Systems & Suffering

The rules and systems that govern our society are deeply problematic. It is a source of chaos and suffering in many people’s lives. The moral & humane thing to do is to fix it.

But what’s wrong in the world spreads like wildfire. You put out one fire, you’ll start another one. You fix one problem, another problem will come up. It doesn’t end.

Which begs the question, should we bother?

Artificial Intelligence works by training on huge amount of data to make decisions on new data. It is sensitive to variations and amplifies biases. It is built on past data, on the record of what humans have done and not what humans aim for. Much like our systems. In a way, they are like AI algorithms.

The system in place reflects humanity. It is frail and fallible. But what if there’s a system that is human-proof? Immune to human errors and biases. Can imperfect humans create a perfect system?

The first step is to figure out what the perfect system looks like. But I doubt we’ll ever get past the first step.

So where are we headed in this fight, when a utopian society is not possible?

There is an underlying system that life adheres to. A ‘natural’ law, so to speak, that humans can’t touch. It allows right and wrong without favor. It permits one to suffer and the other to flourish with no regard to merit or fairness. It is absolute in its indifference to the human condition.

If we cannot build the perfect systems for ourselves and underneath it all is just indifference, where does that leave us?

To fall back on nature, that is, to be just as indifferent?

To keep working on systems with basically nothing in nature supporting it?

Maybe it’s for that reason that we should endeavor to make good enough systems so we can support ourselves.

On the other hand, aren’t we, humans, part of nature as well? That what we create isn’t man-made but as natural as they come? Anyway, I digress. What is natural is to arrive to a synthesis.

As prevailing ideologies shift, so do our systems. Eventually, extreme and opposing views will combine to make a more balanced system. Time will tell where we end up. For now, humanity perseveres, lurching from one extreme to another like a man feeling his way out of the dark.