This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “If being liberal means being open, and generally tolerant, why do so many people ask why “liberals” are so intolerant?”
Tolerance cannot exist without limits, and the tolerance limits are the intolerant in society. Society cannot survive a tolerant existence without being intolerant of the insular and narrow-minded. Karl Popper described this limit within his “Paradox of Tolerance.”
Being tolerant means embracing the tolerant and rejecting the intolerant.
People who spread hatred cannot be tolerated if we wish to live in a tolerant society. In essence, people who spread hatred are in breach of the social contract, and the only way to address that is through the social pressure of rejection. The logic is not much different than the logic used when incarcerating criminals. Separating disruptive elements from society is a necessary strategy for preserving social cohesion.
Hate-mongers fail to understand this principle when they discover, to their chagrin, that their abusive intolerance is no longer tolerated.
They are often shocked and concoct accusations like “cancel culture” to serve as deflections for disguising their confessions. They are, after all, the same people who ban books. Most bullies in society get away with being bullies for a long time because most people just quietly turn away from them to give them the illusion they can continue being bullies. Most people prefer to avoid conflict and will often comply with a bully to get rid of them, making them think they have won.
This is a sad consequence of conflict-averse people because they only enable bullies in society while the one or two brave enough to stand up to them are destroyed.
The only way we will end the abuse we experience from bullies is when everyone stands together to show the intolerant that their intolerance will not be tolerated.
Being liberal has nothing to do with this. A decent human being willing to fight for a better world constitutes values that transcend political ideology.
Conservatives also have it within them to be better. The current prevalence of MAGAts and MAGA-style hatemongering the world over overwhelms their parties with cumulative toxicity that erodes the social fabric. At the same time, the rational conservatives among them, tacitly endorse the assault on the social contract through their tolerance of destructive MAGA attitudes and behaviours.
This is a difficult period of transformation for those who have felt themselves entitled to their biases, and we see examples of it everywhere in every contentious issue where mainly MAGA people attempt to impose their biases onto others. They can’t stomach the idea of equality when they and all of the working people are struggling during a period of extreme income inequity. Instead of being angry at those responsible for their strife, they’ve chosen the easy route of punching down instead of up because all bullies are cowards. It’s much easier for them to pick on those who appear vulnerable in society, such as immigrants, transitioning people, and women.
When liberals try to refocus their anger on those responsible for their strife, they often react with anger toward liberals, and that’s why questions like this exist. Those “so many people” who ask why liberals are intolerant are those who are too afraid to hold the people responsible for their anger accountable. Everyone else has had their tolerance eroded from the futility of attempting to reason with people who hold fast to positions they did not adopt out of reason. There is no point bridging a divide while the other side insists on digging a chasm.
This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “What is the least amount of authority governments can have in the market to allow functional free-market capitalism?”
Let’s begin answering this question by precisely identifying the role of government in market capitalism.
We, the people, through government, determine the rules by which the “game of capitalism is played.”
The government implements, administers, and referees those rules for “we, the people.”
The authority of government in this and all cases is determined precisely by the demands of “we, the people.”
Whatever authority a government has is authorized and endorsed by “we, the people.”
This is a basic explanation of how a democracy functions and from where its authority is derived.
There is no magic formula for determining how much or little authority a government has within any specific context, be it the marketplace or other social issues. Government authority is a dynamic thing which spans a spectrum of ideologies from right to left and top to bottom.
Generally speaking, “we, the people,” make demands of government, and the government responds to those demands.
Identifying who comprises “we, the people,” is where all our problems with government begin.
In the modern U.S.A., a society with arguably the most wealth and power on the planet has several stakeholders with varying degrees of power and influence on government operations — policies, procedures, laws, authority, and scope for implementing and enforcing their decisions.
This is no different than any other nation on the planet, except for how big the money and power pie is in the U.S.
The human condition is such that a contingent of us are so drawn to money and power that they deliberately influence government in ways that disempower and impoverish the many to secure money and power for themselves.
The largest pie attracts the largest contingent of the greediest among us. This is the cause of suffering for hundreds of millions of U.S. citizens today, which spills out onto the rest of the world because of its undue influence on global dynamics.
In many ways, the best thing for democracy worldwide is for the U.S. to lose most of its power and influence. If it becomes a sinking ship due to the recently elected corruption, the rats will abandon it for brighter prospects worldwide. Today, China is poised to become the greatest beneficiary of America’s power drain. It’s already benefiting from Russia’s hubris and overreach. China has been playing Putin in the same way that Putin has been playing Americans through Trump.
At any rate, to specifically answer this question, the least “amount of authority” the marketplace will have in its refereeing is already the “Lassez Faire” strategy the U.S. has been indulging in for decades. This is why the housing bubble and Great Recession occurred during the Bush Administration.
A complete lack of oversight means the predators in society have a heyday of mining suckers through fraudulent strategies to obtain their goodwill, support, and resources.
If you haven’t noticed yet, you might want to take a trip through Facebook and make note of all the advertisers.
