what we need is not the courage of our convictions,
but the courage for an attack upon our convictions…
as my last post touch upon, was the idea that capitalism was
the idea of private vices creating public good and I touched upon
democracy as within this framework of private vices creating public good…
I do believe in democracy as the best system but that is my conviction…
and worthy of an attack…
perhaps we should be clear about what I’m talking about…
are we talking about democracy or are we talking about representative
democracy? I believe we should start with representative democracy which
is the system we have in place right now…(once again, we are talking about theory
instead of reality… and this vital problem of theory vs reality in the modern world)
I have railed against representative democracy, time and time again…
and for good reason… any thinking person who is even vaguely honest can
see for themselves that the representatives we send to our local state capital and
Washington DC have failed to represent us, the people and those same representatives
have sold themselves to the highest bidder… that much is starkly clear…
the entire tax cut bill just passed is one big giveaway to their donor’s as
several congressman have stated that their donor’s are pushing for this tax bill
and that is good enough for them to pass this bill…
if we are being sold down the river as is evident by the congressmen actions,
then we must take matter into our own hands…
but that leaves the second matter at hand which is the problem of
private vices creating public good… how does direct democracy solve this
problem?
it doesn’t… that seems to be the conclusion we can draw here…
so now what? we try other failed experiments of the political among which
are monarchy and oligarchy and dictatorship and tribal and chiefdoms
among other political systems…each of those had their time in the sun
and then they too failed… and failed because those systems failed to adapt
to the growing populations…to adapt to changing environments including
fast growing population and changing environmental conditions must mean
we must have an adaptable and changing political system… which leaves out
several of these political systems as too unchanging and dogmatic…
private vices creates public good… but we know that is not true…
capitalism has created severe and very damaging political, social, economic and
environmental damages to the western world…
we only have to look and see that damage…
so what is left? I believe the answer is in democracy but not in
representative democracy… those people can be and have been compromised
by money and greed… we can no longer trust our representatives to do the right thing…
so we must take matters into our own hands and reclaim democracy to be ours…
direct democracy seems to be the answer… but once again how do we solve this
problem of private vices creating public good?
the answer lies in a reorientation of values… we no longer can accept or value
money as the arbiter of values… we can no longer accept money or profit as
a motivating value of human beings… that leads us to unacceptable and damaging
consequences of nihilism that dominates our modern world… we must return to
human values such as love, justice and peace and forgo monetary and financial
goals, material goods as the motivations for our lives…we must reject the nihilism
of the modern age and turn to? I would suggest we return to a value like the pursuit
of justice as a value we can support… or we can undertake the exploration of space
as the motivation for our persons and species and society… a goal that we can support
and will create a goal worth aiming for…
the key here is the sound rejection of materialism and nihilism of the modern age…
Kropotkin