They joined the revolution at the end of a gun,
No they didn't, they came into the jungle to join the guerilla
Think about this logically. If i got a gun and forced you at gun point to fight your own country against your will.....do you think you'd be a very successful fighter? Do you think an army of people like you being forced to pick up guns and fight against their own would be successful?
Yet the cuban guerilla was a success. it was a success because it had popular support
There is no liberty in liberalism -- simply mutually assured circle jerks much like the Eurozone,
I thought you beleived in free markets? Ok i'm a little confused....what do you believe in?
I understand the reference you're trying to be sly and or passive aggressive about, but I'm ignoring it. Keep the change. You need to look at it closer,
I'm not sure what reference you mean, but consider it this way....perhaps i am saying that I have at times become the monster i am fighting.....not you
I think that we have a warrior side to us which is part of our nature and we've needed it since the days we were hunting for our dinner and fighting off bears from our caves
If we embrace the warrior side to fight a threat then there are dangers with that. I've used the quote here before: ''too much strength is but cruelty and oppression, while too much mercy but aids and abets evil''
So how do you find the balance of standing up for yourself and others without becoming cruel yourself? Very difficult....to fight a violent opponent you must use violence and that brings you down to their level. maybe this is the point to the whole 'turn the other cheek' thing?
But at what point do you stop turning the other cheek? If someone tried to round you and your family up to take you to a death camp....do you let them do it under the 'turn another cheek' principle? Sure you will stop a cycle of violence starting, but you will be dead.
The point i'm trying to make is that at times throughout history people have felt strongly enough to use violence to protect themselves for example the helot risings, the spartacus lead slave army, the peasants revolt in England and the cubans.....did they have alternatives?
One of the problems i have with capitalism is that it dehumanises us by making us compete with each other instead of cooperate. i think the people driving this process are incredibly cynical people who think that if they don't stab someone in the back first then they will be stabbed themselves....so they are always on the war path and always see everyone as a threat.....its like they have become completely taken over by the warrior aspect
They have used certain means for example 'game theory' to create a very cynical culture. There's a good documentary online called 'the trap' that talks about the history behind this
You need to understand what drives humans,
on the most basic level its warmth then thirst and hunger, after that there are other drives such as to procreate and then when these are satisfied there are drives relating to social needs (need for human contact) and beyond that there are needs to have a purpose and meaning......this is of course simplistic, but try going into the wilderness with nothing but the shirt on your back and wait and see what your priorities are
Those needs that you identify in your journey in the wilderness.....i think a good society would help people to have those needs and i don't think capitalism does that either in the 'west' or in the majority world
And then you will understand which government is best for the people.
I've had a lot of life experiences and met a lot of people, from around the world, so i have a reasonable grasp of how things work. Even my time spent on this forum has allowed me to discuss and debate with people around the world on these sorts of issues....but i've done a lot of that irl as well
Why this forum is particularly interesting for this is because people also post their personality type. So what i've found is that you can present a perfectly logical argument as to why something is good and why something else is bad.....you can support it with historical examples, examples from your own life and also with the work of others and various evidence......but some people will still say: 'i don't care, i believe that i have a right to rule over others'
This is really important because if such people do get into positions of authority then they may (they may not....depends on the person) abuse that position of authority. So how can people protect themselves from those few people who will always seek to dominate even if it is not the best thing for everyone?
Because that is how it works a lot of the time. Most people are just going about their day, doing their thing, cooperating with others, contributing to society, but there will always be a few people seeking to ride on the backs of those people.
Now we can either say 'ok that's fine, we will put ourselves at the mercy of this small dominating elite and just hope that they are not cruel to us' or we can say 'i'm not happy with that; i would like a say in the running of my community and i don't trust that small elite of aggressive people to be nice to be'
So if you don't trust a small pushy, domineering elite to be nice to you, then you need to find a way to protect yourself from that
So if when we get a small elite with centralised power we always (as Chomsky says) get oppression and corruption, then perhaps the answer is to de-centralise and to de-centralise as much as possible
If you have system whereby the whole community has a vote on issues then when one of those domineering, aggressive types, who just want to dominate and push everyone else around, says ''i think i should have half of the harvest and the rest of you can have the other half'' then when it comes to vote time, the community will all vote that it should be shared and the vote of the domineer will not have weight.....so the oppressive minority are not able to become oppressive because they are watered down by the rest of the community and are therefore able to share the harvest so that everyone is happy and healthy and not sick, poor, anxious, drowning in taxes and unemployed while a few nasty individuals are sat on their yachts in a tax haven eating the fish roe of endangered species off biscuits that cost your monthly wage
So it should be obvious to any rational thinker that 'capitalism' as a system is like a red rag to a bull for that aggressive minority who not only use it as a means to dominate others but also use it as a philospohical justification for their dominance
An example of the insanity of this would be the irish potato famine where catholics were banned from owning land and the anglo-irish were 'absentee landlords' who owned vast estates in ireland but lived in england and who's middlemen would collect taxes and rentds from the dispossessed catholics. When a disease hit the potato crops the english government did not stop the exportation of food from ireland because they did not want to see corporate profits harmed, so ireland remained a net exporter through the 5 years of famine despite 1 million people dying of starvation and a further million people fleeing their ancestral home to make a life elsewhere (many in the US)
This sort of tragedy can only happen when a few people dominate the many. if the many had a say in the running of the communities then the land would have been shared out as would the food and there wouldn't have been a famine
Hopefully you can see that i've looked at many different ways to form a society/community and that i have formed my opinions not from ignorance of other systems but from a realisation that centralised power leads to corruption and exploitation
I'm sure most people in the work place have felt the frustration of being stuck under the control of a shitty boss.....but that's what happens under centralised power (the same principles apply at every level whether in the work place or in groups or at societal or global level)
Given that I've given my reasons to all your future arguments, found in your post’s laments against me for offence, I'm not going to debate anymore about the fact about what is right and wrong in this world of rubble, because I've propelled past go 3 miles ago and now I find out taxes took all of my 200 rubles.