There are at least ten scams for every legitimate advertisement because for a private, for-profit entity like Meta, generating revenue is a much higher priority than protecting their community. Ironically, they are serious about penalizing people for violating community standards.
Governments today have adopted a similar approach toward their administrative functions by outsourcing much of their responsibility to for-profit entities. The U.S. prison system is one such grotesque abomination of immorality practiced by the government through the authority it has been granted to administer national affairs under a for-profit mindset.
The fraudulent argument used to forward this human rights betrayal is an alleged saving to the people. The reality is that such a strategy represents a cost increase to the people with a dramatic reduction in the quality of service. This pattern of rapacious manipulation of government through propaganda fed to the people is most commonly associated with their (lack of) healthcare (health exploitation) system issues.
The goal, of course, in these cases is to appease the few with disproportionate power and influence in society to boost their annual incomes and quality of life at the expense of millions.
Their influence grants the government greater authority in areas that betray the people’s needs while strategically benefiting themselves.
In terms of authority in the marketplace, people are fed the lie that minimal authority is good for the market, while the reality is that it’s suitable only for the predators in the market.
To make matters worse, they succeed in their propaganda by delivering mindless solipsisms that dull critical thinking like a grifter convinces a desperate mark that they will receive a million dollars from a Nigerian prince by simply giving them a thousand dollars.
Like any sports event, a referee requires enough authority to enforce the game’s rules. If the field is big enough, additional referees are put on the field to ensure violations are spotted and dealt with effectively.
Without that oversight and the ability to respond to violations, the game is corrupted to such a degree that it’s no longer worth participating in any capacity.
Without the ability of the referee to exercise independent judgement, they end up favouring one team over all others to ensure they win every time.
In some ways, this is how the market has been corrupted by the notion that referees are unnecessary to ensure every player and every team has a fair shot of doing well in the game.
In some ways, the market has been rigged like a casino where the house always wins, and in this case, the house is the corporatocracy and the billionaires who own the house by proxy.
The less authority a government has independently from the stakeholders rigging the game in their favour, the less effective the market is for the economy. The restrictions on government oversight that are about to be stripped by the incompetence and malice characterizing the incoming administration will lead to widespread systemic collapse. This will be due to the predators among us experiencing a resurgence of freedom to victimize an entire population that will make the nation a new “Wild West of exploitation.”
By stripping consumer protections such as in food and environmental oversight systems, the outcomes are guaranteed to be fatal to an unpredictable number of mass casualties.
The next four years will be a supremely harsh lesson for those who buy into superficial soundbites because they are desperate to believe the Nigerian prince, who seems so concerned about their well-being, will sincerely deliver on their promise to drain the swamp rather than infest it with predators.
This bleeding heart bleeds for all the victims, be it left or right, liberal or conservative — but I will feel nothing but contempt for the self-serving MAGA addiction to hatred responsible for the ensuing chaos and destruction.
The people who fail to take heed of the nightmare ahead will be in for a lifetime of seriously bitter crows to chew on. I won’t be enjoying their humility, though, because I’ll be too busy grieving over the unnecessary casualties they will have imposed upon the nation.
This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why is the label “socialism” often viewed negatively when discussing progressive policies? Is there a significant difference between socialism and liberalism?”
Socialism and liberalism are distinct ideologies with no practical connection between them.
Liberalism is built on three fundamental societal values: Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality. These values inspire and guide liberal minds in supporting greater degrees of social justice in a broadly unjust world.
Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production. Socialism essentially strips plutocrats of their wealth and forces an entitled class of people to live alongside as equals to the people they prefer to benefit from their exploitation.
These two disparate concepts are often conflated as part of a centuries-long class war waged by society’s plutocrats against the proletariat (the working class) while employing the bourgeoisie (capitalists) as their armies of oppression.
Every movement toward social justice is met by resistance to the entitled classes in society who possess the leverage of despair against the working class to enrich themselves while impoverishing the weakest among us.
Every movement toward social justice is a strip of power taken from the entitled classes to enable the weakest among us to survive and prosper without suffering a dehumanizing indignity imposed upon them by the wealthy classes.
For the working class to fight for and win weekends off from labour is a cost to the wealthy class that they deeply resent and respond to with strategies to strip further dignities from the working class.
Their deep resentment toward increasing social justice and decreasing power over the working class has been deeply embedded into their psyches due to historical events like the Russian Revolution of 1917. A monarchy was violently abolished through two successive revolutions and a civil war, which spread a sentiment of hatred for the ruling class in society across the globe to inspire a similar German Revolution of 1918.
The nightmare of breadlines persists to this day and has been used as a weapon of ideas against another uprising by the working class.
The plutocrats of today have learned to do whatever they can to insulate themselves from another violent uprising that would result in them losing their wealth and power to angry mobs of desperate working-class citizens.
They have invested billions over the decades to have people automatically associate socialism and communism with extreme poverty and extreme oppression. Their efforts have been supremely successful to the degree that the poorest in society today will fight to protect plutocrat wealth at the expense of their well-being.
