Government Size and Character, 6-15-2010

 Before I picked up Aristotle again, I had questions about the optimum size of government. 

I should put the issue as the relation between community and individual. After all, too large a community exerts no influence on its members.

I say the smaller community, the greater likelihood of it exerting a common behavior on its members. For me, praise and blame involve emotions based upon who is blaming or praising me.

Nor do I exclude online or virtual communities. I once received praise from two lawyers who I knew only online that equalled any praise I received from my hometown associates. I merely state closeness increases the effectiveness of praise and blame as controls on behavior.

I recall Jefferson (and Madison?) basing his governmental views on the township as the basic unit of government. That I got from Garry Wills; either Inventing America or Explaining America. The township is no longer that relevant, but I say it is a human-sized unit.

Someone will say TV and the Internet upsets all this fine theory. Let me point to Aristotle again, and to education. Aristotle makes the point that ethics requires thinking, of going from principles to actions. If TV and the Internet upset ethical standards, this then is the result of :

1. faulty education of the citizens;
2. faulty community standards (such as interracial marriage went from forbidden to accepted.)
3. faulty thinking by the citizens regardless of 1 & 2

[I will add today a fourth: a combination of the above. sch 11/9/22.]

As to third, I describe elsewhere that I did not have time to think how my depression was damaging me. What I felt about my life only redoubled my depression. Without time to think, time to reflect, I got swallowed up by depression. Therefore, I say we need time for thinking as well as education.

[I read long ago Walter Kerr's The Decline of Pleasure which argues we need the time provided by leisure to think and reflect. I knew this, but forgot it. sch 11/9/22.]

I do not think we should shelter ourselves against different moral thoughts. I say removing ourselves from tests of ethics and morality leave ourselves weaker than stronger. Montaigne wrote along these lines in a much better way in his essay "On Experience."

[Since 2010, I have come to agree with my mother, who used to say: Let's not, and say we did. Confrontation can mire us in muck. Yes, that is the voice of experience speaking. sch 11/9/22.]

Therefore, we certainly need ethical training and the time for properly applying our training.

sch