h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As you get less energetic and strong, beating the bushes for things that are new and different gets more tiring. Also, change can become more disorienting. When you get up in the morning, you want to know that everything is where it was the night before.

I find that I am a lot more open-minded and receptive to life-styles and perspectives. And yet much more demanding of fairness and decency in many ways - particularly about governing managements of people and countries. This has also caused me to have lost respect for some explosions of protest and anger that demand that everyone else accept THEIR ways and opinions.

I also learned several decades ago that being angry serves no purpose except to drain me, and alienate people. I prefer to dig deep, learn the truths and work in any reasonable way to rectify injustices. 1,000 raving and screaming people has very little effect, where-as a dozen well studied and knowledgeable folks can make a world of difference in city halls and court houses.

But can those reasonable people be heard over the shouting of the angry ones?

Sometimes - when the angry folks are in the streets and the deliberate and concisive ones are in front of those who can actually effect change.

Just my limited experience, but I have accomplished a lot more in communities by working the levels of governance than barking and raving in the pubs about inequities ...

paulh I would be delighted if things were not in the same place tomorrow morning. Some things need to change and quite a lot of the status quo could usefully be chucked

Well, up to a point, but please let my coffee pot be where I expect it to be.

Otto:
"I think it's worth distinguishing between values and opinions"

That´s a good point. However some facts can be opinions for some and values for others. For example: abortion or which are the elements of a family to be named so.



I hadn´t thought of conservative and Conservative until some of you have mentioned here.
it comes to my mind that there are conservative people who do or don´t vote the Conservatives. They are rigid, afraid of change. They need a kind of order around them, even if that order is not good for them or the rest. They are sort of pesimists.
They won´t do many things just in case. As the popular saying goes: let´s keep the bad that we know that the better we don´t know.

I´ve always understood Churchill words, or whoever said that quotation, as being conservative in politics.

He was wrong. It´s not age what make you vote for those who in UK or other places, are looting the country at the same time they are making people suffer the consequences of their ideological austerity measures.


Nick,
you are right, those who bark in the streets are very noisy, however , every right ordinary people have or used to have, comes from grassroot movements, not from that dozen of "aristocrats" deliberating and deciding seriously for the rest of us.

Aristocrats often have the best of intentions, though we all know what path they're used as paving for.

Grassroots action takes a lot of skill to initiate. Too many poor people suffer from self-hatred and poor judgment. Some abuse alcohol, some take to conspiracy theories, some become antisocial. It takes a real gift to connect with what's left of their reasoning minds and dreams.

RE POST 27: I have heard the saying as, "Better the Devil we know than the one we don't" .

>I've found that my values haven't changed much, but some of my opinions have changed quite a bit over time, which is a good thing.<

This got me thinking. When it comes to someone like Churchill we tend to see him as a 'good guy' and so then when you don't necessarily agree with some things then one can deflect some of that by saying 'Oh, he was a generally good guy but he did this or that that I don't agree with'

Whereas with Hitler, given that unless you're a real piece of work you're unlikely to see his 'values' as anything but evil we're kind of in the opposite situation. 'Well not *everything* he did was bad - see this small thing *here* - that was OK - but it's massively overshadowed by *ALL OF THAT!*'


Churchill was on the winning team - there was an argument that firebombing of German cities was a war crime at Nuremberg in 1946 - legally it was decided it wasn't - but then those trials were run by the victors. Churchill was an instigator and leader of the gradual build up of Britain's Bomber Command in WWII.

And not just the build up, the actual strategic use of them to carpet bomb Hamburg, Dresden etc.

When I think of Dresden, I imagine Vonnegut's "Slaughterouse five." I also imaging some priceless lost scores by Bach's sons. "Monuments men" was about rescuing art from he ravages of war, but literary and musical treasures in libraries were also important.

Easy to be against such things with 20-20 hindsight and having not stood in the shoes of those directly in line of the existential threat of Hitler's war machine in 1940 though.

i know.

I listened to a really excellent breakdown and analysis of Strategic bombing, where it came from, how it started etc and its eventual climax of firebombing and A-bombing of Japan recently.

A podcast called 'Logical Insanity' by a guy I love listening to called Dan Carlin - it costs a small amount ($1.99). I'd thoroughly recommend it - it really gets into the nitty gritty of how we ended up down that path and is really interesting - if very very gory at times - not salaciously - but pointing out what bombing really entails on civilian populations.

Let's try never ending up there again.

Oxymorons can be wonderful.

Ending up down that path. It's priceless.

Prose is not my strong point - I'm gratified someone enjoys it occasionally