Hogtied & Happy

The world changed. That I fact. The reason for change, while convoluted and no doubt complicated, where simple and inevitable. The concept is simple. Power is an illusion. Even in the most primitive society, power has always been an illusion. The strongest and most adept warrior becoming unaccountable and all powerful. Why? A lack of viable challenge, so the rest agree to accept him as in power. In a simple two player game of life and death, the odds verify this as the Nash equilibrium. Maximum net pay off. The model is not adequate. Humans, by nature or not as advanced, and certainly not as empathetic as they would have you believe. Superficially, humans are superior interspecifically. But intraspecific interactions are different. In an interspecific situation, humans have no problem in resolving conflict through death. The self awarded superiority makes the taking of another animals life inconsequential and the threat of defeat is either minuscule or unavoidable. In contrast, a human/human interaction to resolve a power struggle is different, but in only one respect. The threat of punishment (be it injury, death, or any other form of castigation) is avoidable. The equation is balanced differently. For a human to risk his life, the reward has to be extraordinarily valuable, or the status quo needs to be unbearable in the truest sense. Rarely are such social games actually two player models. In a village led by the strongest warrior, all residents are players. The equation must therefore take in to account how many players are on each side, and readjust the odds accordingly. Neutrals will always favour the most likely victor. Subservers and the weak willed will do the same. This leads to the odds of defeating the village leader being extremely high. But, in receiving a higher pay off for the villagers, there will still be injury or death for a small proportion unless surrender is immediate. This fear keeps the greater good locked up safely as an ideal, that is simply not suitable for humans.

But things did become unmanageable. Society was reshaped. Humans finally had had enough of religious wars, the guilty being found innocent over technicalities and loopholes, and laws being exploited to punish those they were intended to protect. The world was being controlled by intellectual midgets, and people finally had enough. There were casualties. Not as many as people feared, but enough to make the transition slightly difficult. The reshaping of society was beautiful. Laws were enforced and bound by the spirit in which they were created. Loopholes and exploitation became a thing of the past. The very moral structure of the world changed. Hedonistic calculus became the moral compass, not churches and abstract concepts of heaven and hell. The world was moulded by the pinnacle of human thought. The difference between right and wrong became purely mathematical. If your action had a value greater than zero, you were morally correct and just in your deed. A value of less than zero was deemed immoral and therefore a crime. Each calculation had much to consider. Different types of pleasure were ranked accordingly, as was the absence of them. The calculation was designed to show whether actions made the world a better place or a worse place. It was a beautiful idea, and if Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill had been alive to see it they would have felt vindicated.

Where the old world was built so that idiots could live, the new world prized intellect. The new rules allowed for intellectual freedom that could scarcely have been imagined a few years ago. Knoble, fundamentally good, and allowing at long last for more than technology to advance. Finally the freedom for human evolution had returned. Eugenics and the dissolution of undesirable, weak elements of humanity can now be carried out. No longer are these processes deemed wrong or immoral on the grounds of equality and morality. Every man is not equal and in clearing the bottom percentiles we can now create the greater good. We can finally use science to our benefit, rather than to just keep the unhealthy alive. Free of the chains of religion, we can now drive humanity closer to perfection. The beauty is in the intellect. In the very application of science. Why go through the trouble of active extermination when a passive alternative is so much simpler. Humanity will instead experience a schism.  Sympatric speciation at last. A new type of human. Homo evolvadus. Stronger, faster, more intelligent, superior in every single way. Homo sapiens will perish. No romantic notion of the spirit of man overcoming all odds. People are logical, real progress can now be made. All those who are hogtied by their old beliefs will remain blissfuly happy and unaware until they realise they have all been left behind as nothing more but genetic dead ends that were not worth saving.