it's late at night and comparatively few people are going to see my tweets right now, so im going rant(?) about something that's been eating away at me for a really long time

when the GoT S8 came out, i stumbled on this blog post ( https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/) in scientific american. the post overall was alright, but what really caught my attention was this specific segment and its contention - that the mark of a good society is that it doesn't need heroes

that's something I've been thinking about a lot recently with everything going on - the extent to which the viability of our society is dependent on the personal character and competence of the people in charge of it. our system requires heroes. and that's bad.

now this isn't true to the extent that it has been in the past or is in other societies. we have a system of checks and balances and democratic accountability, flawed as it is. but even that, clearly, cannot insulate us from the effects of bad people in government.

a society whose viability is dependent on the quality of the person in control of the state is not a sustainable society - even democratic elections, the most reliable mechanism in existence for ensuring that the right people win political power, can return poor results.

even when we manage to make good electoral choices, we're still only slightly insulating ourselves from the risk of placing so much in the hands of a so few people; not even the best leader is immune from moral and strategic error, and indeed, as people, they are prone to it.

in the face of our present crisis, many people want us to emulate countries whose administrative states acted decisively and effectively. we should. but we also need to look to countries that succeeded *in spite* of state failure, bc that's far more applicable to where we are rn.

one such country is japan, which ive discussed at length in the past. but i think a far more replicable, interesting, and compelling example is that set by hong kong: https://outline.com/5dKmMy