Doram wrote:I DO agree that guilt tripping people into doing the right thing is a band-aid, and will never be a true answer to anything, but, unfortunately, it is the best tool we have for now. As we all know, wisdom is so rare these days, that approaching any subject from an ideal angle WILL fail, and our messed up world will stubbornly refuse to be less messed up. It requires something more, and what that more is, has eluded me thus far, but I am on the hunt, and I am close.
And what good does it make to just cover the wound up and hope it'll just heal away? What good does it make if you haven't trully learned anything from that experience and eventually you'll cut yourself again? Discipline has managed to keep people in their place for a vast majority, but that doesn't mean it didn't also create fustrated individuals in the process. By all means, individuals that don't like the status quo, but were silenced and do not rise up for the sake of being
good, disciplined, civilised and others that grew hatred of it soo much they rebelled against.
I'm not talking against discipline in general, I'd rather say I am agaist by the methods used to shape the character of a person from the point he reaches the age of critical thinking, the age he begins to aknoweledge the world around. By that point, he shall be taught how to analyse the morals and values he already has by that point and how to question them. How to come to the conclusion if, in time, it does or not appeal to himself as a person. If the given values actually rooted in his brain and goes along with his mentality, or they were merely inherited from external sources and it's the piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit.
By all means, the society, like let's say state-provided education will offer you just a standard character model. Which may not necessary be bad, but usually people want to be more than standard, maybe not necessary by themselves, but also because they're continously told by family, friends and even teachers that they're special and should prove it. And in relevance with the topic, that is mostly the problem with government intervention overall, it will not provide more than a standard, regardless of it's shape and while providing by itself is not necessary a problem, enforcing it is.
To further develop, when I hear
government-intervention, it touches a specific chord in my mind which automatically makes me think of authoritan regimes and regardless of how noble their intentions or missions are, eventually when enough people despise it, it will break down and result in people craving the exact opposite* of what has been offered so far. I'll use communism as a particular example as I'm the most familiar with. Romania was one of the states that actually separated from the influence of USSR and tried to built a name and
"ideology" of it's own, just like Yugoslavia, China or Czechoslovakia, so we cannot really talk about appropiation to the russian culture and adopting the soviet pantheon except for the early-years of the republic when we were occupied after the war. Eventually, the common values of communism were still applied. Private property was confiscated, business and industry became state-owned, all schools were public, had the same curriculum and uniform and everyone called each other
tovarăș (comrade). This is one of the part I would like to insist more on, regardless of age, rank, social-class** were comrades, it was supposed to make everyone think (and agree) that they are all equal. Eventually it didn't caught on, after the fall everyone reclaimed their property, business that couldn't survive were closed down or sold to private owners and the concept of
tovarăș not only died, but became despised. I've been personally told be numerous people, including some teachers
You aren't my equal. We are not the same age, we were not colleagues, we didn't go to the same faculty toghether. which reflects some fustration about how dare anyone compare to them, or how dare anyone try to put them on the same level with others. This is exactly the problem when you enforce something without making people understand or adapt that thing to their own mentality. They either go along with it for the sake of the norm or they either grow to despise it simply because they were forced to swallow it. Not all people are the same mind you, another teacher I particullary liked and can relate to talked with me about the comrade issue and said she agreed with the concept, but not the implementation as many people couldn't see what the aim of
tovarăș was and how it should've worked.
Both teachers given in my example are math teachers and both of them are >50 which means their were both born in full-communist period. Don't know the exact years of their birth, but communism was officially implemented in 1947 and lasted until 1989.
Anyway to end the reply (for now) that's what I view as a problem to gov-intervention. If you will enforce something on people, eventually they will grow to desire the opposite. What is wonderful in today's world is that so many communities were made by so many people with different mentalities, so eventually if the environment doesn't change you, maybe you should move to another environment. And that's why I am mostly for sticking-with-your-own-kind, if one properly learns how to think, eventually he will find his place somewhere, where there others who think alike.
*exageration. not exact opposite, but said so for the effect
**that wasn't actually supposed to exist
