The Flood (Part 2)

So, expanding upon last night's argument (which can be found here, for those who need context: The Flood, Pt. 1

It is established that the threat of "The Flood" applies to societies worldwide, and this threat is viewed as having two causes: 1) sin, (defined as sustained apathy, incompetence, or corruption); and 2) entropy, (defined as the inevitable deterioration of everything). At first blush, it would almost seem as if the sustainment of a working system of culture, society, or government is impossible, given what we know in our apriori structures about the futility of these things.

Well, it's a good thing that we have memory, which allows us the opportunity to not make the same mistakes over and over again and thereby suffer stupidly. We've spent hundreds of thousands of years watching one another, noting what works and what doesn't, and then passing these observations genetically and verbally to our progeny. This has resulted in a number of utter fucking miracles, when you consider the odds, that I will deal with directly.

When contemplating the threat, "the Flood", that is represented in our collective memory, one might ask how we can mitigate it. Well, to use this metaphor to it's most effective ends, it would seem to be a moral imperative for us to prepare adequately for its inevitable arrival.

Holland, a country that has much of its arable territory located inconveniently beneath sea-level, has built a system of levees to protect against the eventual flood. Their engineers did so in a serious manner, planning their construction while accounting for the effects of the worst possible storm that could come about once in 10,000 years.

We can readily contrast this wise planning against the experience of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans. The Army Corps of Engineers, when planning the levees to protect that city, calculated the effects of the worst possible storm that could come about once in 100 years. Meanwhile, corruption within the administration of that city took advantage of a system ripe for the taking, thereby corrupting the initial construction and subsequent maintenance of those levees. They were shown to be every bit as effective as the effort and thought that were evident in their creation and maintenance, and a whole city drowned as a result.

We should not be surprised. The fables that have been handed down to each generation for thousands of years give truth to this story. The "Ant and the Grasshopper", the "Tortoise and the Hare", and most depressingly, the "Scorpion and the Frog" all deal with treating reality seriously, not taking anything for granted, and preparing for the worst.

So, what should we do? Well, as nearly as I can tell, the solution for a sustainable society runs in exactly these areas. One must prepare a vessel capable of withstanding the worst abuse that the world and mankind can manifest upon it. Once that is done, it is imperative that the vessel be maintained appropriately, to be able to continually withstand this abuse.

Among the miracles that I referred to above, we can count the modern manifestation of a Lockean Republic as perhaps the best example. Locke put into words something that is truly fantastic: The idea that a government doesn't exist to enrich the throne, but rather a government exists to defend the liberty of its people, who will then prosper as they are allowed to exercise their own free-will in the furtherance of their own self-interests within the confines of the rights of their fellow men. Consider how unlikely it is that Locke should derive these specific ideas, that he could be able to articulate them effectively, that those articulations should prove to become popular, and that English exiles would then use those ideas and build a nation on another continent based upon them.

The founders of this nation are to political philosophy what Dutch engineers are to disaster mitigation.

In the way that the Constitution is laid out, and its rationale explained in detail by two guys who didn't even like each other in the Federalist Papers, they weren't planning out a Utopian society like post-modern flapnoodles such as Ocasio-Cortez, Warren, or Sanders. No, the founders were planning for the worst of times, the 10,000 year flood.

I think they succeeded fantastically.

With the vessel (The Constitution) having been effectively constructed by serious people to stave off corruption and apathy, while also mitigating the effects of incompetence, what is left to us is to maintain that vessel. How does one do that, exactly?

First, it depends on a competent citizenry. It is necessary for us to understand and articulate the machinations of the protective scheme that was handed down to us. This also requires us to understand the composition and strength of the "flood" that is inevitable. Only through reading and comprehending these things will we be able to maintain the worthy structures that were gifted to us to maintain. Since part of this protection involves freedom of expression, we must take each opportunity to remind one another of the coming storm, whether it be just off the coast or imminent sometime in the next 10,000 years.

Therefore, maintenance of this vessel looks something like this:
Learn about our government. Learn about the alternatives that we've chosen not to exercise and why we've made those choices. Talk to one another about the utility of what has been prepared for us and the threat posed by these alternatives. Teach our children about these things. Pray the entropy doesn't undermine our efforts. Everything else is in God's hands. As He described to Abel, your sacrifice must be genuine and sincere.

And that gets into tomorrow's bit...

The Flood, Pt. 3