What kind of place is this that we need others to govern us? The pain of modern life will never be alleviated by any outside authority, be they elected, imbued by the divine, wealthy, militarily powerful or otherwise, so looking to any form of officialdom for the solutions to mankinds real needs has thus far turned out to be a fruitless endeavor.
The best that any government or it’s so-called divine counterpart, religion, have been able to come up with over the ages is to keep us and our ancestors (going back to antiquity) in varying states of want and discontent.
Now that the endless parade of kings, despots, religions, governments and myriad social hierarchies which have festooned history since time immemorial have been been replaced by the current ruling ethos, capitalism, it’s absurd to believe that any politician is going to provide any of solutions needed to stay the madness currently running rampant around the globe, when it is they themselves who are the spokespersons for the very forces who have been mindlessly providing us the means for us to tear our world apart. Look to yourself and not some glossy mouthpiece for the means to a better life, because in the end, whatever that end may be, the choice has always been yours and yours alone. No matter who you voted for…
Amen to that. It’s similar here in the UK. We have a supine and compliant house whose members must vote with the government if they want personal advancement into the higher paid ministerial positions. The government has total control of the commons. The members are controlled by the party machines. Two masters who must be served if an MP has any wish to advance. Naturally, MPs do want to get paid more. More so than they want to serve their constituencies. My solution is simple. You must decide whether you (ever) want to sit as an MP or be a member of the government. You can never do both. In addition, two terms only as an elected MP, then you may never stand again. Bingo, no more professional politicians, the party machines lose control.
A place full of easily irritated, non-too-bright, physically flimsy balding apes who need some sort of government to keep them from running wild, falling apart into chaos or just getting killed from bad luck or deprivation.
That’s because Life Is Not Star Trek. Even the best government can’t just fire up the replicators and give people everything they want, and because people are discontent by nature. Governments are far better than the alternatives. It takes an evil government indeed to be worse than the results of no government.
Organized government and religion of all stripes have been the command and control apparatus responsible for mobilizing the masses against each other for a very, very long time. Killing in the name of god, in the name of territorial aggrandizement, in the name of nationalism, in the name of race or creed, almost all the terror and misery mankind has brought upon itself has been as a result of populations being stoked and manipulated by those small percentages of people who’ve managed to gain control of the minds of the population and the machinery of state in order to bend it to their purpose.
All I’m suggesting is that we start thinking about perhaps not continually perpetuating the systems which have brought us our greatest troubles, and start think more along the lines each individual engendering in themselves a sense of duty and responsibility to the person standing next to them at any given time. Regardless of who they are. You see, I’m a big believer in that what people believe is what it all will be, and I’m simply saying that we need to find a better dream than the ones we’ve been fornicating with for the past 5 to 10 thousand years. Namely religion, capitalism, nationalism and so on…
As far as replicators go, we don’t need them, although we may in the years to come as the growing global population continues to strain the capacity of our very small world to support it. At any rate, we make everything already. Enough for everyone (with judicious population control being exercised by each individual and the general concenus being that we are all actually equal, as crazy as that may sound to many).
Fear, greed and lust for power, some of mankinds most unedifying traits (as well as being the tripod upon which modern capitalism stands), have found their most poignant expression and manifestation thru the apparatus of state, religion and capitalism. I read somewhere once that if you ‘control the coin and the courts, you can let the rabble have the rest’, and surely that holds true as much now as ever in these times we live in.
All I’m saying is that humans, globally have to start thinking about embracing the more wholesome ideologies of equality, individual responsibility to yourself and others, harmony with nature and a cosmic view rather than a world view, if we are to proceed to the next stage of social evolution peacefully and responsibly. And the current systems we now serve are almost certain to fail in that endeavor.
Not meaningless…obsolete. If we’re going to survive we must learn to stop leaving the governing of ourselves to others and start engendering a sense of responsibility for ourselves, everyone around us, and everything else on this small lifeboat floating through space which we live on.
To beat that old SDMB horse one more time:
- Do some dreaming
- Develop new paradigm for social order without laws
- ???
- Profit!
