|
RPG
Dec 31, 2010 15:13:14 GMT -5
Post by rpgfan12323232 on Dec 31, 2010 15:13:14 GMT -5
As we were talking, Mikio guided me through the gardens and kept pointing out interesting and beautiful things. Now a path with low steps took us up toward a large, traditional-looking building, surrounded by trees and shrubs. On a table by the path stood a collection of little bonsai trees in their pots, looking like exact, miniature copies of their larger cousins growing on the hill. It was as if the camera makers had finally succeeded in producing lifelike, three-dimensional photographs. But the small trees were just as much alive as their bigger relations. We found seating in the shade of the veranda of the building and resumed our discussion.
"As I think about your model of society, I can't help visualizing hard work in dirty, dangerous nineteenth-century factories," I observed. "Life is easier now, but it seems to me that today's society is both better and worse off than the old one. The living standard is higher, but there's so much fear and dissatisfaction. Crime and corruption flourish while honest people are subjected to more and more control and restrictions. What has happened, and when did it happen?"
Mikio thought for a while. "Technology hasn't created a paradise," he said, "for a very simple reason: human society is designed to provide power and profits for the few, not health and happiness for the many. To benefit the owning class, today's humanity is quite unlike that of a few generations ago. But the changes have been so gradual, so slow, that no one has reacted. The idyll is gone; instead, people seem to be mainly mean and selfish.
"A major difference between our days and times past is that we now live under the illusion of ever growing wealth and inexhaustible resources. Before 1950, scarcity was the normal state everywhere. As a consequence, those who form public opinion—owners and shepherds—then set a norm to the effect that it was proper for the lower classes in society to work hard and be content with little. There were strict laws against vagrancy, and those who couldn't or wouldn't be employed were put in workhouses to produce goods or carry out unpleasant maintenance work without pay. All this ensured that most of what wealth there was could conveniently be accumulated at the top of the social ladder.
"During the latter half of the twentieth century, a world economy emerged, where technology and the availability of energy other than muscle power had created such a degree of prosperity that, in industrialized countries, there was enough for everyone. At that time, it became the interest of the rich and powerful that the lower classes borrow, spend, and consume as much as possible. That way an adequate proportion of our collective wealth still ends up in the hands of the former—as taxes, interest, and profits. Whether people work or not is no longer important to the owners, as there are enough machines to help out with production and services.
"To this end, the term 'Consumer' was given a respectability that's totally alien to the word. As late as in the 1940s, 'Consumer' was an insult, meaning the same as 'Parasite.' If you couldn't call yourself a producer of something or a provider of a service, you had nothing to be proud of. But by 1962, President Kennedy could say 'we're all consumers' without being tarred and feathered on the Capitol steps.
"Just as mass production had enabled the owning class in the industrialized countries to turn their populations into profit-generating consumers, so, at the end of the twentieth century, they decided to do the same to people in poor and developing countries, as well. But such countries are bound to stay at a much lower level of prosperity for a couple of powerful reasons. First, big business still needs below-minimum wage labor, so the exploitation of poor nations must continue—normally by installing corrupt tyrants, or, where democracy has taken too strong a hold, through the economic extortion that becomes possible when nations are deep enough in debt.
"Second, the great powers need enemies."
"Why is that?" I asked, quite taken aback.
"You have to realize whose needs we're talking about. The national interests of a great power are the interests of its owning class, the owners of its big business. The tax revenue of a large country is special in that it's a predictable and reliable flow of truly serious money. As such, it holds an attraction to the owning class that's in quite another league from that of a small country. If you're one of the owners of big business, you'll be eyeing that money and plotting how best to divert the largest possible slice of it to yourself. The answer is no secret: it's been known for as long as there have been states in this world. The safest and most profitable way of dipping into the national revenue is getting the nation into a war; selling it weapons, oil, and military supplies and services; and lending it the money to buy all that from you. War is the most dependable consumer there is.
"The politicians controlling the national budgets of the great powers tend to welcome such machinations, because a large country can only be held together if its leaders can point to an adversary that's always producing new, unsettling threats at the national level. Failing this, people's attention strays to local or provincial matters, and the national government becomes abstract, distant, and even irrelevant.
"But great powers can't fight each other anymore—it would be too dangerous—so now the chosen enemy is terrorism. To ensure a steady supply of terrorists, the arms makers and defense contractors, under great patriotic brouhaha, tend to put their own men into the governments of the great powers, where they can make sure that someone, somewhere, suffers enough insult and injustice to resort to armed resistance and retaliation. They've gotten really good at this: America's military-industrial complex managed to spend more on fighting a few tens of thousands of ragged insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan than on defeating Italy, Germany, and Japan in the Second World War.
