The straightjacket, which is society

Part I:

Has anybody ever wondered what the hell it’s all about? Life, I mean.
Sure, some people believe in Gods and a pleasant after life, and some people don’t have time to think at all. I presume they’re just as happy. I never hear them complaining anyways.

At the risk of bumming you all out: I really can’t be arsed anymore.
And why should I be? I don’t like their laws, I don’t like their restrictions, I don’t like their obligations and I don’t like them.
Who’s this I’m talking about? You. Society as a whole. The rich who own everything, who use the media to brainwash you and then use your backbone to make them even richer.

“Communist!” I hear you cry. “Conspiracy theorist!” You moan.
Let’s get a few things straight then, shall we?

4% of the world population lives in the US. They enjoy 22% of the world’s income.
In most European countries 5% of the population own more than 70% of the resources.

Great statistics! It does show that a small group of people control most of the world’s wealth and resources.
Okay, you probably could have guessed that. But you’re also probably questioning the grand scheme of things which annoy me. “Could it be true (said in a Carrie Bradshaw like voice) that this small group of people are manipulating the rest of us to further their own causes?”

How’s this for a quote:
"Rising unemployment was a very desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes.... What was engineered--in a Marxist sense--was a crisis in capitalism which re-created a reserve army of labor, and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since."
Guess who said this:
Alan Bud, chief economic advisor to Margaret Thatcher

Note the little word: “Engineered.”?
Anyways, look around and you’ll see more and more of this arrogance. The fall of communism was engineered by creating a weapons race the fragile USSR economy couldn’t afford, for example!
More tangible was the banana war that France and Britain lost. United Fruits brought them to court for unfair government sponsoring of farmers in Central and Southern America. Even though these “Small farmers” (like Fife bananas) were only 7 odd percent of the banana market, UF couldn’t let it be. Decent union laws are like cancer…they spread. No spreading there. The WTO put an end to it.
Now these small banana manufacturers hardly exist anymore. The workers are paid less for their efforts and a couple of CEO’s earn a hell of a lot more.

“Okay…” you grumble as you drink your third beer of the day, which was probably manufactured in some remote country on the cheap… “So the rich own everything and try to create circumstances which benefit them. That’s still a long way off from brainwashing you.”
Is it?
What’s religion? Religion is a tranquilliser: “Don’t put up a fight now, they’ll suffer for what they’ve done when they’re dead.”

Remember that little verse you were drilled to say as a kid:
“Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But names will never hurt me,
When you’re dead and in your grave,
You’ll suffer for what you called me.”

Those nasty Islamic terrorists killed 10 people today in a suicide bombing! Funny how they don’t mention the number of dead by nasty warheads which cost you (the tax payer) 10 million a piece. Funny how a war in Iraq can cost 82 BILLION $ a year (instead of that money being spent on education and health or something else equally unimportant) and YOU sit at home nodding and saying: “Yeah. I feel safer now.”
Is it not amazing that your friends and family are off in some other country being shot at and maimed because your government told you the enemy had weapons of mass destruction…which they don’t… and you just sit there nodding: “Sure. I feel safer now though.”
Isn’t it amusing that Andrew Gilligan was fired because he said the British dossier on Iraq was “Sexed up”. Now, that it is proven it was (well…THERE ARE NO WMD THERE…SO IT HAS TO HAVE BEEN FABRICATED) he’s not been apologised to, he’s not been re-instated and you just sit there nodding: “War has its casualties, but I do feel ever so much safer now.”

Doesn’t it bother you that there are Palestinian terrorist attacks and Israeli incursions? An incursion sure as hell doesn’t sound as bad as a terrorist attack, does it? No, yet they kill more people with these incursions. Sure. Just sit there nodding your head. I presume you feel safe.

Your mere lack of concern for such issues is due to brainwashing. Have a look at these statements:
Soldiers can kill. Civilians cannot.
Stealing a loaf of bread is theft. Firing someone (taking away their income) is not.
Innocent until proven guilty. Guatanamo Bay.

Funny old world isn’t? Well I thought so too. But now I’m pissed off. Pissed off big!

I’m sick and tired of working 8 hours a bloody day to make someone else richer than myself and then to come home to buy stuff I neither need nor want.
I’m sick to death of the government trying to train me to behave in certain ways.
FINES for example.
Want a wee statistic on fines? Well, I’m sure, being as aware and alert as you are, you know that fines are method of changing behaviour. When someone does something wrong, you fine them and the stimuli (in the form of a sanction) will subtly change their behaviour. Now, let’s take PARKING FINES as an example for the statistics I’m going to use.
The Hague, Utrecht and Rotterdam are 3 of the 4 largest Dutch cities. Together though their population is only about 1.000.000 (Amsterdam is the fourth). Do you know how much behaviour they tried to stimulate in 2004?
63.000.000 euros worth of behaviour.
NOBODY is screaming and shouting about it. NOBODY is saying: “Wait a bloody second. They’re not steering behaviour…they’re raking in hard cash!”

