In philosophy, it is well established that weakness, at all levels, enables the emergence of cruelty. Not being able to defend oneself physically will lead a weak person to exaggerate her attacking response. Not being able to express thoughts and feelings properly will lead this person to shout, manipulate and deceive. Not being able to properly build thorough chains of logical reasoning will lead such a person to adopt dogmatic stances and refuse to accept facts that have been discovered through logically sound methods of knowledge production. All of this is cruel and destructive in its own way and mainly tied to weakness. We could argue that the connection between weakness and cruelty is desperation and helplessness. Being dysfunctional with our available resources can cause us to intensify the use of those available resources instead of expanding our repertoire.
This can be applied to all forms of weakness. To what extent this hypothesised chain influences the connection between weakness, cruelty and destruction is not the focus of this essay. The question treated here is why people remain weak and why they choose the destructive way over the development of new resources to master life, adopting a physical approach. We can quite commonly observe this phenomenon. At the personal level, there are destructive traits, such as betrayal, dishonesty, aggression, greed and fraud, that some people display – sometimes even their whole lives long. At the meso-level, we can observe that companies, religious movements and other societal and economic groupings can engage in fraudulent activities, evade taxes, exploit others and aggressively impose their ideologies on others. Politically, the most common form of destructive (state) behaviour is the exploitation of people‘s weaknesses to achieve societal maintenance instead of societal progress and development. Especially in the contemporary democratic setting, we observe a balancing act between avoiding economic backsliding and societal progression on the one hand and achieving asymmetrical economic growth and establishing a subjective ontology, which is quite commonly observable in non-devletist political systems. This constitutes a weakness in itself, which seems to be difficult for political systems to overcome, but the commons seem to be unable to overcome their personal and organisational weaknesses, either. In order to formulate some approaches to overcoming our weaknesses, we will need a causal explanation for the apparent difficulty of overcoming our weaknesses. By utilising the physical concept of friction, this essay aims at shedding light on the cause of this difficulty.
Friction and Development
In principle, friction occurs between two objects sliding against each other. In other words, friction is a phenomenon that can only exist when objects that are in motion are in direct contact. There are different forms of friction, such as external friction and internal friction, as well as different effects of friction, such as the transformation of kinetic energy to thermal energy when two objects rub against each other. Another effect, for example, is that the material wears down when being subject to friction. What is important to note here is that friction is an omnipresent phenomenon. Even without gravitation or within a vacuum, friction between objects can exist. If we view personal, societal and political development in abstract terms, we will see that there is motion, too. Development, whether we talk about learning new cognitive skills, building muscle, learning new instruments, writing academic papers or learning to manage our emotions, there is motion in our thoughts and bodies. These elements are subject to different objects that they are in contact with, which makes the concept of friction potentially applicable. When we learn new cognitive skills, like a new language, brain cells seek to build new connections among each other. Not only does this increase the amount of moving signals in our brains, but it also puts our brain cells into increased motion – friction emerges. The same holds true for learning new instruments or engaging in scientific and academic conduct. Building muscle, on the other hand, is a more visible example of friction in our development as there is physical friction of joints and muscle fiber. Learning to control our emotions is somewhat in between the entirely mental exercise of cognitive development and physical development, as we surely need to channel our thoughts and our blood flow, too. Although these examples take place on a micro-level, we can conceptually expect friction to emerge as a result of motion within our bodies. The effects are exhaustion and tiredness from these exercises. Sometimes, we can also feel intimidated by tasks and their difficulty and the physical concept of friction might be one of the influencing factors why we perceive such difficulty and tend to avoid it. More directly, the commons feel the need to be motivated to engage in developmental tasks.
Weakness and Friction
Unlike more visible examples of friction, such as the functioning of brakes or the making of fire with stones, the effects are of a more abstract nature in the developmental context, and there are some logical differences. All developmental activities consume energy and processing capacity, wearing down the mental and physical in the short term. In the long term, however, they produce the effect of building the basis for further and more demanding activities of such nature. Because of this, we can argue that there is a limit of development that we can achieve within a certain period. To get from point A of our human skillset to point B, our energy and capacity at point A determines how much time we need to cover this distance. Turning back to the concept of weakness and strength, we could assume that the extent of our weakness/strength can be equal to the sum of our available energy and capacity. We would then be forced to assume that weakness is a result of a time-distance imbalance between the cognitive/physical state of a person and the projected goal of this person. Friction is then a factor that weighs in on the side of this imbalance, making it more difficult for one to develop. Viewed from this perspective, we need to view weakness as a relative concept, not an absolute one. In this case, weakness is measured against the developmental goal of a person, organisation or state and the time to reach this goal, which is aggravated by friction.
