One influential thought is that advancement doesn’t necessarily let human beings feel happiness, rather it would make people feel unhappy because of the new wants development creates and the gap between those who got them and not(1). Primarily, it’s been said that one has desire for material possessions which doesn’t have a point where it ends(2). Wealth doesn’t necessarily lead to the happiness of people.

Besides the progress of civilisation and happiness of people, how much gap of wealth human beings can tolerate? Comparing people in former eras and in modern era, civilization developed and people seek more wealth in the capitalism of 21^st century, but it doesn’t necessarily let people feel happiness in their life.

If some are rich and others feel envious, those who feel envious towards certain people may feel less happiness in their life. How people are to find the happiness in their life matters. If people understand what makes him feel happy, for example refrain from excessive eating and know the enough amount of food needed per day and control, one would feel happy than requiring vast amount of food.

In the capitalism of the beginning of 21st century, it seek further profits. In order to maintain the high standards of life, people need to work harder causes stress. Requiring everyone to labour harder to maintain their living standard is a bit hard for them. The capitalism governs the wider aspects of society with the dominant use of statistics. The statistical penetrated into wider aspects resulted in the integration of societal rules with capitalism. It is not to completely deny the situation, but the problem is that most people are governed by the capitalist rule and not aware of others which may make happiness among them.

Highly civilized society has people’s intention in a lot of parts, that is partly why stress is more embedded in society. There is less uncultivated sphere in the world of 21^st century. It may be better to keep the sphere in practice that one takes the sphere temporary and removes their ownership, and others use them in another time. The digitalisation is to look at the tiny details in the world without removing their eyes.

What appeared in 18th century is the “population”(3). As for the concept of population and its statistics, it is worth looking at the history of census in the US. In order to assemble data in US census, Herman Hollerith had ideas in “devising a punch card system for surveyors to use”(4). It “consisted of a set of punch cards and associated readers that used spring-mounted needles to pass through the holes in each card, creating an electrical loop that advanced the reader’s tally for a particular hole location”(5). His business strategy of renting the machines instead of selling made success in their businesses with their clients, and this origin leads to the International Business Machines (IBM)(6).

Think of community of a nation-state, one can look at strong tie and weak tie in governance, the former is more likely to ignore the balancing of gain and loss among them. The tie could be strengthened and weakened by trust as such that the government works improperly in using their revenue from tax, it is harder for the citizenry to have trust in them and vice versa. When the country becomes dense in their population, society becomes complex as it is going to further be in the cross roads of different interests of different people. The decision making and use of publicly received tax revenue could become hard for citizens to imagine.

Not directly connecting the individuals with the state, but the intermediary is necessary. It is a matter of how an intermediary can connect the opinions of their persons with another if required and with the nation-state. The idea of opinion leader could be the one whose books the ones fanatically follow as fans, loosely saying. The resilience of a nation is how much layers it maintains between the nation and individuals. Government whose budget is limited is not able to provide what citizens need completely, they should focus on how communities can be robust by having subcommunities in it.

Individualness comes from where one is born, spent their life, their language, age. No one can be born in the totally same condition with others. That makes a difference, diversity. Nationalism comes from the intimate feeling towards where one is born, spent one’s time in, as nation-state has constraints on their movement beyond border. Even if not constraint of nation-state, physically one is not able to put himself in different places simultaneously. In a social class they are born, some feel comfortable compared with the other classes, how one behaves is different. People cannot be born in the totally same condition. In that sense, the equality of being the totally same is not possible, what should be cared is equality of fairness.

Democracy emphasises the participatory aspect of the public. Some people recognise that citizens should participate more in the political sphere. In voting, in fact many people leave their decisions to others and things are going without their participation of voting. Citizens’ having their right to vote is a necessary right in democracy, but the fact that it is given to citizens doesn’t guarantee the higher percentage of turnout in election.

In representative democracy, people vote for candidate, whose personality matters a lot though there are of course people care more about and vote for candidate based on their policies. Even if they vote for policies, whether it is going to be implemented or not is a doubtful aspect of politics. The aspect of party-politics is too strong that too much time is spent on which party is attracting people, for example, in media. Not the content of policies but political groups are focused. Voting has the impression of voting to a representative, not the issues directly although a representative’s policies are the important factors in deciding their choice. What we should care is the content of politics, such as what kind of policies are going to be implemented.