Yes the centralised power in your country is going to tax you and find many other ways to keep you on a work treadmill....that's where capitalism has got us
the rule can always be changed
distract and hope I won't see the lies you, Muir, the freedom fighter, continue to uphold.
I think that in time you may see examples of what i'm talking about and you will come to see that what i'm saying is true....not lies
Now I'm not going to say your motives are rooted in devious measures, but I can never know for sure what in your heart is labeled treasure.
I'd like to see a good balance in society between personal freedoms and responsibilites to the community....i don't think the current system allows much freedom and all the responsibilities (like taxes) all seem to be geared towards making the top 1% wealthier and the 99% poorer
But what I can say is when you follow the policies nested in the vested fallacies propagated by communities who reject the individual for better health of your proper 'goal;' you're showing nothing but the inside of your coat and cleanliness of all it owns, never been dirtied by the hard work of the mentally alert, or even the odd menial insert.
I don't believe in rejecting the individual.....i think you have me confused with someone who believes in a centralised power that wants everyone to behave the same way
I'm talking about federalised communities where people can do what they want
You say that you are fighting against centralized power in the form of foreign governments abroad or at home. But you wish for centralized power in humans who have the ability to roam from this land to the unknown? We’ve seen the beauty brought in by true liberty and creativity that bent down to help the societies with broken knees -- mangled from years of lost hope stuck waiting in endless committees.
Can you put this more plainly i'm not really following what you are saying here?
Because you see placing real power anywhere in this world will yield unwieldy results. This was the issue plaguing those who survived the slaughters of their people from the kin of the Sioux -- If absolute power corrupts absolutely, but any other form of arbitrary representative activity sprouts tyranny what answer lies out there in the world to seek?
I've explained above that there needs to be enough of a power share that those who want to slaughter or exploit can't do so
Balance. Like the hippies and new age INFJs on the forum above you and me, is the only way, but it may not be clear cut interestingly enough. If the government only has enough power if every part of the government concurs by not just those who lauder the potter, but also the guild down the road and the homeless man who never lived anywhere but the grove; then the government is caught in its own knot trying to make the people play jump rope, but it’s not the people who be laughing because the larger nanny ran out of pockets to grope, because we DO rely on the government in order to better secure posterity for all of our children, including the memories of the ones lost inside the trash cans of 'women's rights' clinics on the lam, in order to form a more perfect union, and all the other uppity political speech, it’s not a balance and a wall, but the balance within the balance that will help all.
This sounds like beat poetry and i think you have a talent with words, but i'm just struggling a little to follow each point
This is where it might be confusing at my end because although in theory i am against government, i realise that until such a system can grow into fruition then government actually represents one of our best defences against the exceses of the corporations. The problem is that the corporations have opened their ample check books and are usuing money to influnce government to favour them and not the people
So yes in theory i criticise government, but in the meantime it may be used as an instrument to create a more balanced society, if it represented the people.....but it doesn't and will always be subverted by the elite in a capitalist system
And it’s at this point or perhaps the paragraph before that your mind turns off because its lost power to hunger for more. Simply assured is my fate to hang from the door with the 94 other brethren hung by a nail by a man to be reverend, no need to beg, err -- implore that you heed the words of the one who has known the nature of the man and the world. The more current socio-economic version of the allegorical ensemble of the previous sentence isn't one to sentence myself to a needless penance, but simply mutually assured is it mutually allured the light of the guillotine like the light of the angler fish's bulb. Everything comes as a price, I say this not because I assume you're ignorant of such vice, nor owner of hands that have only lived in light, nor for worry of a disconnect in the circuit board residing above the neck. I say this because sometimes I don't see it myself, and I don't see it in others until it's too late. Believe what you will believe as each road has something else to grieve before its able to divert appropriately, but know that a road is only a road if traveled; your reason is weightless on the scale of what is and isn't in this world. When the road ends it ends not because it is no longer needed, but because the destination crept over what it is and taken over the ending with weeds and other brambles. So when your feet run out of ample path but you've still got more to go, it’s only yourself that you can hate for being stuck and never seeing the beauty of where your road could have, would have to go.
