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Bilderberg.org
the view from the top of the pyramid of power
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John Kintaro
Joined: 23 Aug 2008
Posts: 3
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 Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 10:04 pm Post subject: Well I used to believe all this stuff... (and still do) |
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Then I read some Bertrand Russel, and he makes an extremely good argument that we have no alternative except for a nuclear holocaust. I'd rather tyranny for a while rather than no life at all.
| Quote: | | Individual liberty, of course, existed in the ages before there was government, but when it existed without government civilized life was impossible. When governments first arose they involved slavery, absolute monarchy, and usually the enforcement of superstition by a powerful priesthood. All these were very great evils, and one can understand Rousseau's nostalgia for the life of the noble savage. But this was a mere romantic idealization, and, in fact, the life of the savage was, as Hobbes said, 'nasty, brutish, and short'. The history of man reaches occasional great crises. There must have been a crisis when the apes lost their tails, and another when our ancestors took to walking upright and lost their protective covering of hair. As I remarked before, the human population of the globe, which must at one time have been very small, was greatly increased by the invention of agriculture, and was increased again in our own time by modern industrial and medical technique. But modern technique has brought us to a new crisis. In this new crisis we are faced with an alternative: either man must again become a rare species as in the days of Homo Pekiniensis, or we must learn to submit to an international government. Any such government, whether good, bad or indifferent, will make the continuation of the human species possible, and, as in the course of the past 5,000 years men have climbed gradually from the despotism of the Pharaohs to the glories of the American Constitution, so perhaps in the next 5,000 they may climb from a bad international government to a good one. But if they do not establish an international government of some kind, new progress will have to begin at a lower level, probably at that of tribal savagery, and will have to begin after a cataclysmic destruction only to be paralleled by the Biblical account of the deluge. When we survey the long development of mankind from a rare hunted animal, hiding precariously in caves from the fury of wild beasts which he was incapable of killing; subsisting doubtfully on the raw fruits of the earth which he did not know how to cultivate; reinforcing real terrors by the imaginary terrors of ghosts and evil spirits and malign spells; gradually acquiring the mastery of his environment by the invention of fire, writing, weapons, and at last science; building up a social organization which curbed private violence and gave a measure of security to daily life; using the leisure gained by his skill, not only in idle luxury, but in the production of beauty and the unveiling of the secrets of natural law; learning gradually, though imperfectly, to view an increasing number of his neighbors as allies in the task of production rather than enemies in the attempts at mutual depredation - when we consider this long and arduous journey, it becomes intolerable to think that it may all have to be made again from the beginning owing to failure to take one step for which past developments, rightly viewed, have been a preparation. Social cohesion, which among the apes is confined to the family grew in pre-historic times as far as the tribe, and in the very beginnings of history reached the level of small kingdoms in upper and lower Egypt and in Mesopotamia. From these small kingdoms grew the empires of antiquity. and then graduallv the great States of our own day, far larger than even the Roman Empire. Quite recent developments have robbed the smaller States of anv real independence, until now there remain only two that are wholly capable of independent self direction: I mean, of course, the United States and the USSR. All that is necessary to save mankind from disaster is the step from two independent States to one - not by war, which would bring disaster, but by agreement. |
Unfortunately it looks like the USSR have won on this, what "Union" are they part of? It almost appears at a closer glance they run the whole show. |
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TonyGosling
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