http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Michael-Hardt/dp/0674006712

Singapore, Republic of Milling Seed Corn

I am bottomless because my foundation was never mine to see. I am a perspective, an agent, a person, just another dude-with-a-bad-attitude—I am all these things because of the way I am not any of these things. I am not what I am because of what I am—again, the same as you.
[…]
Ghosts are the incorporeal remainder, the something shorn of substance and consistency. This is the lived life of Heidegger, an empty dream that flew the day. Insofar as Dasein lacks meat, Dasein dwells with the dead, another shade in the underworld, another passing fancy. We are not ghosts. If lived life lies in the meat, then the truth of lived life lies in the meat. The truth of what we are runs orthogonal to the being that we all swear that we must be. Consciousness is an anosognosiac broker, and we are the serial sum of deals struck between parties utterly unknown. Who are the orthogonal parties? What are the deals? These are the questions that aim us at our most essential selves, at what we are in fact. These are the answers being pursued by industry.

And yet we insist on the reality of ghosts, so profound is the glamour spun by neglect. There are no orthogonal parties, we cry, and therefore no orthogonal deals. There is no orthogonal regime. Oblivion hides only oblivion. What bubbles up from oblivion, begins with me and ends with me. Thus the enduring attempt to make sense of things sideways, to rummage through the ruin of heaven and erect parallel regimes, ones too impersonal to reek of superstition. We use ghosts of reference to bind our inklings to the world, ghosts of inference to bind our inklings to one another, ghosts of quality to give ethereal substance to experience. Ghosts and more ghosts, all to save the mad, inescapable intuition that our intuitions must be real somehow. We raise them as architecture, and demur whenever anyone poses the mundane question of building material.”

http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/the-ontology-of-ghosts/

He lays the smack-down on democracy, the welfare state, human rights, individualism, social justice, environmentalism and practically every other pet project of the left, and quite a lot of the right, as well, Instead of democracy he proposes aristocracy, instead of elections he proposes examinations, instead of social contract theory he proposes private property and the particularism that it implies. At the end he argues for the right of parents to bind the feet of their children just in case he hadn’t horrified progressives enough with all the other things.

He basically treats the Confucian system of rites/rituals as some sort of proto-formalism and argues for a directed benevolent market polity, i.e. Singapore. I certainly would recommend the book to everyone on here, since it argues for quite a lot of the same thing we argue for, but from a different direction. If you want to read it you can simply Google “reconstructionist confucianism pdf” and it should be one of the first hits. A quote for those who are still on the fence:

“Benevolent governance (ren zheng) requires the acquisition of people’s safety and welfare. But this objective cannot be achieved by establishing egalitarian welfare rights, because such rights are in tension with the Confucian family-oriented ideals and values.”

“Indeed, many East Asian regions draw elements from Confucian philosophy that are at their core familist in two decisive ways. First, political structure and governance are understood neither in terms of a Rawlsian hypothetical rational contract nor in terms of an Lockean actual historical contract, but rather in terms of a comprehensive moral vision where society is regarded as a large family of families. Just as claims of civil liberty and equality and participation in active protests should not be central to family life, or at least to the functioning of traditional families, so, too, such behaviors are regarded as out of place in a directed benevolent market polity. Second, political theory and governance are aimed at recognizing and nurturing families as entities that are responsible for the welfare of their members. Normally, individuals should rely on their families, rather than government, to secure their welfare in general and health care in particular.”

Unfortunately, the major evolved resistance to these memetic infections appears to be stupidity and irresponsibility.

If that weren’t so, techno-commercialism would be a harmless infection that would evolve towards commensalism. In every generation a few percentage points would leave to techno-commercial city states where they would create vast wealth to the benefit of everyone. But its not harmless. The resistance it induces is deadly, like sickle cell anemia.

Until that minor point is dealt with, techno-commercialism appears to be yet another elaborate exercise in milling seed corn.

And again any goverment form or substance has flaws. The flaw being humanity.

Rather a big fan of starkly delineated limited form, the substance in society myself.