Governing the world by one stream of thoughts is to eliminate the choices available in people’s end. Not necessarily we have to encourage capitalism all over the world, but suitable economic systems should be implemented depending on regions. That could be expressed as plurality which can be applied to evaluation, standards put in practice in societies.

The domain of business is a big one in capitalist economy. In 2020s, employees typically work 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week, additionally they often need to work extended hours as overtime. It occupies the large part of citizens’ life based on the time that it requires. Not only life of citizens, the influence of businesses has large influence in society. Businesses are not totally separated from other societal aspects. Society often requires businesses to comply with certain regulations, and more generally saying the changing environments of societies.

(1) Fukuyama, F., 2006. The end of history and the last man. First Free Press trade paperback edition 2006 ed. New York: Free Press. pp. 83-84.

(2) Fukuyama, F., 2006. The end of history and the last man. First Free Press trade paperback edition 2006 ed. New York: Free Press. p. 159

(3) Foucault, M., 1976. Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. pp. 35-.

(4) Zittrain, J., 2008. The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. p.11.

(5) Zittrain, J., 2008. The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. p.11.

(6) Zittrain, J., 2008. The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. pp.11-12.

Principles of politics or democracy or society are more important as it is fundamental. Principles are more static — though it is admittable that interpretation can change over years or meaning of word itself can change — than people themselves who seem more fluctuating, more easily influenced by other people. The mass may be fluctuated by the environments they face.

Also it is a place that one can refer to it in their daily life, or as often as they are surrounded by. When their community goes to wrong ways or get lost in to what direction they should be heading to, they can recall by referring to the principles. This is the referability that it has. In other words to express the importance, holding primary principles in one’s mind contributes not to lose their initial purpose. If looking at another person who changed his mind to go to the wrong, one could be entangled in that situation to the wrong. Persons often are attracted to the secondary which has distance from the initial objective by compromising. Even if they initially aimed at doing good to their society, they may fall into their personal profit on their way to reach their goal.

Additionally, the reason why people should refer to fundamental principle is that people who refer to other people don’t get themselves to the sublime in many cases. Especially on the Internet people with shallow understanding are easily to change their feelings by others. Extreme ones after getting people’s attention have others influenced sometimes, causing polarization.

Having primary principles in community or society, it can unite people living in it. Even if they are in the direction of being divided, that shared principles have the effect of uniting them. The principles are going to always remind of what is thought as important in that community and that’s what makes having principle important. Similar to the wisdoms are at least written on record such as books of intellectuals through changing environments, principles work towards society by making use of the history that previous generations built up.

Philosophy was presumably closer to the lives of persons. Philosophy is more abstract and adaptable to many situations than the concrete. Philosophical principles to be referred to is the one should be implemented in society. Not necessarily people should depend on others in terms of making a judgement. Without having the capacity of philosophy, one cannot talk comprehensively. This trait of philosophy makes its importance of incorporating it into the education of children.

To make people realise is to make history of human beings. Philosophers emphasise what’s important for humans, they let people recognise what’s important. It’s a successive chain of reaction from one generation to another. History is woven by human beings. Learning lessons from the past history prevents the same mistake since it is true that a man has limited time in one’s life and need to leave their history to next generation. Wisdom is more vertical in a sense that the wisdom of former generation benefits the next. Taking into consideration mortality of persons, whether the world can get intelligent that much or not can be partly determined by social architecture. Morality loses some intelligence from the world, although their works remain. Many countries have experienced war before, among them, there are countries which can lesson their history for the current and future generations.

In the meantime, one needs to take into consideration that there’s often things not written in words. Even if one tries to describe what one wants to keep in record in detail, the sceptical perspectives arise. It can be described a matter of to what extent the detailed explanations can cover the wide range of it. Eventually, the principles, or that set of rules, require the outside.

