People and Democracy

"People do not have ideologies; ideologies have people." An ideology can give meaning to one's life, but it can also take it away.

Democracy allows you break the law when convenient and law is supposed to be the minimum of morality. Is it acceptable to kill another human being? I think the majority of people would say no. Yet we need to have police and army with people who are willing to break this rule from time to time. There are shadows of doubt and blurry lines even in such seemingly obvious questions.

It is said that historically, people lived in caste systems that are nevertheless different than the ones we nowadays know from e.g. India. Before, the castes used to be a flexible system, where children would go into apprenticeships based on their recognized skill-sets and talents, compared to the rigid "modern" caste system that distributes roles based on ancestry.

The second point is that all castes carried equal importance. An office worker who issues road plans and a road worker who builds roads are equal in getting the road project done. They need each other to get the job done. They still do, however I believe there exists a societal imbalance in perceiving working in an office to be "better off" compared to working on the road (pronounced in higher pay, reputation etc.)

I think the system in modern democracies is better, as the background of the person seemingly doesn't matter. However, it still operates on the idea that what children want might not be what they need and, counter-intuitively, it doesn't provide them with any guidelines once they are forced to make a decision about their further education or finding a job.

According to Plato, democracy ranks fourth out of five governmental regimes he described. Under this regime, anyone is free to do what they want. However this freedom must be coupled with discipline to make something useful out of it, otherwise we risk running from one thing to another as soon as something starts going poorly for us and never getting anything done.

That's not to say one shouldn't try multiple mutually exclusive pathways (i.e. careers or partnerships) during their lives, however there should be a progression (preferably in the form of gain of experience) over time and the eventual admission that we chose a "good enough" or even the "best" path for ourselves.

Contrary to that, if freedom is taken as an excuse to do nothing, then the life of an individual who assumes such a stance is bound to become exactly that - nothing. A "nothing" likely ridden by anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.

Given that we live in a quite extraordinary time where a lot of things temporarily stopped still in our lives, we were given the opportunity to focus on ourselves. Now is the time to consider what do we stand for, to check whether we are going where we want to go and to make ourselves a bit more truthful (and less despicable!) during the process.

It's time to get up and to get after it and to get it done. You already know what "it" is.

 The Age of the Feminine in Post-Modern Societies

Perhaps you are aware of the following quote: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.” In this article, I'm going to put it in context with interpersonal relationships between men and women in the contemporary society.

The past century provided an indisputable change in the societal role of women, be it the sexual revolution, the equalization of rights or their inclusion into the workforce in order for them to make money.

To give an example from the workplace, men have the majority in the military/police or construction (jobs with more physical labor as well as a greater chance to get hurt or even killed), while women have the majority in education or nursing (jobs with children or care-taking element involved).

I have a reason to believe that as the society became more inclusive over time, the need for truly masculine, dominant or even tyrannical men subsidized, simply because every way of life and behavior is considered a correct one, as long as it doesn't interfere with others in a violent way.

The downside of that is that there are no sensible guidelines as to which route to take and how to behave. Everything got mixed in a mush, where everything seems to be equally relevant or important. By nature, we are inclined to take the path of least resistance (or the least threatening path) and it's easier to sit tight or to keep doing something that is not working for us than to make a real change. Only a small amount of people are willing to put in the extra mile that would make their life genuinely better.

Having read the "Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I know the return to tyrannical societies is not the answer, as regimes under Adolf Hitler, Iosif Stalin or Mao Zedong killed tens of millions of people.

I believe we live in a feminine age today. That's not to say that this era puts women in a better position than men. Everything has its pros and cons for each sex. I'll list some of the implications of that:


1) Less males graduating from universities in comparison to females.

 

Above is the Czech census from 2011, showing university education based on sex and age. On the left side are men and on the right side are women. Green are people with bachelor's degree, blue with master's and orange with doctoral. Note the difference for ages 20-24 and 25-29.

I'm convinced that one of the reasons for this includes greater craving for security by women in both senses of the word - university graduates have the potential to get better paying jobs and have no need to be working in physically demanding/dangerous professions.


2) Today, with a lot of the options in life labeled being "equally correct", there is seemingly lesser and lesser need for discipline, true immersion and purpose. This view is however flawed. People who work harder, are able to focus on what they do and love what they do will always outperform those who do not share these characteristics. I believe this "laser focus" or greater tendency for uni-dimensionality in men is their lifeblood and that it's disheartening to see it letting it go to waste, because they haven't learned how to use it properly.

I got to experience that first hand. In the past, I mostly tried to do just the minimum required of me, so that everybody would've left me alone, so I could've spent the maximum of my time in a questionable manner. It's an arbitrary and chaotic lifestyle, yet at the same time oddly authoritarian and orderly.


3) These times we also have a different understanding about who constitutes the "base" family and who does not. They are smaller and more fractured than before. This also puts a greater strain on all members of the family, as the number of people they interact with to get their needs met is smaller.

Previously, immediate families consisted not only of parents and children, but also grandparents, uncles, aunts and other relatives. It used to be more organic and self-sustainable, in case of support during hard times or death. 

We however now have the option to become more individualistic and picky about who we interact with. If a nuclear family (parents + kids) gets fractured by divorce, it is more likely the children are going to live with the mother rather than with the father.


4) The biological inequality between sexes and socio-cultural equality between sexes has always been a topic for dispute. Back in the hunting/gathering phase of humanity, the differences between sexes were quite clearly cut (i.e. men were on the hunt and women took care of the fireplace or children), whereas nowadays the lines are often blurry and the sexes are more interchangeable in most positions than ever before.


All these factors that are in effect today created an extreme strain on our romantic relationships. We want our significant other to be both our greatest friend who we can trust and respect on an intellectual level, and at the same time someone who we can have children with, battle and connect with on an emotional/biological level. Finally, we (both sexes) need each other; we always had and always will, despite and because of our variable differences.