Simply stated, suggestions for what is deemed good behavior is a large part of what philosophy as well as religion are all about, not only to say supposed truths, but also some sort of relevancy that these may have to action and how actions should be interpreted in comparison to such notions of what is true. That some actions are 'better' than others, that it is better when dealing with someone to treat them fairly for instance, than it would be to cheat them and take all their money.

        Obviously such notions differ from person to person, society to society, and from one time period to another. Not long ago and in some places today, killing those who think differently than you about this or that, usually something of high interest, political or religious or ethnic persuasion, is not morally objectionable if it serves some higher aim such as limiting the spread of such foreign ideas or influences. Morality, notions of right and wrong, vary greatly depending on who you talk to, where, in what age of history, and in what age of the people themselves.

        Given all the generalities that can be made, most people in most times generally think they are or want to be good relative to what is expected of them. Granted those notions not previously outside the bounds of goodness, owning slaves, legally killing disgraceful wives, children, or anyone else deemed your 'property', would scarcely be considered virtuous today, nor necessarily was considered universally virtuous then either, but such actions being legal were not cause for people to consider themselves bad persons. And though everyone in every age does things which they think are bad, most still think on the whole they are or want to be a good person. There are notable exceptions though, and they do receive great attention in the media but that attention is notable as much for its departure from the norm of everyday behavior as it is for the brutality of such acts.

        Good behavior or simply the act of being a good person has such common themes as well.  It is such that benefits our community, sometimes at the detriment of others, but usually for the benefit, advancement, or enrichment financially of those we identify with as 'our own' kind. In primitive societies, our family, in one of groups, our tribe versus another. As we come into more and more contact with other groups, it could be our culture or nation, our ethnicity, our religious commonalties, gang affiliation, or one of any number of different gauges to measure 'us' from 'them'. And subtler groups also have arisen, gender, sexual persuasion, political affiliation or philosophy, profession, all are potential dividing points between who is the us we are good if we are working for the benefit of, despite however much it may cost some of the others outside that group.

        Obviously with so many different ways of dividing things up, most people outside the group in one way, fall inside under a different measure. What is important is which measure one sees as paramount, of more importance than the others. Members of a gang may see that measure as more important than ethnicity, culture, locality, religious and professional commonalties combined. Many loyalties coexist with others and the primary identification usually changes over time, often to larger groups, but in times of oppression or intolerance, can shift instead to smaller groups. Those who once saw themselves as a man first, then a nation member second, and so on down to smaller and smaller groups, if one of the smaller groups of which one is also a part becomes targeted, say ethnicity or religion, suddenly that one becomes first a member of their ethnic, religious , or geographic group first, then a member of their nation, and the order gets reversed.

        Thus in times of trial or war, a person who is one of 'us' one day is suddenly pushed outside the primary group and goes from someone whom helping would have made us 'better', goes to being someone whom being kind to is no longer something to be proud of and even being bad to that person, even killing that person, would be the right thing to do, or in doing so would no longer necessarily make us a bad person. The primary identification that we make is crucial to our determination of what is good behavior and what is not. When ones identification is small like to a gang, to those who have larger more compassing nationalistic or ethnic views, they are criminals killing their own fellow citizens or members of their own race, and so on. To those who have even a larger view than those who view citizenship to this nation or to that as primary, and see their community first with all men and women, or as citizens of the world foremost, wars of nations even involving their own can seem criminal, despite the instinct to tighten the focus in such instances to the smaller group.

        I have said previous in the Relativism books that I define growth as seeing oneself progressively in larger and more inclusive groups. However I do accept that others see this in an entirely different light, that that weakens their notions of who they are, moves them away from their roots, their 'true' people and if such people are being oppressed in some way that argument will indeed carry the day. Yet I believe that exposure to more and more diversity pushes people to larger classifications, by finding more and more in common with those one previous found completely alien. An African-American inner-city youth can share a passion of Chess with an elderly Russian living in Minsk. A Mongol and a South American farmer can share an obsession with raising the fastest horses. Every new sub-group can lead to a broader realization of those who are that persons 'we' in some way and those who in helping that persons 'us' makes him or her a better person.

        None of this is without conflict. When religions first challenged the kings for the hearts and minds of their subjects, the stage was set for other ideas to likewise transcend national and ethnic divisions, such as political philosophies, fashions, trends in music, literature, and so on. Yet always there is a counter-push of staying true to your culture, your heritage, your 'true' people. This conflict has gone on and will continue to go on, and in some cases it is healthy. Remembering older divisions including some we can never be rid of such as ethnicity, can lead to a greater understanding of oneself in relation to the rest of the world. But even those who see this as harmless should acknowledge the possible negative repercussions of such pride, though well-intended, can easily lead to hate whenever one intentionally sees oneself in a group apart from others. And even as we long to be true to our own heritage we must sometimes ask the motives of those who long that we continually set ourselves apart from others. It is too easy a road to power for those who play to our pride, our fears, and our resentments, that those traveling it are far from good character.
 
 
 

        There are only so many things we can be doing at any given moment in time depending on our abilities, and our control over our own environments. In this moment or that one could be trying to create the greatest work of art, doing the most noble deed, trying to feed the malnourished, to shelter the homeless and dispossessed, or someone could be plotting to kill someone, to harm or injure someone in any number of ways, or actually doing so, or helping or hurting dozens or thousands, and the greater the number of these things we could be doing at any given moment and the greater the numbers of those affected by our actions, therein lies our power.

