Dilemma with political loyalties

[southcoast]

I think when people utter the cliche get a life it indicates a paucity of argument,a vacuum where in others there are thoughts and ideas.Halibut is consistent but others are predictable.I find Halibuts posts interesting,your posts are rather unsurprising.

 

Halibut is a troll,he rarely puts his case he simply issues one liners or deviates from the topic,a bit like this really.I cant think of anyone more predictable than halibut,but here we go again getting off the topic thanks to him.

[tinfoilhat]

Lots of people have made sacrifices in the name of democracy over the years, but I doubt any of them did so in the belief that 3 versions of the Tory party and some racists, all in hock to the 1%, would be end result.

 

Excellent post.

[TeaFan]

Halibut is a troll,he rarely puts his case he simply issues one liners or deviates from the topic,a bit like this really.I cant think of anyone more predictable than halibut,but here we go again getting off the topic thanks to him.

 

Sorry to everyone for going off topic, but I've been meaning to say this for a while: I find it interesting how vilified Halibut gets. What he tends to get vilified most for is asking questions: people who are hardly shrinking violets, who never shy away from giving us the benefit of their opinions every 3 minutes, suddenly become very coy when Halibut asks them about their motives or to explain why they think they way they do. Interesting, that. I always think it shows they have something to hide.

 

The other thing he gets vilified for a lot is being persistent, asking a question until someone gives a straight answer or just holding consistent views and values.

 

So I find myself asking whether I would prefer to live in a country where asking questions about peoples' motives, asking for rationales behind beliefs and holding consistent values is considered a good thing, or a country where these things are considered deviant and to be discouraged and stamped out. And because I wouldn't like to live in Iran I always choose the former.

[gnvqsos]

Sorry to everyone for going off topic, but I've been meaning to say this for a while: I find it interesting how vilified Halibut gets. What he tends to get vilified most for is asking questions: people who are hardly shrinking violets, who never shy away from giving us the benefit of their opinions every 3 minutes, suddenly become very coy when Halibut asks them about their motives or to explain why they think they way they do. Interesting, that. I always think it shows they have something to hide.

 

The other thing he gets vilified for a lot is being persistent, asking a question until someone gives a straight answer or just holding consistent views and values.

 

So I find myself asking whether I would prefer to live in a country where asking questions about peoples' motives, asking for rationales behind beliefs and holding consistent values is considered a good thing, or a country where these things are considered deviant and to be discouraged and stamped out. And because I wouldn't like to live in Iran I always choose the former.

 

Another top post:)

[esme]

I made a suggestion as to how we could govern ourselves rather than dance to the tune of party politics before the laste election.

 

Ok there were problems with it but nothing insurmountable.

 

I made an interesting discovery.

 

Very few people actually want a true democracy where everyones vote counts and everyones voice carries as much weight as anyone elses.

 

Most people seem to want more of what we have now only with them in charge on the issues that interest them.

 

Very few want a fair systen.

[andygardener]

I made a suggestion as to how we could govern ourselves rather than dance to the tune of party politics before the laste election.

 

Ok there were problems with it but nothing insurmountable.

 

I made an interesting discovery.

 

Very few people actually want a true democracy where everyones vote counts and everyones voice carries as much weight as anyone elses.

 

Most people seem to want more of what we have now only with them in charge on the issues that interest them.

 

Very few want a fair systen.

 

Back to the F word. There is no fair system of governance. Most people won't get what all of what they want most of the time. We can moan about our system but when you look at "fair" systems like Israel where extremists with a handful of seats become kingmakers at the expense of the most popular party I'll stick with our system. (not this election but the last one when centrist Kadima ended up as the opposition despite winning the popular vote and the government was everything from the left to the extreme religious right)

[esme]

The suggestion I made was basically the same as we have now only with no party politics

 

Each constituency forms it's own party, they choose a representative who signs a legally binding contract to stand down if they fail to represent the majority view of the constituency on any issue wher some predetermined percentage of that constituency express an opinion.

 

Then they vote for that person in an election.

 

If enough win then the people will be in charge.

 

Ok debates will grind on forever, decisions will be arrived at slowly, but they will be the electorates decisions and not those of a bunch of lobbyists or a handful of people in the cabinet office.

 

We only really need quick decisions from government in times of crisis

[janie48]

 

It would require radical change, but all the old political certainties have gone, we have a political global elite who consistently side with the ultra-rich against the general population and who are totally out of touch - the field is wide open as far as I can see; we could take back control if we really wanted to.

I agree with you that we have failures in the system ,and in theory your ideas sound reasonable,but i'm inclined to feel that put to the test a radical change with us the people in control would just turn into a one party system,with a dictator in power and i wouldn't be in favour of that.