And for all of that, they are still less lethal than what you get without governments ( I make no defense of religion ). In cultures without organized government, you don’t have Eden; you have the Law of the Jungle. The war of all against all. A society where more people die of murder than old age, where most women’s “husbands” are just the rapist who killed her last rapist to acquire her, and where brutality counts more than anything else.
And when everyone is a genetically engineered superhuman, with built in benevolence and the intellect to implement it well, perhaps we’ll have your anarchist’s paradise ( although I doubt it ). But we have to deal with the humans who actually exist, most of whom don’t believe that everyone is equal, and many of whom are extremely greedy. Or shortsighted, or brutal, or power hungry, and so on - and government is the only way to keep such people in check that has ever had much success on a large scale.
Not without laws.
Without all-pervading governance (religious, capitalistic or otherwise) dictating nearly every aspect of each individuals life
Without taxation
Without censorship
Without state sponsered intrusion into our private lives
Without state sponsered torture of those we call enemies
Without the most vital resources of the planet being under the control of relatively tiny minority of power-brokers who are as detached from the common mans concerns as you and I are from the moon
Without a continually flourishing police-state (which if you lived as close to Manhattan as I do, would see growing at an appaling rate)
Without a grotesquely burgeoning penal system in which millions of people are kept in a revolving door of crime, incarceration, repeat offense and repeat incarceration (this system also expanding at terrifying speed)
Without monetary systems which have turned human beings into obese, desensitized, ever-feeding, ever-hungering economic units whose only purpose in life (besides making more little future economic units) is to obtain more useless shit they don’t need with money they don’t have
Without nonsensical religious dogma compelling millions to live in ignorance, squalor and conflict over religious ideologies which, with astounding cynicism and hypocrisy promise heaven or hell to their misguided believers
Without a tiny minority of political masters persuing policies which compel hundreds of millions of people to march to their deaths fighting senseless wars (always for economic gain or territorial aggrandizement) and killing off the best and youngest of so many generations.
(I’m referring to the wars of the 20th century alone, in which upwards of 60+ million people were killed and where very abomination and atrocity we could come up with was commited).
Without monetary systems which demand, by law and doctrine, that public companies continually show profit regardless of how they do it (never mind the fact that the capitalist economic model will only continue increasing in size until it finally collapses under its own weight, ultimately plunging untold numbers of lives into chaos).
Without religious charlatans driving their followers to take up arms or take their own lives for their beliefs, or to despise and persecute those they would deem as non-believers or not in accordance with their dogma.
I could go on and on, but I suspect that you might be living in the same world as me so let me finish by answering your question about dreaming.
The answer is yes. Everything you see around you, the great cities we’ve built, the social systems we’ve put into place, the wondrous advances in technology our understanding the Universe, Civil rights, all have their roots in the dreams of people. And in many ways our dreams have now unwittingly propelled us headlong into this present where we are now foundering.
Our dreams are slowly becoming nightmares which have us caught between ever increasing religious fanaticism, runaway capitalist policies (which are continually increasing the polarization of the classes), slowly dissolving civil rights, the systematic re-distribution of the resources and wealth to a small percentage, corrupt political systems and corrupt politicians. So yeah, I think it’s high time we start thinking about following a different dream, cause’ we’re about to wake up from the one’s we’ve been having just in time for the coming storm.
But hey, you go on thinking that this shit can continue, business as usual, without everything we know ultimately burning down, starving, freezing to death or getting murdered in religious or economic conflict because you won’t see a world beyond the one you’re so inured to now.
Change is hard dude, but it’s coming whether we want it or not and evolution doesn’t play around with humans unable to think outside of the boxes they’ve put around themselves…peace
Why not…? You seem to believe well enough in the doctrines you’ve been fed your whole life. Why would it be so impossible to believe in a creed that promotes equality, individual responsibility and a sense of duty towards the world and everything in it. I can tell you why you and so many can’t; your afraid to.
So am I for that matter, but I’m willing to give it my best shot in this life and choose to be part of a solution rather than giving in to the idea that I’m not capable of being the master of myself. I’ve gotta believe in that…otherwise the alternative is what…? Someone else being the master of me.
