Choice
Just a few thoughts I developed as I trudged a mile back from my cancelled class in 5 inches of slush:
I think we, as Americans, have become deluded into thinking that having a choice about everything is good. I'm beginning to think that it's not, that American democracy really is, as Plato so strongly believed, and Mill, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and numerous other political philosophers feared it would become, mob rule. Human nature inherently inspires poor choices, as we've undoubtedly seen throughout history from a deviant Israeli nation in biblical times, through countless invasions and blood baths, to present day issues like the legalization of abortion, the high crime rate throughout the democratic world, and the strife on every societal level, pauper to aristocrat. We have proven countless time our inability to make good choices, so why do we burden ourselves with a task that we can never even come close to completing sufficiently? Why do we think we can do it?
In regimes of old, what the king said was what happened, and if the people didn't like it, they could fight against it, or remain complacent, but the responsiblity of decision making was not on their shoulders. Their responsiblity was to abide or deviate, and in so doing, they gained purpose for their lives, something most Americans don't have. We have nothing to fight for, nothing to struggle against. Until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the black family system was significantly stronger than it is now, suffering a sharp decay directly after their passing (that is not to say I advocate oppressing blacks), but statistics show that illegitimacy rates in the black American demographic remained a steady 30% from 1900 through 1960, rising to an astonishing 70% now. When blacks struggled, they had a unifying purpose. When proletariats in Russia struggled, they had purpose, but in the complacency of a dominating Communist rule, their government slowly collapsed over 80 years.
So essentially what I wonder is whether or not it is better to be oppressed and have the purpose of fighting against it, or to take ther responsiblity of freedom on our own heads and be the diggers of our own graves.
Sometimes I think the best choice is to choose not to have a choice...
"-Wait, you can't do that, those are somebody else's wishes, somebody else's dreams.
-Yeah, but you know what, this one, this one right here, this was my dream, MY wish, and it didn't come true...so I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back..."
-Random movie sampled in Man of Sorrows by Mercury Switch
I think we, as Americans, have become deluded into thinking that having a choice about everything is good. I'm beginning to think that it's not, that American democracy really is, as Plato so strongly believed, and Mill, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and numerous other political philosophers feared it would become, mob rule. Human nature inherently inspires poor choices, as we've undoubtedly seen throughout history from a deviant Israeli nation in biblical times, through countless invasions and blood baths, to present day issues like the legalization of abortion, the high crime rate throughout the democratic world, and the strife on every societal level, pauper to aristocrat. We have proven countless time our inability to make good choices, so why do we burden ourselves with a task that we can never even come close to completing sufficiently? Why do we think we can do it?
In regimes of old, what the king said was what happened, and if the people didn't like it, they could fight against it, or remain complacent, but the responsiblity of decision making was not on their shoulders. Their responsiblity was to abide or deviate, and in so doing, they gained purpose for their lives, something most Americans don't have. We have nothing to fight for, nothing to struggle against. Until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the black family system was significantly stronger than it is now, suffering a sharp decay directly after their passing (that is not to say I advocate oppressing blacks), but statistics show that illegitimacy rates in the black American demographic remained a steady 30% from 1900 through 1960, rising to an astonishing 70% now. When blacks struggled, they had a unifying purpose. When proletariats in Russia struggled, they had purpose, but in the complacency of a dominating Communist rule, their government slowly collapsed over 80 years.
So essentially what I wonder is whether or not it is better to be oppressed and have the purpose of fighting against it, or to take ther responsiblity of freedom on our own heads and be the diggers of our own graves.
Sometimes I think the best choice is to choose not to have a choice...
"-Wait, you can't do that, those are somebody else's wishes, somebody else's dreams.
-Yeah, but you know what, this one, this one right here, this was my dream, MY wish, and it didn't come true...so I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back..."
-Random movie sampled in Man of Sorrows by Mercury Switch