Posted by Michel Leclerc
(here)
Thank you Bill for Chris Martenson. Thank you John (Exomatrix) for your more than excellent synthesis and analysis.
Adding two points to the meritocracy idea, which I defend – I prefer to call it aristocracy – in the Greek sense (not “the Royals”): rule by the best.
One. In my professional life I have frequently confronted my students/trainees/clients with difficult music, difficult literature, difficult art, difficult thinking (philosophy).. difficult, but excellent, supreme, brilliant.. “true”/“good”/“beautiful”. Quite often I got protests: “this is very heavy stuff, haven’t you got something more simple, digest (etc.)”. My answer was always: “
Only the best is good enough for you”. “How do you know it is the best?” My answer: “ I just know... But: I am not the only one in saying so. People whom I admire say this also. I have learnt from accepting their advice. Now let us start listening/reading/watching/thinking etc.”
Only the greatest quality is good enough for us. We should continuously nourish ourselves with the greatest quality. Every time we feed ourselves with subtop quality we harm ourselves.. (Doug, you are so right about this cruel use of horrible music to underline deeds of war – where every one of the crushed soldiers deserves
a long song of sadness and sorrow – a Benjamin Britten War Requiem just for him or her alone. But Doug, stop watching bad movies. Michel, stop watching those few minutes more of any violent and idiotic movie trailer YouTube suddenly confronts you with.)
My students then followed me – I did seem to have that authority – and
always changed their initial aversion. They would not necessarily run to the shop to immediately buy Bartok’s Music for Strings or a biography of Paul Klee, but they understood that those works have a deep meaning and would be worth their while to delve into them so as to enrich their bodies, souls and spirits spending some time of their finite life to this honing of their own worth in their own eyes. A Bach cure. A Michelangelo cure. A Spinoza cure.
Lessons in admiration.
Point two: often we had discussions about “democracy” and what it means. “Oh, one man one vote”. Really? Actually I think you are right (I am remembering typical dialogues here, and put my own voice out of the quotation marks) – but that is precisely the problem. “What do you mean?“ Not everybody deserves a vote. “What? That is dictatorship!” No, it is not. The people who insist on their right to vote without deserving it are the dictators. “How can that be?” Two things. One. Do you really think that people who almost every day profess that they “are not interested in politics” have the same right as you have who are actively interested in it and try to understand how politics may impact your life? Two. Haven’t you noticed that dictatorial governments arise in democracies because they are elected by people who “are not interested in politics”? “How are you going to change that?” I suggest that votes should be qualified. I do not have an absolute right to have one vote. I have the right to have anything between 0.75 and 1.25 of a vote – and voting will not only collect my voting but also present me with a test of my political interests, and tell me after my vote how much of a vote I obtained. (Big protests. Suddenly everybody was “interested in politics”.)
I fear that the people who are asleep, John, are the ones who “have no interest in politics” and
would certainly never want to fight or work to acquire their best possible vote – and it is the "democratic" system which is geared at having precisely their votes, the votes of disinterested and lazy people, and at gradually reducing their interest further. Politicians who are genuinely ambitious to design the best political courses for the genuine common good would be interested in the 1.2 votes and hence would court the approval of those who really want progress for humanity (or as Martenson calls it, a bit naively, “prosperity”).
Alas, because people “who are interested in politics”, like us, like Kennedy Jr., are in the minority, we will not be able to prevail.
That means that it will have to get (much) worse before it can become better indeed. And that worse will involve internecine and civil war, and self-sacrifice.
Maybe the “End Times” will entail that “Christ returns” in the sense that hundreds of millions of people will prefer to drink the cup to its bitter end rather than give up their hunger for the truest, the best and the most beautiful that is “just good enough for them”..
Democracy: Stick a fork in it, it's done
)
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks