It is no surprise to me that there are people who manipulate others. I am reminded of that every time I shop for a new automobile.
…and politicians?! The only difference between a used car salesman and a politician is the size of their audience. P.T. Barnum is credited with saying: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of the rest of us to outvote them.
Hitler? I wonder if the forces he was manipulating were the ones that produce social structure. Regardless, he did not achieve the results he was predicting. This is the result he predicted:
The “1000-year Reich” lasted 12 years. Whatever forces he was manipulating, Hitler did not achieve predictable results. Ultimately, he did not substantially alter the fundamental structure of society.
To decide whether one is manipulating the forces that produce social structure, one must first identify those forces. Humans are predisposed, as a result of evolutionary forces, to interact. Interaction is one of the primary forces that produce social structure.
Social structure is the emergent, unintended result of individual members of a population interacting collaboratively and competitively to procure life-sustaining and other essential resources from the environment they inhabit. The form in which the structure emerges is influenced by the nature of the environment.
Social structure emerges as a natural outcome of interaction. The result does not conform to the will or intention of any individual member of the population, nor any particular faction of the population.
Many people hope to manufacture a better society — better for themselves, that is.
