Of course left unsaid is the proviso that, "I'm doing OK; the rest of you can go fuck yourselves."
Perfect example:
Hm, interesting construction. But I believe social engineering belongs back to 19th century. History proved many times that all societies are based on individuals. And individuals are usually pretty clever, how to bypass the obligation and gain as much as possible from the benefits .) Not to say about organization of such society. The main problem of communism was total disorganization and incapability to control things from the center...All of human civilization is a millennia-long exercise in social engineering. It doesn't have to stop just because you personally are doing OK.
I'm not saying you have to agree with me 100%, or even 90% or even 1%: I might be complete wrong about everything. But I'm trying. If you think you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it.
But the mindless bleating sheeple chorus of "Hey, people suck, whatcha gonna do? <shrug> I hear there's a good game on TV tonight," makes my blood boil.
If you don't have anything positive to contribute, indeed if you having nothing to contribute but tired platitudes and defeatism, go stick your head back up your ass. I'll take up a collection to buy you a glass navel so you can watch your shares of IG Farben rise.
In the meantime, mein kinder, try to stay upwind of the furnaces. You'll sleep better.
I confess to this in the tribal sense. What I mean by that is, I definitely want to improve things in this country to the best of my ability - to uphold the constitution on civil rights, for instance. I will not just sit on my ass and surrender to some sort of bullshit inevitability of "people are bad" - but at the same time, I have difficulty caring as much about people in other nations - not that they aren't deserving, I just feel like until we have our own house in order, I don't have the mental energy to start worrying about what is going in in everyone else's house.
ReplyDeleteI see this in the micro sense in my own immediate space in the fact that I simply cannot get any work done when my workspace is a mess - all I think about is the mess and the jumble and so I have to clean that up first before I can get any work done outside of the immediate vicinity.
Now, if we did finally get our act together here in the US, then I would be happy to work on exporting that abroad and helping, say, first the nations on our borders, or whatever, going to the rest of the world. But I somehow see something wrong with focusing on the evils being done in some far off land with no constitution while people are being tortured right here while allegedly under our constitution.
Maybe that is a character flaw or something, or just a quirk of how I think. It isn't that I'm resigned to there being evil in the world. Far from it. Certainly if the US is contributing to it somewhere else, we have a responsibility to take care of THAT right now. I'm just generally uncomfortable with trying to put other peoples' houses in order while ours is a mess.
Hello Barefoot: I have a question. Why do many people who are into free-market, libertarian, right-wing conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones, Jeff Rense, Webster Tarpley, David Icke, Henry Makow and others claim that Marx, Stalin, USSR and socialist governments were responsable for the deaths of 20 million citizens in the XX Century and that is one of the major reasons on why socialism, and communism is indeed fascism.
ReplyDeleteThey said that according to the book "The Black Book of Communism" Socialism and Communism are failed ideologies and Lenin, Trotsky, the Bolsheviks, Marx were jewish zionists evil people who work for the New World Order and for the Illuminati Order.
Can you tell me if these conspiratorial, libertarianist thinking in America is indeed a major agent of disinformation, misinformation and confusion which blocks millions of opressed americans from joining the ideology of socialism and socialist parties of USA.
Here is a good site for conspiracy-theory news. They are right in some things like 9-11, state-terrorism and zionism, but wrong on that Lenin was funded by the Illuminati Order and Rockefellers.
http://z10.invisionfree.com/The_Unhived_Mind_II/index.php
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I'm not talking about you, DBB. I can't demand that anyone actually do anything, and none of us are setting ourselves on fire on the steps of the White House.
ReplyDeleteBut I do believe in the adage, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way." I can't stand the people who sit in the peanut gallery and shoot down every idea, offering neither substantive criticism or alternative suggestions.
Here is a good site for conspiracy-theory news. They are right in some things like 9-11, state-terrorism and zionism, but wrong on that Lenin was funded by the Illuminati Order and Rockefellers.
ReplyDeletehttp://z10.invisionfree.com/The_Unhived_Mind_II/index.php
Oh man, this is something that pisses me off to no end as well. I consider that those of us who have it good (and I consider myself to have been extremely lucky in that regard already) have a greater duty to help improve the lives of others. It is the most annoying especially when coupled with expressions of how the developed nations are doing good and that this is somehow proof that Capitalism can work. RAAAAAGE!
ReplyDeleteI have seen this attitude a lot across the right side of the political spectrum (though no doubt it is not exclusive to it). I think of it as moral defeatism, an exaggeration or exaggerated response to the limits of human virtue. So instead of working with, around, or trying to transcend human limitations they just stop and declare all future enterprise hopeless at best.
ReplyDeleteOf course someone is going to accuse us of utopianism but I don't think a rejection of this moral defeatism necessarily implies moral perfectionism but a willingness to push the current norms of human goodness. A willingness to fight for a practical solution that goes beyond this artificially strict definition of human nature that often has more to do with a low common denominator instead of our highest limits.