Bashing the Bishop
Posted 8 February 2008
The media has been full of of the high-priest of the loony Christian left's absurd outburst on the subject of Sharia Law.
Why, Rowan, why? Then it dawned on me. He is watching the USA presidential primaries and seeing the massive influence the protestant church has on politics there. There is a very good chance (God help us all) that the Christian Right's candidate will be the next President of the USA.
Rowan must be hankering after the good old days shortly after the reformation when his predecessors word was all but law; when the pilgrim fathers scooted across the pond to set up the perfect protestant nation; and when all other religions were dealt with using as much violence as they pleased. Them were the days, eh!
He is crudely using reverse psychology to wake us all up to the insanity that people, thinking as he describes, will bring about if we don't all scamper quickly to the bosom of the mother church, surely! He cannot be serious, can he?
Here, we are witnessing why the American constitution forbids the intrusion of the inevitable extremism into its legislature and why voting for the Republican in November would be a disaster for the world. We are also witnessing the frantic death throws of a outmoded, outdated cult of fear, which of course is precisely what he is suggesting we inject into our legal framework.
A Religious Tale of Two Cities
Posted 20 July 2007
Your hopeless host is torn, as you may have guessed from reading most of this site, especially spiritually (see - what I believe at the moment).
In recent years I have re-visited my youthful searching years and come to different conclusions about the meaning of life (see link above). So why am I bothering to tell the world? I am currently concerned about the state of ‘church’ in the protestant Christian western sense, amongst many other spiritual concerns.
Why ‘church’? I have close links with two very different ways of ‘doing church’ (as one of them likes to put it). One is a big-city, modern, self styled ‘we are all disciples’ evangelical, non-aligned, young church. The other is Methodist, utterly rooted in its very old tradition and in its much smaller rural city community, but with a young(ish) ministerial team. I will not name and shame here because I think my point is a general one about the mess protestantism is in and why it is failing.
What concerns me? Competition, marketing, limited resources, jobs for the boys, exclusivity, extremism, double standards, trendyism etc. etc., that’s what!
What do I mean by that?
The young trendy big-city church was ‘planted’, a decade or so ago, into an area with a lot of young disaffected Christians with new families or plans for new families. They are a wealthy church with an effective tithing system, which pays good salaries to the staff and maintains a good level of missionary work locally and overseas. The members can afford it! They have no permanent home but are now considering searching for one and raising the funds to afford it. I think, if they go ahead, they will succeed. They are driven by the passion of the charismatic founding pastor, who has on occasion moved me out of my box.
But.
They are obsessed with the trendy and fashionable in terms of communication, worship and lifestyles. Not surprising, given their demographic, but how does this spread the word amongst the less affluent, the elderly and the less trendy? I have been visiting this church every few months for nearly three years and a related one for a few years before that. The demographic does not change! There are no more than a handful of people with whitening or grey hair and surprisingly few non-white people given the area. They appear to be practising a form of Christianity in a particular style that limits their potential growth. They scare all but a narrow constituency away. They are preaching to the converted and feeling very self-satisfied about it.
So, what about the competition. For nearly twelve years I have been visiting one of the oldest Methodist churches in the country in a small rural city, at least three times a year. Despite pretensions to the contrary in the trendy modern church, above, I feel far more welcomed by the Methodists. I certainly detect far more tolerance and a natural warmth that comes from a much more mixed community. The membership numbers are very similar but the annual income is a third of ‘modern’ church.
There is true sense of family in the older church where generations worship together and do so where so many have done it before. The speakers here, ordained or lay, have also manged to move me out of my box (some more than others). The experience shows, the wisdom of the ages and old style of worship clearly puts off a proportion of younger members of the community but this is Methodism. They are, however, working on it unlike the church above, which appears quite content in its narrow mind-set and cult like worship of Jesus with no mention of God.
The old church have their own building and it makes such a difference. Extraordinary work is done here too in the local community and far beyond and there is much hidden generosity that does not show up in the official accounts. The young church is cult-like in its openness about giving and percentage tithing and strict conformity and suspicion of outside influences.