        But add morality to power, and the whole notion becomes muddled. The notion of a right thing and a wrong thing to be doing, or that to do this is better than to do that, the greater the power, the greater the source of possible confusion. If one always tries to do what one thinks is best and only has a half-dozen or so viable alternatives they are conscious of, it can seem simple. But if one contemplates hundreds or thousands of things one can do to be of aid to anyone or anything or oneself, it can be overwhelming. And worse is to believe that one single thing out of all that one can do is the best thing one can or should be doing. I do not mean this to imply that this is a bad thing to believe, only that it can be crippling to acting at all if there is so much to pick from that one might never be sure which or what action or goal to be that best one.

        Religions and even non-religious social structures can say that the answer to such moral conundrums can be found simply by looking within oneself to find out which is the true path at any given moment. That such insight or direction is always there ready to be known at any given time as the need may arise. Many readily accept such notions, it makes sense to think that the answer to what we should be doing, and morality can imply there to be a 'should', is a part of our being, and can be determined by us when not found in this or that doctrine which sometimes is substituted for telling one to look within.

        Such external forces around us gain power when their doctrines are substituted for our own judgements. If our ability to choose the true or best path we should take is thought to be impaired somehow by our present circumstances or some very fact of our physical nature, our looking within can be considered open to error and unnecessary when ready made answers are available in print, are easier to find, much less searching is required, and possess a greater respectability than our own fleeting notions. These doctrines have their place as soul searching every minor decision can be draining and time consuming, and can often be inconclusive. Ready-made solutions to age old moral problems are often seen to be as pointless to question as to doubt whether one plus one really equals two.

        Worse though is when such given answers are not given as external but imbued as what oneself would have and has found by searching within. A sort of guided inner-questioning where the questions frame the outcome in such a way as it is thought that the individuals themselves are coming to their own conclusions of their own accord. I say this is worse because if someone is telling me this or that, I am free to agree or disagree as I see fit, but if someone is taking me on a charted, possibly false,  path of reasoning so that the conclusion I come to I think to be my own I have found by my own device, I would be being lead without thinking to be lead. Thus one can be completely and wholly convinced of things far more than if outright being told them, and would be far less likely to even consider questioning them unless forced to question as well ones own self, infrequently if ever commonly attempted.

        Power can be described also as paths through the woods. For those of little power or understandings of their own power, there is forward along their present path, backwards along the same path perhaps, and occasionally new forks in the way to choose this way or the other. For those of much power, or possess a greater understanding of their own power, they may be said to always be standing at a clearing with many paths verging away from them in all directions. Add morality to this analogy and one could say that where one wants to be or end up if one is selfish, or where one wants others to be or the world to be as a whole to be or to end up if one is altruistic, would be at the end of one or more of these paths and the shortest path to reaching that destination would be the truest path, or the best path to take.

        It has been said through the ages in different lands by sages that the more power one has, if one intends to use it wisely, the fewer paths one has to choose from and the graver the choices are, for the more profound the effects would be the greater the number of people affected by them. By having more paths to choose from, both greater possible harms to oneself or others appear, yet if one holds fast to what one wishes to achieve in this limited lifespan, be it good or ill, the fewer paths are actually conceivable to be taken at all. And if one could see them all and their effects or ends clearly, there would only be one worth taking, and logically only one to take.

        Those that see power in this regards do not seek it out, and humbly accept the gravity of the power that is thrust their way. It is only those who view power in the absence of morality, or with the suspension of the considerations of morality, that hunger for it. Uncaring where one takes oneself or others or ones world, one can freely take any one of those multitudes of paths which others would never in the least consider, possessing in mind instead a sense of where they want to be, what they wish to achieve. But what of those who seek power for the benefit of others, is that not a noble legitimate claim to seek power? Yes and no. There are those who think they see clearer where the paths lead and which is more beneficial to most, and think that this ability entitles them to take it upon themselves to decide the fates of others, but those who inherently possess such qualities people will naturally gravitate to anyway, so one must be able to separate oneself from the will or pride inherent in each of us, to know whether we are leading others to that conclusion of ourselves, or whether it is how others perceive us which is really behind our thinking that we may have what it takes to lead.

        Most of this is inconsequential most might think. It matters not whether ones leaders have natural leadership qualities inherent or gains the power by convincing others that they do. Someone will always lead. Good leaders can make bad decisions, bad leaders can get lucky. Any leader trying to leave a legacy or to be remembered positively for a long time will most probably try to make the best possible decisions, and like everyone else, is doing so on the basis of not having all information upon which to base those decisions and is riding a lot on luck. But it does go to the nature of character in those who seek out power to which people should be wary. It is by incomplete understandings of the nature of power by which it is sought, and a misapprehension of others abilities which leads some to think they are more qualified than others to know what is best for them. Most desire to be lead, to have others make the big decisions in regards to matters outside themselves and their lives, how societies are and should be structured, when and how to war, what goals from space travel to medical research to feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, which of these presently needs the most attention.

        Most do not wish to have their say in these matters entirely stripped away, thus the allure of democracy, but neither does each wish to have to grapple day to day, minute to minute, with the full weight or ramifications of such matters. We wish to be free to concern ourselves with our own affairs, modest personal goals, raising children, being free to lounge about on a summer day beneath a shady tree reading a good book with little care over who leads us or toward what end, for though we know it can have grave consequences for our lives and our childrens, we also know all that is on the margins of our lives, between the great events and defining moments in history, in that space in between we define what is our lives, growing like a tree to fill whatever space is allotted to us.

        It is to completely misread any individual to think or believe that what they are is all that they can be or do.  With each of us, each and every one of us, be they intelligent or not, be they strong or lame, or even mute, there is a power within strong enough to rule the world if need be or if the desire were great enough. Balancing that though, the power of all else outside of themselves is enough to destroy them in an instant, a fallen plane, an incurable disease, before they even get a chance to start. Living is to strike a bargain between these forces, to have an idea of what best to grow into, which is the safest course for survival, or which course fulfills some need, some justification to exist at all and thus be given another day, hour, minute of survival. The longer we live, the more the faith we have that we are doing it correctly by the very fact that we still are.