Here’s an example of a random right-wing website, their fearmongering messaging and how successful the plutocrats have been in conditioning the working class to defend what they view as the saviours of humanity they refer to as “job creators.”
(Please do take a moment to “bask” in the sheer hatred they have cultivated within their loyal lemmings toward any form of social justice for society. These are the slugs in society who beg for a salt bath… and are deeply committed to taking all the rest of us with them on a trip to human oblivion.)
We can see the cancerous attitude as a caricature of humanity within the American political system as a corrupt plutocrat who has become a convicted felon can still campaign for president. In contrast, every other convicted felon is stripped of their right to vote while they rot in prison.
The plutocrats in society have been quietly waging their class warfare for centuries; before, they were plutocrats and considered a monarchy that assumed power over the little people through physical warfare.
They have persisted for over 100 years in a steady and patient strategy of protecting their wealth and power through every influential channel they can.
Look through this resource to see how the plutocrat class influences legislation creation through a group called the “American Legislative Exchange Council” (ALEC). This association has been responsible for literally writing the laws that are implemented verbatim to benefit themselves at the expense of the public good… and this is only the tip of the iceberg for their machinations:
Most hide their money behind organizations like Blackstone Inc., which bills itself as an “alternative investment management firm” and dumps millions into SuperPAC to fund the campaigns of politicians who will support their wealth acquisition strategies at the expense of the working class and the constituents who vote for them.
These are highly paid grifters whose job is to scam hundreds of millions of people out of the value of their labours, and they have succeeded to the tune of over $50 trillion from the middle class in the last few decades alone.
They have successfully converted a system of empowering the most vulnerable among us into a system of oppressing the most vulnerable among us.
They have invested billions in their war while reducing the costs of waging it to a small tax.
Their coup de grâce has been the outright purchase of the highest court in the land, seeking to convert the world into a facsimile of a medieval state with a two-class system of rulers and serfs.
Ironically, they have succeeded so well in entrenching their power to repeat the historic levels of income inequality threatening global stability one hundred years ago that we are on the verge of repeating the same tragedies.
It’s been easy to blame the motivations for all their socially destructive activities on simple greed, but the sheer irrationality of their behaviours transcends greed. It is a self-destructive behaviour that has abandoned rationality.
All of which is intended to prohibit these kinds of social justice goals for the working class:
The minimal costs of a social safety net don’t justify the extremes of greed they’ve been displaying. The only explanation for their extreme behaviour, which resembles the trajectory of an addict, is that they have been deeply scarred by history.
The revolutions of the little people throughout history have scarred them deeply, and that explains why they have invested so much into the optics of language to cause the public to viscerally reject a concept like socialism without bothering to consider aspects of the concept that can and are beneficial to society.
No one blinks about socialism when it involves public money spent on the military because security is more important to many, particularly among those who loudly and repeatedly profess their love of freedom the most.
The most frustrating aspect of all of this is that, as captains of industry and leaders in society, one would hope they would be astute enough to avoid making manifest that which they fear so much… yet, this is the state of affairs today:
Pushing people to extremes of desperation makes it seem like they’re begging for the pikes and guillotines to come out and repeat history.
They can see the escalations occurring throughout the globe. Instead of taking action to avert catastrophe, they invest in secure bunkers to save their asses from the conflagration while hoping their billions will be worth something when the entire world’s economy collapses.
For a group of people who are generally viewed as more intelligent than the masses, they seem to wallow in more profound stupidity than the under-educated people they love to manipulate while convincing themselves of their superiority.
The environmental nightmare they are inviting into our world is rapidly approaching a tipping point in which there will be no return to stability without a dramatic shifting of power throughout the globe. Yet, no inkling of this impending catastrophe seems to grace their awareness. It’s as if they’re watching a massive iceberg drifting toward them, and they’re more fascinated by its structure than what it will do when it strikes.
This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora and can also be accessed via “Why would it be possible for people to live without the government?”
It’s not.
Without government, we would barely survive while struggling with anarchy and doing our best to avoid the bullies among us who would have free reign to terrorize anyone they please.
Life would be cheaper than it is now. Justice would be non-existent, and perversions of it would be meted out by force and without any form of protection for anyone without the power to dominate others.
Virtually all scientific and technological progress would halt. If government ceased to exist from this point forward, we would be facing a nuclear holocaust through much of the world as centuries-long enemies would no longer be restrained from indulging in their worst fear impulses. The mid-East would essentially be vaporized and rendered uninhabitable for the next century. India and Pakistan would decimate each other. Much of Eastern Europe would be bombed into rubble. China would decimate its neighbours and indulge in its most significant expansion across the globe… or it could fall apart into factions ruled by powerful interests within the nation whose infighting would also collapse the country and leave it vulnerable to external aggressors seeking revenge.
Whatever may exist of what you call home would have to be protected by traps and a twenty-four-hour armed security detail. You would sleep in shifts.
