I would argue that there is indeed something fundamental in human nature which seeks the love-hate fascination that you speak of.

What we call "civilization" is essentially a series of conditions whereby increasing numbers of individuals live in increasing webs of interdependence that are larger than what we would consider to be "tribal" or "primitive." And I should note in this definition that I don't seek to imply the value judgment that many people infer in describing one social organization as "civilized" and another as "primtive." I'm primarily getting at numbers of people and their economic and social relationships to each other.

Civilizations rise and fall. And if there is an engine to this it is most likely found in love and hate. It seems that no matter what the social conditions, there will always be people who are either satisfied with the status quo or unsatisfied with it. Or, perhaps more appropriately, there are always people who are unhappy with their position or status within the status quo.

This lack of satisfaction with how things are is, undoubtedly, a threat to the concept of civilization. However, if there weren't people unsatisfied with how things are it would seem that there would never be any progress at all; social structures and habits would ossify, and the status quo would never advance. If there wasn't a contest for control or leadership positions, the quality of leadership would falter. And if there is one positive development from civilization it is that it provides the possibility for things to advance and change.

Life, the earth, and the universe are not static. Neither are civilizations, which are a simple outgrowth of them. Creation is not possible without destruction, for everything that is created is basically just new assemblies of previous creations.

"...as human societies come face to face with burgeoning technological forces equally or perhaps more powerful than any single state."

Microsoft, anyone? Except for having an armed force, microsoft is as a powerful as most nations.

Comedian Dennis Miller likes to summarize the celebrity love -hate by Saying "We're Frank Sinatra!"

The key is balance, at all levels. Power centers fairly equally balanced arrayed against each other. Each keeping the other honest. That is the goal of the American system: the balance of interests.

However, a referee is needed in this system, a superpower above the interests, eg, a government in the case of the US.

How top balance and limit an essentially unlimited power referee. The answer for us was division of powers, with checks and balances, with the most power intrisically assigned to the Legislature, the division most respomsible to the people in general.

However, what is the overarching referee of nations? Especially when very few if any nations consider liberty and democracy of any value at all?

Perhaps an organization of liberal democratic nations should be formed, throwing out as valueless, except for generating noise, any nation not follwing democratic, liberal, ideas.

Steve

The argument about human development is actually quite Marxist. Beside all the crap you can read in the Manifesto, his theories are actually quite useful. I didn't realize it myself until awhile ago, but when I look at the democratic revolutions going on in the world today, I found myself borrowing heavily from his theories of revolution. Yet I find it hard to admit it because I wince whenever I realize it.

Btw, there is an organization of liberal democratic countries. It's called the Community of Democracies. Only a few years old. It's like a UN for democracies only. Not that big or impactful yet, but I bet it will be. For some reason Kofi Annan even gave a speech to its convention in Santiago, Chile in 2005 that it shouldn't try to supplant what the UN does. Do I smell fear?

I doubt we'll get very far with the Community of Democracies. It looks like so far their main structural activity has been to make a UN caucus. If we do try to turn it into a functional organisation, look at the jockeying for position --

http://www.demcoalition.org/pdf/Seoul_invitation_list.pdf

We're looking at accepting all sorts of nations into it because we need the numbers. That gives us two problems. First, the undemocratic nations we accept are diluting whatever purpose there might be. Second, the more democracies we accept that are enemies of the USA, the less alignment we'll get behind US offensives.

We'd probably do better just to build a new ad hoc coalition whenever we need one,

Along with Kurzweil's thoughts on the influence of technology on civilization, there is perhaps another angle to this we should consider...I had not thought of it at all until very recently, when somebody pointed out an article entitled "The Feminization of American Culture: How Modern Chemicals may be Changing Human Biology" by a Lenoard Sax.

Dr. Sax talks about the Feminization of culture, which is well known, but suggests an odd cause: namely the influence of chemicals produced by modern society (most of which, he says, didn't exist till about 50 yrs. ago), on biology, because they tend to induce something like the mimicing of female sex hormones. He cites other examples from nature.

I had never thought of that before, and do not really have the background or time to evaluate the argument properly, but that's just a stunning proposition, and could explain lots.

Perhaps the future of warfare near the singularity will take the direction described by Hugo de Garis in his book The Artilect War. Link: http://www.cs.usu.edu/~degaris/artilectwar2.html