        Being at all is improbable at best, so what works in our minds to have gotten us this far is what is good. We take on more and more responsibilities, when not out of the allure of power, gradually when knowing it to be safe or finding that it pleases us. So easy it is to think those of lesser stations, with less responsibilities, less knowledge, less power, are beneath us, not seeing that it has worked for them thus far, for that when attempting more, doing something different somewhere along the way for them in their circumstances could have been catastrophic. For too many, to attempt to be brave is to be dead, to speak up against wrongs is dangerous, to do right by our own, or even by their own standards, they believe could bring about their ruin in their present circumstances. If we have the illusion by circumstance we are above them, appreciate it for what it is but know it to be an illusion, for it is better than having the illusion that others by nature or by having or had different notions of what they can grow into safely, are better than us.
 
 
 

        The opposite of ever saying no, not that anyone could completely never say no in every circumstance, would be to completely go with the flow, take every course of events presented to you, and let your life be completely dictated to by circumstance, not that it ever not is anyway. Saying no to this thing or that, this road or that, is taking some of that power back, attempting to rise above the events which push you this way or that way. The problem is it is easier to negate a negative future event than it is to create one which is more pleasing, but it is a start.

        Those with confidence or self-assurance can easily say no to almost anything. Where opportunities arose once most assuredly they will rise again, and even better no doubt. The less sure one is of ones potentiality or worth, the more likely one might be to latch onto any seemingly good thing to come along without questioning it, as they are unsure whether such a chance might ever come again to them, knowing themselves to be less fortunate or lucky than others might be. Low self-image or simply being a personality adverse to any sort of confrontations, would also lead one to go along with whatever happens in their lives without wanting, and desiring even not to, take upon themselves such power or responsibility of having to disagree with someone or something in a significant way even if it might mean improving their lives in a greatly positive way.

        There are two aspects of being involved here. We are animals with highly evolved brains. Instinctively we like to, need to, act whenever an occasion presents itself in which we think we can or should act. Another instinct is to run away, which could be a primitive form of the concept of 'no', but it is also some sort of action as well. Other animals act mostly on instinct, they don't need to think of how or what to be, they just do it. And if their instincts, another type of learning passed through DNA, serves them well they will survive and their offspring will inherit the tendency to behave similarly in similar circumstances. Most though not all of our consciousness', as humans, is operating at a different level. We see, or at least think we see future events of courses of actions or consequences of our actions or decisions we make reverberating throughout many years or even over our entire lifespans. Some decisions, actions, or lack of actions in times of need, indeed pay heavy consequences which will affect us our entire lives and we can be aware of that before we do them or fail to honor them.

        This knowledge or anticipation of  how what we do now will or may affect us in the future inhibits certain actions. As barbaric as our modern societies can appear at times, we do have notions of property, of honoring someone's right to their property, of rights of having others behave respectably towards you, and so on. Though in some places, and potentially anywhere in hard enough times, people can be said to live by the 'law of the jungle', for the most part, for better or for worse, we have literally thousands of other laws by which we need to learn to live. In return for the extremely limited courses of behavior, we gain, or at least think we gain, predictability. If the odds are slim we will likely be killed today, tomorrow, next week, next year, etc., we can reasonably start to make longer term plans. We can and indeed do make sacrifices in the here and now for which we would not see the benefits of unless we live decades more, such as planning for retirement, and for the most part it is because we believe enough in the framework of behavior that people, institutions, and so on will continue on in a predictable and civilized fashion.

        We also possess a harder to qualify quality called imagination. This goes beyond the belief in staticism, or the belief that things will stay pretty much as they are now in regards to making plans for the future dependant upon what is known now. Imagination, not just wild imagination of speculation, imagination can go beyond this and anticipate, or precurse, an entirely different set of circumstances of how things will be in the future. Surely on the low end of the imagination scale we know that in the future, if we should live long enough to see much of it, we will all be older than we are now, and eventually able to do less. We know prices will go up, fashions in clothes or music we will not like will come and go, and probably come again. We know leaders we trust will deceive us, and though we expect it, we will be surprised once again. We know that nations will war, then make peace, only to war again.

        But on the high end of the imagination scale, there are those who see extremely detailed notions of how they think life, the world, can be, could be, should be, will be, it does not matter. They know it, think they know it or hope they know it, and say yes to it as easily and as surely as we say no to more predictable choices we are offered. If those visions are not very radical, we can all easily join in, or think them to be solid people. But if their notions of how things will be 10, 20 years from now are too fantastic, bearing in mind few could have predicted much about life today 20 years ago, we would write them off as kooks, and let history be the judge. I have said before that we build bridges between future realities in which we have accomplished our goals and our present realities in which we imagine them but there are those today, one out of a million maybe, who don't just think they do, they actually have a sense of how things will be and live accordingly. It could well be that statistically with enough nuts thinking wild things about the future, someone somewhere would have to be right. The odds of anyone picking a lottery number out of tens of millions of possibilities are almost infinitesimal, yet if a hundred million try, odds are that someone would win, though none the greater for you, unfortunately.

        My point is though we can and do and should spend most of our lives saying no to obvious bad choices (if we are lucky or smart anyway) and to things offered to us, or of potential futures predictable yet somehow disagreeable, we can with a little imagination sometimes rise a little above even that level of control of our lives, which is by no means itself inconsequential. For every thousand or so who are content when choosing a color for their car or house out of the dozen or more colors offered someone somewhere will think, why not lime-purple, or peach-green, or florescent tangerine, and have someone make it for them. And on a larger scale it is those people or that aspect of ourselves that keeps life interesting and unpredictable over the course of many years. It is saying yes to something that does not yet exist, may not be probable, may not be popular today, may not be prudent or profitable, but yet has a quality that will not be denied, and someday will be. Maybe.
 
