Progress Through the Miracle of Brute Force
In some cultures and societies, nothing but brute force is recognized as a reality; an understanding and good faith are regarded as nothing -- if not concurrently beating the other over the head to make sure they are doing what one wants them to do. Societies like that are not very efficient -- because they require another to supervise what the other is doing, and another to supervise the first, on up to the top. So while there is presumably full employment, one person at the bottom is doing all the real work, while all the others, which may be considerable, are supervising to ensure that the job gets done “right,” according to each level’s “administrative” rules, which may actually obscure the original purpose of the actual worker.
In civilized countries, we know this as bureaucracy in all its manifestations -- of arbitrariness, just because one can. The flaunting of such power, is an end in itself -- as proof of one’s status -- that he can get others to do the most ridiculous things, just because he desires it. It is the madness of the abuse of power, weak and ignoble people cannot resist -- but great leaders rise above. Ultimately, that is the only way one can tell them -- and not from anything they want us to believe about them. The most power-mad often go to the greatest lengths to convince us otherwise. Hypocrisy is confused by many reporters as “genius,” while honesty is reported as “stupidity.”
It is thought, if he is so smart, one isn’t he abusing and exploiting everybody else -- as they themselves would, if given such a position of trust and honor? Surely, to their way of thinking, that shows a lack of ambition. They have been conditioned to believe that life is an eternal struggle and competition, of each against every other -- and that is what gives them this great feeling of being "alive" -- to control everybody else. That -- and eating everybody else’s share is what one must do, before others have a chance to do it to them first.
All the other animals do it -- so it must be right and natural; that is the natural order of things, they like to rationalize. If they do not grab more than their share, somebody else will think of it first -- and they will lose out. So thoughtful and intelligent people ask, “Can this vicious cycle ever end?” “And how?”
Awareness of the problem is the answer -- and the leadership of those with the greatest exercise of understanding -- and not the leadership of those who are the most ruthless, brutal and partisan. Leaders must choose wisely among themselves, foremost. What helps is to rotate that leadership so no one becomes entrenched in the permanence of it. That in itself, is a great part of the problem.
Without change, improvement is not possible; things can only stay the same -- without change. It is obviously a self-evident truth. Yet people complain mightily and lengthily, as though that was all that was needed to bring about change -- which is no change. The complaining becomes a substitute for changing. And so a real response, is deferred farther and farther into the future. That is progress through the miracle of brute force -- to deny and suppress it can be otherwise.
Understanding Conditioning(repeat) FOCUS (Channel 49, Honolulu, Hawaii) 1/2/2007 2:00:00 PM A revolutionary new way of looking at exercise. Environmental/Health
posted by Mike Hu @ 9:29 PM
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2 Comments:
I know the schools teach that the "Majority is always right," as no higher truth -- so that the coercion of the masses is justified, and everybody has to play that game as the only one in town.
But there are higher truths than simply the consensus of political expediency (correctness) -- even if all one's relatives are in the HSTA and HGEA.
One of the great problems of these times is the failure to make maximum use of what we already have. We have buses -- but in the drive to obtain rail, they're being totally disregarded and disrespected.
It'd be cheaper just to make the bus system free -- than to build a rail that will be underutilized too.
As long as our senior congress people can deliver unlimited pork barrel money, they'll be this culture and tradition of waste. And what we really need to do -- all people the world over -- is learn to handle the new realities of abundance and overconsumption.
When the cost of gas goes up, people have to change their behaviors to consume less -- and not pass laws that fix the prices so they can consume as much as they want. That is sheer idiocy -- and unresponsiveness that is responsible for the greatest dangers of our times, which is obesity, overconsumption and excesses.
And the media is leading in the denial -- as our worst offenders.
Despite there being virtually unlimited resources -- the information of those resources, is very limited, and in many cases, suppressed and denied -- because the self-interests are entrenched in their control of the information.
The problem of information is that in the past, that privilege was paid for by advertisers -- while information of the greatest benefit to the consumer, would not be promoted, because there is no profit in it, and such information might limit the many profit opportunities ignorance and deception creates.
The function of information distribution was largely left to the media, schools and universities -- which all have their own self-interests in promoting themselves. In the media, it is shameless -- while the schools and universities still try to maintain some dignity and decorum. But simply maintaining that they "know it all," is no longer enough, especially since the rewards of tenure, go to those whose information is the most obsolete and useless.
When the world is changing so quickly, those who should be most valued are those who have the newest information -- and not the oldest, which is what the institutions have going for them. But many are questioning the value of that information -- in a world in which the newest information that probably didn't even exist when they were learning has since come into being, and the only way for anybody to learn them, is on one's own.
That creates quite a conumdrum for the traditional powers that be -- whose major function is to pass on the tradition of their knowledge, as though it was unchanging over time.
So the whole information infrastructure has to be rethought -- in view of the new world we all live in, but many still think it is the world of a hundred years ago -- and so they are failing badly in their responses, and the challenges of life in these times.
The traditional model is to control the thinking of the mass of people -- while reserving that control to a self-designated few. In traditional society, those challenges to the status quo hierarchy were few and fairly easy to fend off -- because all the status quo institutions regarded an attack on one as an attack on all, and so they would band together, circle the wagons and keep the interlopers out.
In the world of "intellectual" property rather than the real and tangible, the turf is much more difficult to defend, or even define, since it is always shifting with new discoveries.
The big mistake in the traditional response has been to defend turf that is indefensible and impregnable -- simply because it hasn't been challenged before, and found to be only an illusion made inviolable.
Societies are defined not by their "lowest common denominators" but by their "highest common denominators," but with the obsession on how to control the masses, all the attention has gone into that direction and objective -- for which there is no escape from our current dilemmas, because the solutions will come from the best and not the worst.
But by pandering to the worst, letting the worst dictate the agenda, the problems get worse rather than better -- quite predictably and understandably -- and are perpetuated eternally as the inevitable "human condition."
So rather than publicizing the worst of the ideas as all that is possible, what the newspapers, media, schools and universities need to do is identify and publicize the best rather than arguing over the worst -- as though that was all that is possible.
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