We have the old struggling to attract the new and the new failing to attract the old and not enough of both. The catholic church is still stuck in the middle ages. None of it draws me into a culture of regular church attendance or membership, even if they would have me with my beliefs. I see more long term hope in the Methodist church. There is a desire to change and an obvious wilingness to embrace or flirt with the new and I think its roots will see it through its culture clashes. The ‘modern’ church has more long term problems as its membership ages, and its attempt to emulate what it believes happened in the 1st century, actually expose it as the real old-fashioned church. Here the Methodists are in the accendancy, clearly listening to God now and not Jesus then.
Mr Grumpy lets off steam - opinionated sod!
Posted 1 June 2007
first published elsewhere at another time
Charity is only necessary because we don’t give a shit.
You can find opinions about charity elsewhere on this site but Mr Grumpy wants to add a few thoughts. I believe that all charity is an expensive waste and unnecessary way of raising funds to meet clear and obvious needs a truly civilised society would meet as a community automatically, through taxes or other nationally accumulated wealth reserves. Politicians use the charity system as a way of disguising the true cost of being civilised and caring while allowing some of us to feel good about ourselves. They know we are never going to vote for a political system that will donate more to all charity causes than we currently do by raising taxes for all of us by say 10%, even though this represents significantly less money than we currently voluntarily donate willingly to charities, and would therefore save most of us money in the long run (on average). It would also force those who currently refuse to help others to do so. Why on earth should anyone with a need served by the existing charity system have to beg for the basic essentials of life (and in some cases unbegrudged and well deserved luxuries), which surely is what society is about?
There are a lot of people giving up their time and whole lives to help others for free because the rest of us are not willing to pay for the essential work they do. It’s pathetic! We are a nation of whining, ignorant, lazy, selfish, greedy idiots, who seem to believe that social responsibility takes second place to holidays overseas; new cars when there is nothing wrong with the old one; houses full of gadgets and regular piss-ups. The sad thing is how little of this we would have to give up just to match current charity activity through taxes, without having to pay the volunteers! It is also amazing how quickly people change their tune when they find themselves relying on charity.
This is closely related to the subject of ’state hand-outs’ (a subject close to Mr Grumpy’s heart). If you read the right-wing reactionary press or watch most television news programmes, you will have been given the impression that this country is overrun by sponging layabouts; not to mention work shy, skiving, thieving scumbags; immigrants and ‘asylum seekers’; junkies and whores all trying to bleed the system dry and deprive the hard working masses of a luxury or two. Hospitals are apparently filled to bursting with fat, pregnant, twelve year-old alcoholic smokers that the run down, disease ridden, inefficient, foreigner infested NHS can’t cope with.
The root cause of the lack of state sponsored charity, our unwillingness to pay more taxes and the exagerations of the fascist media, as well as chronic under-funding of the NHS is that, as a nation (just as with its citizens), we spend too much on other things we don’t need. Our so called nuclear deterrent, for example, deters no one because there are no nuclear aggressors apart from those other countries who possess a ‘deterrent’, and what chauvinistic nonsense is it that causes us to believe they would want to attack this third-rate garbage-can, backwater anyway. Single weapons crudely put together or stolen by terrorist don’t count. Nothing will deter them! Our military ‘defence’ budget as a whole is a gross waste of taxes because it isn’t a defence budget. We have a massive globally capable aggressive military capability, which can launch attacks anywhere in the world with far more deadly force that Adolf Hitler ever imagined possible. Why? For money, for the rich weapons manufacturing and distribution industry’s share holders and to maintain a tight control over global economic power distribution. As permanent members of the UN Security Council we can influence global policy to our own benefit for ever.
The state controlled media machinery ensures we all (almost) believe that it is more important to spend many tens of billions of pounds every year maintaining this offensive capability, than to spend a fraction of the money on all the causes currently supported by charitable donations. They tell us we have to invade countries and patrol the world because of threats from rogue regimes and terrorists when these threats only exist because of massive resentment caused by centuries of invading countries and ‘patrolling’ the world. Every single action taken militarily anywhere in the world by us, our allies and many others sponsored by this country results in huge sums of money pouring into the pockets of the super-rich. These same super-rich who manage the media on behalf of their political lacqueys and who pacify us by ensuring we feel good about all the money we spend on the other goods and services they sell us, because we can’t live without them, and which they lend us the money to buy.