 
 

        If we see a crime being committed we may be legally as well as morally compelled to aid the one being hurt. We may be taxed for anything which we do, we may have moral obligations to help family members. Just by existing we can have any number of obligations we may not care to think about and whenever we act we inevitably will incur more. Even just failing to act when considered appropriate is deemed itself a wrong action.

        By existing at all we shake up order. We put a dent in the natural course of events, we are part of that which disrupts perfect order with perpetual chaos. This becomes second nature to us because all we know are beings who too disrupt life by living. We are raised to act, to take that which would not have been and make it so, though we can never and probably never will know all the consequences of what we do. We reorganize matter, we reorganize life itself and take the lives of plants and animals to consume them to fuel our own. And above all else this is right because without doing so we would not exist at all to be able to question it.

        For better or for worse, each persons existence puts a dent in the scheme of things. We were born into this universe, we put our mark upon it, and what we do though not always long lasting and often countered, can never be undone. For one person who could be born by any other at one time by random chance of DNA, a million others cannot be. For the resources or breaks that could come ones way in life, a good job, a scholarship, is one that someone else would have gotten.

        Every action we take reverberates a thousand times when its potential scope includes others, and millions more when it could affect others actions towards others still. Those who try to limit their interaction with society, to take themselves out of the picture as a variable, such as a monk or hermit, may see more clearly the effects of each action or may seek out such a non-disruptive life out of fear of not being able to control all the possible effects one can have upon the world, nor even possessing the ability to fully comprehend them.

        Yet when we choose not to remove ourselves form the world, do not consciously go out of our way to limit the effects we have on others, each of us is simply one more of billions of others remaking reality as they see fit or to suit their needs or the needs of others. And though we think or hope we have control over the immediate effects of our actions in regards to others, any number of possible curves could be thrown into the mix in the present to forever alter the effects we have on the realities of others. Taking a taxi to a certain street and having it hit a child on that street, or walking home and seeing someone drowning and being able to save them or calling others for help.

        I have said it becomes 'second' nature to us to act and not try to fully understand the intricate web of effects of our actions, though obviously we do consider immediate or obvious effects, because it also is in our natures to not affect order in ways we cannot predict or control if we have any sense of morality. One could save another's life only to have that person go on to become a bigger murderer than Stalin or Hitler. One could become a Stalin or a Hitler and end up uniting the world in peace for generations by forcing all countries to unite just to end ones bloody rampage. When we know for certain we do not know the effects of what we do, when coupled with the desire to have a certain effect on the world for good or ill, we can be understandably hesitant to act at all.

        Simply removing oneself from reality would not free oneself from responsibility either as countless interactions which could have been done after that would also not now exist, not to admit the countless other actions done in the past which can never be changed anyway, but which could never be then amended either. Existence in the past cannot be undone by non-existence in the future. As the saying goes, after the horse has left the corral, it is too late to close the gate.

        It is not uncommon to want to minimize or even undo ones effects on reality, or in the words of 'It's a Wonderful Life', to see life as it would have been had one never been born, to second-guess ones own existence. A key thing to remember here is this is not a perfect world. It is full of imperfect people doing imperfect things everyday. For every one that could have done things better there may be two who could have done worse. Even if the numbers were reversed, the point is that there is no way of knowing what we do at any given moment will have what effects on down the line, and it is possible however disastrous the choices made, others may have done worse in that given circumstance or in that existence.

        For the devoutly religious or those of similar philosophical leanings the answer is simple; God wanted you to be here or you were put here on this earth for a reason. It sounds reassuring enough. Once one gets past such doubts, it is simple enough to believe that all one must do is simply concentrate on making the best choices as best you can see fit because your very existence has been figured into the equation, possibly even your shortcomings as well. Indeed, by this notion you were meant to be, and what you do is a logical extension of that, and if your choices are meant only to do good, even if the effects are wrong, how could you be?

        It is true that ones existence creates a vacuum in reality and it must be filled somehow. Should what you do be sub-par, should you yourself be, should you have missed your chance to make a difference even if that chance can never come again, the hole was filled hopefully by someone who tried most of the time, hopefully one who cared about living up to ones potential even if one never did, as not everyone does and many never even care to.

        Some think morality beyond oneself is more than to care for or aid others in times of need, or to live up to or surpass their civic or familial obligations. That the goal of making ones world a moral place is the responsibility of moral people. When it is the case that others deemed immoral wish that also, or one convinces oneself that they must think so, all is well with those notions and the actions which stem from them, providing they do not harm those whom they purport to help.

        However it can be said no one finds knowledge who is not seeking it, or at least would see the value of it. Trying to make other people better people is a worthy goal but not one that is accomplished without others doing all of the real work. No one can make a person a better person than him or herself. Others can be there to help but they do not deserve any of the credit, nor to the same extent the blame, when one does or does not wish to use that instance to take it upon oneself to be a better person, as others at that point however involved or interested they may be, are merely spectators. All is always changing, and when someone consciously seeks to change for the better, who or what they find which helps them owes them as great a debt for being able to assist, as the one receiving the assistance might otherwise be thought to owe.
 
 
 

        Humility is the great gadfly of arrogance. Without arrogance the humble might be content with their or others lot in life. Humility forces one to say I am not great, merely adequate or not to the task needing to be done. Of the two, humility is the most powerful. When one removes oneself from the equation, one can truly give oneself over to any task and do it far more completely than anyone who might even for a second think that what "I" do is great because it is I who is doing it. Those who are truly humble when doing even the smallest tasks, creating the most minor crafts, can bring such skill to bear that it will far outlive them and be recognized as great art or a great achievement long after the individuals name has been forgotten, should the work somehow survive by luck, fate, or happenstance.