When we take these findings and put them into the context of emerging cruelty and destruction arising from weakness, we can now see that the tipping point that leads to such cruelty and destruction is to be found at the point where the time-distance imbalance between developmental points A and B is perceived to be so great that engaging in such developmental task appears unfeasible. A major factor in this perception is friction. As there is already an imbalance between time and distance, friction is the perceived extra amount of energy and capacity required to reach point B that our focus would shift to. To illustrate this point more tangibly, we can think about a financially regularly equipped person who aspires to earn significantly more money. His energy and capacity at his current state allow him to get to point B but will require him to acquire new skills and maybe change his perspectives and approaches (friction). If his goals align with the scope of B, he will be willing to invest the extra energy and capacity and overcome the feeling of inertia that the expectation of engaging in development produces. If his goals, however, are at point F, he will not be able to reach this point within the expected time frame. He might reach it at some point if he is willing to let his expectations grow from point B to C to D to E to F and work thoroughly through all developmental stages. If there is such a great gap between point A and F, however, he will naturally be too weak to reach this point within the time frame reasonable to cover the distance between A and F. In this case, he might forgo the developmental path and avoid all the friction on his way to point F; he might resort to cruelty and destruction, which is no more than the overly intense use of existing resources instead of developing new capacities to create shortcuts or force his way through.
Overcoming Political Weakness
As we have seen, weakness is relative to the goals and context against which it is measured. It is a static measurement against an ultimate goal and a vectorial measurement of whether and how goals can be achieved. When the distance between our current state and our goal is too big, the friction arising from developmental efforts appears unworthy to be subjected to, and people tend to avoid it. At this point, intensified use of existing resources is the result. Instead of developing new relevant skills in accordance with one’s personal nature, there is the leniency to work multiple shifts and work more intensely. Instead of building a more stable and learning-oriented corporate culture, companies cut jobs, outsource tasks and evade taxes. Instead of following the core teachings of religion as intended, religious groupings lay out interpretations that are easier to apply and are much more convenient for the incorporation of lifestyles that were originally not intended by the religious core to be exercised. Instead of incentivising and pushing citizens to develop more capacities, political systems alter the perceptions of what is desirable. Instead of aiming for joint progression through dynamic policymaking, political systems increase the rigidity of perception as regards ideologies. All of these real examples are grounded in the discrepancy between our goals and our current state of development. We do not alter our goals but rather manipulate our perception of the friction that will arise on our paths towards our artificially constructed goals. For example, contemporary political systems suggest that material wealth is desirable, but most people are cognitively and physically too weak to achieve the material wealth portrayed as desirable. First, the goal is socially and systemically constructed. Second, the standpoint of most citizens is too far away from this artificially constructed goal. It would take extremely high amounts of cognitive or physical development (friction) for the commons to achieve this goal. Third, this friction is then downplayed with the approach of relativising what is needed to achieve these goals or create shortcuts towards this material wealth. The media and entertainment industries play an important role in this construct as they offer venues to achieve material wealth without requiring extensive cognitive resources, and they also make wealth more acquirable. Those who cannot reach this wealth, regardless, have a heightened probability of resorting to cruelty and destruction.
To overcome this, there is one practicable way: aiming for realistic capacity-building. It is the political system‘s task to stick with the objectively true goal of genuine knowledge production and formulate agendas that are incremental enough that the arising friction of development is not perceived as a hindrance to achieving societal progress. The goal should not be to achieve intergalactic space travel in five years but rather to do things like doubling patent output during that same time span. Once achieved, there are newer and more complex things societies can aim for. Devletist systems are designed to effectively incorporate genuine knowledge production into our lives. The nature of this endeavour is incremental, as the focal point is the constant development of genuine knowledge, which is naturally directed towards pushing imminent knowledge borders; unknown knowledge borders can only be challenged by chance.
Moreover, the political systems need to actively reduce systemic friction. By reducing survival considerations and consumption pressures, citizens can concentrate better on tasks in and around genuine knowledge production. Access to education, societal activities, more effective infrastructures and increased contact with controlled challenging tasks will play important roles in states‘ efforts to reduce friction and lower the barriers to development. As the commons are unaware of their weaknesses and tendency unwillingness to develop, the political system needs to form structures that allow them to naturally enter into the vectorial motion of development. Otherwise, stagnation and destruction result from politics without attentiveness to the unconscious weakness of the common man.