Your environment would be like living in a perpetual purge. That would likely last until we’ve culled most of our species and our numbers shrink from eight billion to a few hundred million within a few years at the outset.
Once we’ve burned ourselves out from a pent-up violence orgy, we’d start seeing primitive tribal infrastructures negotiating arrangements to secure our survival as a species. At the same time, we would find ourselves living in an entirely hostile world as we experience ecological collapse all around us from our careless mismanagement of the environment ramped up into overdrive from global conflicts.
We would make the world of the Mad Max mythos manifest and find ourselves severely humbled as a species.
As much as people may hate government and as much as many criticisms are justifiable, we need government for the simple reason that the one in five who currently manifest the mental health pandemic we’re living with is a perpetual threat to human existence.
Once we succeed at reaching a point of optimal mental health where we have overcome our psychoses, human society may evolve to a degree where government is as much an automated system as the rest of the industrialized world promises to be.
Until then, our best bet is to become more engaged in our self-governance as a collection of democratic societies — which, at this point, means “taking our government’s back” — out of the hands of the few with too much power and back into the hands of all of us.
Humanity’s worst threats have always been the few with too much power victimizing the many with too little power. This is why democracy was born and has dominated the landscape over the last century.
Sadly, those with too much power in today’s world hate it and are actively undermining it to send us all back to a medieval state of existence as a two-class society of rulers and serfs.
As much as many people may wish to mock democracy as a fundamentally flawed system while pointing out the advantages of an autocratic system, the reality is that we have never truly committed to making democracy work. If we had, we would do the necessary thing — equip everyone with the education, skills, and insights required to make proper decisions reflecting what’s best for all of us.
This last American election showed us that people are still trapped within the paradigm of what’s best for them personally in a zero-sum game that necessitates the existence of losers to support the winners.
The solution to our problems is not eradicating what we struggle with but fixing where we fail to make it work. That means improving our education systems by learning to value education on a level as if our lives depend upon it because they do.
There is no such thing as an “ideal form of government” because humans are from “ideal.”
What makes democracy a superior form of government to all others is self-determination.
What makes democracy a far more chaotic form of government than all others is self-determination.
No other form of governance is as capable as a democracy of facilitating the full achievement of human potential because no other form of governance empowers individuality.
No other form of governance is as prone to overt assaults against it, while no other form of governance can survive those assaults.
Human nature demands self-determination, while the assaults against democracy today are born of that demand for self-determination — albeit in horrifically corrupted and myopically self-serving terms.
Think about the perspectives of those displaying an aggrieved assault against democracy. They are commonly born from an autocratic mindset which expects the world to conform to their perspectives. They interpret the evolution of society as a rejection of their insular views and a violation of their rights to those views. It is Frankenstein’s monster of cancerous individuality disguising a toxic desire for sublimation to authoritarian rule by people who imagine freedom as their right to dictate the lives of others.
They are not entirely oblivious to the inherent hypocrisies they champion, or they would otherwise not conduct their protests while disguising their identities or hiding behind masks or fake profiles, managing multiple sock-puppet accounts on social media.
They are the disruptive elements in a democratic society screaming a need for a much more coherent strategy for social development. The challenge at hand, however, is not an authoritarian solution dictated to the masses, as history’s failures have made clear. Today’s dynamic in an information-rich society demands a supportive strategy of education and social welfare programs providing opportunities for healing and growth for a species emerging out of a dark and brutal history while still suffering the effects of generational PTSD.
For democracy to survive its current challenges and begin to approach whatever may be deemed as an “ideal form of governance,” our systems must evolve to prioritize the people over the plutocracy seeking to regress human civilization to a medieval state of rulers and serfs.
We will otherwise find ourselves repeating the bloody histories of our ancestors who sacrificed everything to win the freedoms far too many take for granted today.
In today’s world, the closest examples we have to an “ideal democracy” are embodied within the Nordic models of social democracy.
We would save countless lives if we could take stock of how fundamentally destructive the world’s current adoption of right-wing ideologies is for human society and global stability.
Every government imposed on a country has been authoritarian.
Marx’s vision for communism has never been implemented and was never realistically possible to implement in the manner he envisioned.
His view was that socialism (which he often used interchangeably with communism) was an intermediary step to communism. For the people to own the means of production implies a democratic form of ownership, which has never been the case with socialist systems in an authoritarian framework.
His definition of communism was based on the principle, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” — it is, by definition, a meritocracy (which, in itself, is problematic). The problem, however, is that no system is possible — at least at this stage of human development — without some hierarchy of authority.
Every implementation of what has been popularly viewed as communism has never been communism as Marx envisioned it (while he accurately predicted the flaws in Capitalism would lead to the situation we are suffering from today) and failed precisely because they have been authoritarian systems based upon a centralized authority.
