Thursday, December 20, 2012


What if we have too many creators and maintainers, and not enough destroyers?

Our society values creating things.  Creation and maintenance are the staples of capitalism and most of civilization.  Practically nothing any society does is devoted to actual destruction*, which means that once something is created, it is rarely dismantled.  Political science knows this in the form of taxes or government powers that, once signed into law, are rarely discontinued, and I'm certain other fields know this through other lenses.  Examples in the United States include the number of laws (especially those that are regularly broken by common citizens completely accidentally), the length of the Federal Income Tax Code, and the number of people imprisoned for unpopular laws, among others.

Those that develop these systems are often prized as creators, and those that maintain the status quo benefit them.  However, destructive forces are rarely, if ever, allowed to do their work: dismantling and removing outdated, useless, or malignant aspects of a society.  This need not be done with senseless violence, and I am not personally calling for violence of any kind.  The issue at hand is deciding whether or not a system, policy, or program is beneficial (or good, or ideal, etc.) enough to warrant its maintenance.  Some such subjects will likely warrant continuing, but I suggest that many will not; if, however, a system is not beneficial, it should be removed.  My claim is that not enough entities are put up to be destroyed, a process which should be as natural and organic is creation and maintenance.

In this view, destruction is not stigmatized simply because of its destructive nature.  Instead, the substance and reasoning behind the destruction is analyzed independently, and the agent of destruction is criticized and punished or lauded and rewarded.  Again, this is not an advocation of all destruction (terrorism, violence, senseless killing), simply the suggestion that destruction (and, possibly, chaos) should be treated as equal to creation (and order), and the means and ends to both should be examined before a morality judgement is made.

*Simple destruction (like armed forces do) is not destruction as an opposite of creation; military violence is almost always a means to create some end, and is therefore creative in nature.  Destruction for the sake of destruction (anarchism, some terrorism) without a specific goal in mind--a "better anything than this" mindset, rather than a "better <idea> than this" mindset--is clearly separate from destruction for the sake of creation or recreation.

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