        Religion is a great source of humility, the notion that all men must one day bow down before their maker, that all are equal in being judged for their actions or inactions. In their days, Alexander and Muhammad, no one was stronger as a leader or had a greater army. Like them and a thousand lesser leaders before or since, all reasoned that their preeminence was divine, that God was working his will here on Earth through them, and their successes beyond measure proved it to those in their times. Great poets may think their inspirations to write are divine and their conveyance of such notions at best merely adequate, great painters have said that it felt as though God was guiding their hands while they painted their greatest works. By deflecting praise and adulation for their successes away from themselves they were able to better fulfill their potentials and take their successes to greater levels.

        I hope and pray that most have a mixture of these two characteristics. We have seen great accomplishments in the Twentieth Century of both seemingly boundless arrogance on one hand, and individuals of almost saintly humility on the other. We need both but in balance in the world, and at best, in balance within each individual. It takes a great degree of arrogance to say that something you may see in your government or society is wrong, in your culture, in your common attitudes toward others of different beliefs, and to stand up as an individual against society and risk ostracism to say that it is wrong, that the Emperor has no clothes, and face the uncertain but most likely negative personal consequences. To say I am right and everyone else is wrong, or this minority opinion is truer than the opinion of the majority of people, even if the majority are in fact wrong, this is arrogant, and dangerous, and a necessity of evolution. Without anything to keep such arrogance in check unthinkable abuses of power inevitably occur whenever these opinions take root enough to realistically threaten the established opinions, beliefs, or political orders. Abuses to shut out such movements or changes of opinion dawn, and abuses by the new after reaching critical mass enough to become the new norm to secure that position for the future.

        As I have stated already, humility is stronger than arrogance. Without recognizing the limitations of anything which we do, anything which we put forth, and know it to be imperfect, flawed, and know that in a fair and just world, it will be surpassed many times over often and soon, nothing which we do, say, make, or believe will really be worth a damn. Humility is the glue needed to shape our aspirations into something worthy of existing at all, now or in the future, for only by focusing solely on what needs to be done, may what needs to be done get done when times become far more challenging than now.
 
 
 

        We can deny this, we can cry out against it and think we know better how the universe should operate, that good should in the end triumph over evil, that truth or reason should prevail over lies or subterfuge, or misapprehensions. Such notions of a just and completely fair universe are comforting, part of our hopes, collective, naive, in our hearts we long that this is really how it is or one day might be, but it is not now and never will be that way, not in this reality. In the physical universe what survives is what kills anything which threatens it.

        Democracy did not arise because it was fairer than monarchies. Dictators and monarchs have replaced more democratic regimes in the past, just as more democratic systems of recent centuries have displaced existing monarchies. Notions of democracy, or rather republics of elected overseers and lawmakers, evolved because they were able to, in pockets when the populace was sufficiently willing, capable, educated, and armed enough to challenge the proceeding systems of government, for the citizens to demand and take more power for themselves. The more monarchies or dictatorships fought against such change as a threat to the accepted notion of monarchical rule, the more such newly empowered republics saw the existence of monarchies as their enemy and fought back with propaganda to turn the citizens of monarchies against their rulers.

        In the absence of complete suppression of a populace, which would literally entail armed soldiers everywhere ready to immediately suppress all forms of dissent, which some nations actually attempt, propaganda rules. Governments without complete suppression of their populaces exist at the mercy or will of the people who are able to change it, whether by election or force. Thus more important than anything else, what people believe about their existing governments, whether they deem them just or unjust, whether they think they serve their interests or not, becomes tantamount to anything else and is the first and greatest test of its long term survival. Nations can be conquered, new institutions put in place but what people believe in their culture to be the best form of government will always reassert itself, thus the only war that matters in the long run is the war against the cultures themselves. Culture is what preserves and defines a people when a system of government is imposed upon them and only by integrating itself into its populaces culture can systems of governments survive there over time. 

        This propaganda war which turned citizens against their self-anointed Kings, or attempted to turn citizens of capitalist republics against their rulers, these are no longer propaganda in the true sense of the word, that of governments to get their own citizens to believe what their government wishes them to believe, propaganda now due to increased access to others around the world is now borderless and has been for sometime and travels as freely as trade. Each time a citizen of one culture interacts with a citizen of another is an opportunity for such beliefs to be put forth, education by one definition, subversion by another, to take place. And with the rise of the Internet such one on one mini-cultural exchanges will accelerate beyond measure. Anyone anywhere is now a possible target for recruitment by private armies, hate groups, cults, political ideals or party affiliations, and every citizen a knowing or unknowing carrier of their own doctrines instilled in them by their governments or cultures.

        Such exchanges have been growing for centuries with expanded trade between nations and have lead to a flourishing of scientific and academic knowledge, and have lead to greater empowerment of the average citizen of all countries. This has lead many to believe that such interaction is a form of social evolution which is inevitable, or at the very least unquestionably good. Surely one cannot dismiss an improvement in the health or longevity of life to be good, yet as humanity becomes more of a common mind one of two negative possibilities will tend to reoccur. Either one belief system becomes accepted as being good or right, and others become discouraged, a sort of cultural totalitarianism, or camps emerge with large numbers of citizens in one or many countries lining up behind one set of beliefs which spring up in opposition to another or others. Thus the more people weighing in on the same issues, the same beliefs, the greater the scale of the potential consequences should what could be a healthy exchange of opinions degenerate into polarities should lesser notions diminish leaving only a few systems of beliefs to vie for dominance, as will tend to occur in a natural state.