It is an issue that how information is channelled and how people consume information. The places that people grow their opinions are as much important as the places where they makes discourses with others so that their opinions are exchanged and they are to find others’ perspectives. For example, educational places such as school plays the role of making people interact, contrary to their private places where they consume their preferred information. Not necessarily in all places they have to make discussion with others to lose their originality, on the other hand they don’t have to always think alone. In the age after the Internet, some say that people are divided into different parts of the informational world which they prefer to see, to create the sphere which enables the discourses among people of different opinions is required to avoid further division of people and development of nation-state. With the preservation of free sphere in which one can grow themselves, the growth of diversity is maintained.

Community justifies things in the sense that “the only criterion we have for applying the word ‘true’ is justification, and justification is always relative to an audience”(2). The legitimacy comes from what the community believes. A conversation among persons with trust each other and another which do not have makes difference. In the smaller community of homogenous social groups, trust is maintained among them, which is different from the larger one of different social groups. The trust in this sense connotates the sense shared among people that the rule put in practice is more or less shared. The rules that peoples of diverse community practice could differ more than the homogenous as peoples in the former could practice their own culture within their own group.

Providing the environment by their society that people feel the necessity of driving themselves towards the social good is beneficial. It attached the notion of the good to the certain behaviours. If society make advertisements that it is better not to use the one-use plastic products as it harms the environment, the awareness among the public would be increased. In this respect, the movements by United Nations as well as non-governmental organisations have certain effects on their societies. Their campaign over the generations could enhance the awareness and more and more people might behave for the societal good. Having said that national sovereignty should of course not be violated, in United Nations level to have institutional framework that can facilitate discourse on specific matter in a country to make its situation better would be likely to work if that is well organised(3).

Inclusive model of education can foster the mutual understanding on persons. It is more likely to avoid the prejudices among peoples. On discrimination, peoples would not be more unlikely to say discriminating speech towards a group of people if they have a friend of the similar background.

In the world of being complex and unpredictable than ever, knowing how interesting to learn a new thing puts them into the cycle of learning. Learning here is a bit different from that education to enhance the productivity, for example factory workers. There should be community-driven learner who learns, importantly, being supported by their community though he/she tends not to learn by oneself but motivated by the community. Education seems like earning degree to certify. Curiosity and learning are closely related.

With the emergence of the Internet, aviation technology, and the like, globalization was in movement around the beginning of 21st century. Especially capitalism after the Internet is to allow persons on the edge to get empowered and create innovative businesses which needs voluntary actions of citizens are the source of energy for the practice.

Seeking the profit, that is what many corporations are doing in capitalism, doesn’t necessarily lead to the happiness. Of course, wealth can let people expand their activities, but presumably there were people feeling happiness more in previous age than some people of more wealth in the current capitalist society. With the emergence of NPOs and NGOs and their activities in society, people became aware of those goodness. Just seeking profits doesn’t so much have attractions for some people.

There some argument that the “human rights culture” emerged “as a new, welcome fact of the post-Holocaust world”(4). The world came to focus on the individuals and the protection of their rights. Presumably, the universal human rights that have universal importance to human beings are proposed. It is a progress to emphasise the importance of human rights, in the meantime has distance with peoples of each region. The distance is a matter to what extent peoples of each region feel intimacy to the principles. Even if it is defined, practicing it in a way identical in one country with another doesn’t necessarily have to be promoted as the circumstances of peoples who practice the concept is much more difficult to be recognised universally. They have different cultures and practices of their own to exercise their rights and freedom. The public attitude of what should be allowed and not in their own nation can be decided in different ways by their decisions suitable to their cultures and contexts. The invention of different democratic cultures in different nation-states enriches the democracy itself.

Community’s self-governance would signify the resilience and robustness on the basis that self-governance is based on the will of community wholly. Without having empathy in the community, it may not continue to exist. The resilience of its community depends on those who belong it, the quality of individuals, but also the community itself has the capacity to help others. Community is dynamic rather than static, in which some reactions are triggered by others’ behaviours. Even in that dynamic, it often has the established. Things are interrelated each other.

(2)Rorty, R. (1998). Truth and Progress. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 4.

(3) For example, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

(4)Rorty, R. (1998). Truth and Progress. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 170. Rorty refers to Eduardo Rabossi.

