Easy: we smash them first with much more power . However, why this 20% of lucky citizens accept and agree and support such primitive strategy?
1. media propaganda. We are the good, they are the bad, We are the right ones, they are wrong. We are democratic, they love dictatorship.
2. fear. If we do not kill them, they will kill us.
3. ignorance. We bring them freedom and democracy and we help them: they are too primitive to develop more than what they are.
4. evil. They are the problem, we are the solution, and we love the sound of our automatic machines.
… and then, there is a part of this 20% who does not agree and try to think:
- is there a solution different than war?
- what if we used the same amount of money for health and culture instead of war?
- are thoughts too weak against bombs?
- is it anyway too late and we are all damned since we are part of this 20%?
It is difficult to dislike a situation if there are no alternative solutions to propose. Point 2 is difficult to overcome.
Discuss Biology
True, the United States uses more than its fair share of the earth’s resources but the billion or so people that live in poverty in countries such as India will never be a threat to the United States. They are too poor to travel here in large numbers to pose a threat, and those countries are ruled by people that are not poor or hungry and those people control the police and military.
The distance between the US and most of the world’s people living in poverty is too far for them to travel even if they wanted to punish America.
Dear Lloyd Lofthouse, I think here we are not only talking about US but also Europe. More than a practical issue (“they are too poor too travel” – which additionally does not apply to Europe) we are talking about a moral one: is there really no alternative to “mors tua, vita mea”? Is it really too dangerous to change vision and action from what we are used to?
How many of our lives are we ready to sacrifice by starting a risky new politic of dialogue? Do we have really no
responsibility on some of the puppet governments ruling with iron fist the “poor countries”?
We are masters of propaganda, more than what Soviets were in the last century: we are so used to its high quality we call it mass media, movie, art. Maybe it is time to start a new, massive outbound propaganda and let speakers speak more than weapons. We can dampen hate, religious fanaticism and ignorance better by showing them the good side of our life than terminating their lives. But, indeed, the price might be too high, and no one can be forced to pay for it.
I cannot disagree with what you say. After all, it is true, but the only way we can actually bring about change on a level where it counts is one Blog/Website at a time until hundreds of millions of people are doing it.
This voice must be louder and more powerful than the traditional media that is owned and controlled by “great men”. Being “great” does not mean they are saints—more like devils. I’m thinking of Rupert Murdock and his Media Corp that includes the Fox network as I write this. I’m also thinking of the Koch brothers and then there is the Walton family.
The problem is that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
- Lord Action, 1887
Then there is the fact that so many of the poor that live in poverty are also uneducated and illiterate that they cannot speak for themselves through Blogs/Websites.
It seems to me that, we, who are fighting the good fight like a Don Quixote, are only fighting windmills and shadows.
Have you read “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam” by Barbara W. Tuchman?
Then there is this — Bosses Four Times As Likely To Be ‘Psychopaths’: Survey says
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/11/psycho-boss-survey_n_976562.html
point 2 is easily overcome if point 3 is erradicated. ignorance is more often than not, the source of instilled fear (the sort of fear politicians and social-gurus make use of).
however, since point 1 is the main responsible for maintaining and disseminating a state of ignorance, if point 1 falls, point 3 falls too and point 2 ceases to exist.
that leaves us only with point 4, for which I believe, there is no immediate solution, as it does not follow any known logic. nonetheless, it seems to be kept under controlled by point 3 too, so it’s really all about point 1.
more or less.
So, It seems we all agree that knowledge brought by people and not by “great” media could change the world. Although technology prices and very low education are still big challenges for the majority of the poor people, point 1 – as underlined by our proletarian putzfrau
– is still a challenge for us, the Western “civilized” countries. There are big difference between contemporary old and new generations in keeping great media in consideration..maybe things will change earlier than what we expect.
Or, as Mark I think suggested, we could use our powerful propaganda media to change things there were the problems are – although I doubt this is the interest of great media, don’t you think? Propagating fear, not knowledge, is the main media duty.
Crowd founding, Kiva-like structures, NGOs for teaching and so on could speed up the change. If only us, 20%, were interested in changing things, loosing something for others, we could be much more efficient than Don Quixote. But, I missed one point in my post list, maybe the most human one:
5. I could care less about the poor people of this world, as long as *I* feel good and healthy.
Probably modern Don Quixote are just pretending too much from our developmental stage .. but dreamers are always necessary to go further.