Human Rights v Tyranny
This could be defined as the right of every man, woman and child on Planet Earth to have the seven most basic of all human rights, to enable them to live as humans and not as animals or more like animals than humans.
Question: If debate and discussion and campaigning was refocused in such a way would it really make a difference?
In answer I have some observations to make.
The first is that only governments can change the world for the better but… They won’t act unless and until they are PUSHED to do so by informed public opinion, by manifestations of real democracy in action. The problem here is that most citizens of most if not all nations are too uninformed and misinformed about critical issues TO DO PUSHING.
And that’s why I assert that real democracy exists NOWHERE in the world. Real democracy is about much more than voting every few years to confirm a government in office or change it. For real democracy to exist the citizens of nations, the voters, have to be informed enough about critical issues to call and hold their governments to account, not only at election time but any time and all the time. Because they are not informed enough to do that, I say that what we have throughout the Western world and elsewhere is the FRAMEWORK of democracy but NOT THE SUBSTANCE.
In passing I’ll add that there’s a strong case for saying that America is the least democratic country in the Western world because what passes for democracy there is for sale to the highest lobby bidders.
Because our presentations today have to be short, I’m going to assume that ways could be found to inform and educate the peoples of nations about critical issues, to give them the ability to become engaged in the political process, in order to give what passes for democracy some real substance. In other words, I’m assuming that citizens could be EQUIPPED to do the pushing required.
But even if they had the ability, would they have the WILL – would they CARE enough to become engaged in the political process and play their necessary part in causing their governments to change the world for the better, by giving a priority to ensuring that every man, woman and child on Planet Earth had the basic necessities for life.
At issue here is what I regard as the biggest and most important question of all questions.
What, really, is the quality of human nature?
There are, broadly speaking, two views.
One, the pessimistic view, which is more or less an article of faith for most politicians and mainstream media people and many corporate executives, bankers especially, is that we human beings are inherently and unchangeably short-sighted, selfish and greedy, preferring to live for today at the expense of tomorrow, and are, on balance, more “bad” than “good”. In other words, we are really quite stupid.
The other, the optimistic view, is that we have at least the potential to act in our own best, longer term interests, even if doing so would require those of us who live in the rich nations (and the pockets of plenty in the developing and poor nations) to lower our expectations and actually be prepared to take less in the way of material gratification.
If the pessimistic view is the correct one, it seems to me that nothing matters because the end, catastrophe for all, was inevitable from the beginning; in which case we would all be well advised, as individuals, as communities and as nations, to go on screwing each other for all we can get. Praising the lord and passing the ammunition.
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