I'm sorry Shi Tao ... I know you didn't ask for the moon but you might as well have

I originally published this (this morning on Multiply) with the title I'm sorry Shi Tao ... I know you didn't ask for the moon but you might as well have

My friend, jtnewsom wrote today at 4:09 AM 10.11.07

"I have always thought it was a mistake to get into bed with the Reds. In fact I dedicated over half my life in protecting our freedoms from this very oppressive government. I have to look back at the US leaders who chose to kick our friends to the curb to take up relations with such governments. I ask who is really at fault?"
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True, Jon. It's been demonstrated, communism doesn't work. If we were insects, maybe, but we're mammals and a novel category of mammal. We have unusual forces at work in our brains that give us the capability to go beyond the struggle for survival and mere existence, for each of us to live a well-spent life. And we only have one life.

Communism is not a system of self regulation and group organisation that works in line with the whole of our human nature. It seeks to suppress those parts of our human nature that give us our maturity of intellect by stunting imagination, enquiry and well-rounded self-expression. It is a paternalistic style of government that maintains order via repression and dictatorship by the few, of the many. It is the complete antithesis of democracy - which is not perfect - but because of it the many are given, as a right, some powers to curb the excesses of the few, those who are given the powers to govern. Necessary when human nature is not perfect.

We're not inborn with a morality to take care of others, that's something we have to be taught like telling the time is something that we have to be taught. Natural selection took us to the level of being a social kind so cooperativeness will be embedded in maybe a low grade form - perhaps reciprosity, the you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back kind of thinking. In which thinking, of course, are the seeds of corruption when, for example, someone with a small power base treats with another someone with a big power base, which results in a gentle, trusting soul who only wants a little bit of freedom to be himself - being thrown into prison for 10 years! Shi Tao didn't ask for the moon!

I doubt, personally, (from learning about my kind) that there is an investment in our actual human natures of self-sacrifice for the good of others, beyond that which extends as the mothering role which we see in society, the nurturing angle. This could also, however, be an acquired characteristic and, if it is, the natural inclination of all people would then be for self-service. If that's the case, we have to accept that human nature is incomplete and, for completion, we need an accompanyment of laws and social rules ("add ons") that are suitable to gear the human brain to think with "all its might".

Because of our evolved nature, so because of what we are capable of - in my opinion, capitalism also doesn't work if a dog-eat-dog ethic is the accepted "norm" in a society. It's not only people in authority who we rely on to behave ethically for capitalism to work - so serving the physical and emotional needs of not a majority but all people. A society must be able to trust that a large percentage of its business people who are elevated into a position of privilege when compared with their employees, will have policies in place to encourage fair dealings with staff with customers with suppliers, and so on.

The society being structured with an inbuilt integrity, as it were, from the "top down".

Having integrity flowing only from the "bottom up" or - worse - "middle up" would surely - always! - doom a society to ultimate failure