by professorpan » Tue Jan 31, 2006 1:30 pm
Gouda says:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Nobody has to be in charge in the cartoony, round-table, secret cabal sense. But that does not preclude the possibility or danger that a) someone wants to be; that certain clever, powerful groups are or have been vying for world-control, which is a dream of both the powerful and the weak; b) that total world-control is possible eventually through increasingly globalised, coordinated efforts; c) that world-control is gelling, or evolving in this direction regardless of cabals (corporate capitalism + inherent human greed + those intangible, otherworldly military-esoteric battles?); or d) that full spectrum omniscient centralized world-dominance is not necessary to hold decentralized, de facto world-control. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>I agree with everything you said except for (b).<br><br>The world is too big and too messy and too full of conflicting interests for any one group, however powerful, to establish a firm hold on all of its inhabitants. I'm not being facetious at all when I suggest reading Dr. Seuss's "Yertle the Turtle" to get a metaphorical explanation of why total fascist rule will never work.<br><br>And there is one factor left out of the equation, which is the achilles heel of the parapolitical/conspiracy contingent (and I have fallen prey to it at times): there are conspiracies of *good* people, too. And good is a powerful force. <br><br>It's easy to look at a limited frame of time -- our present, deranged era -- and not see the long, rising arc of human progress. It was only a few decades ago that blacks couldn't vote, women stuck coat hangers into their wombs to terminate pregnancies, and rivers in Middle America caught fire because they were so pollluted. And the policy of the two world superpowers was "mutally assured destruction."<br><br>There has been progress, albeit slow and halting. We appear to be stuck in a terrible rut at the moment, and it's easy to think it's never going to get better. But the pendululm does swing back, eventually, and the course of evolutionary growth tends toward increasing human freedom.<br><br>I think back to the time before the current Iraq war, when I joined millions of people from across the world who took to the streets to say "no" to the criminal, imperialistic enterprise. Sure, we lost that battle. But we -- the people pushing for a non-violent future -- did not disappear off the face of the planet. <br><br>And even the most powerful ultimately fall. A criminal gang like the Bush Cult can rule for time, but history will show them to be the thugs and thieves that they are. I'm quite certain of that.<br><br>That's why I disengage myself occasionally from echo-chambers like this one. I don't mean that to be derogatory, because there is often top-notch analysis and commentary, but this forum is often clouded with pessimism and defeatism, as expressed in lists of horrors like slimmouse provided (and slim, I agree with you -- that is a pretty damning list). I'm not a pollyanna by any means, and I have my moments of despair like anyone who pays attention. But I have faith in the general goodness of human beings, and trust in the evolutionary impulse toward unity and cooperative interdependence. And I trust that those who strive to dominate sow the seeds of their own destruction. As Jimmy Cliff sang, "The harder they come, the harder they fall."<br><br>One and all. Om mani padme hum. Rest in peace Coretta Scott King.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>