bitterntwisted

This is my third incarnation here. I become more abrasive with each new incarnation. I don't know if that's me getting older, or something else. I's possible the boards are getting dumber, but that doesn't seem likely. Nonetheless, I seem to be getting into paranoid arguments with people I would normally agree with.

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I've been to see my friend H this weekend. Interesting, and depressing.

She's actually less hopeful than I am about the way things are going. She's deeply involved in business, works closely with movers and shapers in the business community. Yet she says that capitailsm is failing; and that democracy will fail with it. I am certain she is correct; mostly because we have never really bought in to democracy - mostly, in turn, because it's not actually compatible with capitalism or the class system.

Her best outcome is the Chinese model; "benevolent dictatorship", in her terms. (Don't equate the two too closely; I've known her for most of my life, and we can talk a little more loosely than the CE board would tolerate.)

I'm not sure she's wrong. I think that's probably the only sustainable outcome; and while it is not particularly compatible with unrestricted individual freedom, I am bright enough not to see that as a bad thing.

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http://suicidegirls.com/boards/Lifestyle/344506/ seems to miss the point. How can anyone break out of the mould their society puts them in, by behaving exactly in that mould? I'm fine that they do that, if that is really what they want. But the idea that that makes them free...

well, they may be, if that really is what they have freely chosen.

Question is, how am I to distinguish between them and those who haven't chosen? Why would I take one more seriously than the other?

That's not going to make me popular.