Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Let me ask you a Question?

Published by christian on March 6, 2008 in Politics. 0 Comments

“If you could, would you try to shape the world or leave it to be shaped by others?”

To help you decide i’ ll lay out the possibilities: If you answer yes what would you shape it into? That’s important, their isn’t any point in saying yes without having the vision of what you’d like the world to be like. If you don’t have that vision your answer is actually no (you’re brain has blown a fuse, please take it to your nearest neurosurgeon for a tune up). Also consider whether others are aware of this choice and would their vision be different?

A no answer, or a yes without vision, would indicate you taking a back seat, either unable or unwilling to add a vision to the potential multitude existing in the world you live. Naturally you wouldn’t be represented in the global affairs, which deal with creating said visions (one less vision to deal with).

Is this Important?

Read on and make your own mind up. Here’s a quick recap:

“Choosing yes means joining a chorus of other saying yes, your vision is represented but not necessary equally. Power and money still rule. Choosing no means you may have a vision, but are unable or unwilling to let it see daylight.”

Note: This isn’t a question of good versus bad visions, we are only interested in the possibilities and outcomes we will all experience in relation to making such a choice.

Yes requires a belief that the world can be shaped by you. Power and money makes this easier and some of you will already have it (gold bullion is accepted here). Those who do have it will be shaping and those without will also be shaping but find it harder (although not impossible). The resulting mash up would stop your one vision ever being a utopean reality. The worlds political messes witness that compromise is the only way to avoid bloodshed between clashing ideologies. Much of this depends on the size and achievability of the vision, that humans don’t like to compromise when they have the advantage, that money and power offer advantages and that compromise only works when all parties compromise. Other factors come to play, but take a quick look at the worlds papers, to see the results are clear. No one wins everything all the time. The world we see today is the continuing effect of many visions tussling with each other for the lead. Although it has been tried many times by many tyrants, mortalality creates fluctuatations which cannot be avoided.

There is an alternative. If those with money and power had the same vision as those without even agreeing on its implementation, compromise wouldn’t be necessary (basically impossible - sorry).

To answer no is the inability or unwillingness to participate, rich and powerful or otherwise. Some will think it is not a realistic choice, that they wouldn’t know where to start. Others simply won’t care and some will not be able to physically or mentally participate. What ever the reasons the argument for “No” centers on not participating in shaping the world, and leaves it to be shaped by others.

What those others choose to shape it into is of your concern. Its very common and perhaps even human for dictators to begin with good intentions for all the people, but rarer for them to implement them once the’ve achieved power with an ego inflated to stratospherical proportions. History is spattered with societies being turned into dictatorships because their leader just knew it was for their own good. Therefore it is unlikely that anytime soon the world will plunge into the utopian society many of us dream our children could grow up in. Saying no to shaping the world is the status quo.

Welcome to your creation.

Its not only the no’s who create the world that would be too simple. It could not look the way it does without their silent contribution, but nor could it without the effects of those who answered yes. Next time you choose not to vote, you should remember that. Inaction doesn’t abstain you from responsibility. For those looking for inspiration, here it is; Believe you can make a difference, and you will. From that belief comes action. Action to think about what you want the world to look like. Action to find others with similar visions, action to compromise with those who don’t. Action to vote.. So what’s your answer, yes or no?

Individual Language and Mass Language by David Grossman

Published by christian on September 13, 2007 in Politics. 0 Comments

This is cutout from page 7 of a speach given by David Grossman for the International Literature Festival Berlin, available in full here.

Individual Language and Mass Language
(international literature festival berlin, September 4, 2007)

Perhaps it is only in this global reality, where so much of our life is lived in a massdimension, that we can be so indifferent to mass destruction. For it is the very same indifference that the vast majority of the world displays time after time, whether during the Armenian Holocaust or the Jewish Holocaust, in Rwanda or in Bosnia, in the Congo, in Darfur, and in many other places. And perhaps, then, this is the great question that people living in this age must relentlessly ask themselves: In what state, at which moment, do I become part of the faceless crowd, “the masses”? There are a number of ways to describe the process whereby the individual is swallowed up in the crowd, or agrees to hand over parts of himself to mass-control. Since we, here, are people of literature and language, I will choose the one closest to our interests and to our way of life: I become part of the “masses” when I give up the right to think and formulate my ow  words, in my own language, instead accepting automatically and uncritically the formulations
and language that others dictate.
I become “the masses” when I stop formulating my own choices and the moral compromises I make. When I stop formulating them over and over again, with fresh new words each time, words that have not yet eroded in me, not yet congealed in me, which I cannot ignore or defend myself against, and which force me to face the decisions I have made, and to pay the price for them.
The masses, as we know, cannot exist without mass-language—a language that will consolidate the multitude and spur it on to act in a certain way, formulating justifications for its acts and simplifying the moral and emotional contradictions it may encounter. In other words, the language of the masses is a language intended to liberate the individual from responsibility for his actions, to temporarily sever his private, individual judgment from his sound logic and natural sense of justice.

What to do?

Published by christian on March 29, 2007 in Politics. 0 Comments

What to do with the ever expanding human population and the decrease in rural UK land.

I have no statistics to back these arguments up. However i would like to express them in order to spark a discussion.The world’s population is climbing and there is no sign of it stopping. It worries me to think that the continued urbanization of the UK will never stop until the whole of the country is mixed with concrete. If you go about encroaching on green belt land, the next generation will too. If you don’t set a line and say no further, nor must the future generations. Eventually all that is green and pleasant may only be pleasant. If we seek to protect our countryside and wildlife, then we must not build out, but up. Would it not be better to live on the 109th floor of a super tower and still be able to ride your bike in open fields, ride a horse, walk a dog, run, and play football? Or do you prefer your children or grandchildren to all own a house with a garden 10 foot by 10 foot with a small park nearby that serves the local half million. Building up is expensive, but it’s also very difficult because the government or local councils prevent it from happening. I own a terraced house in south London. It has a small garden too. I love it, but I’d like to add another room to my house, and that would mean extending. Alternatively i could buy a new build house next to open fields for less.. Why? It should be more expensive to buy in the countryside then the city. All this supposes that people in fact want to keep their countryside, which may not be correct. Perhaps people want to live in perpetual urban landscape with parks dotted around the concrete. The choice is ours.