        Prosperity is the ultimate propaganda. No matter what else can be said about justice or injustice, poverty or decadence, short of outright physical or lethal domination over another, which beliefs which seem to have lead to the greatest success of the camps doing the propagandizing, this works better than almost any theoretical abstractions based on morality. Should the United States have remained a (politically speaking) minor agricultural nation throughout the 20th century, the world would be unrecognizable from how it is today. Though all of the elements which lead to this prosperity cannot be duplicated elsewhere such as vast natural resources, plentiful aritable agricultural land, a constant influx of the best and brightest of all disciplines, many nations see strength and wish to emulate it, or those nations which may wish to conquer or predominate over others see these ways as the best ways to achieve this. Should other systems, political or cultural, appear stronger, other nations will flock to them as happened with Fascism. Though Communism in the Soviet and Chinese forms aspired to such upsurgency, it never really caught on given the greater economic superiority of the Western Nations, and all countries or peoples aspire to be successful.

        Any present system of government will be staunchly defended against any new forms which present themselves, even if it is suspected that the upstarts may indeed be more just than the present ones, just as monarchies tried to thwart the spread of democratic ideals. The real threat as born out by the events of the 20th century point out, a particular systems dominance comes not from a threat from one country or another, but from ideas themselves. And when any country or government or philosophy seeks to monitor ideas for the purpose of perpetuation of its own standing over rivals within or from the world community, it is already showing its major shortcoming from a moral standpoint. The trouble is every country, every government, and every international political movement is guilty of this no matter how much they claim to support free speech or free thought. Someone somewhere always will say too much free speech is dangerous, and those attempting wrong speech must be silenced or discredited. The good countries do it, the bad countries do it. Only by doing it will they survive in their present states.

        Unfortunately living means outgrowing the present into an ever changing future and the more any nation tries to prevent such growth or change, the further it slides into despotism. In this nation or that, by this system or that, people within a state will experiment with new definitions of government, redefine the notions of citizenship, and in so-called "free" or blatantly unfree countries this will be suppressed or discredited. People will attempt such changes for many different reasons, but for many, because they think such changes will make the world or their small portion of it more just. Notions of what is just will never completely remain the same. And if they are successful, if more inclusive notions of all peoples rights being equal no matter where on this Earth they had the good fortune or misfortune of being born unto, some in the future may erroneously ascribe their predecessors success as we wrongly do ours, to evolution.

        The success of our children against all present and any future suppression of the will for our planet to change politically to an unknown on a global scale, to become by our imperfect notions of justice more just, depends solely on our teaching them to see that all that is taught to us from cradle to grave is to get us to be, think, and act like the best citizen, member of our culture, regardless of how right or just those notions may really be, and that they should and must learn to judge everything independently of what they are told, for true or not, we are told only what our culture thinks we should know, and usually only believe what it is in the interest of those in power to have us believe. But most importantly to have the strength in their own convictions of right and wrong that run contrary to what they see being done around them. Injustice always has to explain itself, what we know in our hearts to be right need not be taught, not advertised, just awakened by concepts as abstract as truth, justice, beauty, and equality, and always seeking to expand them to all.
 
 
 

        Governments sometimes delude themselves into thinking they can control this. They do a better job convincing their populaces that they can. To a certain extent they can. Where government intervention in opposition makes something not profitable, or unduly risky, takers will be fewer. The greater the risks, the greater the rewards must be. If the reward is thought to be great enough, many will do almost anything. In these matters, governments wills are meaningless. And if the potential for profit is great enough, the governments will be bought as well, being made up as they are of individuals, vulnerable to temptation, greed, fear, and manipulation of their own interests.

        Beyond the weakening of governments against their own interests by corruption, they will always seek to ally themselves with those who can deliver the goods, provide for stability, insure continued revenues, minimize potential treats to their long term survival and their own interests. Those individuals, corporations, or organizations which can best provide this will always have their governments favor. Laws will be written especially to suit their interests, where this is not possible, enforcement of contrary rules and regulations against their interests will not be enforced. This is not corruption in the traditional sense, this is reality, business as usual, and unlikely to ever be changed.

        Corruption as we define it is when one or two of the leaders go too far, too openly profit personally at the obvious expense of others or the public good. These instances provide a good show for morality's sake. They are chastised or incarcerated, occasionally executed, for not holding the publics interest always at heart, for overstepping the bounds of trust. This is what the public sees. What is really happening is either they made mistakes so obvious someone had to call them on it or the balance of power shifted, they lost the support of those who put them in power or those against them saw an opportunity to humiliate them and was able to make use of it.

        Such minor corruption is insignificant. One persons failings whether set up or self-inflicted, are usually only exposed to gain shifts in public opinions on policy matters or in attempts to wrest power from one group to another. It is the previously mentioned business as usual that poses the real threat to the public good. Laws will be written, industries formed around whatever will guarantee the safe existence of any particular leadership or state. The greater the threats, real or imagined, the more extreme the laws will be in their scope. The more apprehensive the public is to these supposed or real threats to their nation states, if that is where their primary loyalties lie, the more they will be willing to sacrifice their rights to object, or to put up with what always will be called "temporary" inconveniences to their own interests, health or well beings. In reality these are rarely let up when the threats ease for they rarely will be told when it has.

        Where a publics primary loyalty lies is the real gauge by which to measure attempted political shifts. Each nations national government would of course like its citizens primarily to think of themselves as members of their particular nation first and foremost. The more they are able to do this, the greater power they wield. Economic institutions, corporations, have taken much of that power away. As events have shown, governments may come and go but corporations go on and so will their jobs. Germany within a number of years when from Democracy to Fascism and back but several well known corporations were so well rooted as powers in their own right, more or less kept chugging along. The names of the people at the top may have changed but the jobs remained, so the opinions of the workers mattered not as much as their need to survive and in a modern society most must work continuously or lose whatever they might have. Those who write the paychecks for large percentages of the population have power more entrenched than those who think they can regulate this, unless public will is so far united behind a particular leader or cause that the governments can affect more than just token regulation.

