Ett beslut

Jag är rädd att jag kommer göra min mor mycket olycklig.
Min mor var en gång i tiden politiker på nationellt plan. Det avvecklades innan jag blivit gammal nog för att förstå vad det handlade om, och det är jag glad för. Min mor har dock förblivit aktiv inom ett av våra riksdagspartier, vilket är oväsentligt.
Hon har aldrig uttalat påverkat varesig mig eller min syster i en specifik riktning politiskt. Hon har gladeligen tagit debatten gällande mina tonårsövertygelser vid matbordet, euro-debatten varande den första stora där vi hade olika åsikter. I nuläget ligger hon i ideologisk konflikt med partiet i stort, då hon ej längre säger sig kunna ställa sig bakom den politik som förs.

Min kära moder har också alltid sagt att det är "fel" att rösta på en-frågepartier, med motiveringen "Vad sker om de får makten?". I sak håller jag med henne. Men: En-frågepartier har inte någon större chans att hamna i majoritet.

Jag är en idealist. Jag tror på individens rätt till privatliv, jag tror på ytrandefrihet, jag tror på mötes- , informations- och demonstrationsfrihet. Jag tror på att staten skall vara rädd för sina medborgare. Jag hoppas att staten skall avveckla sig själv, och inte genom att smälta samman med andra stater i tjänstemannasamarbeten såsom EU. Jag tror på kulturers rätt att existera och människans rätt att vara unik.

Jag tror inte att mitt hopp om nationalstaten är något som kommer att inträffa, alltså får detta hopp stå till sidan för min tro på individens friheter.

Mest av allt tror jag på människans rätt till en bevarad integritet.
Därför är jag nu stolt medlem i Piratpartiet.
I Sverige så är skillnaden mellan höger och vänster minimal. Det är några procentenheter i skatt som skiljer. Sossarna kommer inte att återställa A-kassan om de "vinner" nästa val, moderaterna kommer inte att avskaffa hela välfärdssystemet.
Alltså spelar det för mig ingen roll vilken av de båda sidorna som har makten, i alla fall inte tillräckligt mycket för att det ska få mig att kompromissa med det jag tror på.
Därför är jag nu piratpartist.

En svensk tiger Aldrig!

Ses vi där?

Om sexualpolitik och sanningar.

Blogge Bloggelito skriver här om sexualpolitik, lagstiftning, åldersgränser och moralpanik.
Vi gillar Blogge Bloggelito, vi gillar folk som ifrågasätter det absurda i sexualskräck och i att stänga in och omyndigförklara människor.

Vi är nog anarkist, men vi tror inte att det är möjligt, så vi kallar oss liberal. Det är mer rumsrent.

Dagens konstaterande: Sanningen är alltid konstruerad.
Vilket ju är passande att göra ett djupare resonemang om på den här bloggen.

Propaganda, American-style

Pointing to the massive amounts of propaganda spewed by government and institutions around the world, observers have called our era the age of Orwell. But the fact is that Orwell was a latecomer on the scene. As early as the First World War, American historians offered themselves to President Woodrow Wilson to carry out the task they called "historical engineering," by which they meant designing the facts of history so that they would serve state policy. In this instance, the U.S. government wanted to silence opposition to the war. This represents a version of Orwell's 1984, even before Orwell was writing.

In 1921, the famous American journalist Walter Lippman said that the art of democracy requires what he called the "manufacture of consent". This phrase is an Orwellian euphemism for thought control. The idea is that in a state such as the U.S. where the government can't control the people by force, it had better control what they think...
The Soviet Union was at the opposite end of the spectrum from us in its domestic freedoms. It's essentially a country run by the bludgeon. It's easy to determine what propaganda was in the USSR: what the state produced was propaganda.
That's the kind of thing that Orwell described in 1984. One of the reasons why 1984 is such a popular book is that it's trivial, and once attacked the enemies of the U.S. If Orwell had dealt with a different problem, themselves - ourselves - his book wouldn't have been as popular as it is. In fact, it probably wouldn't have been published.
In totalitarian societies where there's a Ministry of Truth, propaganda doesn't really try to control your thoughts. It just gives you the party line. It says "Here's the official doctrine; don't disobey and you won't get in trouble. What you think is not of great importance to anyone. If you get out of line we'll do something to you because we have force."
Democratic societies can't work like that, because the state is much more limited in its capacity to control behaviour by force. Since the voice of the people is allowed to speak out, those in power better control what that voice says - in other words, control what people think. One of the ways to do this is to create political debate that appears to embrace many opinions, but actually stays within narrow margins. You have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions - and that those assumptions are the basis of the propaganda system. As long as everyone accept the propaganda system, the debate is permissible.

