Random thoughts on World Events!
It's my blog so I get to blather endlessly about boring things like politics and things that don't affect everyone by virtue of the fact that they choose to ignore them and they therefore cannot possibly hurt them in any way shape or form.
That said, let me begin by laying down a few basic precepts so you can follow my line of reasoning. Clearly you're welcome not to agree with me on these things but ... that way you won't get lost through my ramblings.
Government as a creation of society was made to serve the people.
People as individuals are inherently good and kind and want the best for themselves and their own and likely everyone around them.
It is when people join groups that they then subvert their own goodness or come to negotiate their relative goodness. An example, religion tells you to think a certain way. Social groups tell you what is or is not acceptable behavior for said group like the Lions' Club or the KKK or the Nazi party or the Republican party.
More can be accomplished through reasoned discourse than violent means ... maybe?
All power corrupts. Even just a little.
Since all governments serve (or should serve the will of the people) the people should serve the government and by compulsion in the government. Essentially your job in government doesn't simply end with you casting your vote, you should be required to be a member of government.
Those precepts aside I've been wondering recently given what is going on in the Middle East with all those people peacefully protesting and what's going on in Wisconsin with those people peacefully protesting as well whether peaceful protest is at all an answer to change. Was Ghandi right, or is Malcolm X right?
I'm curious.
The people in power have all the power, or at least not the power that comes of numbers but the power to disempower, the power of money, greed, coercion, propaganda, the media, pretty much everything. Then we turn to the people and I ask, what power do we have? We have the power of numbers, which is significant. We have the power of being the very wheels and cogs that run the world. Without working people, without everyone's agreed upon consent nothing not government not the world can function. The shoe maker cannot sell shoes to people who will not buy them anymore than the people can buy shoes from a shoemaker who will not make them.
A simplistic view? Not necessarily when you take in mind that a unity of shoemakers could do that. A union of shoemakers could collectively bargain in their favor, much the way the rich do.
Everything is stacked in their favor. Now before you dismiss this as nothing more than liberal bias or the jealous of the poor understand the simple truths that the rich segregate themselves from the poor of their own volition. They use the excuse that they wish to protect and safeguard their wealth, which is a reasonable argument, until it becomes obvious that they have obscene wealth. Why flaunt what you want to so covetously protect, no? And taken to a real extreme, why profit to the extent that someone like Mubarak did when your whole nation is in poverty? He claimed to be an Egyptian and to want to stay in Egypt and I do not question his love of his nation just the love of his people. Its estimated that he had anywhere from 40 to 70 billion dollars in offshore accounts.
If he loved his country so much why didn't he use Egyptian banks, then? At the very least his people could have reaped the rewards of the investment of his money in his nations own resources. This becomes a bit tragic when you realize the number of dictatorships in the globe, how many of them occur in third world nations and how rich and entrenched the upper classes are in the power spheres in those countries.
Here I ask you again, just how safe does your money, your possession have to be that it must be kept so completely out of reach of the poor that you have to take it out of your country, that you have to segregate yourself and your kind from the very people you purportedly work for in governance?
America is no different in that regard. The majority of the nation is in poverty or teetering on poverty. The very programs that are made to help people in financial danger are all currently under attack by a Republican, anti-intellectual party that wants to rewrite history books rather than read them. What got us out of the last depression was nothing short of the government putting itself into debt by funding infrastructure to mobilize job creation. There is not bigger or greater employer for work than the government. Teachers, policemen, the fire department, the postal service and those disgusting individuals who create our laws all work for and are paid by tax money and governments. This includes the soldiers who are made to shoot on the very people they are supposed to protect.
Why then are we so busy trying to cut spending when we most need to spend money to employ people to make sure they have food on their tables and they don't become unemployed, disenfranchised, and so displeased with their governments lack of action that they demand a new government?
Which then brings me to my original argument. If you peacefully protest, as the people of Egypt did, and the people of Wisconsin have, and the government turns a deaf ear, do we then go back to our homes defeated, when the will of the many is not being serviced by the very government we elect and ask to rule over us? Or is violence then a necessary form of bringing about the change we want to see?
