I recently had a conversation with a 23 year old cynic.

This morning I had a reasonable, pre-coffee, conversation with a moderately good friend of mine (No, I don't actually know how old you are)

We were sitting, and somebody brought up the economy. I love the economy. It's always terrible, and plumbing the great mysteries is one of my things.

Now, I'm all for realism in the face of a thousand ideals, but he really shocked me with this. I began my personal shtick, uniting the people under a common idea (bargaining for better wages, tearing down the corporate machine, and really being able to provide for a family without going into mountainous debt), and he countered with an ugly thought.

He has begun to believe that people are too lazy to tear down the infrastructure, carefully placed to enslave them. He thought that the people weren't collectively capable of just saying "no" to the bigger problems. "Revolution doesn't solve problems, it just creates new ones."

Wash your mouth after calling me an idealist, but I'm a little hurt.

Ideals are never without rebuttals

i agreed with your friend's thought, people in common are afraid of changes.
revolution can not be started unless the majority feel they had a massive downfall.
seems like your friend here became a realist now judging from your story.

wow sadly your friend may be right.
people hate change and are sometimes feel useless like they can't do anything about it.
I wish that was not so though. People need a leader to do something that way they are comfortable fighting for something.
but they need someone who knows what they are doing.

scary but true.

Actually I'm inclined to agree with your friend, sadly.
I would love to see what you were saying come to be, but sadly as others have said before me, people plain don't like change, and such are lazy, even if they can see that life would be better.
Like Swordman said, if only there was a leader who could inspire everyone to do these things, then perhaps a true revolution could take place, but unfortunately it doesn't look like it'll happen anytime soon.

I'm a 23 year old cynic meself. I very much like the idea of ideals, but my own personal take on things borders upon the nihilistic.

I actually have a quote that fits this very well...

"There’s one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it’s one word long -- people. No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened. It’s people that kill every revolution." - Spider Jerusalem (Warren Ellis), Transmetropolitan

Myself, I still believe in the potential for humanity to rip free of its own self-imposed bondage, be it a fatally flawed econimc system or what have you... I also believe that things will get worse before they get better. In fact, I'd say they need to get much worse before enough people get completely fed up and finally get off their fat-asses to do something about it.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst...

People are to stupid and ignorant to do anything about anything. with the state of the public school system, and the many pacifiers in place like MTV, jerry springer, cult of celebrity, interwebs, and drugs(both perscription and recreational), people aren't going to do anything they don't absolutely have to. the ecconomy would have to completely crash and die for the idiot masses to really care. let alone do anything about it.

to expect(or even hope for) people to spontainiously rise up and unite behind any cause is so impossabley idealistic that it's adorable. it makes me want to pinch your cheeks and pat you on the head in a patronizing fashion. hold on to that idealism for as long as you can.

I am a rather nihilistic person myself and my personal take on this is that there are few people remaining on this Earth with normal human capabilities. What I mean by this is that only an extremely low amount of our species' population world wide is actually capable of thinking without enforced guide lines. The single most commonly feared thing amongst humans in my opinion is not lions tigers or bears but the questioning of ones own reality. Why am I here? Why do people die? How do I know this isn't some elaborate illusion? Why does this happen? The fact that they get caught on the "why" questions results in the ignorance of the "how" questions.


Another thing I would like to stress is that whilst the general population may have a delayed knowledge and understanding they still have unity making them an incredible force despite common belief. The problem is their lack of knowledge in using it.

Sorry for continually changing this reply but I also want to add that the best quote I could think of for this is probably by Lao Tzu. 'Governing a country is just like cooking a small fish. Don't over do it.' Those that control the economy, big companies, businesses and the government, all know the limit to which they can push something. The problem is that they stop at that limit, wait, and then start the cycle all over again.

Here is something I stole off some blog on the internet which explains why behaviourally and evoultionary, change is resisted - its quite funny too.


"There’s an old joke, so old that I don’t even know for certain where it originated, that’s often used to explain why big corporations do things the way they do. It involves some monkeys, a cage, a banana and a fire hose.