It is somewhat disturbing, isn't it?
Can we ever be sure about knowing anything that is not distorted?
Every peremisis we are basing our view of the world on comes from somewhere, right? Well, who is it that presents this information to us, and with what intent?

Why Democracy?

Assuming that humans are essentially submissive, we both want and need to be governed by one exterior force or another. This is contradicted by the human need of feeling that we are intelligent beings superior to others and able to lead ourselves. This paradox is satisfied by democracy: a form of government which allows human beings to have the impression of being involved in the decision making process while also being sufficiently dominated.

This essay is going to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the implemented democracy in our society in comparison to totalitarianism and anarchy. It will also define the areas to which the authors of this essay think that the rule of democracy should be confined.

To start with the latter, the authors of this essay think that the government should control the things that are to do with the large, collective parts of society that go beyond the needs of individuals and small groups. These collective parts of society are things such as issues concerning the majority of the population of the state, agendas addressing global cooperation, and policies of phenomena that are meant to be the same for every citizen of the state (e.g. healthcare, education etc). Thus the democratic state should work mainly as a nightwatcher state, where things concerning the minority or the single individual are left to be determined on that level.

To move on, one of the major problems with democracy is that there is a great risk for minorities of becoming oppressed, since the majority is the ruling body in a democratic society. This is the complete opposite from a totalitarian regime, in which it is usually the minority oppressing the majority; in an anarchist society, this issue is nonexistent because in such a society, nobody has the right to govern anybody else. Another apparent issue with democracy is that of making everybody take their share in the decision making process; there is no means dominant enough to force every individual in a society to take their responsibility and voice their opinion when that is needed, meaning that the results obtained in, for example, an election could be shifted from what the opinion of the actual majority is. Neither of the species of government in comparison have this problem: when the popular opinion is never needed or asked for, there is no way that it may be false due to possible passivity. Furthermore, assuming that humans are, apart from submissive and wishing to feel able, also selfish, it is reasonable to say that decisions made democratically may not always be in the best interest of the majority of the affected entities. Assuming further that humans also have the wish to not exert more energy than is absolutely crucial, it is also possible to argue that the decisions made sometimes are ill-informed: as John Simon has expressed it, “Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant”.

Although problems like the above mentioned exist, democracy is still considered the superior form of government. This is due to the strengths of democracy, which heavily outweigh its weaknesses. If our assumptions concerning the human nature are correct, democracy satisfies all our essential needs. It allows us to feel like we contribute to society when we take part in the public displays of affection that referendums and elections really are, while providing us with a sufficient amount of rules and regulations and dependence; in short, it allows us to fool ourselves that we are independent beings in a really sophisticated way. It also enables us to elect a smaller group of people that are to take the larger part of the responsibility for our society. This lets a group of people with a larger need of feeling involved and a smaller need of being submissive satisfy their needs while also taking unwanted responsibility off the plates of the others. Finally, the administrative part of democracy provides jobs which are not in any way needed in anarchist or totalitarian societies; makes people aware of the world around them because they need to be reasonably informed in order to take part in the democratic process; and largely decreases the risk for war, as two true democracies never hitherto have been known to fight a war against one another.

As Winston Churchill has expressed it, “has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those others that have been tried from time to time”. This sentence shows that, despite a certain number of weaknesses, democracy is still the form of government which is the most likely to function properly.

Creds: the iPebble. Uppsats skriven för ToK, i par.