 

Somebody has to lead,and as bad as things are now they could end up worse then ever,because ambitious greed for power and corruption would would still be present in some people,how would we go about avoiding that occurring?

[Cavegirl]

I agree with you that we have failures in the system ,and in theory your ideas sound reasonable,but i'm inclined to feel that put to the test a radical change with us the people in control would just turn into a one party system,with a dictator in power and i wouldn't be in favour of that.

 

Somebody has to lead,and as bad as things are now they could end up worse then ever,because ambitious greed for power and corruption would would still be present in some people,how would we go about avoiding that occurring?

 

By doing what humans did for hundreds of thousands of years before control over resources led to hierarchical power structures. We'd be empowered enough as individuals and as collective groups to rebuff anyone who tried to take that power away from us, if only we understood what power we had.

 

Nobody 'has' to lead, there are plenty of societies on the planet today where nobody is in charge and they manage just fine as this article demonstrates:

Nearly all researchers who write about hunter-gatherer bands emphasize the extraordinarily high value they place on individual autonomy. Hunter-gatherers’ sense of autonomy is different from the individualism of modern Western capitalist cultures. Western individualism tends to pit each person against others in competition for resources and rewards. It includes the right to accumulate property and to use wealth to control the behavior of others. In contrast, as Tim Ingold (1999) has most explicitly emphasized, hunter-gathers’ sense of autonomy connects each person to others, in a way that does not create dependencies. Their autonomy does not include the right to accumulate property, to use power or threats to control others, or to make others indebted to oneself. It does, however, allow people to make their own day-to-day and moment-to-moment decisions about their own activities, as long as they do not violate the band’s implicit and explicit rules. For example, individual hunter-gatherers are free, on any day, to join a hunting or gathering party or to stay at camp and rest, depending on their own preference.

 

Intimately tied to hunter-gatherers’ sense of autonomy is what Richard Lee (1988 ) has called their “fierce egalitarianism.” Egalitarianism, among hunter-gatherers, goes far beyond the western notion of equal opportunity. It means that nobody has more material goods than anyone else, that everyone’s needs are equally important, and that nobody considers himself or herself superior to others. Such equality is part and parcel of hunter-gatherers’ autonomy, as inequalities could lead those who have more to dominate those who have less. Hunter-gatherers, of course, recognize that some people are better hunters or gatherers than others, some are wiser than others, and so on, and they value such abilities. However, they react strongly against any flaunting of abilities or overt expressions of pride.

 

From an economic point of view, the primary purpose of the band is sharing. The people share their skills and efforts in obtaining food, defending against predators, and caring for children. They also share food and material goods. Such sharing, presumably, is what allowed hunter-gatherers to survive, so long, in challenging conditions. The hunter-gatherer concept of sharing is different from our Western concept. For us, sharing is a praiseworthy act of generosity, for which a “thank you” is due and some form of repayment may be expected in the future. For hunter-gatherers sharing is not a generous act, nor an implicit bargain, but a duty. People are not thanked or praised for sharing, but would be ridiculed and scorned if they failed to share. Anthropologists refer to such sharing as “demand sharing.” Failing to share, if you have more than someone else, is a violation of a fundamental rule of hunter-gatherer societies (Ingold, 1999; Wiessner, 1996)...

 

According to several quantitative studies, hunter-gatherers typically devote about 20 hours per week to hunting or food gathering and another 10 to 20 hours to chores at the campsite, such as food processing and making or mending tools (e.g. Lee, 2003; Sahlins, 1972). All in all, the research suggests, hunter-gatherer adults spend an average of 30 to 40 hours per week on all subsistence-related activities combined, which is considerably less than the workweek of the typical modern American, if the American’s 40 or more hours of out-of-home work is added to the many hours spent on domestic chores.

 

One anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins (1972), has famously characterized hunter-gatherer societies collectively as “the original affluent society.” An affluent society, by Sahlins’s definition, is one in which “people’s material wants are easily satisfied.” Hunter-gatherers are affluent not because they have so much, but because they want so little. They can provide for those wants with relatively little work, and, as a result, they have lots of free time, which they spend, according to one observer of the Ju/’hoansi (Shostak, 1981, p 10), at such activities as “singing and composing songs, playing musical instruments, sewing intricate bead designs, telling stories, playing games, visiting, or just lying around and resting.” These are just the kinds of activities that we would expect of happy, relaxed people anywhere.

 

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hunter-Gatherers_and_Play#Social_Play_as_a_Mode_of_Governance_in_Hunter-Gatherer_Bands

 

Interestingly, the UK currently lies beneath Iraq and Kyrgyzstan in the 2012 global happiness index.

[harestone]

CG, you are my hero, how is the woodland thing going. ?