Maybe you’re cool with that, but for myself I am not.
Herovoid, do you have an actual plan or is it all “we should stop doing gnarly things and all be more righteous to each other”?
Or, to expedite the process, since people aren’t so keen on the perceived “wasting” of their votes, let’s push for proportional representation and get rid of “winner-takes-all”. Then we can finally have a broad range of people and ideas representing us.
Unless you are deliberately and grandly exaggerating when you say there is “no difference” between the two parties, I think you are being a bit naive.
The GOP and the Dems present themselves as more alike than they actually are because they they need to present a centrist face to the voting public. They desperately WANT to paint themselves as “different” from the other, but they can’t because if they get to far away from the center they can’t win!
Politicians know that America is the country where a leading presidential candidate can crash and burn just by getting excited and issuing a shrill, celebratory yell (Dean). Politicians in America know that they can not admit that legalizing marijuana makes good sense and would be good policy because they could never get (re)elected if they moved one-iota away from the one-dimensional “DRUGS TEH EVIL” lockstep.
For example, consider a hypothetical Joe Super-Liberal and Steve Ultra-Conservative. They are running for congress, though not necessarily against each other.
*If Joe stumped as he believed he’d be pitching government sponsored day-care for all, universal cradle-to-grave health care, and universal college tuition for all Americans.
*If Steve campaigned for what he really believed in he would eliminate the federal income tax, eliminate any government oversight of business and industry (e.g. FDA, USDA etc.) and make Christian prayer mandatory in all schools and workplaces.
Any candidate that presented an honest front like those guys would never, ever get elected. So what to do? Move to the center. Hard.
Result? The two parties sound the same, but they’re just telling you what you want to hear. There are differences underneath the pathetic, milquetoast pandering. Is it enough? Probably not.
*(Remember: Joe and Steve are made-up and I do not intend them to represent any broad swath of current American parties. )
Why assume that every middle-of-the-road politician is lying? (I know; because their lips are moving, but seriously now…) If some candidates can honestly hold opinions that are far to the left or far to the right of the mainstream, why can’t some politicians honestly hold opinions that are somewhere in the middle? These opinions are mainstream because tens of millions of Americans have them - the odds are overwhelming that some politicians are going to also.
I am not sure I am reading what you wrote correctly but I think you may be agreeing with a view I have long held: One should vote not for the *candidate *they favor the most and/or the one they find the most qualified— one should instead vote in whatever way that is most likely to produce a election result that the voter desires. The two are not the same thing.
Yeah-- as usual, my thought got a little convoluted in my hypotheticals.
I do not assume that every or even most middle-of-the-road politicians are lying. Some actually just hold those positions. But I do not think that the entire GOP and the entire Democratic party hold exactly the same centrist positions. I was just responding to Marley’s assertion that there is no difference between the parties.
I simply submit that it is politically expedient to shade your true political agenda (not necessarily “lie”) toward the middle if you are far to the extreme of the typical American voter. Hence, the two parties can seem more alike than they really are.
This has never happened in all the history of the entire world, under any government. In fact, for a scary thought, the United States government is probably among the least corrupt in all of history, a title it happily shares with most other real democracies these days.
You can’t take wealth out of the equation, because as long as people have resources, be it so humble as a good apple pie recipe, they will use those resources to gather influence over the powerful. Without establish a totalitatian dictatorship, your government will never have the power to wholly enforce honesty. And of course the totalitarian states have no reason to enorce honesty.
More to the point for us, trying to do so will increasingly restrict vote-buying and fund-raising to the wealthy. Government agencies devoted to keeping money out of politics will inevitably be corrupted themselves. You want to restrict provate money? Fine, but then who decides who can run? On the basis of polls? As happened in Kansas recently, incumbents will be bend or ignore the law to protect themselves. Why shouldn’t they? Would you prevent me from giving my own money to support canidates I admire? If so, how then can I speak? If I cannot spend my own money, why should I be allowed to spend my own gasoline to travel or spend my time to support my canidate? WHy shoudl I be allowed to vote at all?
