I'd like to know what your sniffing that allows you to take an hour and half out of your day to watch propaganda
It's amazing how conditioned people are to the steady stream of propaganda coming out of all the major news channels Let's be honest, the same 'hidden hand' owns the lot. If people knew the reality of the situation there would be a revolution before the morning.
Oh I don't know; if pushed enough; people have their breaking points. If the revolution happens it probably won't be televised anyway.
Gas hit 4.00 a gallon...how many protests did you see? Yet for Gay Marriage both for and against...how many protests have you senn?
I'm not disagreeing with you on that. People don't like to get off their ass and do something unless the other option is more painful.
Putting my thoughts together on this one ... Here are some of my thoughts on the philosophical view on democracy, struggle and adaptation. Democracy and a well informed population Conflict is historically often the result of a few, but with ramifications for many. Information and decision making is an integral part of a democracy, but is sometimes challenged. There are emerging technological changes that can bring on more profound changes to society and democracy as well. Just like technology has changed reality for the music industry, technology is increasingly more going to change reality for news organizations by merit- and trust-based models for individual reporting. Sometimes an individual effort is welcomed - like when it is directed at preserving the environment; "start with yourself", "be the change". But when it comes to politics or information, the individual opinions or efforts are mostly scoffed upon and resisted. This is primarily because of a lack of trust for the system in which this information, opinion or effort is presented. The current prevalent trust-model is based on similar opinions perceived in information, commentary or similar from a news organization and it's presenters. Democracy is about having an individual voice, being able to influence your surroundings and the society that you take part in. To be able to do so, you also need to stay informed because a democracy demands some kind of effort as a participant in this decision making when we are going to vote. Sometimes this effort is concentrated into short spurts where we are bombarded with political propaganda to "make an informed choice", because we have not taken the small effort over time to stay informed - we sometimes face a large task of making up our mind just in time for our vote. Then when you finally vote, you are stuck with the decision and almost powerless as an individual to change anything for a long period of time. A political leader today can stay in power, although lacking almost any support of the population. This is not how it should be. We should be able to stay well informed participants with a higher level of interaction in the decision making all the time, and not only at some crucial crossroads in politics. The current democratic system does not let itself to adapt quickly to changing situations, and democratic society as a structure and model has not kept up with the changes and progress of humanity. We now have broadcasters and news organizations who sometimes unfiltered and in an unbalanced view present interests that strongly influence the population and political support. These are strong forces who undeniably have an equally strong impact on politics and society - because the population need information to make their participation in a democracy. It is the very pillar of democracy - an informed participant interacting to make common decisions. As with everything that exists or is part of reality - any phenomenon we can imagine - it has some type of structural integrity. This type of self-preservation is part of everyone, a society, planet, nature, a democracy or an idea itself. When the structural integrity is being challenged, apathy is a recipe for disaster. There are many types of reaction and interaction available to support the structural integrity - also of democracy. Resisting or excluding strong opinions in a democracy is not the way to progress into a healthy and thriving future. Therefore the structure itself needs to address the challenges - and evolve with the various parts which makes up society - like technology, religion, economy etc. When we study the world and evolve any science, we develop systems or models representing the mechanics, nature and knowledge that we find through our studies. The field of "systems theory" is an interdisciplinary study of how we evolve and structure our knowledge and understanding of the universe. Society and other higher level structures are sometimes modelled as "complex adaptive systems", although there are numerous mathematical, sociological and other models representing opinions and understanding of the individual parts of society or integral structures and their interactions. As we know through the work of Gödel, any complete system is limited and any unlimited system is incomplete. That in fact means that we are not able to map "everything" into our models and systems - i.e our understanding or knowledge. We also need to evolve our models, to keep up with our increasing knowledge and changing universe. We cannot stop adapting, or we will cease to exist - which we will ultimately do as physical individuals. The insight and understanding of our place, and how we interact with our surroundings is integral to everything we do - it is wisdom. We use the simplest form of logic in too many situations - propositional logic with two values true, false and the condition of "absurd", while we do well know that the world does not map itself unto such a simplistic black and white view. There