Anyway. A year ago, bunnerabb and I had a pretty heated argument about whether or not it was brave to sacrifice yourself in order to commit an atrocity. I maintained that the cowardice of the 9/11 hijackers was down to their superstitious beliefs - if you think you're going on to a better world after death, killing yourself is self-interested and cowardly. bunner reckoned that killing yourself was always cowardly, because you wouldn't have to face the consequences of your action (interestingly, I see that show Politically Incorrect was later cancelled over something similar).
The whole argument was peripheral. It's clear that we're in agreement about what matters, and it seems most of the SC community is too.
Electoral participation in this country is now plumetting to US levels, much to the glee of Downing Street and their paymasters. People are generally pretty comfortable and voting, let alone protesting, is a hassle, so why bother? Sure, our government steals from us to pay for the massacre of the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Palestinians, the East Timorese, the Indonesians, the Iranians, the Saudi Arabians, the Colombians, which is a shame and everything, but we're doing okay and it's a chore to do anything about it. And even if we did, it probably wouldn't make any difference anyway. Nations have always been ruled by bullying murderers: it's just now they have the capacity to murder on a greater scale than ever before.
History has proven that at this stage of human evolution, people are too evil and selfish to make much of a success of utopian idealogies. Capitalism takes account of human nature, and so creates societies which are, for most, better to live in than any other. Unfortunately, we don't even have capitalism anymore. It's gone in favour of plain old kleptocracy, and those in charge are going to make sure it doesn't come back any time soon.
boorite tells me we need pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. I just signed a form distributed by CND agreeing to take an hour off work and participate in sit-ins if the "war" commences. A laughable little waste of time which won't make one iota of difference but, sad to say, I can't think of any better answer.