"When the Cold War fizzled out around 1990, it became a matter of urgency for the arms makers and the governments of the great powers to find new enemies. As we know, the choice fell on the world's Muslims, who have the advantages of a culture based on honor and vengeance, widespread poverty, and minority status in nearly all the large nations involved. They are easy to fear because their fertility is high. They have internal divisions that can be used to play them against each other, and they can be provoked as needed by indulging Israel. Their local religious leaders, always looking to maximize donations to their noble causes, have it easy to find young men with no prospects for a job and turn their minds to extremism and holy war, enabling our governments, once again, to raise our defense budgets.
"There you have the two main reasons why misery will persist next to affluence and wastefulness. But, while withholding prosperity from the developing world, we've managed to export the new covetousness alright: everybody consumes First-World entertainment, even if they have nothing to eat."
"Going back a little, my understanding of how values form is quite different from yours," I ventured. "I've read about all kinds of cultural and sociological influences interacting with developments in technology and communications. Isn't your model of values being manufactured by the owning class a bit simplistic?"
"You can't separate human behavior from economics. Our minds don't have separate compartments for different aspects of our interaction with society, just because those aspects are studied by different scientists. Economics is the foundation of our survival, and will always be one of the strongest influences we experience.
"Insight doesn't come from knowing the right answers. It comes from asking the right questions. The most important question you can ask when you want to discover hidden influences or find out who committed a crime, is, 'Who benefits?' This question has been the basis of criminal justice since Roman times, and it's all you need when you try to understand where our ideas come from. If those in power clearly benefit from the current values and preferences of the public, then you can be pretty sure that, ultimately, they're behind those same values and preferences.
"The main difference between the morals of today's postindustrial society and those of the famous good old days is that greed is now quite acceptable for everyone, not just for the rich. Because we have all been taught greed, our values have changed, and in many respects disappeared. Without the old values that made a virtue of restraint, there's no more peer pressure against enriching yourself by whatever means you seem to be able to get away with. And, sad to say, peer pressure makes up the main part of the conscience of many of us.
"What's left is envy. Revengefulness and envy provide the last checks that remain at society's disposal for curbing economic crime. Either the guy has taken something from me, or he's getting away with something I couldn't get away with. So I turn him in. This is something entirely different from concern for his integrity. But it's very useful for whoever has an interest in enlisting my vote for putting more stringent controls on civil liberties."
"What you're saying," I interjected, "is that greed and the crimes it induces provide an excuse for more control, and attaining more control over citizens requires more power to be given to the authorities. Is there any other way?"
"In the old kind of society, there certainly was one," Mikio replied. "People were honest. Respect for the rights and property of others was instilled into every person from childhood. But modern parents that are taught greed by opinion makers have no way of teaching their children integrity. Children learn by following the parents' example, not by what they're told to do. Today, we're fast forgetting that people should be honest and that their honesty should be taken for granted, as a basic tenet of society.
"Where greed is fulfilled, there's prosperity. With prosperity come stress, boredom, and spoiled children. As soon as we no longer have to struggle for our survival and our betterment, we turn against each other, bickering and destroying, like birds or mice crowded together into too small an area, even if they're given plenty of food.
"We Japanese have a particular problem because we've all been raised to conform without questioning, and we therefore tend to be quite gullible. Moreover, we have no traditional sense of morality to fall back on. Shinto, our main religion, has no code of ethics, and Buddhism provides only our burial rites. Our concepts of duty and obligation, Giri and On, apply only within the group we belong to, such as a company, a school, or a family.
"As the crime rate rises, politicians can campaign for more government control over people on the premise that we can't trust each other and, hence, will think it a good thing that the authorities protect us by keeping track of what everybody is doing. When we're far enough removed from the old tradition of integrity and honesty, we'll sacrifice our own freedom in order to have protection from others. When a politician argues for more control because of the threat from criminal elements, we accept that the alternative of raising well-mannered children and trusting each other is no longer available, scarcely even remembered."
"Raising well-behaved children is no easy task," I objected.
"You're certainly right there," Mikio confirmed. "That's another thing that's completely different now. Before automation, kids had responsibilities in the family, and the family needed their work to survive and prosper. Give children a productive task, and they'll keep busy and be responsible like anybody else. But today, child labor has been outlawed—ostensibly, to put children in schools and protect them from overwork and exploitation—with the aim of eradicating all remaining pockets of family self-sufficiency by breaking off the transfer of traditional skills to the next generation. To protect children from accidents—under the assumption that their parents are careless idiots—they aren't even allowed near the equipment the family farmer uses for his living. Today's few remaining farm children are nearly as ignorant of where our food comes from as city kids, and, as adults, just as likely to become mere consumers without any complementing skills. Where children of bygone days played traditional games and made their own toys, modeling them on the working environment their families depended on for a living, today's children must be inundated in expensive, technical playthings to keep them from becoming unmanageable through boredom. The toys represent no aspect of any productive process, only fantasies and conspicuous consumption.