If you don’t know them leave those who do to grieve in peace.
I am sick of national and global second-hand, state and media encouraged mourning! Why in the name of anything holy should I mourn the death of anybody I didn’t know or stand silent for half a second for something that doesn’t affect me. I DIDN’T KNOW THEM and neither did you (except their friends and relatives of course)! I do often (but not always) experience shock and feel sad when I read about or see terrible images of deprivation and death around the world but I rarely feel the need to join in a mass hysterical chest-beating tear fest. And when it does happen it is because of suppressed feelings I know I am transferring to the immediate events. I recognise this (usually) and mourn appropriately for whatever loss it was that I actually suffered and then get on with my life as best I can. I suggest the great British public enrols on some mass group therapy course and rids itself of its extremely damaging, nationally self-harming demons before the entire nation is sectioned and stuffed in a padded cell by the United Nations. I know this will not happen in any form, by the way, because the state machine likes it just the way it is, ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaa. And who runs the United Nations ayway, ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaa?
This includes the annual dirge of military and state sponsored ‘remembrance’. The people who died ‘for us’in the appalling events of the 20th century must be spinning in their graves at the nation their bravery spawned. Spewed out of the filth of vile, avoidable and unnecessary war is a diseased, bloated, arrogant nation of poorly educated and easily manipulated selfish idiots. They continue to make the same mistakes that led to the previous wars and that is just how the state machine, super-rich and the warmongers like it. They use the annual shenanigans to inject us with another regular dose of clear thinking and free will suppressants. It is easy to avoid war by recognising the true causes, removing the irritants whose self-interest encourages it and repairing damage before it gets out of hand. Far better, for example, to give billions of pounds to an economically desperate twenties and thirties Germany than spend much more fighting for our freedom in the forties, and paying for it for the next fifty years! Not to mention the guilt fest afterwards that led to the creation of a poorly conceived state of Israel and the massive cost to us all that this has caused. That is another subject for another day. Our own royal family’s inbred relations were single-handedly responsible for the shocking depravation and injustices that turned Russia on its head at the start of the century and contributed to the instability of Europe. All avoidable when power is properly distributed and kept in check.
Only flawed institutions need to be protected from words.
Another subject close to Mr Grumpy’s heart is freedom of expression, censorship and state controlled moral standards, and closely related organisations who exploit this weak form of government. It is an act of cowardice and a foul attack on natural freedom to in any way censor the expression of any original human thought no matter how offensive or unpalatable. I don’t care what form the expression takes either; be it written, spoken, pictorial, private or public. Where such expressions are provably factually incorrect or extracted or derived from others against their will, I believe some form of redress should be available in an appropriate and similar forum (including seeking punitive damages in court) but where it was created for the purpose of contextually relevant entertainment there should be no such recourse, ever.
This is particularly true for expressions of opinions or humour or any other art form concerning spiritual, religious or philosophical and other belief systems of any kind. For one simple reason: it is ALL nothing more than a matter of opinion formed on a psychologically unsound basis. If up to now no human had ever believed in anything non-physical whatsoever and suddenly people had started expressing strong religious opinions about fantastical beings and entities they would be locked up in padded cells, en masse! To have the law of the land defend their delicate sensibilities and massage their well founded insecurities is a crass injustice. It is the very essence of political vote rigging and desperation when the state is mobilised to protect one set of opinions against easily provable more reasoned opinions. Political correctness has completely floated in fairy land when it defends the indefensible; not surprising though when the head of state is the ‘defender of the faith’, absurd!
I say elsewhere on this site that I believe in God and that I suspect He doesn’t want me to harm others in anyway including psychologically. What I say above potentially contradicts this because if I insult someone’s belief system I am likely to do them harm at some level. True, but I can’t always have what I want and neither does God, but I could be wrong and suffering from a delusion. There might be no God and even if there is he has obviously given me free will including the freedom to defy Him! I prefer to believe that if someone mocks or insults my beliefs it is up to me how I choose to react. My preference would be to laugh along and side-swipe with a suitably insulting retort of my own, and if someone delivers an apparently devastating critique on the whole basis of my entire life philosophy I can simply choose to ignore them. I do not need the state or any law to defend me unless they resort to violence because I’m not allowed to kick ten tons of shit out of them in my own defence, which is what they would deserve, of course!
