Text 21946, 357 rader
Skriven 2011-08-24 00:22:33 av Lee Lofaso (2:203/2)
  Kommentar till text 21738 av alexander koryagin (2:5020/2140.2)
Ärende: True Democracy
======================
Hello Alexander,

 ak> Hi, Lee Lofaso! How are you?

Ate far too many tamales than I should have
at cheap Mexican restaurant...

 AK>> Demo - it's from the word "people." People define rules.

 LL>> What people?  Whose people?

 ak> People of a particular society. In Ancient Greece there was the ancient
 ak> Greece's democracy (for Greeks only). In modern Greece there is quite
 ak> another variant of democracy. Democracy is everywhere _where people (of
the
 ak> society) believe in it_. That's a just definition. You could have
questioned
 ak> most of the Soviet People in the USSR "do you believe that your country is
a
 ak> country of justice and freedom?" I assure you that the answer would have
 ak> been positive. People believed in the way they lived. It means that it was
 ak> democracy also. And a bloodless way it through which the modern Russia was
 ak> born proves it. But ask modern Russians the same question.... And you
 ak> probably find democracy only in Moscow and a few major cities.

Definitions change over time.  Same with society.  What fits for
society in times past does not fit for society today.  And no two
societies are alike, even those of the same time period.  However,
some things remain.  And the central question, regardless of time
period, is this - "What do the people want?"  Democracy is one way
to deliver the goods.  But that begs the question as to what kind
of democracy?  Ancient Greece had a version, which changed over
time, to something that worked for them.  But what about other
ancient civilizations?  Did they also have some version of democracy?
I would think they did, even if we fail to understand their ways.

 LL>> "We the people" can mean many different things.  For example, the
 ak> first
 ak> [Skipped]
 LL>> property. Blacks were not part of the equation.  Women were not part
 ak> of
 ak> [Skipped]

 ak> Well, if African slaves and white women were out of the process it simply
 ak> means that the society did not think they were equal with white males.

Abraham Lincoln's vision of America was a white America with no blacks
or reds or yellows or browns.  In fact, he wanted to use Louisiana as an
experiment, kind of like a model black society he could play with.  But
that is a side of Lincoln that most folks (other than historians) do not
know about, or want to know about.

 ak> They were treated as second sort beings.

Africans and Native Americans were not even considered as being
human beings, but rather animals that could be bought and sold.
After the divisive war (1862-1865) fought amongst our people,
Africans were granted citizenship, thus recognized as being
human.  Native Americans were still considered as being animals,
but at least they had reservations to live on.  It was not until
Bill Clinton was President that Native Americans were finally
recognized as human, so that those on the reservation could
vote.

The phrase "He's gone off the reservation" is a reference
to someone who has gone crazy or cuckoo.  It stems from Native
Americans being forced to live on a reservation.  What the
White Man did was steal their land and force them to live
in arid and desolate places known as "reservations".

 ak> So they were out of that society and out of the democracy that society had
 ak> imposed on itself.

Out of sight and out of mind.  Society freed itself from those
it did not want to participate in that society.  A way to purify
the race, and keep it from being contaminated.

 ak> But anyway, it was an improvement of democracy because some time before
 ak> people had lived under absolute autocracy of royal court when the
 ak> definition of equality was even more narrow.

Oh, Heroditus might disagree with that.  ;)

 ak> But again, we can mark those societies (democracies) only from
 ak> the moral and aesthetic point of view we share now. I mean majority of us
 ak> shares.

We cannot (or should not) seek to impose our own version of
morality on those of the past.  But it is something that is perhaps
an impossibility, as our own version of morality prejudices our own
thoughts in everything we do.

 LL>> Who wrote the US Constitution?  Wealthy white men.  Who ran the
 LL>> government?  Wealthy white men.  The first president of the United
 LL>> States was a wealthy white man who owned property and slaves.  In
 LL>> fact, slavery was legal in the United States including when Abraham
 LL>> Lincoln was president.

 ak> Well, but democracy started in Greece where slavery flourished. It is
 ak> nothing but a confirmation that evaluation of democracy depends on the
 ak> morals and aesthetic of the society which evaluates.

Slavery still exists today in various parts of the world.  And keep
in mind there is also economic slavery, which exists in every country
in the world.

 LL>> It was not until after his untimely death that slavery came to an end
 LL>> and black folks were granted the right to vote.  Women gained their
 LL>> freedom to vote later, in 1920.  And the equal rights amendment has yet
 LL>> to be ratified, meaning that even today women in America remain
 LL>> second-class citizens.

 ak> Such views is a mirror of the society at that time.  But was there
 ak> democracy?  Yes it was.