Today’s capitalism can be argued to be an authoritarian system imposed upon the people, entirely consistent with the historical failures of the implementations/impositions of pseudo-communism. (Particularly since the U.S. is on the brink of transforming into a fully-fledged fascist state stripped of its last vestige of Democracy by Drumpf’s promise to end elections. The state of corporatocracy that the U.S. has today has arguably been imposed upon a people without their knowledge or consent. A corporate infrastructure is a totalitarian style of monarchic rule as an operating system of administration… and precisely why corporations are anachronistic holdovers from a medieval era that cannot help but evolve into a threat to democratic governments.)
Marx’s vision of communism can be argued that it was intended to be an organically evolved system, which, by today’s measure, means a form of advanced direct democracy.
To contradict the presumption in this question, Lenin did not impose his brand of communism on the country. He won the support of a majority of the people against the Provisional Government in place at the time. The people who endorsed his program supported his confiscation of land to nationalize it and divide it among the peasants.
This is eerily much like where the U.S. is at with the potential installation of an Orange Nazi Turd who should be rotting behind bars like every other convicted felon instead of roaming about free to campaign on a platform of destroying 243 years of American democracy.
The real problem we have is dialectical and a propensity for oversimplification.
Even authoritative sources like Britannica fail to offer clarity in defining governmental systems. As far as that source is concerned, there are five countries it identifies communism as an “official form of government”: China, North Korea, Laos, Cuba, and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, descriptions of each nation contradict that statement:
Vietnam — The politics of Vietnam is dominated by a single party under an authoritarian system, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV).
North Korea — A totalitarian dictatorship with a comprehensive cult of personality around the Kim family.
Laos — Lao People’s Democratic Republic (commonly known as Laos) takes place in the framework of a one-party parliamentary socialist republic.
Cuba — Cuba has had a socialist political system since 1961 based on the “one state — one party” principle. Cuba is constitutionally defined as a single-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republic with semi-presidential powers.
China — The Chinese constitution describes China’s system of government as a people’s democratic dictatorship. The CCP has also used other terms to officially describe China’s system of government, including “socialist consultative democracy”, and whole-process people’s democracy.
(This post was an answer to a Question posed on Quora — where all my posts on Medium have originated; hence the personal response indicated within this article. — https://www.quora.com/profile/Antonio-Amaral-1/ )
This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “If Darwin’s theory is correct, then there is always fierce competition within each species in which only a few survive. Why is the human population increasing?”
This question is an example of someone reading something about what someone else proposes, not to learn from them or to understand what they mean by what they write or say, but to find reasons to be critical and dismissive.
This behaviour is quite common on social media and in communication dynamics everywhere.
The attitude displayed within this question is an example of an attitude governed by catering to one’s ego. The Dunning-Kruger arrogance would be astounding if it were not so prevalent among humans so entirely subservient to their egotistical compulsions.
The audacity of ignorance reeks throughout this question, beginning with “If Darwin’s theory is correct.”
Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection has transformed the world through a deeper understanding of the mechanics of life. It has not only stood the test of time but spawned innumerable initiatives and several new branches of science. Yet, some under-educated schmuck on social media declares their suspicions of its value while providing a badly butchered rendition of a god-awful misinterpretation of it on a fundamental level.
This attitude is why many believers are often considered abusively ignorant.
This attitude demonstrated by so many people in many contexts is why conflicts occur between people.
If you’re going to cite Darwin’s theory, then at least try to understand it correctly on the most basic level.
Others have gently corrected this arrogance of misinterpretation and have convincingly explained how and why it’s a disservice to scientific progress. I want to focus my venting on this arrogance so often displayed by people who assume their juvenile grasp of something they haven’t understood is magically superior to a mind that has transformed human society on such a fundamental level in such a dramatic fashion.
This style of ignorance is why we struggle everywhere in every endeavour, whether scientific or political, as human society gets bogged down by idiocrats.
This isn’t even close to the worst example of a Dunning-Kruger level of arrogance, but the timing was fluky, and so, lucky you.
I have no idea what the communication dynamics within a high school environment are these days. I can, however, easily recall how the arrogance displayed by this question by students would often be met with a comeuppance of some sort by the instructor.
If you were a scientist yourself, never mind that you would not have concocted such a butchered misinterpretation, you would still not present yourself with the kind of arrogance displayed within this question.
There would be some respect in your tone for the work done by someone so significant to human history and the evolution of our society. You would be aware of the benefits you have been living with as a consequence of his work, if not on a detailed level, but on a level that shows some appreciation for its value.
Your lack of knowledge of his work is not justification for your arrogance. It does, however, scream your ignorance to the world, and that should be an embarrassment to you while it isn’t, nor is it for all the many who barf up similar expressions of unearned arrogance.
Over and over again, and every day, a believer pulls out their cynically dismissive arrogance gun to shoot themselves in the foot in the same way you have.
Here’s a clue for you, though… in case you want to demonstrate some respect in future for someone who outclasses you from beyond the grave, this is how you would broach your confusion over what you don’t understand with a modicum of humility and respect for the work of a significant contributor to humanity’s progress:
Instead of huffing your ego like this,
“If Darwin’s theory is correct, then there is always fierce competition within each species in which only a few survive. Why is the human population increasing?”
