Of Diamonds and Turds

So you have this certain political system in a country, with a specific election process. It can be any country, really. Let's call it X. Now, the citizens of country X persistently finds that they end up with leadership candidates to choose from which are invariably rich, power hungry, selfish, deceitful and immoral.

"Ach", complains the citizenry, "our Great Country are cursed by these lying, deceitful crooks running it, why can't we get someone decent for a change". And they despair.

Now, lets contrast this with an certain engineer. It can by any kind of engineer, really. Let's call him engineer Y. Interestingly, this engineer has for some time been trying to construct a machine that through application of pressure and chemistry produces high quality diamonds. Alas, the engineer finds that it persistantly, and disappointingly, produces a brown, soft mush, not much different from - say a turd.

Well, what does engineer Y then do? Does he rage and wail at the turd-like creation of his flawed machine? "Begone, foul wretch! I demand you be a diamond!" Perhaps. Or maybe, after an initial brief despair, if he is a smart engineer, he makes changes to the machine that produced the turd until it works better. And he tweaks, and tweaks until at last he get something he is satisfied with.

See, if you got any kind of system, like say the aforementioned politcal system of country X, that seems to produce nothing but ever more vile - for lack of a better word - turds, it is not the turds themselves who should be blamed and heckled, but the ones who keeps operating such a flawed system and demanding that it produces diamonds. How can it?

It's like controlled breeding, really. If you have a breeding programme that demands it's subjects to be ever more deceitful, ruthless and immoral to get selected, you'll end up eventually producing som pretty nasty bastards. And when they are let loose on the world, it will ultimately be the fault of the ones that have tolerated such a system to be operated in the first place.

You wouldn't think the system is broken looking at some of the passionate support of X and X, and the attacks from opposition to X and X.

The system people get, is probably the system people deserve.

a reply to: Cobaltic1978

I think a critical citizen should take it upon himself to evaluate both the system that society has designed to produce our leaders as well as the results said system produces. If we really want better politicians then we need to make sure that the system, and the society they spring from, foster the kind of values we would like to see.

Maybe there are ways to float the diamonds to the top, if we could only find them.

The most horrifying possibility is, of course, that we will never get any shiny diamonds, because we are a species of turds, and "glistening" is the best we can manage.

But I'm not quite ready to give up yet.

a reply to: beetee

I never said anything about giving up, but there seems to be a heck of a lot of apathy when it comes to politics.

I believe people are waking up, but it is going to take a hell of a lot more people to make a difference. We shouldn't be surprised that it is taking longer than some people would like, as it is a big moment when you realise everything you have been taught and programmed to believe, is nothing more than a sham.

a reply to: Cobaltic1978

No, I ment that I sometimes feels like giving up, not you.

And the apathy you mention is a real menace to every political system. Or to systems of any ilk. If a system does not work very well but everybody just stand around complaining about it, but doing nothing, or even worse can't be bothered to even care, sooner or later you have a meltdown.

Like Chernobyl. Only worse.

"This reactor seems not to be functioning very well.. Ah, who cares, let's look at what the Kardashians are doing.. The french stole her jewels, you say.. It's a travesty! I demand action! Oh, look, a new Iphone came out..."