The concept of “social order” has become a vague term in the past two decades, a chic rhetorical accessory, often invoked at public policy conferences. Governance programs usually assume the concept in the introductory sections. The phrase “good governance” passes, at the level of common opinion, as an ideal or optimal type of government. On the one hand, they are the ones who idealize the values underlying “good governance”, often regarded as a miraculous potion for weak administrative and reformist capabilities. On the other side are the skeptics, those who consider good governance an ambiguous word-suit, unnecessary and the same as those who so blindly embraced both capitalism and communism in their beginnings. The fact that we are talking today about the values underlying the principles of good governance signifies their consecration in the civic alien of democracy.
The concept of “good governance” was first embraced by international reformist elites in the context of growing discontent with leaders and political practices in developing countries. The frustration of the reformist agenda was constantly fueled by meeting with authoritarian, corrupt or demagogic leaders. The risk was the wastage of financial assistance through clientele and corrupt mechanisms, followed by stagnation and impasse of reforms. Reflections on good governance have, however, generated consensus on the opposite of the syntagma, the polar pair of good governance. Bad governance means personalization of power, social stratification, lack of human rights, governments lacking responsibility or electoral legitimacy, lack of transparency and consultation, harassment of civil society, elements that should, by any means, be excluded from the future forms of society.
There is a concept, a model in which all elements of society, from elements of the environment to its members, have unique indicators that can be cataloged and organized by computer-controlled systems. The goal is to increase the efficiency of the interaction between all the elements that create a society, making the need for social classes obsolete. The vote will not make its presence felt overnight, and the rate and pace of adopting the changes will vary from country to country. But the big companies of the moment work side by side with authorities like the Council of Europe to make these changes possible. Intel presented some of the directions addressed at the recently concluded Intel European Research & Innovation Conference.
One thing is clear, besides massive investments and authorities’ support, the road to Europe is going through the R & D divisions, and Intel has around 50 across Europe, with the number of researchers rising year on year. Society is evolving at amazing speed. The things we consider today “state-of-the-art” technology will be outdated in a few years. Companies and ideas that dominate the world today may not be there in 2020. Of course, the question remains whether all these changes will be beneficial to the average individual. A continuously controlled, electronically controlled company can be abusive, making it easy to think about scenarios such as those in SF movies or books.
Even if we do not have a bright future ahead of us and if someone, more cynically, might think that the solution to overpopulation could be the limitation of life, this will only prove to be a delicate deception. The cold reality is that by limiting life to administrative measures, the results can prove catastrophic for humanity in the long-term, and social destruction might just become a palpable fact.
Anabel Cooper
Latest posts by Anabel Cooper (see all)
- A Framework for a New Social Order - December 23, 2017
