Yesterday’s blog mentioned Plato’s 5 regime types and that the belief systems Politics and Religion will be kicked out during the transfer from the 4th (ie, Democracy) to the final regime type (ie, Tyranny). With the knowledge of hindsight, one regime type is missing: Theocracy. My diagram below pictures that missing one in between Democracy and Tyranny.
Money must be the oldest belief system of any regime type. Religion is added in Plato’s 2nd regime type, Timocracy. The sharing of Power in Oligarchy (3rd regime) facilitated the belief system Politics. These 3 (ie, Money, Politics, Religion) represent the Power domain of my original 2016 version of the 7 Belief systems.
In the 2019 update of the 7 Belief systems, Science & Tech were split in Science (Knowledge domain) and Technology (Power domain). To a large extent, China’s Social Credit System represents my 2019 update: a powerful combination of Big Data, Big Money and Big Tech. I suppose that Politics in China, Europe and USA have underestimated the monster that they created.
I’ve always wondered how Plato went from Democracy (4th) to Tyranny (5th). I suppose that when you add Theocracy, the transfer from Plato’s 4th to Plato’s 5th regime type is more obvious. Plato must have realised that (representative) democracy will not work because (most) people need, want and believe in leadership. These people fail to realise and/or remember the words of Lord Acton (1834-1902):
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.” (Source)
Tyranny represents the Power domain of my 2019 update of the 7 Belief system, being the belief systems Data-Info, Money, and Technology. Many of us are at the start or finish of Plato’s 4th regime type, Democracy.
Democracy (1992) by Leonard Cohen
artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise.
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