You build a nice big room-sized cage, and in one end of it you put five monkeys. In the other end you put the banana. Then you stand by with the fire hose. Sooner or later one of the monkeys is going to go after the banana, and when it does you turn on the fire hose and spray the other monkeys with it. Replace the banana if needed, then repeat the process. Monkeys are pretty smart, so they’ll figure this out pretty quickly: “If anybody goes for the banana, the rest of us get the hose.” Soon they’ll attack any member of their group who tries to go to the banana.

Once this happens, you take one monkey out of the cage and bring in a new one. The new monkey will come in, try to make friends, then probably go for the banana. And the other monkeys, knowing what this means, will attack him to stop you from using the hose on them. Eventually the new monkey will get the message, and will even start joining in on the attack if somebody else goes for the banana. Once this happens, take another of the original monkeys out of the cage and bring in another new monkey.

After repeating this a few times, there will come a moment when none of the monkeys in the cage have ever been sprayed by the fire hose; in fact, they’ll never even have seen the hose. But they’ll attack any monkey who goes to get the banana. If the monkeys could speak English, and if you could ask them why they attack anyone who goes for the banana, their answer would almost certainly be: “Well, I don’t really know, but that’s how we’ve always done things around here.”

This is a startlingly good analogy for the way lots of corporations do things: once a particular process is entrenched (and especially after a couple rounds of employee turnover), there’s nobody left who remembers why the company does things this way. There’s nobody who stops to think about whether this is still a good way to do things, or whether it was even a good idea way back at the beginning. The process continues through nothing more than inertia, and anyone who suggests a change is likely to end up viciously attacked by monkeys."

Everything is possible through friendship, love and goodwill.

ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!

Here's what I meant:

Hungary (like other Warshaw Pact countries) was under Communist rule until 1989. My father was among the reform communists who were striving to reform the system... in the end it fell upon them to dismantle it and hold general elections.

(He has a funny story too. At the time they were getting "advice" from a lot of western consultants. Guess what the first question of the US consultant was? ..."Could we *fix* it?" ...that is, could they rig the elections. The first fucking idea, to come out of the west was to see if a candidate could be picked, and the US would back the idea as long as it was "their man"... and people wonder why things are so fucked up in Russia. He told them, that the idea was the opposite thing in this case... (and then probably told him, to go and fuck himself)).

This was a "revolution" of sorts, but it was bloodless, as there were no impeachments or criminal tribunes held for the "crimes" of the past system. (There was a lot less need as well, thanks to Goulash Communism). Instead the MSZMP (Magyar Szolialista Munkás Párt - Hungarian Socialist Workers Party) gave up total power. Thanks to the NEM the country already had some experience with capitalism. Everything looked good, we should be good at this!

...well we weren't. In one form or antoher, we're still living in the cape of János Kárár. He was the leader of the MSZMP for almost 40 years. He proposed Goulash Communism, which was can be summed up in the difference in his motto from that of Mátyás Rákosi the man he replaced, who was ousted in the revolution in 1956.

Rákosi was a total bastard, a power-mad dictator his motto was:
"Those not with us, are against us!" - that is, unless you were 100% behind him and the movement, you were an enemy of the people and an enemy of the state. He heavily used secret police and network of informants to terrorize the population. People were imprisoned for telling jokes!

Kádár's motto is telling in turn:
"Those not against us, are with us." - that is unless you were actively rebelling against the system, you won't be prosecuted. He heavily curtailed the powers of the secret police. He even left avenues to criticize the system, in fact his favorite humorist Géza Hofi often did so on prime time national television. It was still a dictatorship of a sort, but a far cry from what the country experienced under Rákosi.

What do I mean about still living in Kádár's cape?
-Only 50% of the expected taxes ever arrive in the coffers. My people have made tax evasion into a national sport! They still act like they're "sticking it to the man".
-However they still demand full social services: free health care, education, a state mandated pension, cheap public transportations, big welfare support for the jobless, big welfare support for those with children... everything for everyone and damn the costs!
-Meanwhile corruption is still rife. You can't win big tender, unless you grease the appropriate palms, or have pals/relatives in place. By now this has even penetrated to the work market, where you can't get a job without connections and 70% of all job adverts are bogus! They already have a man for the job (through connections and often under qualified), they just have to go through the forms as the law mandates it.