That is exactly what I am saying. This is called “strategic” or sometimes “insincere” voting. It is why countries often relax the rule of “independence of irrelevant alternatives” when they create voting systems by allowing run-off elections.
As an aside, proportional representation has some gaping shortcomings. I would not be so quick to adopt it unless you are willing to accept the massive unfairness it can engender.
That’s not what I said at all, which I think you’ll find it you re-read the quote. I said there are differences, but I find a lack of differences on some important issues. You mentioned one, drug policies.
As for the complaint “My vote doesn’t make any difference!”, well, this is a nation of 300 million people. Even if there are only 100 million registered voters, your vote is only going to make 0.00000001th difference. Your one vote doesn’t make much of a difference.
Voting is the floor for political involvement. The real way you make a difference is not by voting for the candidates or issues you support, but by convincing lots of other people to vote for the candidates or issues you support. Your vote is one vote. But if you get involved, knock on doors, put up signs, make phone calls, write letters to the newspaper, complain on message boards, you can influence hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of votes. Bill Clinton didn’t get to be president because he voted for himself and hoped for the best, he convinced millions of people that he should be president.
And even if there are no candidates that you support, you can still influence things by issue advocacy. If positions become popular, political candidates will start supporting them. If almost everyone in America were pro-life or pro-choice, or pro-gun control or anti-gun control the issue would be decided and over with. The united states isn’t going to adopt single payer health care unless a plurality of voters is committed to making it happen. Changing the minds of politicians isn’t the way to get your pet issue enacted, changing the minds of the American people is.
Complaining that the rich can just buy votes and sway the sheep is fucking stupid. Sure, Rupert Murdoch has 100,000 times the influence you do. And so? Why does he have that influence? Because he controls a vast media empire. Nobody handed him that media empire, he wasn’t annointed media emperor by divine right. Why don’t YOU own a TV station? Why don’t YOU run a newspaper? These are not impossible goals for driven entrepreneuers to achieve. You don’t have the skills, talent, luck, drive, connections, or capital stake? Well, sorry, but that’s not a problem with the system. You really could start a local newspaper, my community of 10,000 people has two local newspapers. It’s not exactly easy, but it can be done. You can start a radio station. You can start a magazine, a website, a think tank, a message board, an advocacy group. Or you can find a worthwhile existing one and get to work.
Is that too much trouble? Too much work? Too much effort? Well, tough shit. You think Rupert Murdoch didn’t put in a lot of work to get where he is? To create his own private biased news network, his dozens of private biased newspapers, and so on and so on? Sure, Rupert Murdoch started way ahead of you, but if you spent the next 50 years putting in 80 hour weeks building up your media empire, then you might surprise yourself with what you’ve achieved. Or maybe you’d fail, because not everything is due to hard work, lots is due to luck and, get this, innate talent. Lots of people aren’t cut out for this sort of thing, either because they aren’t good at it or they don’t enjoy it, most likely both.
If the thought of running a newspaper doesn’t excite you, how can you complain about the people who do run newspapers, who did what it takes to get themselves in the position of running a newspaper? Just running one of those free local alternative papers that are mostly ads and music listings is a tremendous amount of work…but people start them. It can be done. So if you aren’t even making that sort of effort, how can you complain about the media barons? One person CAN make a difference. Sure, you’re probably not going to be that person, I’m probably not going to be that person, but that’s just because there are 6 billion people in the world, and most people are lucky if they make 1/6 billionth of a difference. But if you’re better than that, if you’ve got the answers that the rest of us don’t, then what’s stopping you? Maybe you’ll only make 1/10000th of a difference, but that’s a couple orders of magnitude more difference than most people make.
There’s a reasonably elegant way to remove the influence of campaign contributions on elections. Make all donations unlimited and anonymous. Set up a central clearing house so the donors never directly interact with the candidates.
What this means is that it’s now impossible (in theory) to verify whether a contributor gave you the money they said they were going to give you. Sure, they said they gave you $1M, but they could just be lying.
What this means is that people will now give money to candidates whose position they agree with rather than trying to use money as an influencing factor.