Variations of democracy, as no two democracies are alike, past or
present.

 LL>> There are other groups as well who remain
 LL>> second-class citizens.  Gays, lesbians, transgered folks, midgets,
 LL>> quadriplegics, deaf dumb and blind kids, etc.

 ak> I would not recommend you to mix all these groups together.

But that is America at its chaotic best!  :)

 ak> Reading it one may think that gays are handicapped persons from birth.

They are.  In every society.  Think what would happen in
a society composed only of gays.  It would not last very long,
at most one generation...

 ak> But love for mixing love and shit and abhorrence for modern women comes in
 ak> other way, I assure you. It perfectly depends on the morals and aesthetics
 ak> the society lives on.

An ammoral society could survive just fine if it thought itself moral.
Caligula saw nothing wrong with how he treated women and others.  Nero
thought he was doing Rome a favor...

 LL>> Some are similar, others totally dissimilar, and perhaps
 LL>> even unrecognizable to one society as being a democracy at all.
 LL>> However, any democracy or form of democracy (in the way you describe)
 LL>> cannot have an inflexible set of rules, as society changes over time.
 LL>> If a rigid set of rules were set in place, it may work for a short
 LL>> while, but would lose favor later, to be replaced by something else.

 ak> To take it wider, there are not any political or cultural systems with
rigid
 ak> constant rules.

You have never tried to live the life of a Trappist monk.
Would you like me to spell out the Rule of St. Benedict?

 ak> The main question what a direction a particular society is
 ak> going on. Do humans become better, higher, more refined?

Man has a very dark side to his nature.  The question is, can he
always keep that dark side under control?  Every man (or woman) has
a breaking point, no matter how good the man.  At some point, the
rage and anger will come out.  And when it does, the man becomes
a fierce, primitive animal that cannot be stopped.

 ak> It is easy to check.

Only if one is in control of one's own senses.

 ak> The list of things that humans consider as abomination
 ak> have been formed for thousands of years.

Man forgets quite easily when he is in a rage.

 ak> The lower conscience the fewer items in the list.

Man is both a political and a social creature.
And sometimes a primitive beast.

 ak> Vise versa - this list must grow with growing of human
 ak> standards and conscience.

The higher order of things is something man will (or should)
always be striving for.  But sometimes he forgets...

 AK>> Yes. The main thing is that every particular democracy is defined
 AK>> by majority.

 LL>> Tyranny of the majority is a problem in democracies.

 ak> But human civilization is like a train. If one person wants to stay and
 ak> drink beer the train cannot and must not wait for him. Majority must have
 ak> the right to decide. In opposite case the train will go nowhere.

Better to drink while on the train than off the train.  And hope
you do not fall asleep drunk and miss your destination.

 AK>> But majority doesn't allow them to do the things out of the rules.

 LL>> Rule by an angry mob.  Worked in the South for decades.  Not
 LL>> very healthy for black folks, as Ku Klux Klan members sought them
 LL>> out wherever they could be found.  It was not until civil rights
 LL>> legislation was passed in the mid-1960s that black folks got some
 LL>> protection from racist mobs.  But even that legislation could not
 LL>> save Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from an assassin's bullet.

 ak> But Ku Klux Klan mobs cannot be called majority.

The Ku Klux Klan was a majority in the South for over a hundred
years.  And black folks were scared.  Along with Jews, Catholics,
Asians, gays, lesbians, Muslims, and anybody else who disagreed
with the KKK worldview...

 ak> The fight against Ku Klux Klan was carried out by majority of the American
 ak> people.

A very small minority, not even close to a majority.  And that fight
took decades before anything approaching justice came into being.

 ak> It came time to change morality and add some new taboos.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher who was one of the main
leaders in the civil rights fight in America.  His main backers were
African Americans.  But the audience he was trying to reach was white
middle class America.  He wanted to show average white Americans what
was happening to blacks, how blacks were being mistreated and denied
justice.  He did not live to see the fruit of his labor, as his life
was cut short by an assassin's bullet, cutting him down at age 39.
We are erecting a giant statue in honor of Dr. King within the next
few days.  I wish I could be there, but Washington DC is much too
far a place away from my beloved swamp.

 ak> Also we can recall that democracy is not necessary a perfectly good thing.

It can be very ugly, and messy, at times.  But it works.

 ak> Again, we can take Greek democracy, or Roman's. The level of democracy
 ak> depends of morals and aesthetics.

