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To: Oblomov who wrote (212373)	7/24/2009 5:46:47 PM
From: ggersh	Respond to of 306849

"no one could have forseen this". The Phrase of the Century, at least so far.

To: Oblomov who wrote (212373)	7/24/2009 6:20:26 PM
From: LTK007	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

i applauded GST post, that was my layer of self i call idealism applauding But the layer of my self which basically rules me, my layer i call realism, can say only , yes i agree with this you wrote "Instead, the bubble will continue to grow, and will eventually pop. This will create profound civil unrest. It will catch everyone by surprise...it will be said that "no one could have forseen this". i see humanity in the OVERALL as having a strong leaning to being Dutiful Servant to Insufferable Masters. So in the end i see NO solution, none at all. Anyone that were to read in depth Stanley Milgram's "The Dilemma of Obedience" one is faced with the shock that 70-75% of all humans will torture another person to death ONLY because they see the one as giving the order as an authority, a master, so to speak, thus they ROBOTICALLY like OBEY, and most with NO sense of guilt afterwards, as they say, "i did no wrong, i was just obeying orders"(Dutiful Servant to Master. Milgram's stunning experiments were voted in the top 3 investigations into human nature in the 20th century, but TRUTH is his studies are REPRESSED as it makes people ask a terrible question about themselves. So to your writing "But this will not be done, because it would require the people to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with true self-government. It would require individual responsibility." i agree as i am faced with the ugly truth, the majority of humankind do NOT want to be free, it is like they are DNA embedded to be dutiful servant. The only REVOLUTION that can save man is to DESIRE taking on INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILY. Milgram's studies and Zimbrano's recent stunning studies, reveal data that will CRUSH idealist optimism about the direction of man. We can let our idealism chatter, but in the end The Reality will NOT go away. Max

To: Oblomov who wrote (212373)	7/24/2009 11:39:58 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

You express yourself very clearly and what you say is compelling. Where I beg to differ is that you cannot have good government without a sense of shared responsibility. Individual responsibility with shared responsibility leads directly to the social and economic decay we see in America. I am in Moscow today and there is something here that is a very visual reminder of this issue. When apartment ownership transferred to individual title the question of who owned the common areas was for the most part left unanswered. As a result most people felt no sense of responsibility for the common areas -- the entrance and hallways for example. These common areas soon became horror stories of trash and ugliness in buildings where individual apartments were otherwise meticulously kept. This is also what has happened in America. There are loud voices -- including many on this thread -- shouting "like hell am I going to be responsible for the common areas of my society, and nobody is going to make me do it against my will". What these people hate so strongly is the sense that they are being forced to do what must be done to have good government -- that is, to exercise shared responsibility for those common areas in addition to individual responsibility for our personal space. I don't disagree with you that what we are confronted with is bad government that is very insulated from the tragedy of passing our bills onto future generations rather than own up to them now. But one of the reasons behind this is our inability to feel any sense of shared responsibility for them at all -- we want to refuse to pay for maintaining the common areas and our elected officials know it so they hide from facing the issue. Instead, we seek to have an expensive if garish entry way to our building, and we levy a tax on our children to "pay for it" -- a tax that will bankrupt them. But none of this makes government "bad". It simply shows how much we need better government and a far stronger sense of shared responsibility among its citizens -- and not only individual responsibility. Simply taking the attitude "screw it" I have no responsibility beyond myself makes a person a free rider in society. Our bad government is in large part a reflection of us being bad citizens. Government won't change until we change our attitude towards shared and individual responsibility -- you can't have good government if you don't have good citizens.