Life has a way of providing a balance, consequences and yet... no real justice. It provides struggles, solutions and no guarantees. For instance... sexually transmitted diseases lay hazard to the unfaithful, promiscuous and careless, yet MANY people who have STD's weren't necessarily living the life of a sexually active person. Over indulge in the pleasures of food? Life hands you high cholesterol, obesity and the increased risk of a heart attack. Yet there are many people who've died of heart attacks who may not have even been overweight. The risks are always prevalent.
So here we are, seeing ourselves constantly threatened with our own survival. People, for the sake of their own survival, will retaliate when their safety is threatened by another. For example, if I were to go around punching people... eventually someone would try to fight back and could even potentially kill me. In a way, life just sort of works out to keep things at a certain (yet unpredictable) balance.
What's really fascinating is the various ways different societies cope with this inevitable survival that we all struggle with. Human relations power is a part of this balance in life. You're as powerful as I am, so I empathize your struggle. We lay equal risk to each other and there for... we find ourselves at a mutual understanding.
Of course, with power, comes the obvious problem of hierarchy. If I'm a human and you're an ant... where's my incentive not to squash you? Will your ant friends get mad and try to bite me? I can just kill your entire family for fun and then enjoy the rest of my day. Matter of fact, it's interesting to note that humans are by far the smartest animal on the planet which places us at the top of the food chain (nature's hierarchy of survival) which gives us little, if any, incentive not to eat all the animals below us. Again... life provides no certainty and occasionally an animal may kill a person.
The reason for mentioning the person killing an ant scenario is to make an analogy of hierarchies with human interactions. Our natural incentive to empathize with people of equal ranking of ourselves is thrown off track when one person places themselves on top of another. This is why state leaders are often quick to go to war. There is no empathy for peasants in far away lands. There is little to no empathy for a state leader's own citizens (their only motivation to be nice is in a representative democracy where their own lust for power is threatened by majority rule).
Perhaps the only reason that the notion of anarchism isn't a highly celebrated world view today is because people feel threatened by hierarchy. That's right... people are afraid of anarchy (a lack of hierarchy) because they're afraid of hierarchy itself. "Who protects me from the bullies?" Here's the part that most people don't get though. There is something known as a collective power. Collective power as a whole is stronger than any individual... yet collective power wouldn't wield violence on itself because... well... that would defeat the purpose of the whole notion of survival.
A society based on collective power could regulate itself because it would create a communal sense of survival. If you don't believe this to be true... next time you have a family gathering... just start punching the shit out of one of your relatives and see if your family cheers you (the bully) on as your grandmother lays on the floor in a pool of blood.
Cooperation and collective power is the only way we can really survive in this world if we want to live in further safety.
