Governments and large institutions would naturally prefer to operate in the dark even when doing their corporate best to perform dutifully, because the public is a moron cyclops. The public has no perspective on events and interprets what little it can take in more stupidly than even the wildest cynic can predict. And when the public is told the truth, it despises the teller and clings to the lies.
It did help, back in the day, to have regulations, shared principles, and a broadly applied workman's education that made it possible for average Joes like me to laugh when "government figures" were posted. But the public has always wanted to believe what it's told, prefers outright nonsense to reality, and lives for those thrilling moments of absolute certainty when all questions are reviled, all the Good People gang up on the Subverters of Truth, and tears of maudlin sentiment are wept as the naysayers are rounded up and herded off to the tune of heroic music.
Please don't climb on your C19 hobbyhorses, this is just by way of example: Tony Fauci is an archetype of the sort of, uh, man, that slimes to the top of a large institution by being a corrupt backstabber, smearing real scientists, and lavishly rewarding his sycophants and enablers. He's not the problem. The problem is a public that can see this guy pontificating and neither spit at the screen or explode with laughter-- a "college-educated" public that has spent its millions of individual adulthoods mostly in corporate and institutional jobs-- jobs requiring them to eat pounds of feces deposited on their "career track" by the likes of Tiny Fauci. The public loves its diet of crap, the warmer and closer to the source, the better.
No amount of exposing the malefactors is going to fix that or change the system that promotes them, not by a gnat hair. Not that we don't need our Johnstones, we do. But her work is for those who can hear it, and they will always be a tiny fraction of a public that desperately needs to know and refuses knowledge with a self-righteous pout.
I am not being cynical, I am synthesizing opinion from close long term observation and experience.
Yes, there is something we can do. We can make a difference today. Stop cooperating. Strike the system.
You got a corporate job? Go find honest work. You got a car payment? Interest on debt is the single largest income stream for the baby-eaters: YOU are responsible for stopping that. Not all of it, not all at once, but change your direction and your attitude. If you cannot afford to live without debt, you are not living within your means, and you are buying your own chains with the years of your life. If you can't get it used, you probably don't need it. If you are not an independent journalist, your media subscriptions are ruining your life. I've been hearing the news second hand these past thirty years, and its all the same stupid lies: turn it off. Want to strike a blow for freedom? Give something free to someone who needs it. Want to live in an economy based on just principles, kindness and fairness? Live That Now, and stop wasting your time thinking there's a political solution.
Real politics is coercive violence, dumbocracy is the threat of violent coercion by majority vote. When "normal" individuals meet reality it is typically because they got kicked out of their lives by the reality they have ignored too long. Want to stand their world on its head and turn their thinking inside out? Be kind. Share. One deluded doofus at a time, yes.
I am not saying it will work, I am not claiming it will change the system fast enough to save us: I am stating the bald fact that no amount of playing the system's violent game by the system's violent rules is going to bring about a world of peace and plenty, ever. You choosing to be human, you living a person to person human life, is the first, last, and only chance there has ever been, or ever will be: the only chance for us as a species, the only chance for you as a human being. Live it or don't.
What a good example of suggesting positive action - and doing it!
REAL CHANGE IHAPPENS WITH TRANSPARENCY, FACTS, GOOD WILL, LIFE [not just human] RIGHTS, AND PARTICIPATION - AND WE CAN EACH START CONTRIBUTING NOW.
I personally would start with specifying minimum knowledge, skills, and abilities for running for any public office. An operational and assessment plan for all three legs of government: an annual statement of concrete goals, long term and annually, with assessment and adaptation integrated, with a good dose of participative democracy especially budgeting.
The rule of law to be the COMMON GOOD. Simplest procedures, least interventions, maximum benefits. Expertise required to draft policy and procedure. Exceptions dealt with individually in line with common good unless and until sufficient instances indicate they need incorporation into general rules.
Lots of public comment.
Consequences for noncompliance. And enforcement of those consequences.
Throughout education and public interactions, demonstrations of critical thinking skills topmost logic and its alter ego. Applied economics: the uses of peace dividends and the neverending costs of war. Civics classes for all: factual history, government operations, and participation as a civic duty. Immediate best practices study groups on governmental citizen service and cooperation, neighborhood to global. With international field trips, person-to-person. These already happen, we just don't hear.
What am I missing? The military budget should cover transition and operations costs.
The response to sarcasm and criticisms, WHY NOT? And WHAT'S BETTER? And of course, incorporating what IS better.
And we each contribute from now if we haven't started yet.
This is just my synthesis to prime the pump, from observation and participation over many years. There are pathfinders, here are a few,
I would have to agree with you on this. I will repeat a quote from I don't know who but "an ounce of kindness is worth more than"? I forgot the rest but it is true. For instance I ran out of gas (to many bad occurrences in the day so yah I missed it) and I had my kids in the car and their mother so grabbed the gas can and started walking, I didn't get 10 feet and a very kind man stopped and asked if he could help. I felt so good and since that time have tried to copy his kindness as this is the example I want my kids to use and if we all take care of each other well maybe we won't need politicians.
Governments and large institutions would naturally prefer to operate in the dark even when doing their corporate best to perform dutifully, because the public is a moron cyclops. The public has no perspective on events and interprets what little it can take in more stupidly than even the wildest cynic can predict. And when the public is told the truth, it despises the teller and clings to the lies.