"For their own survival in old age, yesterday's parents and grandparents relied on the ability of children and grandchildren to carry on the productive work the family was engaged in. Because of this, adults had a vested interest in fostering in their children a solid work ethic and values like compassion, prudence and productivity. Today, children are mostly in the way of their parents' hedonistic consumer lifestyle. Employers, social security, and pension schemes are assumed to take care of the aging—few realize that there can be no security for the old unless the young stay productive and competitive. So parents think that it's the task of schools and officials to teach their children how to behave, and to intervene when correction is needed. The only remaining entities with a direct, pecuniary interest in children's values are retailers who want their money, and the retailers' advertising agencies. Advertisers raise our children, and we wonder why we don't understand them.
"This has been going on and getting worse long enough to result in a nearly total loss of traditional value systems. But liberal democracy wasn't made to cope with a population without values. Neither was any other form of government the world has known so far. Even where dictators forced their views on defenseless populations, they had to depend on some kind of norms and values that made people react predictably. They had no means of keeping tabs on everyone individually, so they had to impose at least two mechanisms based on respect and values: a power hierarchy of privileged officials, and economic sanctions or rewards, as the case may have been.
"Today, the disappearance of values makes us ever harder to govern. There are hundreds of millions of people with resources at their disposal that two or three generations ago were either unknown or the privilege of the very few, such as cars, computers, efficient communications, lots of money, unscrupulous lawyers, and the ability to travel fast and far. Suddenly, very many of us are both very selfish and very powerful, and society has run out of constructive ways of keeping us honest. Introduce a restriction, and someone will find a way around it. Promise a reward, and it'll be abused.
"Clearly, this situation is untenable. To preserve their credibility, politicians must come up with a solution to the problem of mass dishonesty that they and the business community have created by teaching us greed and covetousness. Given today's technology, and considering that nobody wants to stem the consumer's appetite for ever more gratification, the solution will have to involve computer control over everybody's actions and over all movements of money.
"Abolishing cash as a payment medium, as is happening just now, is part of that solution. Whatever a consumer does has to be paid for. If you're forced to pay by computerized account transfer rather than by exchanging tokens of value such as cash, your current whereabouts and what you're doing are known to the system whenever you pay for something. Further, there's at least a theoretical possibility to have the computers check the legality of all payments."
The afternoon was now cooling off, and Mikio wanted to walk again. Knowing the parks in detail, he took me to see the ruins left from the buildings forming the keep of the old Edo castle in the East Garden.
Following my history lesson on the ancient Shoguns, I still wanted to pursue a few questions.
"Tell me something, Mikio. Why is entertainment such a central matter in life? It seems that somebody is pushing the idea that entertainment is really important. The media dedicate more time and effort to reporting on entertainment than reality."
Mikio looked at me and laughed.
"You just answered your own question," he said. "You haven't been away from your TV set two weeks yet, and already you've discovered that beyond all the brainwashing, there's a whole world out there. If they didn't keep people glued to the sets, this society would fall apart.
"In ancient Rome, the interests of the ruling class—interests known then, as now, as 'the security of the state'—were threatened by the growth of a bored, angry mob of unemployed lower class citizens. The solution then adopted to pacify the masses was to give each person a set amount of flour every month, and to build large arenas where grandiose and violent shows and competitions were held. In return for food and the interminable spectacle of the cruel killing of beasts and humans, the crowds stayed manageable and fulfilled their only civic duty, that of voting, to the satisfaction of their patrons. This was the well-worn concept of 'bread and circuses for the people.'
"Modern society is managed along the same lines. Basic material security —if need be, through handouts—and entertainment provide the dope for people nowadays. Make entertainment so fascinating that a majority of voters never care to seek any other views than those you feed them through their favorite TV channels, and you have a perfect rubber-stamp democracy. No matter which political party is in power, business and government always have essentially identical interests. Thus, commercial television is just as useful as government-owned media for distributing political propaganda.
"This system of government now prevails all over the world. It's very similar to the state of the late Roman Empire just before the Barbarians overran it. But this time, lacking a superior outside enemy, the fatal attack will come from within."
