Entirely Original Alternate Ideologies?

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Geordie

Socrates said:
Another idea is a belief in a government system based on that of the presbyterian church, where you have a pyramid of an electoral system, with each group electing the people just above them, and them electing the people above them in turn etc.
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This is supported/mentioned in an episode of Yes, Prime Minister.

IIRC, voters elect a street representative, they in turn elect an estate representative and so on to MP.

Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_the_People_%28Yes,_Prime_Minister%29

My memory is not correct. Local councillors elected by 200, MPs by less than 1000, these larger bodies following executive councils elected by the members. If my memory had been, that'd be your ideology. Never mind. :eek:

EDIT: I had a friend who favoured this bold passage. So the estate representatives would then elect ward/town representaives, all the way to national ones. He was something of an extreme liberal/anarchist. Anybody has the right to do/believe anything (politics, religion, drugs, you name it), as long as it isn't harmful to others. The way he presented this ideology, it had some rather large holes in it, but so do capitalism and liberal democracy, so...
 
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Kyro92

I think this might work best with institutions that died out before the modern era, and didn't go through the ideological creativity of the 20th century.

Slavery for example. If it had lasted to the present day in the South, we might have seen working class whites clamoring for protectionism against slave labour, or outright redistribution. A "social democracy" founded on taxing the labour of slaves rather then the labour of the rich would be peculiar, no?

Then maybe you could have a reactionary right in the South, backed by plantation owners and military, bellyaching about how the luxury afforded by slavery is making whites degenerate. Calling the contemporary society "Athenian", and idolizing Spartans as the ideal. Maybe the "Spartanists" even take power by a coup and copy Spartan ideas like separating males from their parents at a young age and raising them in what amounts to military boot camps. But unlike Sparta where this is universal, the Southern landed aristocracy is exempt(whether by de jure law or de facto practice).
 

John Fredrick Parker

Donor
This actually got me thinking a little about what future changes could mean to political ideology -- for example, what happens when/if Artificial Intelligence is developed to the point where sane people can see it running the government? The idea wouldn't be "technocracy" per se, since it would be the program itself running the nation, not the programmers.

OK, actually that's a fairly common sci-fi idea -- but I don't hear it getting a lot of serious thought at present...
 

Hobbesian

John Fredrick Parker said:
This actually got me thinking a little about what future changes could mean to political ideology -- for example, what happens when/if Artificial Intelligence is developed to the point where sane people can see it running the government? The idea wouldn't be "technocracy" per se, since it would be the program itself running the nation, not the programmers.

OK, actually that's a fairly common sci-fi idea -- but I don't hear it getting a lot of serious thought at present...
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first step : declare an automaton a person.
second step : negotiate the right that this non-human holds.
third step : Arnold Schwarzenegger
 

Somes J

Cyrus Alquist said:
I think this might work best with institutions that died out before the modern era, and didn't go through the ideological creativity of the 20th century.

Slavery for example.
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That reminds me of an idea I've toyed with. A world where abolition never really got off the ground, and instead the main thrust of reform was to make slavery less horrible (put limits on the stuff masters could legally do to slaves, put limits on the amount of time a person could be enslaved, allow slaves to have limited property rights of their own etc.). So reformism instead of abolitionism as the major "anti-slavery" ideology. I kind of figure this might be a plausible development in a culture with slavery more like it was often practiced in the ancient world, where it wasn't based on a hard racial caste system, but more of a class issue, with the boundaries of the slave class being much more fluid than in a place like the early nineteenth century American South. Better treatment of slaves might be a rather popular cause in a society where a lot of free people have a good chance of ending up enslaved if they have some bad luck, and a lot of free people are ex-slaves or their descendants.

This might eventually get you a materially non-horrible but to OTL people rather creepy set-up where technical slavery is still going strong, but it looks more like a labor contract than what we envision when we hear the word 'slave'.

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Edit: oh, one other idea:

This one came up in a discussion here of worlds more misogynist than OTL, where somebody suggested a version of communism that viewed women as a parasite class ... the thought I had was "or as part of the wealth to be redistributed."

So; a communitarian ideology that dissolves the conventional family and mandates a form of polyamory where women are "held in common." The original thought I had was a horribly misogynist set-up where the women would basically be communal sex slaves of the men, but more humane versions could be imagined too.

Strikes me as a development that might happen in a traditionally polygynous society, where men might draw the mental link between "I live in a tiny cockroach-ridden apartment because that rich bastard has all the money" and "I don't have a wife because that rich bastard has five of them", and treat them as parallel issues.
 
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snerfuplz

I have been thinking about this but what about a Militia State. Basically runs like a military dictatorship with some Starship Trooper esque ideas. So in an area not under any control by a power, like a buffer zone, but full of hostile natives like the Great Plains after the forced migration of the Eastern tribes. Settlers would come in waves and settle illegally on the land but they would be subject to attack by natives and without a power to defend them. They form a militia and as the powers all benefit from this buffer zone, perhaps not enough resources or distracted by a cold war type situation. For this to work the militia should only be strong enough to defend the territory but not expand and destroyed the hostile natives. Eventually militia leaders rise to prominent position as the militia itself becomes all important to the point where there has to be conscription. Perhaps then the leaders decide that citizenship can only be attained through militia service as does obtaining position of power. It could even be designed in the Spartan way where the militia members all sleep and eat together and captured natives are bred and used for slaves. Or simply the physically unfit, women, children, and elders could do the logistical work like agriculture and trade
 
theman822

theman822

Bergil said:
An idea that I heard someone mention in another thread that I thought was kind of cool was a state where most of the population held some sort of noble title, to the point that it's almost democratic, albeit completely unequal.

Or a belief that what makes the people as individuals "stronger" or encourages "strong attitudes" is good. Could be either democratic (As a rhetorical device for politicians to justify stuff, and a way for voters to think) or dictatorial ("For your own good"). Full disclosure- this is something I believe (among other things), and I kind of get the impression that nobody else considers this.

It's also not possible that someone could declare that the "default" human mindset is the correct one, and try to determine what that is and emulate it. Again, could be democratic (How better to determine how humans act then by asking a bunch of humans) or otherwise (see Loki from The Avengers movie) depending on what they find and how they interpret it.
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What is this thread?
 

ngabay

Killer300 said:
No thoughts on what I laid out.:(:p

But seriously, here's an idea.

What if there was an Meritocracy where the skilled really ruled? Yes, I suggested this already, but I consider it interesting because,

A. Unlike technocracy, many countries had elements of this, like China.

B. Many countries want to believe success is determined purely by skill, like the United States, showing meritocracy even today is quite popular.

So, what I mean is a country that does everything in its power to do this. I'm not sure how different this would be from technocracy, if at all, but it's worth considering, as it could appear far earlier.


For a more unique ideology? Okay, what about a country that hates its past? A lot. And I don't just mean a part of it like Germany does, I mean ALL of it, the country despises. Hence, an ideology based on destroying remnants from the past as much as possible.
In a way, radical anti-nationalism.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Germans_(political_current)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japaneseism
 
Lord_Vespasian

Lord_Vespasian

Banned
Zuvarq said:
National Assimilationism: Marriage between two members of a single ethnic group is prohibited, unless they are both of the majority/plurality group. State atheism is espoused, and religious syncretism is encourages as an alternative, but the state religion is whatever religion is the majority/plurality. but Monolingualism is illegal.
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Slow down Alexander the Great. I know you want to Hellenize the East but maybe tone it down a little
 
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