Culture can begin from a smaller scale and expand to a larger one. It can originate from a small community where like-minded people start cultivating the atmosphere they prefer, and with the acceptance of additional members, it can spread over a wider area of society. Culture can be recognised as big bubbles in a society, if some are powerful, it could affect the society significantly. The traits of community influence the members in it, for example fosters one’s intellectual aspect if the community as a whole emphasizes being intellectual.

Creating a context is related to creating a culture. Having the number of people who have the same culture is to have the people who are aware of the culture. As for the society of 21^st century, it is a matter of how we can create a society where the right things are spread than the extremes or things assembling attention. The unordinary often gets attention from the public as it is rare and unconventional. This creating context is applied to a number of cases as such that: one should look at how he can create the context in which more people feel the importance of freedom in society, the ways to do it is not necessarily their direct claim or display their opinions in public space without caring about people of the other opinion. It depends on circumstance people say certain things or refrain from doing so.

Norm is not what authority owns. Community has norms. In the state where authority has control over people, the norm is greatly influenced by authority. Depending on to what extent citizens are freely behave, it is decided that to what extent societal norms rely on citizens. Not only the oppressive aspect of norm which, for example, works that citizens look at each other for finding some who behaves irregularly from their norm. While focusing on the secure holding of freedom in maximum, norm works as another regulation with flexibility in society. If norm becomes intensified, it could narrow the range of actions among people. This is the case of more narrowing norm, however the fermentation of the norm which work towards outside, in other words the norm of expanding the sphere of the actions of citizens can be tried to be installed. It is also expressed as the culture which society prefers for their life.

The creation of culture contributes to the transformation of norm. The progress of culture contributes to the progress of civilisation. Undevelopped culture of former generations are replaced by the newer. The cultivation of culture enriches a community. Various standards save persons who weren’t evaluated well in one criterion. Small communities within the large one maintains the diversity. It is too distant to have an architecture that one is connected to the large nation-state directly without accessing to the intermediary type of community. It is because the direct connection towards the large makes difficult to grasp the enough aspects of the nation, compared with the smaller. Not directly connected to the national level, the intermediary such as local levels are necessary and helpful to create the culture of political participation.

The social structure values people who are talkative enough to participate. Actions are needed to be done by active behaviours of persons. If a country seeks participatory politics, some encourage others to participate. Even so, there would be those who are not much interested in the participation. When they feel the necessity they would participate in it. But when feeling the unrightness to their politics they could act by voting but also some could act in a way, not for example voting.

While securing the universal suffrage, leaving it to those who engage in politics makes it a type of the politics with limited range of people participating, which is those who are eager to participate. In a larger community, people would be harder to have the actual consciousness of joining politics. Their vote is one of the numerous votes. Recognition could work in small community recognising each other as democratic. In order to have a society where “a legitimate government is one whose authority citizens can recognize while still regarding themselves as equal, autonomous, rational agents”(1).

(1)Scanlon, T. M. (2003). The Difficulty of Tolerance. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 14-15.

Published 17 July 2023, Last updated 18 July 2023

Hopefully, in order to have the stability in the governance, the architecture of politics which doesn’t much depend on the quality of the ruler and the ruled and systematically prevent the occurrence of negative sides is what needs to be considered.

When it comes to the negative aspects, think of the citizens gained power thanks to decentralisation, there could be a situation in which the masses go to the wrong direction which cannot be redirected into the right by a few; contrarily when power is centred to a few and when they are corrupt, it is difficult to get it right by the rest of people. Furthermore, if a platform is owned by a person in influence, the turnover has significant impact on its ecosystem. The stability of society may be maintained by the decentralisation of power into the edge which could prevent the sudden instability caused by the transfer of power from a person in power to another, and the empowerment of the citizens in society constantly.

The concept of consent requires the care about coercion. For example, submission and consent are different in the perspective that “both involve acceptance, but only the latter is valorized by free agency”(8). Forcing one to give his consent cannot be said free consent. The importance of free consent is that “Force cannot convince the mind of anything. We can enforce outward behaviour, but not inward conviction”(9). Making governance by consent could face the problem of coercion. It could cause social pressures to oppress one’s opinion.

