Daniel,

Thanks for the shout out.

From tribal chieftains and elders, to kings and courts, to presidents and legislatures, government functions as the executive and regulatory agent of society. As biological organisms, our executive and regulatory function is the central nervous system. Certainly there are many biological organisms with minimal nervous systems and relate to their environment far more neutrally and reciprocally. Unfortunately we are not one of them. Having become top predators, through group cooperation and interaction, we are very linear and goal oriented. The hunt keeps us focused. Which is to say that we are not going to eliminate government anytime soon, so the best alternative is to understand it, in order to respond to it most proactively.

Yes, government can be extremely malignant and amount to nothing so much as a gang, predating on society, often resulting in multiple such centers of power, competing for power and resources. All very beneficial to those within them, who act nothing so much as cells within this larger organism.

Which explains the fundamentally religious acceptance we have towards our group identities, be they religions, nations, sports teams(colors), etc.

As such, these groups amount to nodes in a larger network, much as the people within them are nodes in the group network.

Which is just how nature functions, but we have an ideals based, goal oriented culture, in what amounts to a conceptually binary and cyclical reality. We think that as it is all connected, it is singular and some ideal state awaits us, even though there are multitudes of particular ideals, from Heaven to Mammon.

The reality we actually live is that tension, balance and feedback of opposites and multiple shades and parts of such spectrums. Good and bad, up and down, right and left, positive and negative, personal and public, interior and exterior, etc.

In an ideals based paradigm, the tendency is to go to particular extremes, rather than admit the opposite side serves as much a necessary function as your side of the debate, resulting in polarization pulling apart all nuance.

Consider efficiency, which is to do more with less. So the ideal of perfect efficiency would be to do everything with nothing. Obviously the feedback will beat you up, far before you reach that goal.

This dynamic is thermodynamics. Energy expands, as form coalesces. Galaxies are energy radiating out, as form gravites in. Our bodies have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems driving us on, along with that central nervous system sorting through the multitudes of desires and impulses bubbling up from the heart and gut. Societies have those multitude of factions and desires pushing out, with cultural and civil forms pulling in and mediating among them. Not every acorn gets to be an oak tree, even if they all want to be.

The consequence is the feedback of the patterns emerging from and affecting the processes producing them.

So, yes, government does deserve pushing back, but not to do away with government, merely to keep it in line and not taken over by the in crowd, such that it does predate on the society, to the eventual detriment of even the in crowd. Even parasites need a healthy host.

Fluctuations.