A good example (nearly) of inappropriate censorship is the recent attempt by the Evangelical Alliance to prevent the BBC showing the stage musical parody based on the Jerry Springer show. This is the same so called Christian lobbying group who ruined lives up and down the country with claims of ritual satanic child abuse, which were completely unfounded and were later proved to have been maliciously made in the first place. This is the same group who once published a list of items that could be found in peoples homes identifying them with cults that included candles and many other perfectly ordinary household items! And so what anyway, as I say above, theirs is just a completley un-provable opinion! The world is infested with evangelicals who try to convince themselves, their children and education authorities that they don’t believe in evolution and they have the pseudo-scientific gobbledegook to prove it, in order that evolution shouldn’t be falsely taught to their deranged children.
Presumably their American cousins have failed miserably to ban the Jerry Springer show itself because it puts off potential recruits when the nutters on the show claim to be Christian. Same here, they are using ‘bad language’ as one reason, but what really upsets them is a man in a nappy (diaper) claiming to be Jesus and gay, and they can’t handle gay in the Evangelical Alliance, oh boy, that gets them going. The only other people I have ever met who become aggressive about gays are people who are clearly struggling with their own sexuality. The trouble with the modern cult of Jesus as opposed to traditional Christianity is the massive reliance on identifying the presence of God they feel within as Jesus. And he is a man they believe never had sex with a woman! The real issue is creative censorship. This is a musical about a ridiculous show about ridiculous egomaniacs, not a musical about or condemning Christianity. Even if it was, the insecurities being regularly paraded by the Evangelical Alliance and their current political sponsors should not ever be allowed to influence political, moral or legal decisions in this country. Write to your MP, now! This must also be true for other groups who have already been allowed to exert exactly this kind of influence. This unfair treatment is not solved by allowing Christians the same ‘protection’, but by removing it from all other groups!
3000+ annual deaths on our roads is mass murder.
At a more down-to-earth level, Mr Grumpy would like to let off some steam about the state of the nation’s driving. Unlike most of the maniacs on the road, I know I am a bad driver so I do what I can to avoid combining my limitations with other people’s faults by using simple common sense, especially at high speeds. But, what about the rest of you moronic psychopaths? HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF THE F’ING 2 SECOND RULE. That is the gap (including reaction time) considered safe by all experts at all speeds, in good conditions (light, dry, not icy or slippery), you MUST leave between you and vehicle in front if you don’t want to die when they crash. So when I leave a 2 second gap WHY DO YOU DRIVE UP MY ARSE or overtake me so that you are only then 2 seconds closer to your destination (assuming you don’t plough into the back of the car you are now up the backside of)???? Idiot!!!! Why don’t you just drive into a wall now and get it over with? When you see pictures on TV of motorway pile-ups, they were caused by people just like you ignoring the 2 second rule and nothing else at all. Somebody might have crashed for some other reason but the single cause of the pile-up was driving too close, simple. By the way, leaving gaps speeds up average traffic flow, as does letting people in at junctions and not blocking roundabouts or yellow boxes! If we all follow the rules we will all get everywhere faster with far less risk, imagine that - stress free too.
On the subject of roundabouts, how did you people ever pass your driving tests? How????? INDICATE (signal) you dicks, and indicate appropriately! One of the most irritating things is people indicating right apparently for no reason other than they are not turning left or because a small roundabout is offset to the left of the carriageway or there is a kink in the road. If you are carrying straight on the same road the roundabout interrupts, by all means indicate left as you approach your exit but why indicate right before hand, you are going straight on stupid? If it is a long way round to the straight on exit and you feel you must indicate right, stop indicating as soon as you pass the previous exit (if there was one) and indicate left to show you intend to exit. You will cause accidents and delays if you continue to indicate randomly because you vaguely recall your instructor telling you you should indicate at roundabouts! The Driver Standards Agency has a good website at highwaycode.gov.uk if don’t believe me. Also, don’t use roundabouts to overtake me you idiots. Why are you in such a hurry to die? Organise your bloody lives so that the few minutes (and it does only add up to a few - if any) you gain risking your lives everyday aren’t so important any more.