In order to have resilience in governance as well as suitability to a wider variety of people, the flexibility might work better if it is incorporated. People are different as some are more inclined to individualism and others are not. If it could be flexibly changed depending on the characteristics of the people, it could be adaptable to wider range of citizens and situations. For example, those who prefer individualism would as much as they can represent their own ideas by themselves although, as a citizen, there is going to be a certain limit of self-representation. That is because without such limitation people would participate as in direct democracy. There’s certain sort of harmonization with the concept of indirect democracy in the consent governance as the latter chooses the representatives. In terms of practicing, there would be communities in any size for governance, otherwise complete individualism and complete direct democracy which go to unstable when the public is influenced in large scale to the wrong direction.

Another domain of importance is the rights of citizens. Even in terms of protecting the rights of citizens, the model of consent is supposed to work. In order to ensure the “unalienable Rights”(8) of citizens, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”(11). In the history of US context, it was argued that “the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty”(12). It doesn’t violate people’s liberty and rights. To incorporate these ideas is consentocracy which is a form of governance based on consent and puts the concept of consent to the front.

However, in the perspective of the rights, they are not limited to those of citizens’ end. Around 20th and 21st centuries, the rights of citizens and minorities have been often claimed. Due to that movement, society has progressed towards protecting them, which is a remarkable advancement. In this context, it often is talked from the perspective of citizens however, it may better to assume that rights are not limited to citizens, and it is what authority also can have. For the sake of maintaining the stability of a community, people are required to serve at least some portions to the community. If people are obliged to follow what authority orders which is for the benefits of community and its happiness, their duty could be ranged a variety of things. When they are at danger such as war, in order to preserve the existence of that state, they may be given the order to join the war for the sake of preservation. While one country takes action for their preservation against another, another would be also at danger. At the time, for instance, when facing war, the right of life and of death — its history dates back to patria potestas — can be exercised(13). One country to preserve their existence, they kill the people of another(14). The power which authority has could put the lives of person the end. It is that “those who are a sort of biological danger towards the others”(15) can be killed by the exercise of power(16).

Going back to the paradigm of consent, in order to be a member of a political community, consent model is used and it has the mechanism of justification of authority of a state. Without having a state mechanism, it could be chaotic that people of different interests often collide each other, even the danger of life may be caused. For the stability and safety of life, to create community and have a set of rules based on consent is an option. In the situation that states are established, states of different interests would be at war. When facing war with another state, their state is put at danger. For preserving their state, they have to be at war with another, otherwise they are defeated, that means that their members need to be had in war. If the reasons that members of a political community first gave their consent was to preserve the safety of their life, without it they are more likely to be in conflict one another, they will become under danger, even if they belonged to the community, at the time war broke out. This may be called dilemma. Without having balance of power among states, it is difficult to avoid war.

Compact could be a form of mutual understanding that lets society work. Based on the concept, people make agreement which would make the frequency of conflict less happen. The agreement given by their free consent makes a sort of paradigm that people rely on for the organisation of a state. Even in the technological context of the late 20th and the beginning of 21st century, the robust concept of compact has been influential and it is one of the key components in governance.

(8) Locke, J., 2016. Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. NewYork: Oxford University Press. p. xii.

(9) Locke, J., 2016. Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. NewYork: Oxford University Press. p. xxv.

(10) Lessig, L., 2019. Fidelity & Constraint: How the Suprime Court Has Read the American Constitution. NewYork: Oxford University Press. p.13. Lessig referred to Thomas Jefferson. The words come from what Jefferson had written.

(11) Lessig, L., 2019. Fidelity & Constraint: How the Suprime Court Has Read the American Constitution. NewYork: Oxford University Press. p.13. Lessig referred to Thomas Jefferson. The words come from what Jefferson had written.

(12) Hamilton, A., Madison, J. & Jay, J., 2008. The Federalist Papers. NewYork: Oxford University Press. p.13.

(13) Foucault, M., 1976. Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. pp.177-178.

(14) Foucault, M., 1976. Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. p.180.

(15) Foucault, M., 1976. Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. p.181. The original text is French.

(16) Foucault, M., 1976. Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard. p.181.