K: no need for forgiveness…you said what you needed to say… that is enough…
as for your very first point, is the point I wish to address…
when push comes to shove, the idea that our attempt to be a better person,
within society should be synonymous… but there is a caveat…
as we live don’t live in a democracy, where the people rule, then
bettering ourselves doesn’t matter…because it won’t be for us…
recall, I have said that we are connected to all things and we are…
for us to achieve some betterment of ourselves, it must be done for
the betterment of a society that responds to us and is a part of us…
if government isn’t of the people, for the people, by the people, it
has no interest in the welfare of the people outside of treating
people as cattle, as an means to something else… and we can still reach
the betterment of ourselves but it is done in our name, not in the societies
name and not in the government name… we must understand that
government is a tool and that tool must be in the hands of the people
whose lives are affected by that tool… the power resides in the hands
of the people because it is the people who work, live and die within that
system… this defense of democracy exists only because there hasn’t
been a solid defense of democracy… the majority of the people…
that has been lacking… a solid, defensible argument for the rights of
the people to govern… not a monarchy, not representative democracy which
isn’t either, and certainly not dictatorships or autocracy or an oligarchy…
or as I have called this government of America, an corporatocracy…….
I have no wish to engage with a government that doesn’t care about me,
that doesn’t listen to me, that doesn’t invest in me or doesn’t
obey me…………….
this concept of improving ourselves must come with a government of the
people, for the people, by the people…for why would we engage in our own
personal improvement if we don’t benefit from it somehow?
and an indifferent government that only engages for it masters, be it
an oligarchy or an autocracy or a corporatocracy…
has no interest for me and will not receive any consent from me…
we engage in our own personal improvement if, if we can gain some benefit
from it, for we are social creatures…and government is a part of that
evolutionary social system……. as is culture and society…and our improvement
of our social nature must come with a payoff and that payoff without a government
that represent us isn’t much of a payoff……
to create an example… as I work as a checker in a large grocery chain…
we are the highest paid employees because if you pay checkers shit,
they are far more likely to steal or rip you off… they pay us well
from self preservation rather then some enlighten thinking…
anyway, we are treated so badly by this corporation, that any
help that we give to the corporation is done so reluctantly because if
we help the company make any extra money, we don’t benefit in any way,
shape or form… and it almost always in some fashion backfires on us…
I have help my store in some fashion several times and gotten screwed
every single time… once getting written up for helping the store out…
if one is punished for helping, then people get very reluctant in helping out…
the same goes for helping out a government that will simply use that event
to screw you… you get very reluctant to help out…………
that is the nature of people… pure, unadulterated acts of kindness
done because they are good is quite often punished in some fashion…
once I found a book in the library that had pornographic pictures in it,
I turned it in and was accused of being the pervert who put the pictures in the book
I did a good deed and was punished, I am sure you have similar stories of being
punished for doing a good deed…
that punishment makes one being reluctant to engage in practicing good deeds…
anyway, government of the people, for the people, by the people is
the form of government that is a social form of government that
I can take some form of pleasure helping because in the end, I will
benefit from my actions whereas in another form of government, I
won’t be rewarded because that government isn’t about the people…
it is about whomever controls it, be it monarchy or dictatorship or
autocracy… we the people don’t benefit from those forms of government…
and thus we should improve ourselves for a government that is about us
and that form is democracy…pure democracy, of the people, for the people,
by the people…………
Kropotkin