I don’t recall all of the significance of Satyr’s arguments on nature, if you’d like I’ll reread them and respond to that. But, right now I want to address the idea of the weak being strong in numbers with out a strong hierarchy. That issue goes directly to human nature. I just can’t imagine the apes having evolved into humans without this constant necessity for every male to prove he’s worthy to breed. You may notice that all supposedly charitable organizations’ focus turns from charity to maintaining itself in competition against other charitable organizations and the people running it are in fierce competition to be on the top. It’s because we naturally feel we must dominate, obviously no matter how weak any individual is and how weak his father and his father and so on for several generations may have been, if one goes beyond 5-10 generations then nearly every father from then back to the dawn of humans was one who fought for his right to breed and succeeded (occasionally a weak one gets lucky even in the most hostile environment). So we have a nature to compete and to be on top that is impossible to ignore.
Those who consider themselves to a part of the organized weak feel proud and strong to be a part of that group. Their rhetoric is that they are proud to not be a stereotype of the typical overly masculine male. They believe they are strong through their numbers and their shared ideals and have no need to form hierarchies when they can instead vote on their group’s actions. But, it is an illusion that one is proud to be weak and not will their power. They are actually willing their power when they are a part of a group with ideals for which they agree with. This group may maintain a unity as long as all the members agree on the ideals behind it, but they will not be able to merge with other groups of weak individuals to create further strength in numbers unless the other groups share the same ideals. If they don’t share the same ideal, the members will use the rhetoric that the other group has wrong or evil ideals, but the real issue would be that their will is their ideals and to compromise them would be to lose power.
Then the group itself will disintegrate as the members begin to disagree on the interpretation of the original ideals, because each member was only happy to a part of the group with equal standing as each other member because he felt that the ideals of the group were his own, almost as if he thought of them himself. So if others begin to differ each individual will feel his power being diminished, and fight for his ideals within the group itself, even if the differences are actually very petty, because it’s not about righteousness it’s only about power.
The scenario I just described doesn’t even mention the fact that many members of the group will never even have the illusion of ideals separate from their will to power, but will have no ideals except that they wish to take control of the group. If they are smart they will be the ones to create confusion among the members as to what the original ideals it was founded on really meant. Furthermore, my scenario didn’t mention that the strong are often quietly controlling this group of weak individuals and only letting them think they are making progress through strength in numbers.
Strength through numbers in a democratically run group was an idea I once thought made sense, but the more I think about it and the more I experience human nature for myself the more of a mess it seems. The cold hard reality that is living naturally is all that seems coherent to me. And within that context one may still show strength through more subtle means, almost as if it was strength through weakness, and can love one’s friends and family. One simply has to get over the idea that no one in the world should be left behind.