A society's perception of morals and aesthetics.  Our own perception
may be very much different.

 AK>> But any democracy has sense only if the people observe society's
 AK>> taboos voluntarily and understand that permissiveness is not
 AK>> necessary is a sign of good. Democracy is a mirror of a particular
 AK>> country.

 LL>> Why is it taboo for a white man to be with a black woman in one part
 LL>> of a country but not taboo in another part of that country?  Is it
 LL>> because one part of that country is more civilized than another part?

 ak> Life in a big country is like a big old river. In that river there can be
 ak> many places with slow flow. Water changing in such places far more slow
than
 ak> in the stream.

I live in a swamp.  Not a river.  In the swamp, water is everywhere
and flows in all directions.  There are alligators swimming about
making it a very dangerous place for humans to swim.  Walking along
the banks one has to always watch one's step so as not to wake
a sleeping 'gator.  If you want to understand democracy and how it
works, read the words of Pogo.  He wrote the book.  (Actually it
was Walt Kelly, whom J. Edgar Hoover suspected of being a communist)

 LL>> The USA has a president who claims to be African American.  His
 LL>> father was black, his mother was white.  Since he identifies himself
 LL>> as being an African American, most people (including myself) consider
 LL>> him to be a black man.  Regardless of what criticism he gets in regards
 LL>> to politics, the real reason for that is not politics but race.  And
 LL>> that is the dirty secret white Americans do not want to let the rest
 LL>> of the world know about.

 ak> Well, imho his race is not very important.

For young people in America and the rest of the world his race is an
asset.  But young folks here did not grow up in the days of segregation,
when Jim Crow ruled.  The older generation did, and as such race is
very much a factor.

 ak> He looks good, his English is good etc.

He now has quite a bit of gray hair, unlike three years ago.
But that's what the presidency does to folks.  It makes them age
much faster than normal.  :)

 ak> The hatred against him is very similar to the hatred to Bush Jr. I
 ak> know many people who compared Bush Jr. with foolish chimpanzee.

Scientists have trained rhesus monkeys to play rock, paper, scissors.
Our former president has yet to learn how to speak the English language
properly, much less play children's games.

 ak> BTW, indeed, his grimaces looked very similar. ;-)

Every president or leader has to be an actor.  In every country,
not just the USA.  George W. Bush was a terrible speaker, and he
knew it.  He tried to use humor to offset that shortcoming.  It
did not always work, but perhaps that was better than total silence.

 ak> But probably during hard times such treating is inevitable for all high
 ak> politicians.

If we cannot laugh at our politicians, what have we become as a people?

 LL>> Culture and society are two different things.  Societies come and go.

 ak> [Skipped]
 AK>> I don't think it's correct. We can say about culture only in context
 AK>> of a particular time. Take for instance Russian culture. When you
 AK>> talk of it you must point a time tag, is it in 18,19,20,21 century
 AK>> etc. Therefore, culture strongly depends on society. For instance,
 AK>> society with christian values has becoming culture. Society with
 AK>> delapidated christian values has quite another culture.

 ak> [Skipped]
 LL>> How did this happen?  In the 1920s, Americans took over our schools.
 LL>> And those American schoolteachers punished children who spoke French,
 LL>> demanding only English be spoken.  Cajun parents then decided to teach
 LL>> their children English rather than French so as not to get the children
 LL>> in trouble with the schools and schoolteachers.  Schools in Cajun

 ak> Another confirmation that a notion "democracy" is very vague.

Comes in many different shapes and sizes, as well as colors.

 LL>> How can a people preserve a culture without its heart and soul,
 LL>> that people's own language?  Imagine, if you will, your own people
 LL>> forgetting the Russian language, your only means of communicating
 LL>> with them being a foreign tongue.  It happened here, to Cajuns.
 LL>> Only, instead of Russian, we speak French.  :)

 ak> But in America there are people from all the world.

And if everybody spoke English, and English only, those cultures
would cease to exist.

 ak> For instance, I know that if people from Russia (who moved to the USA)
want
 ak> to teach their children to speak Russian they do it.

But those same Russian parents also teach their children Russian.

 ak> Could Cajuns children teach French at home?

Today, after having learned from their parents and grandparents
mistakes, yes.  But it will be a long process, given how many folks
have forgotten their own heritage due to their inability to speak
Cajun French.

 ak> [...Once there lived an old man. He had three sons. Two clever ones and a
 ak> footballer.]

Cajuns play bourré, Italians play bocce, and Russians play
their very own version of roulette...

--Lee

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