        Rarely do national governments have even this much power as to have a great majority of its citizens thinking first and foremost of themselves as members of their nation state. The United States has done well in this regard given its diversity, being able to focus on certain pivotal points in history as sources of pride and nationhood as being open and inclusive while doing a pretty effective job at minimizing what might tend to disprove these assumptions. Iconizing Lincoln and Martin Luther King glazes over slavery and a lack of equal treatment for all, which had always been an American ideal if not in fact. The best success for selling this is the successes of those who would be and have become its citizens. The ability to ensure individuals that their goals will be or at least might be attainable or more attainable because they are in a place which values them more. Whatever the reality may be in any given age, the so named American Dream remains its governments greatest asset at home and abroad.

        European nation states also have great majorities of it citizens thinking of themselves first and foremost as members of their particular nations. This is due to by and large to long standing established borders of ethnocentric groups speaking within those borders by and large common languages, though obviously this has been changing recently. Countries with newer borders or large diverse ethnic groups within their borders speaking different languages cannot achieve national identity as easily and rely much more on propaganda, indoctrination of patriotism of children at young ages, or simple suppression of expression of other national, sub-national, or cultural identities.

        This is not to say that nations with solid ethnocentric majorities will not use such methods as well. Such nations will resort to such devices in the interest of the long term survivability due to political or cultural threats, or when the government has a tenuous grip on the support of its people once a radical political shift occurs or when it fails to provide an adequate standard of living for large enough groups of its citizens that it becomes in danger of losing power, in a coup or in a fair and open election.

        The question which everyone wonders at some point or another is who is really in charge? On one level it is the nation states. They can imprison any individual on anything, manufacture evidence to justify silencing anyone, any movement, and get enough of its opinions expressed in both independent media and in those cases, state controlled media, that their publics or some portions thereof, will cheer it. At another level it is the economic entities, individual and corporate, which can tilt whoever is in power one way or the other, support or oppose the official state line in regards to the media, now consolidated in the hands of disturbingly few, disturbingly large media conglomerates which when acting in unison provide the same propaganda power as any nation with state dominated media could wield, yet with the added notion of irrefutability of being free, open, and unbiased. The more faith one has in its media being open and untainted, which even in the best of cases will have its content decided by a relative few determining what is and is not news worthy, and never free completely from having their choices in turn decided for them by those writing their paychecks, the more susceptible these nations are to complete manipulation. No one is manipulated more or as well as one who thinks he is not manipulated at all. We all are, the extent of which we may never fully know.

        Nowadays it is in vogue in some circles to think that some supra-national clandestine world government is really in control in league with corporations to subvert national control and remove yet one more level of control individuals have over their own lives, for those few individuals left who think they have any control over their national governments perhaps. International governments are beginning to take hold and entrench themselves and mostly riding the support of both international corporations which seek global reach, and the support of developed nations seeking to institutionalize the present economic world situation which is presently in their favor, but this is hardly a secret. Given the military insanity of the human species, the ever present escalation of nations gaining weapons of mass destruction, we as a species are standing in the middle of a minefield with new mines being added exponentially, thus the considerable growing reluctance to make any movements at all. It would be comforting as well as perhaps chilling to think this is all part of some great design for the future of humanity, or as some evil global conspiracy, whether it is true or not. In reality it is the result of both greed and fear, in whatever proportions I doubt anyone could gauge.

        We also like to believe that it is the public who are in charge. We after all sign petitions, vote in elections, go on strikes, and given things to do to feel that we are the ones in charge. A small victory here and there whether won or handed usually will placate the public need for feeling empowered, but the complexity of international relations or development, whenever a public thinks it can grasp it, such notions are easily shattered. Experts, or so-proclaimed experts, will chart national and international policies, provide convenient fall guys should things go wrong, a barrier of accountability for those in power. And those in power provide the same purpose. If simply getting new experts does not placate the populace, they change the people who hired them, the leadership, though gradually coming to realize that it doesn't really matter who leads, this person or that, this party or that, the big picture remains, the mine field wins.

        The reality is no one is in charge. Each is reacting to whatever happens. A rogue country does this, a rogue company does that, a nation or leader goes nuts with anti-something furor or, in the case of a leader, just gets too full of himself, and throws the whole plans of everyone out of whack. Corporations have the best long term prospects yet are the most vulnerable. They have no borders, governments can seize their assets, and are made up of, when they actually tend to think of themselves as such, entirely members of the public. Governments though they like to define themselves as calling the shots, often are completely changed overnight, and other than temporary work stoppages and the inevitable reverse coups in some instances, life pretty much goes on the same.

        Surely people are the least expendable. How can corporations or governments exist if all the people are gone? Obviously in this case people are primary when viewed in total, however they rarely are. Governments can still plan for and imagine worlds without certain others, corporations take into account large losses of life whether by environmental accidents, or by poor product design, or by side-effects or consequences of products which can cause illness or death, and protect themselves with insurance against these possibilities. People as a whole are still valued though obviously no one is considered indispensable, and often in many ways, large numbers of potential casualties are in one way or another taken into account by some organization somewhere.

        Yet the real threat both to humanity and each individual is the redefinition of people or the common good. Surely at least as far as we are concerned, human governments, human corporations, will not outlive humanity. If they err, or we err through having them speak for us as a whole, too greatly and mess the whole thing up, one mine in the minefield too many and no path to any future, then the question of what is an individual and what constitutes the public good will not matter in the least. Barring that eventuality, we must pause now to define what it is we hope our governments and other invented devices for us to interact with each other by, to provide for us a map or measure for the future before we completely have relinquished all power to them and to chance. 