I’d recommend reigning it in with something demonstrating a little more awareness of the limits of your knowledge with something like this:
“Why is the human population increasing if there is always fierce competition within each species and in which only a few survive?”
Do you notice the difference, or is it too subtle for you? Is this response to your question an example of being too sensitive over something that doesn’t matter to you? — If that’s how you feel, you sorely misunderstand why the world is always in conflict. The difference between the two examples of word choices can be between reaching an agreement within a sensitive negotiation and going to war against a new enemy.
In this case, the subject is not critical to resolving anything. It is, however, an example of how often cynically dismissive arrogance pushes people past their tolerance limits.
In essence, this answer isn’t even so much for your benefit as it is for every other believer who decides they can dismiss 165 years of scientific progress based on being too lazy to educate themselves properly on a subject they believe their cartoon degree of self-assuredness compensates for their lack of interest in doing their homework.
It would be best if you could manage some gratitude for so many people who gave you polite answers while entertaining your somewhat mild rudeness in this case. Like Chinese water torture, however, enough of it eventually breaks people’s ability to be polite in the face of self-serving delusions like believing your gut feelings trump the hard work of countless professionals who have dedicated their lives to improving all of ours.
Eventually, you will run into a pushy someone like me who will call you out on your disrespect because that seems to be the “skill god gave me.” I’m sure you might feel it’s not a pleasant experience to find yourself confronted by this kind of venting… truth be told, I wish I weren’t triggered into a need to vent in this manner, but that’s the world we live in.
C’est la vie.
I feel better now, and I’m sorry if you don’t. I hope you pass on this message if you read it to understand it rather than look for reasons to dismiss it.
This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora.
Human rights are essentially an agreement between humans to protect a characteristic or behaviour of all humans within their community.
Human rights exist only by virtue of the agreement itself and the degree of commitment by other humans to protect those rights.
This is a global issue, with human rights being violated all the time and everywhere on the planet. It’s a problem that demands our immediate attention and action. This is why human rights are violated all the time and everywhere on the earth.
We have far too many humans who view rights as scalable according to their essentially misanthropic perceptions of humanity — because we are suffering from a mental health pandemic affecting at least one in five among us. We are only now beginning to realize that we are a species that has been suffering for centuries from generational trauma from our barbaric origins.
The fight for universal human rights is a fundamental building block in a healing process that will require centuries to emerge from.
We are far better off today than we were one century ago simply because of our increased awareness of the issues we are dealing with and an emerging appropriate context from which we interpret our experiences.
Human rights are crucial to preserving the social contract and ensuring systemic stability.
Without human rights as a concept enshrined into law, we descend into barbarism.
After writing this answer and posting it, I realize I’m doing a disservice to the concept by providing such little context.
Human rights have a long and bloody history of development in which their inklings as concepts we should value as a species were responses to centuries of brutal violence characterizing human life.
The earliest examples of human rights enshrined in local laws date back to circa 2350 BC in Asia as the reforms of “Urukagina of Lagash,” which evolved into more well-known examples of legal documentation such as “The Code of Hammurabi” from circa 1780 BC.
Ancient Egypt also supported fundamental human rights through documents such as “The Edicts of Ashoka” (c. 268–232 BC). Other principles of human behaviour emerged during this period, while one such principle has been incorporated throughout most living religions today and is popularly known as “The Golden Rule.”
Fast forward to 622, and “The Constitution of Medina” functioned as a formal agreement between Muhammad and the tribes and families of Yathribe, which included Muslims, Jews, and pagans. This agreement was an early means of uniting all peoples of the land under a common identity referred to as “Ummah” and incorporated several changes to how slavery was defined and limited.
Early Islamic laws from this period incorporated principles of military conduct and the treatment of prisoners of war that became precursors to international humanitarian law.
Moving forward into the Middle Ages, the most influential document establishing the modern basis for human rights was the creation of the “Magna Carta,” itself heavily influenced by early Christian thinkers such as St Hilary of Poitiers, St Ambrose, and St Augustine.
The Magna Carta of 1215 influenced the development of “common law” and several constitutional documents following, all related to human rights, including the (1689) “English Bill of Rights” and the (1789) United States Constitution.
Some may remember from the Iraq War and the establishment of Guantanamo that the Bush administration suspended the writ of “Habeas Corpus” — the right to know what one has been accused of — was a right established in the Magna Carta. This was a fundamental violation of a basic right that set the nation back in time to an era of barbarism — and they hypocritically leveraged that violation to commit war crimes for waterboarding that the U.S. itself forced Japan to face an international tribunal for war crimes over the same behaviour decades earlier.
This is a stain on the American people that will not wash off their conscience while they do nothing to own responsibility for their grotesque violation. This dark moral failing of the nation has become a slippery slope of moral failures permitting the monstrosity of immoral behaviour. We — as in the world- are now on the verge of potentially falling entirely into a pit of immorality because of their “leadership” in this area.
