I woke up one morning thinking about those three words, linked exactly that way and in that order. How this popped into my head was kind of a mystery. What I remember was that the night before I may have either heard someone in a political talk show, or was it someone in my dream, who asked the question, "Is God a socialist?"
Far be it for me to feel guilty of heresy to repeat the question here, it is what it is. A question that I can't let go even if I wanted to because it was like an itch that needed to be scratched. That even led me to jumble the three words in another way, such as the combination that says, "Socialist's Natural Nature"? Or, should it be "Natural Socialist's Nature"? The last one has a nuanced meaning or interpretation of the same combination as the first one but there is something about it I can't truly figure out. The reader may have better luck with it. I'd like to move on.
I begin by asking, "Is the ant or bee colony a natural socialist structure in the animal kingdom?" Of course, the two examples have other derivatives in the animal kingdom as well, such as the organization exhibited by the wolf pack, a pride of lions, or a pack of Africa's wild dogs, or the uniquely different animal organization that mimics human monarchy - a cackle of hyenas. I begin there because there is no better phenomenon to connect them all to "Nature's Socialist Nature".
Both the bee and ant colonies are run as a dictatorship, perhaps a benevolent one. The queen dictates everything and though mostly immobile on its own once it starts the colony, its size massively bigger than any individual bee, it needs to be carried by several if the need arises. But it knows everything that is going on. It knows to lay eggs that will develop into worker bees, or more soldier bees, or drone-caretaker bees that take care of the larvae and the young and general house keeping, depending on what needs to be replenished. It gets the largest share of food being brought in every day. Everyone else gets the minimum needed, just enough to sustain them for a day. In other words, there is no equal sharing of resources being gathered. The queen is the CEO, the fat cat of the colony. Why does it need all the care and nourishment?
And so it comes to this. A well run colony is like a well run corporation. The CEO, the fat cat, who could be the founder of the company, or the hired gun to run it, has the responsibility no different from the queen which, in fact, is the one to start a colony. Absurd, you say? Well, the worker bee brings in nectar one sip at a time. It does not do or is it required to do much more than that. The wealth of the colony - the entire beehive of honey - is cared for by individuals with different jobs. The colony is defended by soldier bees, no different from how a nation is made secure. We've talked about what the worker bees do, but more importantly the workers are the foundation of the beehive's economic system. The drone caretakers do pretty much everything, no different from the government services (from education, general services and maintenance of the infrastructures, etc.,) paid for by taxpayers.
Simplistic analysis, perhaps, but we know there is no equality of benefits (no income equality to speak of) because why? Each of the individuals contribute at different levels and the worker bee does not begrudge the queen's benefits because, again, why? The queen dies, the colony dies. But it is a very simplistic view indeed because the colony is actually a single organism. Yes, a single organism in reality. It is the very same analogy in why the brain, a mere three pounds of tissue, only 2-3% of the average human body's entire mass gets 25% of the energy extracted from its daily nutrition. The human body, made up of various and many parts, is not a socialist organism. The finger nails, perhaps more relevantly functional than our hair, both get the same kind of nutrition but they do not get the same amount or quality that the pancreas or liver gets.
Does that answer the question, "Is nature, by nature, socialist?" Does it answer, "Is God a socialist?" If God is, why did God make mountains and molehills, why not give every nation the same climate, equal geographic domains, equal access to the oceans, farmlands and mineral resources, etc. An all powerful God could have made us all equal in stature and have exactly the same skills and talents. We have those questions and a host of other queries. Many of them will remain unanswered.
But does nature abhor socialism like it does a vacuum?
Socialism is a choice, yes, and we know a sector of humanity at one time or another had tried it and others still trying to become one. Presently, several nations run their governments with different shades of socialism, some a bit more than others. Communism - what we'd call the more severe form of socialism - had been tried but it had suffered a fatal retrenchment of some sort. For all intents and purposes, Cuba seems to be the only true communist country, and a very poor one, while Venezuela is today's greatest and most glaring example of socialism horribly gone wrong. Venezuela is the blinking red light that says, "Whoa, don't you dare go this way!" China is Communism In Name Only (CINO, for short). It still selects its leadership through the Communist Party system - a monolithic one and unchanged since the days of the Mao era. The country at large - particularly in the rural areas, farm lands and factories, small and large communes - is very much run and controlled based from the original model of communism.
One huge difference that made China an economic power that it is today, despite the fact that it still self-identifies to be a communist country, is that it runs its economy by modeling it after a capitalist system, with all the trimmings of blatant government support and intervention and a compliant citizenry, always worried and weary of an unforgiving system. That is its biggest advantage over a purely free market system practiced in the west, which is a free market system by and for a free people. Will China and its brand of hybrid communism be able to sustain itself in the long run? Time will tell. Will capitalism, a mere century old, survive? Only time will tell.
Nature is not a socialist. God is not a socialist. I think we can put that to rest. Or, can we?
We are in the midst of a gathering storm. It might seem just like a swirling wind, apparently incoherent for now, but it is gathering momentum. It is getting more and more difficult to dismiss like it used to be at the mere mention of the idea just two decades ago. The danger is that people will begin to believe that there really is such a thing as a free lunch. More than that, the enticements are getting more and more believable, or at least the growing number of people are allowing themselves to be deluded by the delusions proposed by a handful (for now) of potential aspirants who want to run this country waywardly to the extreme left of liberalism.
