Imagine this world

Imagine a world where things have become so intense that it is nearly impossible to know all of the rules or how to fit in because they are so complicated, and so perfect, yet no one is willing to help you to learn them because they think that is your responsibility to learn them yourself.

Now imagine there being so much peer pressure to conform that trying something new in order to learn is forbidden, as well as being unique, and results in punishment, either by the government or your peers.

Now imagine those in charge are portraying themselves as really good people - yet they humiliate others who are weak every day in front of a world-wide audience, in order to get a laugh, or in order to punish them for being weak.

Now imagine that kind of totalitarian world combined with the technology to spy on what everyone says or does and also combined with the technology to rain death down from the sky with drones.

Imagine a world where a decade earlier, someone said "You don't have to worry about The Patriot Act if you are doing nothing wrong." And now imagine a world where doing something wrong has taken on a whole new meaning.

In fact, think of a world where it is not even possible to decipher what is considered right or wrong by the elite because it is so complicated, and it even fluctuates on a yearly or seasonal basis.

I mentioned imagine on purpose because as far as I can tell its only an imagination exercise.

reply to post by darkbake


Imagine

Member Edit:

I'm sorry to inform you, but you have exceeded the number of times you can abuse a word.

Thread Closed.

reply to post by darkbake


I wouldn't want to live in a world like that.

It would probably cause children to go insane and start killing each other for no apparent reason.

Millions of people would probably be homeless and hungry.

Governments would dictate what was good for the people(healthcare, foods, whether or not people should own guns, even attitudes).

No I certainly would not want to live in a world like that.

But I'm stuck here anyway!

colddeadhands
reply to post by darkbake

 

Governments would dictate what was good for the people(healthcare, foods, whether or not people should own guns, even attitudes).

See, that's the core issue, that is not a Democracy at all. In a Democracy, people get to decide what they want and then get together and make a society where it works.

In our current society (sorry, the imagined society, I have to stick to that), people wanting something is considered a crime. Even on the scientific side, we have people trying to argue that there is no free will to want anything, and at the same time, that wanting something is an anomaly.

The issue is, of course, centered here - wanting something is illogical. That's the whole point. That is what makes it free will. Anyway -

On the medical side, people's natural traits are being medicated down to some arbitrary "norm." What is happening is the denial of the self, disguised as a society that is better for everyone.

I think it's a Grand Illusion, and a good one, and it might even be exciting to join - until people start getting hurt, then it could turn terrifying. Then it's going to turn into one of those things where people start thinking "how can I get farther up the ladder to avoid being put in prison or killed off" and then, of course, there is competition - and less and less people make it until only a few survive as Kings of the Hill!

And that was a fun game, right?

reply to post by darkbake


Sometime in the not so distant future we will see TPTB no longer hiding behind rigged elections and hidden bills. They will stand up and announce to the world their intentions. Of course by then it will be too late. Obey or perish will be the new slogan.

Not to make light of your thread, but there was a card game we used to play in college that your thread reminded me of.

Maybe you've heard of it - The game was called Mao, and it was almost exactly like you describe this.

I'll give you a basic rundown without telling you the rules.

You play Mao with as many standard card decks shuffled together as the dealer wants. There is a basic ruleset that holds the same from game to game, but no one is supposed to tell anyone what they are.

As the game begins, the dealer, before doing anything else, makes this speech, "Mao is a game of life, and like life, we start out without knowing the rules but still must pay the penalty for not knowing."

Then the game begins. The whole point of the game is to try to both figure out what the rules are and win only by watching what everyone else does. The thing is that you may not know how many other people at the table have a clue how to play, either. From hand to hand, people can jump in or sit out, and as people win, they get to make up one single rule that is all their own to enforce on everyone else at the table, but if that player forgets or gets their rule and another player figures it out or calls them on it ... then they get penalized for it! At that point, not even the dealer knows all the rules anymore.

After a while, it's chaos, and as you can imagine, not just anyone can take it. We had one girl not even make through the first hand. My parents refuse to even consider playing.

But the sorts of frustration this game can provoke in people are on small scale (and this is a game we're talking about) what you describe that is going on your imagined reality.

reply to post by darkbake


When people believe they are "good", they need sometime to be righteous against - someone to fight against.
Anyone who is weaker or ignorant is seen without value and punished instead of being taught.

reply to post by arpgme


Oh, that's not true. When people have false pride, the conditions you talk about take over. It's pride in your righteousness or moral superiority that drives you to find someone to feel better than, and it's not a unique condition to any one religion. I have, in fact, seen atheists and agnostics fall prey to this as well.

reply to post by ketsuko

ketsuko
reply to post by arpgme

 

Oh, that's not true. When people have false pride, the conditions you talk about take over. It's pride in your righteousness or moral superiority that drives you to find someone to feel better than

I just said that.

ketsuko
and it's not a unique condition to any one religion. I have, in fact, seen atheists and agnostics fall prey to this as well.

I did not claim that it was a unique condition to any one religion. That was an assumption that you made.

reply to post by darkbake


Hello,

Unfortunately I don't have to try very hard to imagine what it would be like to live in the world you have described, i've seen too much of it over the last couple of years, as i'm guessing you have too?...

We the people are the only ones who can stop it but most people are completely oblivious to it, or worse still, they say thats 'just the way it is so you best get used to it'. It makes me really sad to see that they don't have a clue about how it will eventually effect them,

Never mind

reply to post by arpgme


Usually when people talk like this, they are coming from the position of superiority and throwing someone or "someones" else under the bus so to speak.

Basically, we've forgotten to think about others as much as ourselves. We live in a world that encourages us to think first and only about ourselves and what we want. It encourages us to mire ourselves in hedonism and think that's "freedom" and if anyone tells you maybe you shouldn't be doing that, they're "oppressing" you instead of the real powers who are steadily making all the most important decisions about how your life is going to be lived for you every day.

They steadily distracting us and dividing us in to smaller and smaller and more fractious groups and creating a mass of subhuman individuals who will have to be ruled and controlled by an iron fist but without the intellectual and moral capacity to think of rebelling.

That's what we see.