        With media manipulation now an art form, and science rapidly evolving to the point of direct and completely effective control which may one day be effective on a large enough scale to reduce democracy to a to controlled oligarchy by unseen rulers, there is the need to assert now what it is that makes us human, what we as a species value above all else, and how to entrench those values in present or future systems of government that they shall not be lost on future generations or latter incarnations of our own when we have further the power to dampen, confuse, or purge these aspirations through manufactured apathy, solicited greed and self-interest or coercion, or outright more effective forms of direct manipulation. We stand as a species both on the verge of entering into the maturity of being able to do ourselves in but choosing not to, and also as one on the verge of self-inflicted senility of forgetting who we really are by in the end not knowing or thinking what we really want and leaving it up to others, fairly or not fairly, by getting us to believe whatever they decide we ought.

        The most promising way of guaranteeing as best we can a future of human beings of free will instead of automatons is the codifying of the following ideals. Free will ought to be above reproach on all fronts. Attempts to compromise it for any people or any individual should be treated as tantamount to murder for it most certainly is in the same vein. All action designed to preempt behavior by punishing people for what they have not done yet but are considered likely to do for one reason or another ought to be discouraged by governments and societies in general by the strongest terms possible. Treating the public like children that must be prevented from injuring themselves is tantamount to enslaving them, and all governments in one way or another overstep themselves to treat its citizens in such a manner whenever they are allowed to deliberate real matters vital to the publics interest without a public dialogue or in secret, or by viewing the public as unqualified to judge for themselves this issue or that, this law or that.

        Complete freedom of thought is an essential, if not the most essential, component of free will. It must be absolute or it will be forever dead. The easiest way to control people is to outlaw wrongful thinking, to use the notion of insanity or mental illness as a club with a greater power to beat down the human spirit than any other. So obvious the example of the use of such a method as political suppression by the former Soviet Union, it is easy to forget that all nations criminalize certain thoughts or beliefs and will seek them out and change them by enforcing or attempting to force renunciation of them in sanitariums. Many of the ideals we hold today of equality, of science, would once have made any individual possessing or expressing them guilty of heresy, of treason, and if allowed to live at all would have been cause enough to be treated as insane. Once any beliefs or opinions are considered out of bounds, however potentially harmful to others or to social order, and are used to remove a person from society, it opens the door for ANY other belief in principle or in practice to be used in the same manner and establishes a precedent which cannot be caged. Since all nations have embraced such methods to varying degrees for extreme beliefs, such continuing abuse of freedom of thought is inevitable to spread.

        Being individuals of communal societies with interaction with others a necessary component of our existences, the expression of all such views should equally be beyond reproach by legislation or by social as well as physical isolation, save only the extreme instance of immediate harm to safety, such as the notable example of yelling "fire" in a public theater. Any ideas extreme enough will cause any individual to be incarcerated or institutionalized under the premise that they endanger the public safety or encourage unlawful behavior. Unless such harm is immediate, direct, and indisputable by every member of society as being harmful, it is always better to err on the side of too little restraints than too much. Physical harm, and immediate at that, should be the only restraint for preventing one from expressing ones beliefs. Every culture has some sacrosanct areas off limits and unquestionable, and every society will enforce such predispositions with censoring individuals for stating conflicting notions. Thinking this is not so only enables it to spread to other aspects of our behavior unchallenged. No aspect of human behavior or values ought to enforce compliance by the attempt of any government or society or culture to prevent the expression of anyone from giving airs to their disagreements. Without being bothered by such others extreme beliefs, without risk of being profoundly disturbed by others insanity, we are giving up the right, most literally, to think for ourselves. And should any nations law, custom, doctrine, or belief need to suppress dissenting viewpoints, it is most likely one of the ones most in need of being rethought. 
 
 
 

        This is not a given across everyone’s beliefs or cultures. Surely many see their own cultures beliefs, traditions, or values as the penultimate of civilization, and those who seek to challenge this to be misguided or deranged at best, criminals or subversives at worst. To the extent where an individuals desire for social change leads them to commit criminal acts, whether in the interest of advancing or publicizing such views or viewpoints, or whether simply trying to live their lives on their own terms regardless of what they consider oppressive restrictions, they are most certainly, by definition anyway, criminal or subversive. When their values are too far apart from members of their own society and they provide a source of constant irritation to those who provide the structure of passing on the cultures or societies values from one generation to the next, when seen in this light, people of such views are misguided and deranged in some way.

        However to whatever degree we deem our present societies to be fair, good, or just, we owe to those who once were seen as such. We like to think we know which values we hold will be embraced by future generations as being the one to measure the value of such distention now, which may be seen in a different or nobler light by those yet to come but it would be guessing at best. Just as those generations gone by might hold our present civilizations as morally decrepit for such things as open adultery and not uncommon divorce, we judge their moral shortcomings in regards to race or gender relations. Throw anyone today a hundred years into the future and they most certainly will see moral degradation by some measure by our definition, mixed together hopefully with some new freedoms or more expansive or inclusive notions or implementations of justice or equality no one in our present time might ever do more than just dream.

        This is humanity on the long term scale. Each generation picking and choosing morals leftover from previous generations like sorting through antiques at an auction. By whim or taste, some will be cherished for more than we value them now, some we cherish will be discarded as mere junk. The best we can do is make our best cases for the values we hold and let the ones we do not value also be aired or debated as any idea which we can conceive surely will be existent in one form or another even if never realized by anyone. Only by thrashing these ideas out a bit, can we make it easier for those yet to come to see their values or their shortcomings. And like the most useful of antiques there will be those ideals long forgotten that not only will be dusted off and reused but will still carry forward their original essence, the inherent notion of their utility, and will be adapted and improved upon in ways we can never imagine. That is the hope, and leave to them the reality.