If we are not careful, the idea of the free stuff - free college, universally free health care, freeing up debt, guaranteed income, income equality (a nonsensical idea) - is the very anti-thesis to real freedom. Lest we forget, when a government can so easily give away free stuff, the same government can so easily take it away. The worst part is when government uses that power to give and take as a tool to subjugate the people - the very same people that sustains it. As a matter of fact, let us not forget that the very idea of giving away free stuff is a zero sum proposal. Where ever and whenever the government gives away stuff for free to a group of people, it is actually taking away from others. That government, believe it or not, when it gets to a critical point, is a government that will cannibalize itself.
This reminds me of a short essay I wrote in 2016, "99 Cannibals and 1". That is where I end this note but, so you know, I begun thinking about this in December, 2016 with:
https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2016/12/99-cannibals-and-1.html
Both the bee and ant colonies are run as a dictatorship, perhaps a benevolent one. The queen dictates everything and though mostly immobile on its own once it starts the colony, its size massively bigger than any individual bee, it needs to be carried by several if the need arises. But it knows everything that is going on. It knows to lay eggs that will develop into worker bees, or more soldier bees, or drone-caretaker bees that take care of the larvae and the young and general house keeping, depending on what needs to be replenished. It gets the largest share of food being brought in every day. Everyone else gets the minimum needed, just enough to sustain them for a day. In other words, there is no equal sharing of resources being gathered. The queen is the CEO, the fat cat of the colony. Why does it need all the care and nourishment?
And so it comes to this. A well run colony is like a well run corporation. The CEO, the fat cat, who could be the founder of the company, or the hired gun to run it, has the responsibility no different from the queen which, in fact, is the one to start a colony. Absurd, you say? Well, the worker bee brings in nectar one sip at a time. It does not do or is it required to do much more than that. The wealth of the colony - the entire beehive of honey - is cared for by individuals with different jobs. The colony is defended by soldier bees, no different from how a nation is made secure. We've talked about what the worker bees do, but more importantly the workers are the foundation of the beehive's economic system. The drone caretakers do pretty much everything, no different from the government services (from education, general services and maintenance of the infrastructures, etc.,) paid for by taxpayers.
Simplistic analysis, perhaps, but we know there is no equality of benefits (no income equality to speak of) because why? Each of the individuals contribute at different levels and the worker bee does not begrudge the queen's benefits because, again, why? The queen dies, the colony dies. But it is a very simplistic view indeed because the colony is actually a single organism. Yes, a single organism in reality. It is the very same analogy in why the brain, a mere three pounds of tissue, only 2-3% of the average human body's entire mass gets 25% of the energy extracted from its daily nutrition. The human body, made up of various and many parts, is not a socialist organism. The finger nails, perhaps more relevantly functional than our hair, both get the same kind of nutrition but they do not get the same amount or quality that the pancreas or liver gets.
Does that answer the question, "Is nature, by nature, socialist?" Does it answer, "Is God a socialist?" If God is, why did God make mountains and molehills, why not give every nation the same climate, equal geographic domains, equal access to the oceans, farmlands and mineral resources, etc. An all powerful God could have made us all equal in stature and have exactly the same skills and talents. We have those questions and a host of other queries. Many of them will remain unanswered.
But does nature abhor socialism like it does a vacuum?
Socialism is a choice, yes, and we know a sector of humanity at one time or another had tried it and others still trying to become one. Presently, several nations run their governments with different shades of socialism, some a bit more than others. Communism - what we'd call the more severe form of socialism - had been tried but it had suffered a fatal retrenchment of some sort. For all intents and purposes, Cuba seems to be the only true communist country, and a very poor one, while Venezuela is today's greatest and most glaring example of socialism horribly gone wrong. Venezuela is the blinking red light that says, "Whoa, don't you dare go this way!" China is Communism In Name Only (CINO, for short). It still selects its leadership through the Communist Party system - a monolithic one and unchanged since the days of the Mao era. The country at large - particularly in the rural areas, farm lands and factories, small and large communes - is very much run and controlled based from the original model of communism.
One huge difference that made China an economic power that it is today, despite the fact that it still self-identifies to be a communist country, is that it runs its economy by modeling it after a capitalist system, with all the trimmings of blatant government support and intervention and a compliant citizenry, always worried and weary of an unforgiving system. That is its biggest advantage over a purely free market system practiced in the west, which is a free market system by and for a free people. Will China and its brand of hybrid communism be able to sustain itself in the long run? Time will tell. Will capitalism, a mere century old, survive? Only time will tell.
Nature is not a socialist. God is not a socialist. I think we can put that to rest. Or, can we?
We are in the midst of a gathering storm. It might seem just like a swirling wind, apparently incoherent for now, but it is gathering momentum. It is getting more and more difficult to dismiss like it used to be at the mere mention of the idea just two decades ago. The danger is that people will begin to believe that there really is such a thing as a free lunch. More than that, the enticements are getting more and more believable, or at least the growing number of people are allowing themselves to be deluded by the delusions proposed by a handful (for now) of potential aspirants who want to run this country waywardly to the extreme left of liberalism.
If we are not careful, the idea of the free stuff - free college, universally free health care, freeing up debt, guaranteed income, income equality (a nonsensical idea) - is the very anti-thesis to real freedom. Lest we forget, when a government can so easily give away free stuff, the same government can so easily take it away. The worst part is when government uses that power to give and take as a tool to subjugate the people - the very same people that sustains it. As a matter of fact, let us not forget that the very idea of giving away free stuff is a zero sum proposal. Where ever and whenever the government gives away stuff for free to a group of people, it is actually taking away from others. That government, believe it or not, when it gets to a critical point, is a government that will cannibalize itself.
This reminds me of a short essay I wrote in 2016, "99 Cannibals and 1". That is where I end this note but, so you know, I begun thinking about this in December, 2016 with:
https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2016/12/99-cannibals-and-1.html
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