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Lyra:
quote:I think the number one irritating thing about this board is the near universal belief that the only politics worth discussing is on an individual levelWhereas I find your determination to look at structure and macro all the time ultimately futile - not wrong, but finally my understanding of political action devolves to the micro. Almost to chaos and fractals, if that doesn't sound too ghastly neo-hippy.
quote:I think that there are a lot of problems with the macro social structures in the world, such as nation-states, transnational corporations and NGOs.Indeed there are. And what are these things? Chimerae afforded headspace and processing power in the brains of individuals. Abstracts. Illusions, perhaps delusions, with power because they are accepted. On what level can they be beaten? Only by redefining the rules, by revolution (which probably requires or even is a subset of the foregoing), or by a superior force which is both lacking and quite possibly inherently undesirable.
quote:I believe in increased redistribution of wealth - we cannot hope to help the third world without giving them some more fucking money.We cannot help the third world without increasing resources, capability and information there. These things are notionally cyphered in the first world as money. Whether this cypher functions properly in the third world, the second, or even at the less cheerful reaches of the first is highly questionable. Allowing the third world to evolve into a mirror of the first, even as we have to escape from the problems of the first's structure and waste, is possibly disastrous and cruel.
quote:I believe that the world lacks long-term thinking and that democratic structures need to be modified to allow this to happen - short termism is what is destroying the environment and national infrastructure.We are completely in agreement. It is something of a surprise to find that the longest term planning which is publically acknowledged is that of Japanese corporations - especially when the majority have bad environmental records. Although Sony may be changing that. It's hard to say.
quote:I also believe that if we are to be governed then the government needs to take some interest in not just our fiscal well-being, but our spiritual well-being as well. The decline of community and spirituality has very real consequences for the world, and if old-time religion has become irrelevant then we need something to take its place...Also perfectly true, and I would suggest to you that this is where we came in. Spiritual development must take place on an individual level. You can't get it in bulk. I'd also say that it is at the heart of all the problems we've talked about. Democracy, socialism, anarchism, even capitalism, depend on people functioning with an eye to the larger picture, and being true to their own interests in the longer term, in a balanced way. Without that, it doesn't matter what system you use to codify a society, you're going to end up with Camp X-Ray somewhere.
And yes, I tried to lighten this topic earlier. Because I think humour is also a vital part of political discussion. We have to recognise that it's inherently funny and silly and pompous and whatever else, otherwise someone says something like 'it's for the good of future generations' or 'it's about our spiritual welfare' and thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people get burned alive.
On the whole, I'll go with the occasional crappy joke. |
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