New show: NewsReal with Joe & Niall

[Joe]

Something interesting to note in the Valencia floods; yesterday both the King and Queen, and later the PM arrived. The PM's car was attacked and the King and Queen had mud and other items thrown at them and a chant of "murderers!" rang out from the crowd.

It's gives an insight into how much the social contract between the people and 'authorities' still holds sway. It's possible that, prior to the floods, if you had asked many of those people who were chanting "murderers", about their opinion on the monarchy, they might have said they are outdated and corrupt and 'we don't need them'. Yet as soon as disaster strikes and they are suffering, what people really believe comes out: that the monarchy or other authority has a duty of protection over the people and are invested with 'powers' that can and should protect the people from excess suffering and harm, of whatever nature.

If the people experience excess suffering and harm, they immediately and instinctively know where to put the blame.

The same is true for atheists or people who dismiss religion. They can do so with impunity during good times, but as soon as disaster strikes, they're the first to appeal to god, or his representatives on earth. It's similar to a child that disses mommy when she tries to stop him or her doing something that might get them into trouble, but as soon a trouble arrives, it's immediately "MOMMY!!!"

 

[T.C.]

I wonder how much people’s anger with authorities in such scenarios comes from the idea that unconsciously they know that there is a human-cosmic connection, and that bad leadership or bad people in power leads to natural disasters.

 

[Joe]

I wonder how much people’s anger with authorities in such scenarios comes from the idea that unconsciously they know that there is a human-cosmic connection, and that bad leadership or bad people in power leads to natural disasters.

Yeah, that's the "mandate of heaven" thing. I doubt many people know about it consciously, but like I said previously, there is this unspoken social contract where the people give power to the authorities, and with that power the authorities are meant to handle the 'big stuff', while the people get on with living their lives.

When that contract is deemed to have been broken, people express what they believe is righteous anger at the authorities. The problem is that they take it too far and ascribe culpability to the authorities for, effectively, not preventing natural disasters. This has been happening a lot lately, and many revolutions and uprisings etc. in modern history were sparked moreso by natural events that caused the people to suffer en masse rather than the political explanations given by gentlemen historians after the fact.

The problem with the human cosmic connection/mandate of heaven is that it's not easy to always link natural disasters with evidence of particularly egregious leadership prior to it. So I think it might be something that holds true moreso at the end of certain cycles when really big disasters befall the planet. It's likely that at such times, there is plenty of evidence of the corrupt and fetid nature of political leadership across the globe, and it may well play a part in the way in which the cataclysmic events play out. It's all rather complex it seems.