Intimidation, Coercion, Violence, and Destruction: A Perspective from the Entropy Law

From the entropy law, it is much more difficult to bring up than to break down. It takes years for a zebra to mature. But it only takes minutes, or seconds for a zebra to be taken down by a predator.  It takes decades for a person to grow up. But it only takes minutes, or seconds for a person to be taken down by a killer. Because of this huge asymmetry, the most important and effective social interaction is destruction instead of construction. The greatest figures in the recorded history are generally the ones cause the most destructions. God from the Old Testament caused a great amount of destructions to almost all social groups. In the great flood, only one family was spared. In 1 Samuel 15, the Lord Almighty commanded,

 ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.  Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

David is probably the most beloved figure in human history. In 1 Samuel 27, David did the following,

Now David and his men went up and raided the Geshurites, the Girzites and the Amalekites. (From ancient times these peoples had lived in the land extending to Shur and Egypt.)  Whenever David attacked an area, he did not leave a man or woman alive, but took sheep and cattle, donkeys and camels, and clothes. …

He did not leave a man or woman alive to be brought to Gath, for he thought, “They might inform on us and say, ‘This is what David did.’” And such was his practice as long as he lived in Philistine territory.

David committed genocide to eliminate his enemies. Violence is not only important in the past, but also today. Huntington noted,

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do. (P 51, Huntington, 1996)

More often, the threat of destruction instead of destruction itself is carried out to reduce the cost of implementation.

Divide and rule is the destruction of a coherent group of opposition.

High fixed cost systems, which have devoted more resources to build up,  are more vulnerable to the threat of violence and destruction. Those with PhDs are more vulnerable to the threat of losing their positions than those with little education. That is why some clear scams, such as climate catastrophe, form consensus so easily in academia while there are many skeptics among uneducated.

This doesn’t mean all academics are convinced about the doctrine of climate catastrophe. But few are willing to speak out. For example, John Clauser, a Nobel laureate in physics, only speak out his opinion about climate catastrophe after he got Nobel prize in 2022, when he was eighty years old. Nobel prize is the highest prize in science. He speaks out only after he had no more higher prize to collect and when he was already eighty years old.

References

Samuel P. Huntington, 1996, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster.