Re: Society
The part I highlighted in bold is right on. You really hit the nail with that sentence. Ideally, this is what it should be. Even the word ‘government’ has its roots in Latin meaning “to control”. Democracy places power in the peoples’ hands but that doesn’t exist today. I’ve been living in the U.S. my whole life and I still feel like I serve the government and that that’s the mindset I’m supposed to have in order for me to be grateful for being able to live here.
People have the potential to have a lot of power but it rarely ever happens. The Arab spring is something that happened many decades too late. People allowed themselves to endure extreme conditions before finally uniting. Under normal conditions, that shouldn’t have taken any more than a couple weeks under a recognized leader. Regardless, the spring was temporary, not permanent. People need a permanent leader and temporary revolts don’t necessarily imply that people are able to rule over themselves, just shows they’re too pissed off and want to cause a ruckus to bring in a leader that they can actually look up to.
I believe we would all have to be perfect to not have leaders and be able to get by. All throughout our entire history, we have had leaders. Whether they were elected or born into power, society as a whole has always needed the image of a leader, of a single face. Even animals have leaders because it empowers them. It creates a sense of unity and protection, not just because they have to, but because they choose to by instinct. So instinctively, we humans are no different. This is why we elect town mayors, state/province governors, prime ministers, presidents, etc. - we need to place as many leaders as we can to micromanage our communities.
Unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal or perfect world, so my intention behind discussing this is to come to a consensus in the world we do live in today.