Cars are a privilege and luxury, not a right. Use them responsibly and considerately and we can all keep them but you can be sure that in a dark Whitehall basement somebody somewhere is already planning to take them away to some degree or other just to reduce the carnage, 10 deaths a day for crying out loud. Many caused by alcohol of course, so show a little self-control and dignity and try to survive without a drink when you know you are going to drive. It’s not hard, or do you need help with your problem; it’s freely available to non-cowards across the land.
NIMBYists never contribute anything to the wider community!
I do not agree with namby-pamby, self-interested, environmentalist jobby-jabber about cars destroying the environment. Poor car and fuel design and manufacture contributes to the excessive use of resources and to unnecessary pollution but despite a concentrated period of research (see later for more thoughts on that subject) and decades of brainwashing the JURY IS STILL OUT on the consequences, and it is in the nature of this ‘advancing’ species and the fact that the less privileged here and particularly overseas are going to demand the same, that there must be a massive global increase in car production and usage. All other forms of public transport and social engineering schemes posed as alternatives involve just as much pollution and resource wastage. A bus or tram might sometimes carry a full load but usually, even if it has as many as twenty people on it, it is still a huge resource and fuel hungry vehicle, and it never stops! Same for trains and planes and all construction plans to move industries and people around. What we have to do is improve the efficiency of production and sustainability and re-use of materials and use new fuels. Electricity does not help the environment because power stations are pretty inefficient and filthy. I do not include nuclear power here because although it is controversial because of its historical link to weapons, it is actually totally clean, provided you deal with the waste and don’t have uncontrollable accidents (that’s another rant), why are the brilliant minds of the world taking so long to conquer fusion power (is the oil lobby holding them back)? By the way governments around the world ARE investing huge sums of money in cold fusion despite the alleged failure of the original Pons & Fleischman experiment. The two scientists concerned continue to have their research in the field funded, what’s going on there then? Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like; it’s better than ‘fat Scottish know-it-all twat’.
One of the biggest piles of hog-wash spurted out in a self-masturbatory frenzy by the anti-car campaign in this country is the nonsense that we are about to be swamped by a tsunami of cars as car usage doubles in the coming decades. How???? Are we expecting a doubling of the population (damn those illegal immigrants and our irresistable road networks)? Maybe we going to allow ten year-olds to drive and all the people who currently don’t feel the need or who stubbornly refuse to drive are going to see the light, and we are living longer of course. Even if you combine these possible sources you won’t get anything like a doubling of cars on our roads. So what is going on? NIMBYism, that’s what. Most of these pressure groups have at their heart a dedicated NIMBYist who doesn’t want a bypass built over their land or who doesn’t want a new housing estate (with its associated traffic) spoiling their view and the value of their property, or in some other way wants to avoid localised increases in traffic (with its associated decreases elsewhere) or they just failed basic arithmetic at school.
Saving the planet will prevent the future evolution of giant insects.
Global warming? Bollocks! This is the biggest single area where science is embarrassing itself. It is impossible to know by any method other than the invention of a time machine what happens next. Plus: the earth in relatively recent (pre industrial) times has frequently been much warmer and much colder than now for varying periods of time. There is not one definitive shred of evidence that humanity is the cause or in any way contributing to global warming in a way that anything other than humans will ever care about, which may or may not continue for a totally unpredictable period of time.
When humanity is extinct in a few million years, and it will be, something else will dominate this planet, post or pre meteor impact or super volcano explosion. The continents will continue to shift plunging habitats into the oceans and changing climates irreversably. The earth’s magnetic field will switch dramatically and the angle of tilt to the plain of our orbit will change and as a consequence of all of this nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING will be then as it is now. So, what are we trying to save, conserve or preserve? Why are we trying to interfere with the natural evolutionary process that all of our natural human activities are part of, in the naturally selected evolutionary dominant position we currently have? We are, apparently trying to prove that we are super-natural, god like even; trying to deny that the cuddly, furry, funny, cosy creatures and environment we care so much about is more important than what will evolve as a result of our activities if we don’t try to ’save the planet man’. We are just one little branch of the evolutionary chain. We cannot influence in any way the eventual outcome because forces far far greater than us will have the last laugh. I understand that some of you desperately want to keep it all nice and diverse for your grand children but don’t kid yourselves that you will acheive any more than that.
