The woes of humankind generally consist of a failure to recognize adventure in adversity, and thus to retreat into our own minds.
The following are thoughts for the heretical.
Our greatest woe is denial of time. We pretend it isn’t there and passing. As a result, we tend to shy away from end-dates to projects and times when we want to see end results.
Instead, we like to hang out in a perpetual present tense, where we are working gradually toward some unspecific and unmeasurable future state.
Not a result, but a state. That is like saying that we want to work toward a time of working, not a time of achieving the end result of that work.
One consequence of time-denial is perpetual compromise. If you have no ultimate goal or task to achieve, you view life as a series of incremental changes moving vaguely in a favorable direction.
As a result, you are open to compromise as a way of life. Like a relationship that will not lead to marriage, open-ended time scales impose only one requirement on the humans in them: don’t rock the boat to the point where you endanger the relationship.
However, since there’s no goal, this is a simple task of avoiding certain behaviors that set off the other person; these are easily avoided since nothing needs be achieved except avoiding those behaviors.
In those situations, compromise is the best option. There is no goal or time schedule to endanger. The only risk is making the relationship unstable. People compromise, and then work around the compromise.
On the other hand, having a finite goal and time period lends itself to excitement. A relationship that is intended to lead to marriage is an ever-intensifying process, without falling into the becalmed state of apathy of a “maintenance” relationship.
But we are our own greatest enemy, and in fear of the woe of finite time, we languish in an apathetic perpetual present of lifestyle maintenance, and evade all adventure.
Another woe is equality. It seems like such a good thing, but it causes an obsession. No one knows what the sum total wealth of a society is, so in an attempt at equality it must be parceled out unevenly.
This in turn puts people into a mode of wondering if they are getting their equal share. If someone else has gotten more, the wealth total has increased and so each individual deserves more.
Because equality is not determined by granular and organic situations, like a farmer working her land or a small businessman advancing his business, but by a central command, there is always suspicion that one is not “equal enough” and is missing out.
This creates a mentality where the equal citizen is constantly vigilant for what others have, and if they have something he does not, he feels not equal enough and demands that the difference be handed to him.
Our woe is in failing to recognize inequality as a form of game by which we struggle to produce and conserve more, with great variation between results in order to give them great impact.
These modern woes are schizoid in that they show us a difference between the face value of reality as it is explained to us, and the underlying thought process of people within it.
Schizoid thinking of this nature brings on a neurosis, or doubt of reality, because each individual must rely on the social answer in order to transact daily business, yet must also work around it or face dysfunction.
Woes of this nature signify how exhausted in its soul our society has become. Where former generations saw opportunity, we see obligation and tyranny.
It is no surprise that we live in the center of a herd of gadgets and entertainment, staying perpetually distracted and stopping only sometimes to view the outside world through a rain-streaked window as if some kind of disconnected dream.
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A long long time ago, Bolli Bollason was hanging out in Norway with his brother Thorleik and King Olaf. Thorleik wanted Bolli to set sail with him and maybe go raiding some more. Olaf wanted Bolli to keep hanging out in Norway with him.
You know what Bolli said? He said, “I intend to do neither. I intend to travel to the destination which I originally set out for and where I have long wished to go.” And when Bolli Bollason intends to do something, he does it.
Bolli Bollason wished to travel to Constantinople and he did just that. We know this because there are no reports of northerners having entered the service of the Byzantine emperor before Bolli Bollason.
Bolli Bollason said he was going to Constantinople and he went to Constantinople. The rest is history.
It is very valuable to set a goal and go for it. Work hard, build success and confidence etc. There is no work-morale in school.
I must assert it is ‘modern times’ beginning with the industrialisation and human greed that has lead to this ‘disconnected dreamstate’ and gadgets rather than left or right. With an increase in well-fare and globalisation things were handled poorly in the west. I don’t believe in going back in time, but rather to make use what is placed on our table.
Equality was a good thing, giving all the children standard math, ABC and socialisation. My grandmother was the first generation to go to school an additional fourth year. That must have been around 1940. The mistake was to give everyone additional years.
Here, it is now 9 years minimum, not counting kindergarten and preschool. 99% go 12 years and almost all of those eventually take additional higher studies.
As small kids additional years was OK, because they could play around. It was meaningless, though. Few kids are fit for intense studies. It was a great mistake to give all children knowledge, the same knowledge at that. The older kids simply grow lazy and indolent. I was bored with school. Did not work at it at all. I tried sometimes, less as I got older, but the rest of the class…so noisy and no one worked hard. Impossible.
Here, many good things were implemented with socialism, but people and politicians didn’t know to stop. The mess we are in now can not have been due to leftism even if we’d like to say so. Socialism began even in the 19th century here. The french revolution is not the crucial point, but the industrial revolution. Socialism IS a mess, but the mess we are all in began with the passing of time. Dealing with modern times has always been the crucial point.
I don’t think it can be done, going back in time. Neither do I find it favorable. In governing all parts must be given at least a spoonful of what they want, otherwise people are not manageable. Especially today, though an economical crash would present some options. Liberty and Compassion cannot be rejected, for one. They spring from inborn human needs.
We must turn things around. We actually have to GIVE a little to get what we want. And politicians work too slow, they are also rotten.
The simplest way is to get rid of them with this sort of revolution and rebuild the system.
I say remake Democracy into Direct Democracy, while having a monarch figure deal with issues they are not at all fit to make. People can vote with their Iphones as easily as they thumb up/down on Facebook. Direct D was never possible before. Now it is. The public pressure would disappear also, they can not scream in a leftist way when they decide ‘some’ themselves. The general public may well grow bored voting, realizing they are not fit for it. You could even keep the supreme court, it would take their screaming away also.
Just an idea, to play around with.
Okay, direct democracy but let’s vote on our phones only about very limited issues, well-delineated and spelled out. In the US they have these things called ‘riders’ where unrelated issues get put in with legal bills that go through congress. Those who try to stop it get ignored. So if we did this, they’d have to really make each vote be over a tiny thing and the broader implications would have to be spelled out also. In the short term the changes would be tiny but in the long term people might be more satisfied with their choices.
“The mistake was to give everyone additional years.”
and
“I say remake Democracy into Direct Democracy, while having a monarch figure deal with issues they are not at all fit to make.”
together mean we need as much as possible completely ignorant people having an illusion of participating in sociopolitical life, while the ruling guy(s) are making real decisions.
What’s the point? We already have this situation in the US, and it doesn’t work well. Who would benefit from this kind of ‘democracy’?
Maybe, it would be better to explain to everybody that democracy does not work in principle, as it is beneficial only for a part of society and does not help the whole system to become stable and efficient.