"What happened to all the other things people used to do?" I persisted. "I know that people had to work harder before TV was introduced, but surely they had some spare time then, too?"
"Most of what people did in their homes before television took over had to do with some productive activity that helped them survive and prosper. They also put great value on just being together and talking to each other. In all sound societies, there always was an element of self-sufficiency and independence that gave the citizens the guts to stand up for their rights. Such societies were based on individual initiative and responsibility. Government and all other social activities were characterized by the words, 'By the people.'
"Now we've let our guard down. We've accepted the idea that everything, including what the government does, should be 'for the people.' Evidently, this is what politicians want, as it makes them and their bureaucrats indispensable. It also makes for a centrally controlled society. Electronic entertainment is the ideal means to achieve such a state, as it replaces all other leisure activities with the act of perceiving, or interacting with, a centrally distributed monologue. Thus, people's opinions and outlook become standardized by those in power, whereas, in earlier times when people communicated locally, there were a variety of views of the world, which helped keep leaders and opinion makers honest.
"Virtual Reality was the best invention ever for business and government. Virtual Reality is so fascinating, and it's so much nicer to have your own choice of realities than having to put up with the one decaying environment we've got left in the real world, that we'll soon have a majority of people, i.e., voters, who actually prefer VR to the real world. The entertainment industry is working hard to ensure that they never have to come back to reality. They can get news that relates to their virtual worlds; they can eat exotic dishes in Martian restaurants even though the food is just the regular supermarket slop, ordered, heated, and served by their own alimentabot; they can mingle exclusively with fantasy beings of their own preference. This majority can be totally manipulated by the propaganda channels, and it will decide what our society is going to be like.
"Lots of other people, too, have lost their ability for meaningful communication with each other. They prefer the uncomplicated illusion of interacting with famous entertainers as they talk back to the computers of the TV stations. What time is left over is spent on fashionable, expensive hobbies. It's easy to see that once you have thus destroyed self-sufficiency, more must be bought, perhaps with borrowed money, and profits will benefit.
"What we have, once more, is a political system that favors non-accountable government, big enterprise, big media concerns, big banking, powerful propaganda machines, and, where labor unions still remain, corrupt union leadership. Such organizations willingly take care of imposing conformity and exerting control. This is much easier for those in power than dealing with individuals and small enterprisers who all have different needs and interests.
"Once upon a time, such a system was called corporatism and the political philosophy supporting it was called fascism. At the end of the Second World War, we were told that fascism had been defeated and would never return. In truth, however, fascism was far too valuable to big business to be allowed to disappear. So instead of open fascism like there was in the 1930s, we now have something called democracy that serves as a cover for wholesale corruption of politicians by big business. Since even leftist politicians are now for sale, and intimidating them is no longer necessary, the more disgusting public features of the old fascism have been left to parading, powerless neo-fascists. But the traditional corporatist connection between big business and government is closer than ever.
"However, in an important sense, our society is the direct opposite of the old despotic regimes. Multinational business is now stronger than government, and the latter takes its orders from the former. Where business in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the 1930s was made to serve the purposes of party and government, today government and parties alike serve the needs of transnational enterprise. In olden days, strong-arm governments supported by national armed forces put the people to work for the interests of the country's power clique. Today, government and media keep people happy and ignorant, borrowing and spending, in order to profit an absent, transnational owning class.
"Almost no one seems to realize that all the good intentions of national and international politicians and bureaucrats, and all their pious talk, mean nothing at all, because they don't take the decisions. All issues of any consequence are decided by billionaires and their business executives, with the sole aim of maximizing the next quarter's profits."
At the end of the day, after many more insights on my part, Mikio invited me to share his customary evening meal. We joined a number of other monks, and a few dropouts, for a free dinner generously provided by the kitchen of the Palace Hotel.
Mikio introduced me to his friends. Most of the monks had begun as young novices. But a couple of the older ones had a business career behind them like Mikio did. One had suffered burnout and a nervous breakdown, and had quit his job to protect himself from karoshi, or death from overwork. The other had seen himself relegated to the class of madogiwa-zoku, the "window-side people"—elderly workers that were never promoted, but regarded by their employers as useless. They were placed by the window, something that would have been counted a privilege in the West. In Japan, it meant that they could be assumed to waste time by looking out. Humiliated in every way, some went mad or became alcoholics. Mikio's friend had found a new way of life that was slowly giving him back his self-respect.
The dropouts were furosha—homeless—or burakumin, members of the lowest caste in a society that, since 1868, officially has been casteless. Traditionally, the burakumin did the most defiling jobs, such as slaughter, corpse disposal, and removal of human excrement. But by now, most of them had been made redundant by automation. Rather than accepting handouts and helping feed the corporatist system that kept denying them basic human dignity, the burakumin I met had elected to stay on the outside and shun consumerism.