What is certain is that the powers that be are scaring themselves shitless about it and they want us on side. This could be because they believe the scientific BS or because they know the earth is naturally warming and won’t stop until we are all dead (as has happened many times before). The UK solution is to panic us all into saving resources and energy (while sustaining economic growth), while the American solution is to massively increase expenditure in space exploration, particularly concentrated on Mars. The super-rich have obviously decided that they want Mars (or the Moon at a pinch) habitable before they or their offspring perish in the fires of an earthly Armageddon. The Evangelical Alliance meantime will weep for all the souls they failed to save and scramble for their concordances to find the passage in the bible that allows for the existence of a life-sustaining Mars after judgement day.
Remember, scientists’ mortgages are paid for by research grants directly or ultimately. Once a theory is popular it is possible to milk it for payments for years. It is the nature of science and statistics that it can be used to demonstrate all manner of probabilities, which always need to be supported by further research.
Politics 101
Posted 1 June 2007
originally published elsewhere at another time
…………….. Things to be clear about: I don’t advocate anarchy; I am not a communist; I don’t support the Head of Stateship of the UK Royal Family, or any other system of inheritance; I don’t believe all ‘dictators’ are bad; I do believe democracy does not equate to freedom.
What is civilisation? Originally it was a way for powerful warlords to bring the unruly peasants under control. They built large towns/cities where all financial transactions/taxes could be controlled and where a close eye could be kept on the majority of their subservient vassals. It was also easier to gather armies from denser populations and to protect all the warlords’ interests if the populations were not scattered far and wide. So what has changed? Not a lot: ‘civilisation’ continues to be a way for a powerful minority to impose a limited view and culture on a weak majority.
Civilisation comes in many forms. Some parts of the world base their civilisations on religious beliefs and rules and others have economic priorities, whether they have self-appointed dictators or democracies. In all cases power over many lies in the hands of the few.
Anarchy is usually presented as the only alternative to civilisation but that is only because history is written by the descendants of those who have benefited from the control strucures inherent in civilisations. A system of global cooperation between groups, individuals and communities could be devised that requires no single power entities to control it. Agreements could be reached across all boundaries on how to administer all processes of cooperation and how to deal with breakdowns without any need to concentrate wealth or power. A good starting point would be for every individual, group and community to agree to abide by the United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The few who do hold the reins of power will never willingly give it up. So, do I advocate revolution? YES, globally but by simply taking the power away from the powermongers. Stop paying them to keep you powerless by buying all the goods, services and luxuries they have brainwashed you to believe you need. Stop believing everything the media they control tells you and remember they always divide and conquer. You can be 99% sure that most of those they portray as ‘evil’ or ‘un-democratic’ or ‘uncivilised’ are simply attempting to wrest some power for themselves, and THEY don’t like that. Having less and doing less = less stress and more happiness. It also equals less power for those who rely on you to keep them rich. It also gives them less warmongering resources and less cause to fight.
So, where does politics come into it? The political layer is the veneer of legitimacy between the controlling elite, which may include some of the politicians, and the masses. The controlling elite (made up of the super-rich, Royal Families, religious leaders and the military) pull all the strings. They can use their wealth and influence to steer politicians in any direction they like. For example: in a democracy where a large global corporation employing tens of thousands of people, objects to a political decision that makes the business more expensive to run, it will be threatened with closure. This also threatens votes. Politics is the culture of persuasion and manipulation used by politicians, the powerful and their media lacqueys to enlist our complicity in our own suppression.
Law and justice systems are the politicians’ preferred weapon of choice against freedom, which would bring about the downfall of their masters and, in their minds, anarchy. The majority of laws are made to ensure the status-quo and to provide income for the underlings in the ruling classes. A simple set of globally understandable, commonsense rules could replace all laws in a world-wide cooperative society, not dependent on ever increasing wealth for its stability. These could be administered by locally chosen and appointed (regulary replaced) individuals taking commonsense decisions, which need not be consistant across boundaries or time.