I'm loathe to think that violence is the answer, because there's nothing I hate worse than stupidity and violence seems the logical reasonable answer to a blathering brute. Humans have evolved enough to create computers, to be able to use propaganda and other tools for coercion and disseminating truths or lies ... and as a very intelligent man I admire once said:
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov
Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/i/isaacasimo133913.html#ixzz1EUVWryRL
It's from his Foundation books, of which I've only read the first, but I should read the rest, they're awesome.
I'm loathe to think that violence is an answer. But when reasoned argument will not work, did the United States not bring about change through an American Revolution? When the government refuses to listen to the people, and our representative system is corrupt and not working then are we not duty bound to change the system and the corrupt government that runs it? It then becomes a question of peaceful protest or violent uprising.
Malcolm X was feared because he empowered the black man told him to arm himself, which the constitution readily allows for, and that was met with a violent backlash, and his and Martin Luther King's deaths. Is violence then the answer when we're dealing with unreasoning, self-centered beasts like the rich, the entitled, and the entrenched?
Nope. Plain and simply no. We've learned the lessons too often, and seen them again and again that violence only begets violence. Jesus taught us a better way. And while there is probably a lot of wisdom in the words of Malcolm X, raising a fist against a fist is not one of them. Neither should we roll over and accept our defeat too readily. The world can only change if we change it and what keeps change from happening is our reticence to lose anything, our collective unwillingness to sacrifice, and sadly the way we too easily become victims to the divisive tools of their propaganda and their rhetoric.
We don't have to beat them to make them see things our way, we just have to outsmart them.
I for one am sad at what our government is doing in the hands of the rich who don't care for what the majority of the poor people of this country have to go through. Our very president can't understand the urgency of the necessity of jobs, for all his enlightened and liberal views.
The answer then lies in us. To empower ourselves, to bring about the change we want to see in the world by not just being it, preaching it as well to those who will hear, and helping others to see that you can't fight bigotry and hatred, and poverty with more richness, and indifference and worse the same hatred thrown back. Because the rich hide behind tall walls and they own the police force. In the end the stones we choose to throw at them only break the windows of our homes.
It is only when we the people unite together in great numbers and say, "Enough!" That true change will come about in the world. All we have to do is start in our neighborhood. If we create a big enough wave of change then the rest of the world MUST follow. Or doesn't every country in the world have television and cars? If we but give the people what they want, they will get it.
Just something to think about.
Peace out.
That said, let me begin by laying down a few basic precepts so you can follow my line of reasoning. Clearly you're welcome not to agree with me on these things but ... that way you won't get lost through my ramblings.
Government as a creation of society was made to serve the people.
People as individuals are inherently good and kind and want the best for themselves and their own and likely everyone around them.
It is when people join groups that they then subvert their own goodness or come to negotiate their relative goodness. An example, religion tells you to think a certain way. Social groups tell you what is or is not acceptable behavior for said group like the Lions' Club or the KKK or the Nazi party or the Republican party.
More can be accomplished through reasoned discourse than violent means ... maybe?
All power corrupts. Even just a little.
Since all governments serve (or should serve the will of the people) the people should serve the government and by compulsion in the government. Essentially your job in government doesn't simply end with you casting your vote, you should be required to be a member of government.
Those precepts aside I've been wondering recently given what is going on in the Middle East with all those people peacefully protesting and what's going on in Wisconsin with those people peacefully protesting as well whether peaceful protest is at all an answer to change. Was Ghandi right, or is Malcolm X right?
I'm curious.
The people in power have all the power, or at least not the power that comes of numbers but the power to disempower, the power of money, greed, coercion, propaganda, the media, pretty much everything. Then we turn to the people and I ask, what power do we have? We have the power of numbers, which is significant. We have the power of being the very wheels and cogs that run the world. Without working people, without everyone's agreed upon consent nothing not government not the world can function. The shoe maker cannot sell shoes to people who will not buy them anymore than the people can buy shoes from a shoemaker who will not make them.
A simplistic view? Not necessarily when you take in mind that a unity of shoemakers could do that. A union of shoemakers could collectively bargain in their favor, much the way the rich do.
Everything is stacked in their favor. Now before you dismiss this as nothing more than liberal bias or the jealous of the poor understand the simple truths that the rich segregate themselves from the poor of their own volition. They use the excuse that they wish to protect and safeguard their wealth, which is a reasonable argument, until it becomes obvious that they have obscene wealth. Why flaunt what you want to so covetously protect, no? And taken to a real extreme, why profit to the extent that someone like Mubarak did when your whole nation is in poverty? He claimed to be an Egyptian and to want to stay in Egypt and I do not question his love of his nation just the love of his people. Its estimated that he had anywhere from 40 to 70 billion dollars in offshore accounts.