What the hell is wrong with my people? They still live like it was fucking communism and the system they were thoroughly sabotaging wasn't the one they have such high expectations for (look at that long list of social services).

...and when the MSZP (yeah, the successor party to the old Communist ones!) tried to fix it with reforms, to rationalize spending (I can never get over the irony, that my country's so screwed up that a socialist party would push to get hard line neo-liberal reforms through) the people were collectively up in arms about it, demonstrating in the streets, and eventually a public votes was held - and those gutted the reforms.

Yeah, I hate neo-liberalism too, as several countries were screwed by it (that's why Russia crashed in 1997)... however my country's a loon-house! People want everything, but are unwilling to finance it. Sometimes you have to say enough is enough.

Now for some reason, people are happy they have a conservative cabinet in place. Fidesz has promised everything: They'll fix everything, and they won't "take anything from the people". How do they propose this? With TAX CUTS! ...Tax cuts, when the budget already has holes big enough to drive an battleship through...

Well actually there's rational behind this: part of the reason why tax evasion is so high is because the taxes are really damn high. But they're high because tax evasion is so rife... so you get where I'm going.

So yeah, tax cuts wouldn't be a bad thing... but what are the chances, that people will still not pay their taxes and the budget will sink us all? In fact where will the money for the pension come in the meanwhile, until people finally start paying?

Well here's what they did:
-They *seized* (or blackmailed people into forfeiting) their private pension funds. They reversed the pension reform that was made 12 years ago. They have no idea where the pensions are going to come when people do retire (and we have a demography crisis, that made the private pension funds necessary in the first place).
-They put out a *crisis* tax on big corporations. They will keep this tax on for *years*. Capital is already fleeing the country. If the government can cannibalize your profits at a whim, then you'd be a fool to invest here.
-They also retro-actively reclaim 98% of all state employed leader's severance pay over 10 000$. Granted, some of those were outrageous... however instead going to the trouble of criminal investigation, they made a blanket move... THAT GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING, THAT THE LAW STANDS FOR! You can't retro-actively make laws. (This is a form of "getting even" with MSZP for being "forced" into opposition for 8 years... as if loosing the actual elections had nothing to do with it...).

...and they're bringing the worst excesses of communism back too:
-Recently a privately owned aluminum firm was put under government control. This was done in response to catastrophe with toxic waste. Never mind, that the corporation was following the law to the letter, was willing to pay compensation and it was government regulators who saw nothing wrong with the current waste-disposal method. Never mind, that this was one of the few world class industries in the country.
-The new media law. A state censorship body will be able to fine and outlaw anyone who they believe is acting against "public morals". We're already getting a lot of flak from the EU over this.

So yeah... that's why I think revolution doesn't solve anything.

lastmousestanding THAT WAS AWEEEESSSSOMMMEEEE

Because it did hasn't worked out well in the past it cant work out well now?

I don't think that's what he's getting at, specifically. Basically, think of the monkey example above. People are rapidly becoming indoctrinated useless sheep. Revolution is almost unthinkable, and the few examples where it's come about, it really hasn't worked because even during and after a revolution, people want paybacks on minimal or non-existent investments. Everything is done half-assed now, including the revolutions to break 'free' of the mediocrity. And so comes realism/cynicism.

Now, I may have missed his point entirely, so feel free to correct me if I've misspoken, Flaser.

Check out the film "Ikiru" one day if you ever feel like watching a really wonderful piece of Japanese cinema (akira kurosawa directed), that somewhat touches exactly on what you've written about in the op post.

Why the fuck do you keep necrobumping Random threads?

I didn't realize the necrobumping period for this forum was only 2-3 weeks old, I've been *posting* to threads that I thought were interesting, and that I had a valid response to contribute to. I'm VERY new to the forums here, but anyway I got a pm from one of the mods and now I understand how far back I should go.

Wow, you beat me to it.

And again, it was an honest mistake, so I apologize.