Politics and religion should never be mixed. We can see the damage this causes in many Islamic states, Israel and in the right-wing Christian domination of US, UK and other European state politics.
But this is only half the story. Exactly how the power mongers maintain their grip on us and why they make the decisions they do is complex. There are limited resources in the world and limited opportunities for economic growth at any one time. In order to sustain levels of growth and relative levels of wealth on behalf of their puppet masters, politicians must manipulate economies globally. Also, since each group of politicians believes its way is best, they must (in democracies) persuade the voters to keep them in power.
They use scientists, the media, lobbying groups and opportunities as they arise to control and manipulate public opinion. If the public can be persuaded that world population is out of control and bad for the environment, we (the voters) will have little sympathy for poverty stricken people in undeveloped countries. The politicians won’t tell us they have approved massive billion dollar loans to these over populated countries to allow them to buy weapons and build hospitals and roads, which we will sell them. When a natural disaster occurs and the countries affected can’t afford to rebuild their countries we will be encouraged to donate huge sums of money so that they can use it to buy things we will sell them. We have to do this because they can’t afford it because they are poor because they are paying back billions of dollars every year to pay for the things they have lost, which we sold them in the first place and lent them the money to pay for, and which we will still expect them to pay off in the fullness of time.
As a side note: I do believe that all charity is an expensive waste and unnecessary way of raising funds to meet clear and obvious needs a truly civilised society would meet as a community automatically, through taxes or other nationally accumulated wealth reserves. Politicians use the charity system as a way of disguising the true cost of being civilised and caring while allowing some of us to feel good about ourselves. They know we are never going to vote for a political system that will donate more to all charity causes than we currently do by raising taxes for all of us by 10%, even though this represents significantly less money than we currently voluntarily donate willingly to charities, and would therefore save most of us money in the long run (on average). It would also force those who currently refuse to help others to do so. Why on earth should anyone with a need served by the existing charity system have to beg for the basic essentials of life, which is what charity is for?
If the public can be persuaded that an evil dictator controlling a major oil producing country, which borders other oil producing countries, is a threat to us and the region, we will go to war to ’save his people’. What we are really doing is preventing the evil dictator controlling the price of oil because that will help ensure the wealthy stay rich and stay in power. We will also benefit from lending huge sums of money to the devastated country so that they can buy what they need from us to rebuild their country. Not to mention the benefits to the share holders of weapons manufacturers.
The rich and powerful countries of the world and the rich and powerful individuals and groups they represent have gained their wealth historically through suppression of the weak (not withstanding the occasional revolution, which always failed in the long term anyway because power was unfairly distributed). At first this was achieved by stronger warlords at local level and then by kings at regional and national level. At every stage the wealth, land and power was kept in the hands of the few while the majority paid for it. Eventually modern political, military and laws enforcement structures were created to manage the maintenance of power on a large and international scale. This has been going on for centuries now and has reached a level of sophistication the masses are encouraged to ignore. The results are still the same: at local, national, regional and global levels the power and wealth is kept in the hands of the few at the expense of the vast majority.
It is a politician’s job to constantly think of new ways to exploit opportunities for economic growth whatever the cost to the majority, while keeping him/her self in a job. As there are limited resources and massive global poverty this growth is always relative. The poor stay poor and the wealthy stay rich, and powerful. Some of them are honest enough to acknowledge that they are consciously looking after their voters’ best interests, whatever the cost to groups and individuals elsewhere in their own country or overseas. Even they will deny that this ultimately only ever really benefits a tiny number of super rich individuals with whom all wealth and power is concentrated.
The true cost of changing all of this would be culturally devastating for those of us who live in rich countries. Individually, on national (and certainly on a global) level we would gain little from taking the wealth from the rich and distributing it between us, but distributing the power in a genuinely fair way would change everything for the better. In such a world it would take centuries to regain all the comfortable paraphernalia of modern living but we would be happier, except for the few who cannot handle sharing power and control that is. Perhaps in a well designed post-political true power sharing community based society, we would eventually lose the wealth/power hungry gene by natural selection. Best do it quick though before the geneticists engineer it into all our offspring on behalf of their pay masters, and consign humanity to another palaeontological extinction footnote for some future earth species or alien visitor to wonder at.
