No leaders left.
Arriving with my bike, I subtly tilted my head when seeing the police car deliberately blocking the bike rack in front of the restaurant where I live. Deliberately, because there were other spots to park. There was nobody inside, I guess they had gone for lunch. Carrying my bike into the house, I thought about how well their behavior fits into everybody’s behavior.
They’re not the only ones. Almost all the time we have cars blocking the rack, some even moving aside the pole we put there with a big “No Parking” letter on it. Even when asked kindly to get their ugly piece of planet polluting metal out of the way to make space for one of the healthiest mediums of personal transportations, they get angry.
Everyone does it.
Yeah, that bridge thing is obvious, but I’m getting to a different point – the reciprocity between government and society. Shouldn’t cops be better? Shouldn’t politicians be better? Shouldn’t they lead by example? The whole idea of appointing someone into a position of power is that the person is more capable of doing that job than oneself. So, yes, they are judged by a higher standard.
Every people have the government they deserve.
I don’t recall who said that, but it resonates a lot with me, especially here. People always complain about how corrupt the government here is, yet some schools have a day where the kids can pay very small fee to wear casual clothes instead of the uniform, yet everyone seeks to get an advantage over the rest by bribing, and everyone who can plays their contacts constantly in an ever-spinning wheel of powerplay. The corruption is everywhere, I’d even call it deeply rooted in society. But everyone is surprised when politicians and policemen are corrupt?
*Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve.”
Yes, they should be better. But what if they actually are? Wouldn’t that be even more scary? When the society is so deeply rotten that the best of them are still morally corrupted? The values of society have been diluted over a long time now, most people don’t even know what they are anymore, neither their own nor the society’s. Egoism has taken it’s place, and that’s how many people act. At the same time, institutional education has seen a steep decline in funding and hence quality, leading to a self-propelling downward spiral.
It’s the best we can offer.
And that is sad. And yes, there might be better suited people, good people, still among us, but those who are best fitted to wield power are precisely those who don’t want it. The time of those who do seek power being at least somewhat noble seems to be over now.
We ran out of examples.
The higher standards are now so low that everyone can get away with everything through the right channels, and that makes the power the government wields even more random. While taking these pictures, I was myself doubting if I should upload it into the community chat and call the cops out, knowing that there could be repercussions that could cause me trouble. In the end, I did, but I had to play it, I had to play the powers against each other.
Municipality vs. National Police
The mayor wants to promote cycling. There's closed main roads every Saturday (which is not much, you can cycle from one side of the town to the other in 5min tops), and he likes to promote events that include bicycles. So, I posted that it's a shame that the mayor is trying to get Cotacachi bike friendly, and here's the national police being a bad example. And I only did a story, not a post.
Expose without exposure.
It doesn't feel good to censor myself. It's awkward to feel that I have to. I hope that I'm just being overly cautious, but recently it has turned into feeling like common sense to do that. I'm not sure if that danger is real or not, but I rather stay on the safe side on those things, and work on changing my community by leading through being the good example.
What are your thoughts about this topic? Please feel free to engage in any original way, including dropping links to your posts on similar topics. I'm happy to read (and curate) any quality content that is not created by LLM/AI, as well as read your own experience and point of view, I love to learn!
Chain the bike to the car, and then there's a better security on it.
That would be fun. I'd might be put into jail, though. That wouldn't be fun.
Once the government has more power than the people can overcome it's no longer a government. It's a dictatorship. Even so called "democracies" elect leaders but the government has all the power. Typically the voters tend to be uneducated and believe anything they see on TV and don't dig deeper. No analytical thinking... The result, a government that is corrupt and fully of bullies.
The police parking where they shouldn't it a classic example. Happens all the time here in the US too because they feel they can do what they want to.
!BBH
!PIZZA
It's the same here, they don't care. You can see traffic cops pulling over motorbikes for having too many on the bike or no helmet on, and then turn around and see the same traffic cops taking 2 other cops without helmets on their own motorbikes. The incoherence is astonishing for me.
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@thebighigg(7/15) tipped @beelzael
Come get MOONed!
This is something I have often questioned (and written about a fair bit in the past) and while many think power corrupts, I reckon that many of the people who get into power were already corrupted. Getting the power upped the scale of the corruption, but they came from the general population too - they are products of society.
What if one day there was an AI that was truly incorruptible, in the sense that it would only suggest options that benefitted the greatest number of people as equitably as possible. Would be listen and act on it? If they did, what would change?
Okay, let's say it's even possible to generate a truly incorruptible AI, and that the whole world has the same values and hence defines "benefit" in the same way.
Those who are not within the greatest number will rebel, for starters. And second, depending on the moral slump we're in then, even a great role model won't make a difference. I think there is a point of no return in society, where the aspiration is so far against the establishment that role models are taken from within the society, and those won't be good ones.
And they are the ones in power and control positions now.
I have raised many questions over the last few years about role models. Look at the super heroes - they used to be heroes, doing what it took to do the right thing. Now, they are broken and tortured souls, that have the same problems as the people who are watching them. They have been turned into reflections of us, rather than guiding lights to aspire to.
I remember the super hero post, it was a great one. The thing to critique is that those super heroes, though their souls and minds are made human, still try to find the way to what is best for everyone, to help others, to do what's right. They have a moral compass again and again, though going through the same things that we do.
Politicians don't have to be super heroes, and they can't be, though they're often treated that way by their fans. They have a great chance to lead their community to the better because they are (or could be) relatable. They could choose to make themselves that again by being more honest and less show, but nobody wants that, either. People expect them to lie, to be super human, so they can keep following the cult of the perfect leader.
One thing that could help a lot would be starting to say "I screwed up, I apologize, I'll do my best to make it right" - hard to hear that within regular days, but even worse from a politician. We had one of those in Germany, Robert Habeck, he genuinely gave his best, he admitted to mistakes, and always went forward. Unfortunately, he now stepped away from the parliament as well, which is a shame. The world needs more politicians like that.
Politicians should be bureaucrats, not celebrities. They are meant to be public servants, not public rulers.
They can't do it now. They get ousted immediately. The problem with cancelling all the people who make mistakes, is the quality of what is left in the barrel keeps decreasing.
Exactly, and that falls into what you always write and I agree with - we keep excluding the negative experiences, we don't allow falter and failure anymore. Everything has to be perfect all the time, and super healthy. Which of course causes the opposite.
I see that extremism around me quite a bit. People build their own expectations, and as soon as a person does not comply with them, they get shunned and ghosted, the worst, no more contact. The confrontation with what actually happened (including a introspection of what oneself could've contributed to the eclat) is impossible, it's uncomfortable.
From time to time, a bureaucrat like that pops up. Angela Merkel certainly was one, though I don't agree much with her policies. But that's just the thing - I can disagree with her policies, and yet acknowledge that her intention was the best outcome for her people, her society, her community as a total. I can even understand why she chose those policies, and admit that some of them were successful. And yes, I can even do the same with Trump, just as I could with Biden, though both aren't anywhere near my favorites.
I appreciate your writing style that goes with these photos. Did you also post these pictures on Reddit?
As far as the general premise of your post, the older I get, the harder it is to find leaders to look up to as an example. There seems to be so much corruption everywhere.
There is indeed. I find most of mine close to me, where I can see what they do, the good and the bad (they're still humans), and see what attributes of which person are worth aspiring to.
No, I don't really use reddit. I like Hive a lot better. I do cross post into twitter and snaps, but that's about it.