No i am living it. I left a coercive hierarchy after being involved in a union dispute. I went on holiday and while i was gone, the management bought enough of the workers to prevent us getting legal recognition. From my own perspective this has been wonderful as i had already set up a cooperative and myself and others forged out on our own and now spend most of our days laughing our asses off
I just wish more people could experience that
I don't its possible to right everything off as just a perception though because the victims of the holocaust or the killing fields or the guilags were not suffering from a perception problem they were suffering from a bullet in the head
There are very real and tangible reasons why centralisation of power is a bad idea and history is littered with examples. We are currently living through our own example as the corporations (and banks) are taking all the wealth while forcing 'austerity' on the public....much like the potato famine all over again
As i've said you can apply these principles at every level. You could speak theoretically about it on an online forum or you could (as i've done) apply these principles to improve your quality of life in actuality while hoping that they will be employed society wide for the betterment of all
But this is all relevant to all of us and will even have implications here on this forum
And I guess that's the crux of this all this cadence laced and conservative based propaganda'd post -- it’s potential that is our job to preen if necessary, and to praise as it overcomes adversaries, and love as it becomes one with the plan God has for you and me. It’s this potential that coils so tightly into the snake that warns all to tread warily, flown on the flag above tea parties, and all who understand why true life come’s not to the heartless. It’s this potential that sparks wars, lights fires, and slaughters the unborn, not in the real world, but still in the very real coil of the heart that is or isn't soiled. The actual act of man, from bankers to peasants doesn't have to rely on the factual, but more purely, more vapidly, ironically, is the pulse that lets us sow and lets us reap. It’s the beep keeping hope spiking in families as their loved one is slowly flat lining, it’s the mud on the proletariat's boot, or the capitalist's face mixed with soot in the grand canvas of Marx's projection of adverted past brought to pass. It’s all of these things, its good, and we can make it bad while trying to make it glistening, it’s the taut and locked line connecting man and his maker from the crater to the cradle.
I think its easy for you to say 'its good' because you are a middle class american not a 'peasant' with mud on his boot
I hope you're able to get out of this what you need to know -- that this is a road only you can create, only you can open up and if needed make desolate. But it will only be you who will have to answer to yourself as your eyes flit to the curve ahead, but your cortisol raises to your head to make your legs quicker than their current state of lead in the quicksand that is slowly pulling you into a cosmic bed, guided by the feat your feet were unaware they bred. This community you wish to make with such glee, where we can all be one happily; fails to understand the mathematical principles behind the very real effects of emotional entropy, fails to count in thermodynamics of human antics when the realization occurs that only one slot exists for the string to exist in this valueless world.
You need to look past this narrow conception you have of alternative systems being somewhere where all pegs of all shapes are banged through a round hole....that would be my idea of hell as well!
Alternatives are not about uniformity they are about diversity....they are about creative solutions employed for the betterment of all not just to enrich a corporate elite
Prophesy the rise of the illuminati and all these other political and civil right naughties, but only if you can withstand the potential truth that in dawn of December twenty-two it will be a pit you awake in, and only one hand reaches out to rescue, while all the ones with which you have comingled pull away to break away for themselves. Prophesy only if you're comfortable with the truth in that, and I guess that's enough of a chat. Hey look, I made a post as nonsensical as the ones you propel in an effort to make us quizzical like “this is whimsical and thus truth must be hiding, hey, never know til we cull?” Cool. But look past that, and maybe you might see the commodity that co-morbidity seems so welcome to hide in the hind of political togetherness. (get it? No? Then remember your beginnings).
I have made some predictions on this forum that have come true...yeah thats true
They were based on certain principles which as i've said can be applied at every level whether in your life or looking at world events
The most important one being: centralised power will always lead to corruption and exploitation
Pardon the pun, let me get back on track to continue this fun:
They joined at the end of the gun, because they hoped it would make them closer in the long run. That, and they didn’t want to be the next to say ‘no,’ and go with cloven hoofs to do-si-do with all their friends and loved ones who knew when principles should be used for more than just best-in-show.
No they joined because they hoped for a better future than the one they had living under the authoritarian rule of Batista and the US mafia and corporations
Sadly because they were stuck on the dorrstep of the worlds superpower that was and is run by corporations they never got to see a communist state and got stuck with a centralised governemn that was oppressive in trying to keep power while the US tried to destroy it
Even in the last few years the US tried to block Cuba from the OAS
