Cultural dysfunction

One sign that a culture is dysfunctional is that people value their "individual rights and liberties" over their social responsibility to wear masks and and practice physical distancing during a global pandemic...

IT and the need for police

So, briefly, from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

The move to defund police departments runs into trouble as soon as we start thinking about the nature of human societies. In small-scale societies, where people might be organized into foraging bands or horticulture-based villages, we would typically see maybe between twenty and 100 individuals, many related by blood or marriage. Also typically, enculturation of children would stress Dependence Training (DT), a mode of upbringing that emphasizes the social ties between group members and social responsibility to the group. When an individual becomes disruptive by, say, stealing, or acting aggressively toward other group members, they will be sanctioned. If the offense is great enough, they might be banished or even killed. The punishment would have the weight of group consensus; there are no "police" in such societies.

In large-scale agricultural/industrial societies, which have developed only in the last 5K years or so, populations become much larger and more dense. People are no longer related to everyone else, they more often than not don't even know each other. Enculturation moves away from DT and shifts toward Independence Training (IT). Individuals' rights outweigh social responsibility. This shift is exacerbated by Capitalism, which is only really a few hundred years old. IT exalts the Individual over the group, and the Individual finds it easier to commit socially irresponsible behavior: theft, physical violence, homicide, etc. Because there are too many people for the group to function in a cohesive way, a special class of group members has to come into play: the Police.

And this is why we will probably always need some level of policing. At least until we find a way to change our mode of enculturation to value dependence over independence.