"Although wealth has always “bought” political office, it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century that financial interests began in earnest to play the leading role in inappropriate decision-making. Politicians use every means of deception to consolidate their positions, repeating slogans used for centuries such as, “a return to family values,” “to serve God and country,” and other verbal expressions of undefined goals. They talk around every issue without saying anything of substance, placing emphasis on the role of law and order in government and on international agreements. They enact new laws to control behavior and if these don’t work, they resort to force, boycotts, and blockades. But none of the methods ever addresses the root cause. Most people believe that to set things right, all we need is to replace incompetent and corrupt officials in government with decent men and women of high moral character. Although we occasionally find politicians of sincere intent, they seldom find useable answers to problems. Human systems fail, obviously, to serve the needs of humanity. This is true across the entire spectrum of human administration: the church, the government, the military, and the banks. In the past most social designs were unsuccessful for the majority because their designers were unable to transcend the limits of their own environmental conditioning. We tend to bring our past into the present and project it into the future. Today, the laws that govern society are not based on truly comprehensive and scientific studies. They are based on opinions and traditional practices. For example, our approach to dealing with an increase in crime is to build more prisons, rather than alter the conditions responsible for socially offensive behavior in the first place. In a recent discussion with criminologists it was pointed out that if our crime rate continues at its current level, more than half the U.S. population will be in prison by the year 2010. the other half may well have to guard them. Rather than depend on a failed system of punishment of incarceration after the damage has been done, a more effective approach to solving our problems would be to shift our attention to the scourges of poverty, malnutrition, poor role models, violence in the media, and stresses in family life. We need to make an effort to teach people how to resolve conflict without the use of physical force." ~Jacque Fresco
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 02:11:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015