totalitarian rule

totalitarian rule
I have been thinking lately about how absolute power works. how come that in virtually all countries from the ancient times and basically till now there were absolute rulers at the head of the states or then countries? Predominantly kings and pharaohs were considered as chosen by God to fulfill their role in the country. it was a hereditary function to keep the power in the hands of one family. How is it possible that so few people could govern so many? the quiestion is even today and the answer is very like the military power. who controls the military controls everything. in the end, it is about physical ability to defeat or defend. in this age, it may be the first time that conventional warfare and army may loose its power and meaning, but in the past, the strength and size of the army or police was everything and only thing that could keep one powerful. How come that so many people in police let themselves be controlled by someone they may not like? the answer is probably ideology. if the people in the armed forces rebelled then the few then powerful would very soon lose their power. we have seen such coups, for example Napoleonic army or Russian Revolution. These were mainly examples of such force. The ability to hold a large crowd of armed people together under one rule is indispensable for any regime. It is the ideological menagerie. the soldiers believe that they are doing the right thing by guarding their ruler. if one does not think so, the other convince him or ostracize him. should there be an uprising among the crowd, it needs to be very soon crushed. once people start thinking individually and not as a group told to do something, then we get a step further to the ideal society, which unfortunatelly shall never be fully reached. in an ideal society there would be no need for an army to defend a ruler because as Platon says an enlightened ruler would be better than any democracy. this is of course utopia, democracy is by far the best system we have, although still lack some vital features and has many faults. rather than having one englightened absolutistic ruler, it is much better to discuss the state of the society among people so that all of them could be enlightened and get more and more autonomic, in other words getting rid of the menagerie we are in.

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Používam Rychlý zápisník

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