It did help, back in the day, to have regulations, shared principles, and a broadly applied workman's education that made it possible for average Joes like me to laugh when "government figures" were posted. But the public has always wanted to believe what it's told, prefers outright nonsense to reality, and lives for those thrilling moments of absolute certainty when all questions are reviled, all the Good People gang up on the Subverters of Truth, and tears of maudlin sentiment are wept as the naysayers are rounded up and herded off to the tune of heroic music.
Please don't climb on your C19 hobbyhorses, this is just by way of example: Tony Fauci is an archetype of the sort of, uh, man, that slimes to the top of a large institution by being a corrupt backstabber, smearing real scientists, and lavishly rewarding his sycophants and enablers. He's not the problem. The problem is a public that can see this guy pontificating and neither spit at the screen or explode with laughter-- a "college-educated" public that has spent its millions of individual adulthoods mostly in corporate and institutional jobs-- jobs requiring them to eat pounds of feces deposited on their "career track" by the likes of Tiny Fauci. The public loves its diet of crap, the warmer and closer to the source, the better.
No amount of exposing the malefactors is going to fix that or change the system that promotes them, not by a gnat hair. Not that we don't need our Johnstones, we do. But her work is for those who can hear it, and they will always be a tiny fraction of a public that desperately needs to know and refuses knowledge with a self-righteous pout.
I am not being cynical, I am synthesizing opinion from close long term observation and experience.
Yes, there is something we can do. We can make a difference today. Stop cooperating. Strike the system.
You got a corporate job? Go find honest work. You got a car payment? Interest on debt is the single largest income stream for the baby-eaters: YOU are responsible for stopping that. Not all of it, not all at once, but change your direction and your attitude. If you cannot afford to live without debt, you are not living within your means, and you are buying your own chains with the years of your life. If you can't get it used, you probably don't need it. If you are not an independent journalist, your media subscriptions are ruining your life. I've been hearing the news second hand these past thirty years, and its all the same stupid lies: turn it off. Want to strike a blow for freedom? Give something free to someone who needs it. Want to live in an economy based on just principles, kindness and fairness? Live That Now, and stop wasting your time thinking there's a political solution.
Real politics is coercive violence, dumbocracy is the threat of violent coercion by majority vote. When "normal" individuals meet reality it is typically because they got kicked out of their lives by the reality they have ignored too long. Want to stand their world on its head and turn their thinking inside out? Be kind. Share. One deluded doofus at a time, yes.
I am not saying it will work, I am not claiming it will change the system fast enough to save us: I am stating the bald fact that no amount of playing the system's violent game by the system's violent rules is going to bring about a world of peace and plenty, ever. You choosing to be human, you living a person to person human life, is the first, last, and only chance there has ever been, or ever will be: the only chance for us as a species, the only chance for you as a human being. Live it or don't.
What a good example of suggesting positive action - and doing it!
REAL CHANGE IHAPPENS WITH TRANSPARENCY, FACTS, GOOD WILL, LIFE [not just human] RIGHTS, AND PARTICIPATION - AND WE CAN EACH START CONTRIBUTING NOW.
I personally would start with specifying minimum knowledge, skills, and abilities for running for any public office. An operational and assessment plan for all three legs of government: an annual statement of concrete goals, long term and annually, with assessment and adaptation integrated, with a good dose of participative democracy especially budgeting.
The rule of law to be the COMMON GOOD. Simplest procedures, least interventions, maximum benefits. Expertise required to draft policy and procedure. Exceptions dealt with individually in line with common good unless and until sufficient instances indicate they need incorporation into general rules.
Lots of public comment.
Consequences for noncompliance. And enforcement of those consequences.
Throughout education and public interactions, demonstrations of critical thinking skills topmost logic and its alter ego. Applied economics: the uses of peace dividends and the neverending costs of war. Civics classes for all: factual history, government operations, and participation as a civic duty. Immediate best practices study groups on governmental citizen service and cooperation, neighborhood to global. With international field trips, person-to-person. These already happen, we just don't hear.
What am I missing? The military budget should cover transition and operations costs.
The response to sarcasm and criticisms, WHY NOT? And WHAT'S BETTER? And of course, incorporating what IS better.
And we each contribute from now if we haven't started yet.
This is just my synthesis to prime the pump, from observation and participation over many years. There are pathfinders, here are a few,
https://actionlab.strongtowns.org/hc/en-us/articles/15740863816980-Strong-Towns-and-Big-Cities-Office-Hours-Chuck-Marohn
https://www.peoplepowered.org/
Do you know Charlotte Perkins Gilman? For a laugh at our own expense, I highly recommend Herland.
https://archive.org/details/herland_0806_librivox/herland_01_gilman.mp3
I would have to agree with you on this. I will repeat a quote from I don't know who but "an ounce of kindness is worth more than"? I forgot the rest but it is true. For instance I ran out of gas (to many bad occurrences in the day so yah I missed it) and I had my kids in the car and their mother so grabbed the gas can and started walking, I didn't get 10 feet and a very kind man stopped and asked if he could help. I felt so good and since that time have tried to copy his kindness as this is the example I want my kids to use and if we all take care of each other well maybe we won't need politicians.