At any rate, I’ll avoid proselytizing further and get to the goods of reading material and a “pretty picture” at the end with a chart of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
The Institute for Economics and Peace provides an in-depth analysis of civil unrest in the UK specifically through the .pdf available from the link below:
Note from this quote a clue as to the causes of civil unrest:
“The UK has become less peaceful in the last decade. Peacefulness in the UK deteriorated by almost 11 percent in 2022, the most recent year of measurement. This is the eighth deterioration in peacefulness in the last decade and the first since 2020. Fifty-eight Police Force Areas (PFA) deteriorated, while eight improved. This is the largest number of PFAs to deteriorate since 2018.
Of the five UKPI indicators, homicide was the only one to improve, while the remaining four — violent crime, weapons crime, police officers, public disorder — deteriorated”
This suggests the aggravating factors for civil unrest do not lie within social dynamics among the population but an overall level of dissatisfaction with systems failing to meet the needs of the people.
Sadly, the propensity for ignoring causes and treating symptoms has exacerbated the problems as police have increasingly adopted militaristic policies for “serving and protecting” the public.
The militarization of the police has made this phenomenon worse, not better and they’ve been allowed to evolve in a counter-productive strategy that fails on every front from inciting civil unrest to increasing incidents of their wrongdoing as police are responsible for up to 40% of all domestic violence incidents.
The strategy of militarization of the police has turned them into a terrorist organization for many citizens. This is a consequence of conservative politics because imposition is the only language they understand.
Here is a summary provided by Chat GPT on social events in which Police catalyzed riots as a consequence of their inept approach to conflict de-escalation (from a U.S. perspective):
Numerous social events throughout history have seen police actions catalyzing riots. Here are some notable instances:
1. 1965 Watts Riots (Los Angeles, California):
– Trigger: The arrest of Marquette Frye, a black motorist, by a white California Highway Patrol officer.
– Outcome: Six days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and extensive property damage.
2. 1967 Newark Riots (Newark, New Jersey):
– Trigger: The arrest and beating of John Smith, a black cab driver, by white police officers.
– Outcome: Six days of rioting, 26 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and widespread destruction.
3. 1967 Detroit Riots (Detroit, Michigan):
– Trigger: A police raid on an unlicensed bar, or “blind pig,” in a predominantly black neighbourhood.
– Outcome: Five days of rioting, 43 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and significant property damage.
4. 1968 Chicago Riots (Chicago, Illinois):
– Trigger: The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., followed by police actions during protests.
– Outcome: Several days of rioting, 11 deaths, numerous injuries, and extensive property damage.
5. 1980 Miami Riots (Miami, Florida):
– Trigger: The acquittal of four white police officers in the beating death of Arthur McDuffie, a black motorcyclist.
– Outcome: Several days of rioting, 18 deaths, numerous injuries, and extensive property damage.
6. 1992 Los Angeles Riots (Los Angeles, California):
– Trigger: The acquittal of four LAPD officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, a black motorist.
– Outcome: Six days of rioting, 63 deaths, over 2,000 injuries, and widespread destruction.
7. 2001 Cincinnati Riots (Cincinnati, Ohio):
– Trigger: The police shooting of Timothy Thomas, an unarmed black teenager.
– Outcome: Several days of rioting, resulted in injuries and significant property damage.
8. 2014 Ferguson Unrest (Ferguson, Missouri):
– Trigger: The police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer.
– Outcome: Weeks of protests and riots, resulting in injuries, arrests, and property damage.
9. 2015 Baltimore Protests (Baltimore, Maryland):
– Trigger: The death of Freddie Gray in police custody.
– Outcome: Several days of protests and rioting, resulted in injuries, arrests, and property damage.
10. 2020 George Floyd Protests (Nationwide, USA):
– Trigger: The police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
– Outcome: Protests and riots across numerous cities in the U.S., resulting in deaths, injuries, and significant property damage.
These events highlight the recurring issue of police actions triggering significant social unrest, often reflecting deeper systemic issues within society.
Imposition is conflict escalation NOT conflict resolution.
Although the militarization of the police is entirely the wrong way to go in addressing social unrest, they are a symptom of resolvable political problems beginning with the short-sighted views of conservative politicians who interpret every problem as a nail because they have learned only how to wield a hammer.
Nuance escapes them.
The patience required to facilitate peaceful resolutions runs contrary to a profit-oriented mindset that equates time spent with lost dollars.
The core problem is also exacerbated by their sycophantic support of the conditions that led to last century’s Great Depression and were responsible for triggering the Second World War. We are watching those conditions and their consequences replaying themselves right now in real-time with the horrifying implications inherent within the corrupt American system.
No nation is immune to the impact of economic distortions feeding despair among the public.
The core problem catalyzing the increase in civil unrest is economic by nature.
