Human beings live in society, and can only exist effectively in community. Community is the condition and guarantee of human existence. The...
Human beings live in society, and can only exist effectively in community. Community is the condition and guarantee of human existence. The essence of existence in a community is the possibility and necessity of cooperation. Cooperation in community can expand human capabilities in unlimited ways, as human history demonstrates.
But there are obvious conditions that must be present for a community to form. A community is sustained by cohesive mechanisms and can survive only as long as cohesive forces can be maintained, for example, as long as the members of the community contribute more resources to the cohesion of the community than they take out as benefits of belonging to the community, and the willingness of the members of the community to abide by the established rules of the functioning of the community is also a fundamental cohesive factor. Belonging to a community not only has benefits, but also obviously requires personal sacrifices. This is a general rule for the existence of any community of individuals, the precondition for the existence of any society.
Human beings, rooted in their individual existence, are also selfish who seek to maximize their individual benefits and minimize the resources they employ to spend. Creating a community and sustaining oneself as an individual may require opposite behaviors. An example of this situation is freerider-like behavior, where a community member seeks only the benefits of belonging to the community, but does not contribute resources to sustain the community. Commonly used behavior of this kind necessarily leads to the disintegration of the community.
The creation of a community is obviously beneficial to the group as well as to the individual, but for the community to function successfully, it is necessary that the actions and behavior of the members of the community can be controlled and regulated in some way.
This role is played, for example, by the institution of the legislature. The method seems to work, human societies can survive in the long run by using laws, but the application of laws as they are currently used is cumbersome, not direct enough and narrow.
Obviously, the democratic legislation has the appropriate functioning rules, the way the laws are created, as well as how they are applied, the court system and the sentencing process, but the system is clearly not working effectively because the committed crimes are not moving towards eradication at all.
There are many reasons for this situation. Even if the connection between the violation of the rules and the execution of the sentence is established, it is distant and involves many steps, and the benefit of social role of the applied sentence is questionable. Typically, the ruling plays the role of punishment and deterrence, which does not directly support the development of society.
In more advanced societies, justice is used to shape behavior in a socially appropriate way, to educate and nurture, which can also directly serve the development of society, although in this case, too, a period of exclusion from society may be necessary, but the length of this period is obviously not a matter for the courts alone to determine, but must also depend on the development of behavior. Studies have also shown that capital punishment, where it still exists, does not have the desired deterrent effect, but rather serves to exact revenge or to satisfy society's sense of justice, which is in fact misguided and unjustified. In more advanced stages of judiciary systems, this form of punishment is not practiced.
The organization of community building, the regulation of members' behavior in the community, is essential, and its effectiveness must be improved. This necessary need is obviously limited by the extensive provision of the possibility of individual freedom. Individual freedom can be a driving force for the development of society, as well existence in a community is a medium for the effectiveness of functioning as a society. Fundamentally, there is an unresolved, ongoing discussion about what is the ideal balance between the provision of individual freedom and the degree and manner of personal behavioral constraint that results from functioning as a society. Obviously, the regulation of what is and is not forbidden, and the definition of specific areas of regulation, requires social agreement if compliance is to be declared an expectation of society.
Laws must necessarily be a dynamically changing system, with methods available to determine them continuously. It should be a basic principle that what is bad for society must be regulated immediately at the social level. However, progress is needed in this area. Obviously, individual freedom, such as freedom of speech, or individual profit, such as the ability to make money, must not be to the detriment of society. An actual example of this problem is the way social media currently functions and the role it plays.
Internet-based social media allows for a global and instantaneous flow of information between users. This functionality makes it an ideal tool for information sharing and connecting, and potentially it is an optimal platform for the necessary organization of society. While it initially fulfilled this role, as it can still do, it has also developed ways of exploiting its potential that are detrimental to society.
Human nature is attentive to negative emotions and also tries to find an explanation for everything it does not understand, at the level of its own knowledge and existing prejudices. It is primarily based on exploiting these characteristics of human behavior that it is easy to create high levels of engagement and mutually exclusive opinion bubbles among users on social media, simply by creating and launching a story that seemingly serves the purpose of solution and is believable to the target audience, regardless of whether it is true or not. The high level of social attention and engagement on social media is a suitable basis for generating financial gain, which also creates a positive feedback loop and a dominance of profit-makers called trolls on social media, acting even society-wide, which, as can be seen, can even lead to the disintegration of human society.
As we develop, we have tools at our disposal of ever greater potential, and the misuse of which is increasingly dangerous to humanity. It follows from this, that any phenomenon that is demonstrably or visibly harmful to society requires immediate regulation regardless of its occurring constraints.
The meaningful implementation and enforcement of the law to improve the efficiency of society also requires considerable development. Dealing with violations of social rules usually does not have optimal consequences for society. The most beneficial method for society would be to prevent harmful acts, but this presents both objective and subjective difficulties. On the one hand, prevention would require external knowledge of the personal intention, which would be harmful even if external knowledge of the internal intention were feasible, and on the other hand, many acts harmful to society are not dealt with, either because the degree of harm of the act does not reach a certain threshold, or because the harmful act is simply not registered.
The difficulties of preventing crime, however, can be solved by surveillance. The more a person in a community is aware that his or her actions are identifiable, the more that person will conform to the behavior expected by the community, even if his or her individual intentions might predispose the person to different behavior.
