The role of strategy in the “liberal” dialogue with “conservatives” within an “authoritarian” system.  What would Machiavelli have said?

 

The role of labels – ambiguity of language

 

Language of discourse

 

Dichotomies

 

What is liberal?

 

What is conservative?

 

What of the continuum within this two black/white dichotomies?

 

How does one end up a liberal or a conservative?

 

How does government sanctioning of behavior that may be of trivial importance, at least from an atypical perspective (like who to have sex with and when, not to write sex or romance novels, not to listen to pop music), how does the sanctioning nonetheless affect more important behaviors like a daily press coverage of governmental activities and the degree of freedom in making changes within the status quo, and a change in economic strategies to face a rising population (e.g. unemployment), increasing savings, increasing spending, sound financial system (law concerning property rights), etc?

 

An authoritarian regime quells the multiplier effect: by forbiding people from writing their thoughts they are either eliminating or hindering the growth of various industries: paper, timber, pens, books, dialogue, etc?  Same with music.  Same with fashion.  They are closing out industries without replacing them.  In a free-market, groups of people use their own resources and those of others to create goods and provides services that customers demand, which in turn creates income, which increases the living standards with time.  If demand itself is curtailed or overly-regulated, the authoritarian is creating a staggering economy, especially in light of their socialist bends (which leads to inefficient usage of inputs) and even concepts like the charging of interest, especially amidsts nations that do charge such interest rates.

 

 

For people to act, they must believe the following:

 

1)      Their expectations, especially one they really cherish and those that matter to them have been violated

2)      That they can achieve a positive outcome

 

Usually, if people feel either is not present, they will not do much, especially if the expectations broken are of a social bent, that does not severely affect them, or if it does, it only affects them at an individual level—in that case they might not find support.

 

 

 

Why do we do what we do?  Why do we stand for what we do?  Must we?  What happense if we don’t?  Assuming our we come to our values accidentally, either by the culture we are born in and by our own genetically endowed value system morphed by our culture, why do we insists on sticking to this random sense of self?  Why must we be true to ourselves?  If I Mehdi, why can’t I reject “him” like I “reject” a culture or an ideology or ethnicity and not embrace someone else’s self?  Is it about power?  And does this get in the way of people agreeing or criticising one another.  We are what we believe.  At least at the point in time we believe it.

 

To be or to become that is the question.  Be=Fixed, Rigid, Duration, Not Flexible

                                                              Becoming = A relatively greater degree of change than that exhibited by Be when Be tries to attain its objective of duration.  Becoming is always changing.

 

Someone said: we never step into the same river everytime (Becoming) but the essence of the river remains – its still water (Being).  These currrents are always in conflict withing the brain, within the social arena that manifests into politics.  Politics is disagreement.