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While we should read the signs of the times, some principles of right and wrong are deeply ingrained into human nature. Let’s look at our little world of dreams from the perspective of morals.

Unlike Thomas More’s ingenious Utopia, the system of collective intelligence (CoIn) is designed for today’s and the future’s (and the past’s?) “flesh and blood” folks (and other beings?). We change the world without changing people. Instead of trying to eliminate wrong behavior or bad individuals, we intend to optimize the balance of the opposing forces (yin and young, if you like that metaphor).

Let’s take corruption as an example. In the material world, corruption means misuse of power, bribery. Analysis from the perspective of the fraud triangle (discussed in the first paragraphs of this post):

• More power and money open more opportunities for bribe. CoIn distributes both in a way that significantly decrease those opportunities.
• Bureaucracy and hierarchy encourages bribery. In CoIn, these are not part of the system.
• Monopolies and collusion of corporations (not to mention crime syndicates) helps to justify bribes. “There is no other option”, “everyone does this”, “it’s still better to pay these guys than the others” are typical explanations. In CoIn, the number of situations in which bribe makes any sense is minimized.

Now we can expand our scope to the non-material (spiritual?) world. How does mental corruption work? Let’s think about the most awful thing that someone can commit – I let you use your imagination, dear reader.

Should we punish that person? Of course, dreadful acts should have consequences, and the perpetrator should be held responsible. See this post for a framework in CoIn.

But does that make the individual invaluable or wicked? Probably, but I think that it’s smart to not assume that. Let me explain why.

If we believe that someone is an inherently bad person (not to mention dehumanization), then logical deduction may lead us to scary results. For example: bad people are a threat to the society, so their followers also pose a threat, and people who share some views with their followers are more likely to become followers, and so on. At the end of this logic, we are controlled by fear.

On the other hand, if we don’t judge human beings, we can focus on understanding why terrible things happened, preventing reoccurrence, and finding the best course of action to keep the phenomenon under control (including, but not limited to, effective sanctions). Dealing with emotions is hard, but measure twice and cut once to break the vicious circle. After all, finding peace of mind is the best for everyone, isn’t it?

Homework:

Specify some terrible things committed by people. How did you and / or others handle those situations? Would you change the response after thinking it over again?