The West didn't get where it is today being nice.

Lately as I have watched the dreary spectacle of our global political present unfold day to day it is clear to me that whoever has the power and pullls the strings, big business, investors and bankers, do not want anything to be nice. Nice does not suit profiteering and never did suit it. There is no way our world is going to be governed to be a safe and gentle place for any of us. It is actively discouraged that it should be so by those who prod us with their cattle prodders. There is nothing safe and gentle about this life or this universe, not in nature and neither in the human heart once it is tested to any degree beyond humility.

That is the way the bosses run this show. Even Mr Nice Obama as President was lighting up the White House with pretty rainbow lights while hunting down and extrajudicially slaying Gaddafi and Bin Laden (neither ever had a trial so they are barbaric acts and extrajudicial), conducting a huge drone campaign and letting Christians be chased out of the Middle East and murdered in their hundreds of thousands.

Right now our powerful financiers in the West are forsaking freedom, democracy and humanitarianism for profiteering in China and Russia. Russia's nerve agent executed citizens have no true friends. It's "Business" as usual, folks, just a few muted coughing noises of disaproval from the usual excusers, yeah you U.N!

I would still be living in a hut if not for the vicious exploits of the bosses and their ancestors here in the UK and that's if I was lucky. It is a fact. It is like I have to be the beneficiary of what the bosses do. Even Jesus of Judea had to be a beneficiary of what the Romans brought with them. He was conscious of it to when He said "Render to Caesar what is his".

With a perception like mine this world is an ever deepening nightmare when I appreciate the reality of our human state and condition. It was never better, only worse. It used to be even more cruel.

My problem is that I am a gentle and caring person. I am very strong and am holding my sanity together just about all through this, but I feel totally paralysed. I don't have a greedy bone in my body and I can't perform selfishly. It is a hopeless ongoing situation of stumbling from day to day. I am guessing there are many people out there who are gentle and feeling the blues of this current, past and ongoing insanity.

One thing we can be sure of is that it will end in tears. It always does! The only person I ever could totally appreciate is Christ. I know there is a real personality behind all that wisdom. It is the brightest of attitudes, Beautitudes in fact, that I have witnessed in all my experience of this empty old rag of human history and experience. Was it all just a Greek/ Latin take on a Jewish Revolutionary? Whatever it is and was still shines as the potential beauty and gentility of evolved humanity.

The Devil sure is ruler, metaphorically at least and care is crucified and cremated with every deal done, but just as ludicrously as turning the other cheek will help you to survive kind attitudes and care do not get you making a profit out of real estate. Greed begets greed and dog eats dog.

Would I change a thing about who I am and what I hold dear? Can I be bought? Still the answer is NO!!! I am still here, still caring and still keeping kind. Turn them screws a little more, it will do no good. Even my family have forsaken me and become greedy and uncaring. I had to watch as they slowly turned, year by year, as they grew older and more corrupted by this serpent's lair of a world.

"Bury the rag deep in your face
Now's the time for your tears" (Bob Dylan "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll")

Yes, there are sides to our perception, a floor and a ceiling, like a cell. This human consciousness at the edge of the perimeter where there are no stars is only so big and wide and really quite small with nothing outside. Is there your Kingdom, Jesus?

"For thine is, life is, for thine is the" (TS Eliot "The Hollow Men")

Let me out! Let me out! Let me...

you got that right......

we got here however....by devine providence.......big time record setting thing this Western bunch.....we made the top rock music.... we made the 787.... made the top drawer Gold and oil discoveries....timber....not a prob......

a reply to: GBP/JPY

Electricity,
Digital communication,
Diesel combustion engines...


We got to be the best by having the best minds working to make us the best.

Not sure where we lost it though.

a reply to: Kakamega

True, that - the title of this thread: " The West didn't get where it is today being nice. "

It sure didn't get here being nice. IT got here by being a meritocracy.

Unfortunately, the meritocracy, which is sometimes very not so nice, is being denigrated in modern times.

We could achieve more again by going back to prior values of meritocracy, IMHO … and we should accept that meritocracy isn't about being nice 100% of the time.

EDIT:

I sometimes forget that there is a whole new generation coming up that hasn't been accustomed to learning about meritocracy, in many instances.

Here is a definition for anyone wondering wtf I am talking about:

Meritocracy
Political system in which capital is assigned on the basis of expertise




Meritocracy is a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement, rather than wealth or social class. Advancement in such a system is based on performance, as measured through examination or demonstrated achievement. Although the concept of meritocracy has existed for centuries, the term itself was coined in 1958 by the sociologist Michael Dunlop Young in his satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy.
Wikipedia

originally posted by: Kakamega
There is nothing safe and gentle about this life or this universe,

Right. Just like all entities in existence eat fleas from each other's hair, and then huddle to build mounds to live in.

You can't generalize a narrow-minded view to encompass the whole Universe. Just because one planet is messed up, doesn't mean normal worlds are not safe or that there's 'nothing gentle' about them.

That's quite a megalo-manic, nihilistic and all-encompassing, sweeping statement. You couldn't leave this kind of madness to this planet, you had to reach to places you haven't even been to and confidently state you know the state of those places..?

Can't even shake my head hard enough at a frog that boldly claims that all living beings eat flies, croak and jump around in a swamp.

Do you realize how VAST the Universe is? Do you not know anything about the astral world? Have you not researched the channeled messages from higher beings from other planets that tell about NORMAL, good worlds?

This world is incredibly twisted, but it's not great wisdom to extrapolate that to encompass even everything in THIS world, let alone the whole Universe!

Sorry if I sound harsh, I am just a bit shocked at the ego of an ant that claims things about human infrastructures without ever experiencing them or having the capability of even thinking beyond purely instinctual insectlike level.

To counter your claims, I would like to present a claim of my own:

There are plenty of safe and gentle things EVEN in this crazy world, let alone the whole Universe! (I still can't believe you thought it wise to make such a sweeping statement..)

a reply to: Kakamega

edit is a old fickin thread.

Deeply religious people of many faiths would have said this, not only about the West, but about the whole world:

The devil took him to a high place and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in an instant. The devil said to him, “I will give you all the power and glory of these kingdoms. All of it has fallen to me, and I give it to anyone I please.

In the Christian tradition, the liberal view goes back as far as Augustine in the 4th century, who taught that evil is simply the absence of good.

Others, some of them doctors of the church, say that evil is more than the mere absence; that evil is a palpable presence, which an infernal personality that animates and organizes it.