In all its humbleness, this small group of nonconformists presented an enormously uplifting experience. True, they couldn't feed themselves, but they claimed survival because of their basic right to life. And while living as beggars and scavengers, they had refused to sell out to the coercion that ruled the lives of the rest of Japan's population.
I hated parting from Mikio, but I knew our time together had come to an end. I thanked him profusely, wondering if I'd ever be able to meet him again.
Once more, Mikio straightened me out in his patient manner.
"It's true that we've become friends, Gregory. But I'm old, and I remain here. You have a mission and you must travel on. If you can act with more wisdom thanks to what you've learned from me, you'll have repaid me. Now go on your way; my thoughts go with you."
I felt very strange going back to my hotel room after that day's experiences. The entertainment center was still shut off, and I left it that way. Many thoughts filled my mind, and sleep came slowly.
My stay in Japan was drawing to a close, and the next day I went to visit the Tokyo outlet of my favorite Sydney outfitters, there to buy myself the traditional Australian Akubra hat, Drizabone raincoat made of wax-impregnated fabric, and Blundstone boots. Although all this, by Australian standards, was frightfully expensive, the familiar outfit made me feel like I had regained a part of my personality lost with my original luggage.
Upon my arrival in Tokyo, I had decided to trade in my air ticket and continue by sea and land transport. After some searching, I had found an adventurers' travel agency that had sold me on the idea of taking a freighter to Europe through the Northeast Passage.
Many cargo ships carry passengers, but no more than twelve. That way they aren't obliged to have a doctor on board: the medical training of the ship's master is considered enough. So, for the next leg of my trip, I would travel on board a Russian bulk carrier scheduled to join a convoy to Murmansk in the northwest corner of Russia. From Murmansk, I hoped to find some convenient means of getting to Finland, just beyond the border. There I had an old friend who had issued me a standing invitation to drop in on him at any time, should I be passing through.
|
|
|
RPG
Jul 30, 2012 12:11:24 GMT -5
Post by Bear on Jul 30, 2012 12:11:24 GMT -5
Credit to who made it first! (If someone did!)
List of my dragon eggs:
1 A small fuzzy hot pink egg.
<>Tag<> This egg contains a dragon, about the size of a mail box at full growth. She has fuzzy. wild hot pink fur and soothing green eyes. Cannot breath, but can constrict. Can fly, with two long wings. Walks upon two legs, each with five retractable mettalic, curved claws. This Dragon likes shiny things and will take yours. When you get mad, it tries to make you happy by returning some objects mysteriously. Beware...
A slimy white egg.
<>Tag<> This egg contains a dragon, about the size of a dog at full growth. He has rigid white scales and flecked, beady yellow eyes. He has wings, and can fly moderately. He breathes blue flames, the hottest type of fire. He walks upon four limbs, that have two long claws on each of them. His fangs stick out of his mouth. Also he has a long tail that is whip-like. This dragon is nervous and shy. You can chase him into hiding easily and you may not find him for weeks, but he is loyal and always comes back. Beware...
A lumpy spotted egg.
<>Tag<> This egg contains a dragon, about the size of a salamander at full growth. He has electric yellow scales, streaked with silver and silvery eyes. He cannot fly, but has wings and is an incredbly fast runner, with a lean body, huge nostrils, ans fast feet. His four limbs have three little claws on each foot. He can breathe sleeping gas. This dragon loves to pull pranks on you and is a little unawawre of your feelings.Beware...
________________________________________
Dragons for adoption
Coconut
<Tag>
This dragon is covered with brown scales and is full grown. He has retractble white teeth and claws(4). He can breath milk. He can only hover on his tiny wings and is the size of a coconut!
Facts
Color-Brown Eyes-Blue Type of skin-Scales Type of flight-hover Can breathe-milk Size-Coconut Claws-4 on each foot(white) Teeth-Full retractble set(white) Legs-4 Heads-1
Ruby
<Tag>
Red dragon with glowing blue yees. She can't fly. Her scales are made from rubies. She has four legs and 1 claw on each one with no teeth. She is funny but loves shiny things and will steal yours. Beware.......
Facts
Color-Ruby red Eye-Ice blue Skin type-Scales Fly-can not Can breathe-Nothing Claws-1 on each foot Teeth-2 on top and bottom Legs-4 Heads-1
I do not kit-steal or Kit-save, or kit anything. After all there not real anyways. If I do any of that it's for fun!--BFF-Russetclaw45--100% against animal cruelty
|
|