents at home, or after our parents have died, we don't need to replace our parents with the government (Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland?).
The New Concept of "Human"
A modern, sophisticated, and mature society or civilization needs to know its true self and its place in the greater cosmos.
In a recent post we perused the new discoveries in microbiology which tell us, among other things, that a cell count of any one human being ends up with about 10 microbe cells for each one "human" cell (On The New Meaning of "Human").
Thus, we are an ecosystem as it were, because the microbe cells are symbionts to the human cells, meaning, we are in a symbiotic relationship with them, and we both rely on the environment of the Earth for our lives.
A mature government will only come from a mature populace that knows we have a future based on our respect, care, and concern for every life form on our planet.
The short and the long of it is that each of us individually has and together have a great distance to "travel" (Tenets of Ecocosmology).
The next episode in this series is here.
The lyrics to the following song are here:
Could I make it shorter and just say for the most, we are a cancer on the planet?
ReplyDeleteGrowth for growth's sake is the essence of cancer: Link
ReplyDeleteA man not given to frivolous words, in public anyway, Robert Gates, recently said:
ReplyDelete“I do believe that we are now in uncharted waters when it comes to the dysfunction in our political system — and it is no longer a joking matter … we have lost the ability to execute even the basic functions of government much less solve the most difficult and divisive problems facing the country. Thus, I am more concerned than I have ever been about the state of American governance.”
(speech given at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where he received the Liberty Medal).
Whereas Gates was correct about dysfunction, which has caused the approval rating of Congress to plummet, why stop short of assigning blame?
DeleteThe group most culpable for dysfunction is the ideologically rigid Far Right in Congress, obstructionist Republicans and Tea Partiers.
Yeah Dredd,
ReplyDeleteDo a paracleanse at least once a year! :-) Natures Sunshine herbals has a good one. Seriously I'm a nurse. They give viruses something to cling to. Germs are natural... but super resistant bugs are not a good outcome. Just as losing the People's Voice in America is not a good outcome.
Ancient,
DeleteThere is a way to remove super resistant bugs ... talk to them instead of firing on them to kill them (Microbial Languages: Rehabilitation of the Unseen--2, Hypothesis: How Toxins of Power Are Neutralized or Removed).