of course exists a plethora of well-formed logics - like modal logic, first-order logic, paraconsistent logic, dialethism etc which cover more situations - but not all. The world has surely evolved quite a lot throughout history, and there is no real stopping progress. The conservative struggle ends up in direct conflict, where the lack of adapting gradually sometimes results in catastrophic or traumatic revolts of change forced upon us. The refusal to accept change or adapt, sometimes manifests through efforts to strong-arm others into falling back into their place. There are numerous examples of this throughout history - and we see it as well in the struggle with bringing up teenagers into adulthood. The rich who enjoy cheap and unlimited access to cheap goods, struggle to keep their dominance - sometimes resulting in increased crime and violence, whereby increased security measures is applied. In Brazil they have the highest number of bulletproof cars in the world. USA protects their interests and corporate investments through the support or threat of force to ensure cheap supplies for their consumers. We used to see slavery in an effort for cheap labour, while we now sometimes see illegal immigrants in sweatshops or "economic slavery" through denied real economic growth by controlling real wages, buying power and access to e.g buying land. The progress and increased interaction between countries is leading to more conflicts from those who oppose changes, and refuse to adapt - clinging to the conservative view. This is true in society, politics and religion. In Europe we have seen recent strong changes, with the formation of the EU, open borders and the world's largest trading bloc. There has also been a religious dampening in Europe where religion is strongly separated from politics and has faded from it's previous integral part to decision making. Russia has gone through a somewhat traumatic change where they are now growing stronger, and interacting strongly with Europe and other countries. China has open up much of it's economy and is now overwhelming parts of the world economy with it's huge population, potential and growth. Japan seems to be ever changing with it's limited natural resources and various economic struggles in waves with world trends - but always striving to innovate. The middle east has lacked somewhat in change, but the energy revenues have lead to some real improvements in conditions for the region. The US has lead a dominant role in both world economy, consumption and innovation, but now that is changing - and we see resistance and a struggle to keep it's position in the world. In stead of accepting gradual change with little painful impact - we now see the formation of forceful struggle which turns into direct conflict. (cont.) ...
... (cont.) USA is culturally close to Europe, as well as having their strongest economic and political ties to Europe. Europe and the US have both evolved to the changing world but in somewhat different directions when it comes to the importance of religion. The US is today very different from Europe, because the philosophy in the US with it's dominant role seems to have been that they are further entrenching themselves. We see this in politics, religion and economy - and they are in fact having a very polarizing effect on the world and those they interact with. The mantra of "with us or against us" has saturated almost all aspects of US society. The political scene is deeply entrenched into two camps who are locked into a power-struggle, where any external issue is in fact ignored by the sheer fact of the total polarization between the two parties who have been allowed to legislate and shape the political scene into what it is today - without any competition to the two dominant parties. This also shapes how democracy and the integral structure of US society is formed and works. There has been no adapting to allow for the healthy, thriving future of a democracy with this strong polarization - it is long overdue, and will be very difficult, traumatic and potentially catastrophic. When a famous evangelist interviewed the democratic and republican presidential candidates, he also stated that he could accept any christian, judaic, muslim, buddhist choice - but not someone who was an atheist. This also is apparent in how the US is a polarizing force in the world - where religion is an integral part of US politics all the way from the political grassroots support and onto the world stage. By virtue of being a religious free haven - the US also is a fertile ground for religious extremism, this can be seen in many of the odd religious communities, as well as being a polarizing influence in it's relations, whereby religious extremism polarizes into religious extremism elsewhere. The effect is of course mutual and works both ways, but it is very clear how this polarizing nature of society in USA effects it's relations with others in the world - and further entrenches them into resisting change, refusing to adapt to the changing world. Sometimes we see the chaos, crime and corruption dominating the political scene - like in Brazil, Italy, Israel and India. The abrahamic religions are basically a polarizing divisive mechanism - between "good and evil" - "us and them" - "for us or against us". Religion was historically a part of the political decision making, where the religious representatives would either offer counsel or direct rule. It is also a collective force which unites people against "outsiders". Religion has thus served a central part in evolving the world, and as protection through conflicts. However, now the world has started to evolve onto a level where it is shedding more and more of the old ways - and increasingly faster developing