This world is about me

 

This world is about me! Without me the world doesn’t matter (for me). Therefore, the only practical use of this world is to make me happy! Unfortunately, based on recent observations that is not entirely true. Something is wrong. I don’t know how to fix it and that is driving me crazy.
On the other hand, that is not entirely true. There are so many things to be grateful for…
I am alive. I am healthy. I have a loving and happy family. We are striving towards our goals and we are all helping each other.
Also I appreciate that I have this blog, I have your attention, I have a job and … the internet.
Therefore, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself? *
But I don’t agree with the above even though I understand it. We don’t need to be rendered helpless by fear because that will play in the hands of our enemies and lead to our (and our loved ones and those close to us) destruction. On the other hand we have to fear the unknown and strive to understand it because arrogance is the path to ignorance and ignorance is the path to hell!
There are two ways to acquire knowledge – through experience – you learn better but it may take some time could be expensive and even painful if not outright dangerous, and through the shared experience of others. The main goal of knowledge being – how to make the environment more cooperative to the pursuit of our desires. Or in other words how to increase our personal power.
One obvious way is through better knowledge – the other through the cooperation of others. That is why we, the people form associations of which the government is the most powerful one. Unfortunately, that power comes with it being most prone to be corrupted and turned against us – the people. And that is not because power corrupts (it actually does) but because we, the people are not careful enough to use it correctly and establish the necessary checks and balances to keep it from slipping into dictatorship. The history of the USA is proof that the nation with the best (not perfect but still the best) system of checks and balances is the most developed (again not perfect – but still number one for the foreseeable future).
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish. **
One reason the US political system has survived regardless of it’s obvious deficiencies is because the strong middle class managed to keep the system going without having to resort to drastic measures like the Russian revolution of 1917 that deteriorated from the most democratic system of government – that of the Soviets (or councils of the people) to a corrupt system where elite intrigue and backstabbing replaced stakeholder involvement in decision making. Still it pulled Russia out of poverty and brought us space travel. It failed because it didn’t protect private property (actually openly declaring as its primary goal the abolition of private property). That may have sounded good in party documents – almost biblical if it wasn’t accompanied by the increasing inequality incompatible with the stated goals of communal bliss. Communism failed because the lack of accountability led to uncontrollable corruption. The mere success in total control of the masses led to the inevitable loss of that control, because without the people there is no political power only temporary coercion that constantly undermines the society it is supposed to serve by creating resistance (and even worse indifference) to its attempts to achieve anything at all.
Because it is in the interest of us human being to maintain and increase our/my personal ability and potential to achieve a better quality of life and with the government being among the most powerful organisations/associations created by people it is self-evident that the main or perhaps only goal of any proper government is to protect private property. On the other hand private property is impossible without a government to protect it. Because, even if you are the strongest in your neighborhood it will only take the collusion of two or three people to deprive you of it.
That ultimate power of government in regards to private property invites the temptation to use it as a tool to steal and re-appropriate that property to those who hold or pull the strings of political power.
That struggle between those who need government to protect their property and those who want to use government to steal is the essence of politics.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_inauguration_of_Franklin_D._Roosevelt
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address