If he loved his country so much why didn't he use Egyptian banks, then? At the very least his people could have reaped the rewards of the investment of his money in his nations own resources. This becomes a bit tragic when you realize the number of dictatorships in the globe, how many of them occur in third world nations and how rich and entrenched the upper classes are in the power spheres in those countries.
Here I ask you again, just how safe does your money, your possession have to be that it must be kept so completely out of reach of the poor that you have to take it out of your country, that you have to segregate yourself and your kind from the very people you purportedly work for in governance?
America is no different in that regard. The majority of the nation is in poverty or teetering on poverty. The very programs that are made to help people in financial danger are all currently under attack by a Republican, anti-intellectual party that wants to rewrite history books rather than read them. What got us out of the last depression was nothing short of the government putting itself into debt by funding infrastructure to mobilize job creation. There is not bigger or greater employer for work than the government. Teachers, policemen, the fire department, the postal service and those disgusting individuals who create our laws all work for and are paid by tax money and governments. This includes the soldiers who are made to shoot on the very people they are supposed to protect.
Why then are we so busy trying to cut spending when we most need to spend money to employ people to make sure they have food on their tables and they don't become unemployed, disenfranchised, and so displeased with their governments lack of action that they demand a new government?
Which then brings me to my original argument. If you peacefully protest, as the people of Egypt did, and the people of Wisconsin have, and the government turns a deaf ear, do we then go back to our homes defeated, when the will of the many is not being serviced by the very government we elect and ask to rule over us? Or is violence then a necessary form of bringing about the change we want to see?
I'm loathe to think that violence is the answer, because there's nothing I hate worse than stupidity and violence seems the logical reasonable answer to a blathering brute. Humans have evolved enough to create computers, to be able to use propaganda and other tools for coercion and disseminating truths or lies ... and as a very intelligent man I admire once said:
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov
Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/i/isaacasimo133913.html#ixzz1EUVWryRL
It's from his Foundation books, of which I've only read the first, but I should read the rest, they're awesome.
I'm loathe to think that violence is an answer. But when reasoned argument will not work, did the United States not bring about change through an American Revolution? When the government refuses to listen to the people, and our representative system is corrupt and not working then are we not duty bound to change the system and the corrupt government that runs it? It then becomes a question of peaceful protest or violent uprising.
Malcolm X was feared because he empowered the black man told him to arm himself, which the constitution readily allows for, and that was met with a violent backlash, and his and Martin Luther King's deaths. Is violence then the answer when we're dealing with unreasoning, self-centered beasts like the rich, the entitled, and the entrenched?
Nope. Plain and simply no. We've learned the lessons too often, and seen them again and again that violence only begets violence. Jesus taught us a better way. And while there is probably a lot of wisdom in the words of Malcolm X, raising a fist against a fist is not one of them. Neither should we roll over and accept our defeat too readily. The world can only change if we change it and what keeps change from happening is our reticence to lose anything, our collective unwillingness to sacrifice, and sadly the way we too easily become victims to the divisive tools of their propaganda and their rhetoric.
We don't have to beat them to make them see things our way, we just have to outsmart them.
I for one am sad at what our government is doing in the hands of the rich who don't care for what the majority of the poor people of this country have to go through. Our very president can't understand the urgency of the necessity of jobs, for all his enlightened and liberal views.
The answer then lies in us. To empower ourselves, to bring about the change we want to see in the world by not just being it, preaching it as well to those who will hear, and helping others to see that you can't fight bigotry and hatred, and poverty with more richness, and indifference and worse the same hatred thrown back. Because the rich hide behind tall walls and they own the police force. In the end the stones we choose to throw at them only break the windows of our homes.
It is only when we the people unite together in great numbers and say, "Enough!" That true change will come about in the world. All we have to do is start in our neighborhood. If we create a big enough wave of change then the rest of the world MUST follow. Or doesn't every country in the world have television and cars? If we but give the people what they want, they will get it.
Just something to think about.
Peace out.