BOC-L Digest - 14 Dec 2006 to 15 Dec 2006 (#2006-291)

[M Holmes]

Chris Owen writes:

> Hi M, Is that Mike or?

> I guess that just about raps it up for idealism! If we cant dream and
> hope for a better world then for sure we will never get one. 

That's not my view at all. I'm quite an idealist in fact. The thing is
that simply producing a laundry list of wishes isn't a very practical
way either to design a new society or to figure out the even more
difficult problem of how to move from the current society towards some
sort of utopian ideal. The main problem in this is of course people
themselves. What's utopia to you might well be hell for someone else.
For example I get the impression that you'd ban weaponry. That rules
your idea out for me as utopia because even if everything is hearts and
flowers, I still believe people should have the right to say "no!" and
the wherewithal to make that count, and that involves personal weaponry
sufficient to discourage folks that might feel ready to use force to
make you do something for your own good or for the alleged good of
"Utopia". Conversely you might think that the freedom to go and buy a
Blaster is inimical to any Utopia. 

So now we both have the problem of figuring out how to meake each other
as happy as is practicable in our versions of Utopia. Once we've figured
that out, there's something like six billion other people with whom to
repeat the exercise...

>  You will notice however that I did not say I would have forced
> anyone to do what they dont want to do.

So if I wanted sixty kids and a gun collection, that'd be just fine and
dandy?

> These were simply things
> that the people of  Viridian would all agree make for a better
> world.

As I get older I know less and less, but one thing I do know for sure is
that once you get more than a couple of hundred people, they'll never
all agree on very much at all for any serious length of time,
particularly if it involves them giving something up for some other
people's idea of Utopia.

> I still think there is a chance that we  could make a better
> world and a starting point would be if could describe or define what
> one would look like. 

So do I.

> Obviously the first thing we would aim for in no more war

You see, I'm just not so sure about that. War is a Good Thing when it
involves stopping a bunch of people organising and deciding that
theey'll start forcing another group of folks to start living somewheere
else, stop living at all, start living by some moral code they don't
adhere to, quit collecting guns, porn, money, and any number of things
that any one person might not like another person enjoying doing.

The sad fact of the matter is that sometimes bullies need punched, and
sometimes it takes a Big Punch to get the message across that when you say
"NO, I will not adopt Sharia law, The Code of Moses, or whatever" you
mean business. Serious military hardware is really the best way of
making that Big Punch felt.

> so no need
> for H Bombs tanks and military.  You dont have to blow someones head
> off to get what you want.  I believe that the best example of what I
> am describing is how Ghandi was able to change his world by just
> sitting down in the road. 

That worked by moral embarassment. Not everyone gets morally embarassed.
For example I suspect that sitting in the road in Zimbabwe and
protesting about the Right to Eat (the state has destroyed agriculture
and most of the economy and nicks the food aid to give to Party
supporters) would just get our Ghandi-style hero's hands chopped off, if
not actually her head. Conversely, I suspect that if everyone in
Zimbabwe had guns'n'ammunition, Mugabe might have discovered it prudent
to at least feign moral embarassment and reign in some of his more
lunatic schemes.

Certainly if I could, I'd rather send a handgun to a Zimbabwean peasant
than a goat, but strangely Oxfam don't seem to offer that facility. It's
a crying shame really.

> I must say that these Bush years have really knocked my belief that
> mankind can do better though. 

Even wars have to be run competently. The message wwent out to everyone
in the runup that Bush and company only wanted to hear what they wanted
to hear. The they took out anyone who could do the job and put in
useless yes men. Everyone kept reporting that things were just dandy and
Rumsfeld et al believed it because they wanted to. Now it's a grade A
fuckup and if we're lucky we'll see Iraq split into three countries with
only a few hundred thousand more murdered by other Iraqis seeking their
own vision of Utopia and discovering folks next door rather against it.

> Or perhaps I am getting too old and tired to dream of better things. 

It's easier to get cynical when you get older because you've seen some
of the shit that some of the scummier folks in our species will pull.
Try to maintain your idealism nevertheless. It's good for the heart and
spirit.  

Have a great holiday!

Mike