It can be scientifically proven that observation influences behavior, but the objective usefulness of observation is also scientifically debatable. Observation should not lead to a restriction of individual freedom, which may seem to be an immediately contradictory statement, since observation necessarily influences individual free behavior even in an instinctive way. The history of many literary novels and the functioning of existing political regimes seem to demonstrate that constant personal surveillance is not only a suitable means of enforcing rules, but also a source of strength for the existence of repressive, totalitarian regimes.
This fact is undoubtedly true, but totalitarian regimes not only make extensive use of surveillance, but also monopolize the definition and application of rules. The situation is a typical example of a tool that can be used for both beneficial and harmful purposes, and the more effective the tool, the more dangerous its use. However, if it is possible to agree by social consent on a framework for the application of a tool that is effective in society, refusing to apply the tool on the grounds of danger is more harmful than beneficial to the community.
Restrictions by influence on individual freedom are harmful when they do not serve the values shared by the community as a whole. Individual freedom cannot be harmful to the community, just as community rules cannot unnecessarily restrict individual freedom.
However, appropriate regulation can only be fixed in its principles and methods of operation, the concrete regulation needs to be a dynamic system that is flexible enough to adapt to changes in the society and its environment. Methods of regulation that seem suitable for this task can be found in the thoughts.
Law enforcement is the most chronic element of the application of the legislation. Applying equal rights and enforcing the same laws to all members of society is the necessity for a well-functioning democracy, but thorough detecting when rules are broken would require constant monitoring of members of society.
However, constant surveillance of the members of society is not only the most effective means of ensuring the optimal law-abiding functioning of society, but obviously it is also the condition and medium for the existence of totalitarian dictatorships. At present, for understandable reasons, it is primarily dictatorships that use social regulation through surveillance of members of society. Societies that have adopted democratic rules are typically reluctant to the use of this tool, also for understandable reasons. Today's democracies are typically representative democracies, which in principle can easily transform into authoritarian regimes by itself, and the surveillance of members of society as a regulating tool in the hands of power could make this transformation to be one directional and permanent.
Another concern about continuous surveillance is that it typically leads to psychological distress, which can even lead to physiological illnesses. The concern is valid in principle, but it is nuanced by the fact that the stress is objective if the person being monitored is actually breaking the rules, which may be the purpose of the surveillance. Otherwise, the stress associated with the monitoring is subjective. Stress of subjective origin may either disappear spontaneously through conscious or unconscious acceptance of the circumstances, or it may not develop at all if the person does not recognize the observation situation as a new circumstance, but socializes into it as a default state. Observational stress is not a major obstacle to the use of surveillance and can even be a useful side effect.
In particular, dictatorships use extensive surveillance of the behavior of members of society to maintain their power. However, it is also worth noting cases where surveillance in these societies is used not only to filter out individuals whose behavior is dangerous to power, but also to enforce more general rules that are useful for the functioning of society. In these cases, society may be able to function effectively despite the socially dangerous limits of dictatorial leadership.
An example for this can be China, where the social point system by monitoring used for coercing members of society not only serves the authorities to suppress deviant behavior, but also promotes adherence to general social values. Chinese society has been able to achieve significant achievements despite the socially imposed constraints of autocratic leadership. The Chinese society using a point system may be successful not because the social point system serving the existing authoritarian system by filtering out political behavior deviating from the authority contributes to the enforced social stability, but on the contrary, a dictatorial lead society may be successful despite the use of the social point system for political purposes as well. The use of a social point system provides the motivation for members of society to maintain cooperative social behavior, which ensures a successful society despite the suppression of free human behavior that can be useful for the society yet detrimental to the existing political power.
The social point system - in which the monitored behavior of individuals in society is subject to correction according to a predetermined set of conditions utilizing positive or negative feedback to the availability of social resources - is a controversial means of regulating society. In general, it can be an appropriate tool if the regulation is transparent and if its rules, which should serve an objectively useful set of values, are under established social control, and not for the sake of maintaining economic or political power.
The social point system is a powerful tool for regulating society, which can be used to both benefit and harm the effective functioning and development of society. It is clear that a social point system used for political repression weakens the potential of society, even if it seems to provide social stability. If the corrective elements of the social point system are not political instruments, do not contain functions to maintain power, but only regulate general community behavior that promotes cooperation, their use without restricting variability (individual freedom) will increase social potential and ensure more effective social development in the long run.
A tool in itself is never simply good or bad, it is its application that makes it that. The social point system is such a tool. Under broad social control, and using the collected information only for the purpose it is needed to serve, this tool can be effective and efficient for the society.
The more powerful assets we have, the greater the risk of possessing them. Giving up a powerful tool is a mistake, as is using it dangerous. But the balance between the benefits and risks of use is up to us. As long as we, as members of society, are able to maintain this balance, we are able to exist at the level of a productive and successful society.
In a democratic environment, the following rules seem to be necessary to apply for the effective use of the social point system:
- The rules of operation should be established in a transparent manner, based on democratic social consent.
- The voluntary nature of participation seems necessary, as does making the benefits of participation definite.
- Opting out of participation and the disadvantages resulting from evaluation are objective necessities that must be enforced and personally accepted.
- Evaluation must not be associated with public stigmatization.
- The accessibility of the value of evaluation and the consideration and application of its results require commonly agreed rules.
Extensive use of the social point system utilizing surveillance can, under the right circumstances, be an appropriate means of enforcing social rules, which is a necessary part of the optimal functioning and successful operation of a society.
No comments