society, interaction and knowledge. There is becoming more emphasize on cooperation, and more advanced or complex relations and interaction between organizations - structures that are adapting to this evolving world. As every structure has some kind of self-preservation, so has religion - and the struggle for change is not without pain. Democracy is a structure and model that we need to protect, and we do this by making sure that it can adapt to the evolving world and new strong influences that seek to exert force upon the very fabric of these structures - the mechanisms, services and trust that we have in the democratic model. Democracy is not about polarization, religion or dominance - it's about making sure well-informed participants can ALL have their interactions and say in society. Therefore we need to make sure this is what is being protected, and we need to adapt the democratic structure so that attacks on it's pillars are nullified - not excluded or fought in a conflict. Excluding or eradicating opposing opinions or force is not how you deal with the world in a healthy way. Today we are seeing more and more electronic voting being made available to the world's population, and this is the first small baby-step to adapt to the evolved world. When it comes to information, we are some places bombarded with problems, issues - but never given the chance to get to grips with how to make changes - participate. This is e.g evident where the media is swamped with reports on violence, crime, corruption - but seldom are the decision making process being challenged, the politicians are not asked tough questions or confronted with their (in-)action. Sometimes the "objective reporting" lets one interest present it's views without there being any challenge - no balance - because journalists are not able or unwilling to present other facts/sides of a story to balance views. These are all challenges to democracy - the very structure and model of democracy - which needs the well-informed participants interacting. With politicians and the current political system we also lay our trust sometimes too heavily into the hands of politicians or bureaucrats. We are now technologically ready to rationalize and make more effective the political system - shedding politicians and evolving into a system where we lay our trust back into the democratic system backed by technological advances as well as world change. We see some of these changes already - with more and more merit-driven information where trust-models can be evolved into more balanced representative presentation of events - or at least a fair plethora of views, if not objective. We can then delve into the depths of our choosing to form an opinion in a matter, and we can do this at our own choosing - not at the whim or will of others. With user-contributed/-generated content we can access this plethora - but we still need better structures to present it in a balanced and fair view - deflecting attacks on the democratic structure which informing it's participants is reliant upon. We also need at least as strong identification schemes as currently in place for democratic voting - and preferably better schemes. To avoid electronic voting fraud - there are already many studies with solutions presented. To have interactive information forums - there are currently not any well-functioning systems, only simple ones mimicking opinion presenting systems already in use throughout society. There needs to be more work to ensure an effective democratic debate which can be trusted to support a fair and balanced democratic structure. Also, for the voting itself - there needs to be effective ways to ensure change, as well as solid decisions. Trustees which can be selected by voters to represent their opinion in a vote are important, because not all votes in society can command the attention of all of society's voters. It is also important to be able to individually change one's vote and opinion on a matter or vote - and have this effectively contribute to change reflected in action when change in opinion is made. A democracy is dynamic - and this needs to be represented. In case of emergencies there needs to be elected representative counsels attending to specific matters for periodic terms which can be able to act in case of technological failures. There are huge rewards for a democratic society in getting rid of excess bureaucracy, politicians and potential corruption of democratic structures/institutions. Making democracy more effective is long overdue given the technological advances and advances of society at large. In some countries some of these changes are emerging. We can see direct democracy, or representative direct democracy as a transition into a full direct e-democracy. Evolution of democratic structure to further be able to face new challenges is paramount to the survival of democracy. Apathy and having individual opinions drowned is a threat to democracy's future and survival. Democracy is about the representing the individual opinions and making them count - through information, interaction and voting. Some may say these ideas are "crazy" or "impossible", but in fact a representative direct democracy party is possible today within most existing democracies. Furthermore the voting technology already exists, while the "informing technology" is still emerging - being dependent on human interaction, relations and emotions it's not the easiest challenge. Some useful links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_direct_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outfoxed (example threat to a balanced and well-informed democracy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collactive (example threat to a balanced and well-informed democracy)