The core problem feeding the despair driving otherwise peaceful citizens into extreme action is the economic distortion corroding the basic patience, tolerance, and decency of otherwise peaceful people who want only to live modestly dignified lives but cannot because we have all been robbed of trillions in a class warfare that seeks to resurrect a facsimile of governance resembling a medieval caste system of two classes of people; rulers and serfs.
This trajectory is unsustainable and will continue to feed unrest.
This sociopathic profit motive cannot but lead to chaos.
Making matters worse is that the lifestyles of the wealthy class have put humanity on a trajectory toward its extinction.
No one should be surprised by an increase in public unrest.
Things are going to get MUCH uglier before they get better.
The questions we need to address are:
“How many casualties can we tolerate before we come to our senses?”
How much pain and suffering can we stomach before we lose our shit?
How many millions must die due to preventable causes and the behaviours of sociopaths hellbent on destroying this planet will it take before civilization is a chaotic mess of violent insurrections all around the world?
What will it take for the wealthiest among us to show some leadership and help set this ship of humanity onto a path toward a sustainable future?
(This post was an answer to a Question posed on Quora — where all my posts on Medium have originated; hence the personal response indicated within this article. — https://www.quora.com/profile/Antonio-Amaral-1/ )
The world is changing ever faster by the year. The natural reaction many people have toward circumstances changing in ways they haven’t been able to process is to resist that change. A large part of the problem contributing toward resistance to change is the perception that things were okay before the proposed changes had been introduced and “pushed onto them”. (People in general, regardless of their political ideology, don’t appreciate feeling like they’ve had their lives dictated to them.)
In the case of gay marriage, for example, many people seemed quite comfortable with their many generations of heterosexual marriage. They didn’t want to see their status quo change because that represents a change to something everyone believes is fundamental to society — family. The notion that a family is not a genetically controlled environment just doesn’t factor into sensibilities which still believe in the “Ozzie and Harriet illusion of family” (even though that symbol hasn’t existed for decades — if ever it did beyond a small segment of society). Changing that image is difficult for some people on a fundamental level because it means changing much about how they perceive the world around them.
Conservatives have the greatest difficulties with such changes because they are naturally predisposed toward conservation — (hence their designation as conservatives). There is certainly some value in preserving aspects of tradition and ideology to facilitate the cultivation of a consistent set of values to strengthen a community. We are at a point in our history where diverse communities across the globe that have been evolving for centuries are now transforming into a singular and global community. Many traditional values are forced into being discarded quickly without permitting conservatives their luxuries of taking the natural amount of time they would otherwise take toward adjusting to change.
Some conservatives can still support notions of slavery and misogyny. It seems clear that some of these views have been entrenched so deeply within the human psyche that we have many centuries of effort ahead of us to cure our society of such destructive attitudes… and because the changes which are occurring across this globe involve cultures which are still currently living in what the developed world regards as barbaric conditions; we have an enormous amount of work to do to resolve the conflicts arising out of the differences in perspectives as expressed by groups whose affiliations range the gamut of the spectrum of ideological concerns.
I don’t believe conservative values are fundamentally any different than liberal values; only the comprehension each group has on how to achieve those values differs between them. For example, both dislike the fact that unwanted children are forced into this world, and both would like to see the elimination of abortions as a means of preventing those children from being born into deplorable conditions. The conservative mind rationalizes that the best way to eliminate abortions is by imposing conditions and laws which govern behaviour. The liberal mind rationalizes education and support as the best solution toward reducing abortions to their minimal requirement. In the case of this issue, it seems clear to me in my biased mind that the liberal mindset is more capable of acknowledging the reality that people will respond far better toward receiving support than they would in being dictated to. This introduces an aspect of conservative thinking, highlighting a degree of hypocrisy in their efforts. No one likes to be dictated to, and it seems conservatives are the most vocal complainants of appearances of being dictated to. They seem incapable, however, of recognizing how their solutions are often impositions of their will upon others. They want their cake and to eat it, too. (This is speaking in generalities, of course, but that’s the nature of this topic.)
I think conservatives do sincerely believe they are helping our society to preserve values, but that often, they don’t seem altogether self-aware enough to recognize how many of their “proposed solutions” are not only not solutions but are often approaches which exacerbate the problems they claim to want to solve; but even worse is that they are approaches which contradict their values.
(A case in point would be the sheer number of laws they have introduced for controlling a woman’s reproductive rights while completely dismissing how those laws contradict their desire for a small government and greater freedoms as individuals… and under the auspices that they are protecting an unborn life while demonstrating no capacity for supporting initiatives to help already born and suffering children. They claim to possess superior morality arising from their religious beliefs, yet also complain about supporting those with the greatest need in society while lavishing riches upon those already wealthy.)
A conservative ideology and mindset may contribute some value toward establishing some framework for consistency within the development of a stable social structure, but it seems clear that the conservative mindset has lost all touch with what it means to be conservative in the first place and that it now is merely a caricature of an obstinate child who simply wants the world to capitulate to its own selfishly myopic views without having to give anything back in return for the luxuries they enjoy because of the sacrifices of those who came before us.
thotbag 