Don’t get me wrong though. I do despise the raking in of cash in this manner…BUT I hate even more than someone is trying to change my behaviour.
DO AS YOU ARE TOLD! GO OUT AND WORK! EARN US GOOD MONEY.

Part II

Don’t park there. Wear a seatbelt, Wear a crash helmet (but not in the car), get a driving license, pay your taxes so we can bomb more 3rd world nations, go to church, carry your ID with you, don’t use violence (unless against a 3rd world nation), etc. etc. bloody etc.

Of course, we live in a democracy. We can change things.
Funnily enough though, every political party I’ve ever supported has NOT had ANYTHING to say in ANYTHING at all.
Funnily enough, most of the major parties DO EXACTLY THE SAME…
Privatise this, free market that, support Bush, pro-private education, no national health service, lower direct taxation, higher indirect taxation….WAIT….

Let me explain that last little concept there for you.

Direct taxation is relative to your income. If you earn more money, you pay more taxes.
Indirect taxation is taxation on things like food. And clothing. And housing (WHICH, incidentally, are PROMISED to you in the international treaty on human rights as BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS). This means that if you are poorer you pay just as much as someone who is richer. This person is richer because you work for him and make him richer.
It also means that larger families are higher taxed than smaller families. Now…I wonder where the larger families are? Would they be at the top of the income scale…or the bottom?

So, you are promised democracy and therefore you must abide by it.
If you don’t like what you are getting, vote differently. No? YES!
That’s what you are told.

But no matter what you vote, it doesn’t make a difference. The major parties all agree on most issues, and on the unimportant issues like Fox Hunting, they’ll spend hours and hours of your time trying to make it sound interesting, so your mind doesn’t wander onto delicate subjects like the war on Iraq and the complete lack of weapons of mass destruction there…
And voting on the smaller parties pushes you into the fringes of society.
Mhmmmmmm….democracy.

I can be arsed no longer.

I’m sick of acting like I care about work, houses, property, cars, laws, people and whatever.
In fact, a nuclear war sounds about right for me at this moment in time. We have the weapons…let’s use them!

I can be arsed no longer.

I’m sick to death of you! YES YOU! Sitting there, nodding your head and feeling good for yourselves because you donated to the flood appeal. I hate to inform you, but 15.000.000 children die of HUNGER each bloody year. I’m glad you bought off your conscience, it just isn’t enough though. Is it?

I can’t change this bloody society on my own can I? You’re obviously too dumb, intoxicated, brainwashed or ignorant to join me. SO SCREW YOU ALL.

EVERYONE.

I hope you all die of horrible diseases. I’m washing my hands of the lot of you.

And this is where I stand.
Stranded in mediocre middle-class life, not wanting to be poorer, not having the means to be richer and not having the guts to kill myself.
Stranded in the mediocre existence of working without fun, living without fun and anything creative I make being censored.
Stranded in mediocrity, millions of people dying all over the place due to our negligence, entrapped in a consumer society and doing EXACTLY AS WE ARE TOLD!

I can be arsed no longer.

Perhaps it is time for me to withdraw from society and live amongst the sheep (not easily said by a Scotsman…given one of my previous posts)?

Part III

Some statistics:

In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"

Every year 15 million children die of hunger

For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years

Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!

The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving- Since you've entered this site at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year.

One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture

The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy

Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF

3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.

In 1994 the Urban Institute in Washington DC estimated that one out of 6 elderly people in the U.S. has an inadequate diet.

In the U.S. hunger and race are related. In 1991 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, and 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.

The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.

One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.

Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.

In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.

Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death

About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age

To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.

The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.

Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger

It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.






You can find similar statistics everywhere on the web, because they basically come from UN sources. This is the site I got them from:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm

Originally posted by shavixmir
Part III

Some statistics:

In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"

Every year 15 million children die of hunger

For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years

Throughout the 1990's ...[text shortened]... is is the site I got them from:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm

Originally posted by shavixmir
Part III

Some statistics:

In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"

Every year 15 million children die of hunger

For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years

Throughout the 1990's ...[text shortened]... is is the site I got them from:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm

Shavixmir is in a rage
his rant goes on a bit
I wonder if he's a middle class,
sober, snobby, Rab C Nesbitt ?

but then again,

Maybe there are some valid points
but made with too much din
Its only a matter of time that
we prove he is Billy connellys twin.

So who can then,

Fathom the mad rants
from that crazy scotish call
I can't understand a flipping word

but then,

I live south of Hadrians wall 😉

EVERYONE.

I hope you all die of horrible diseases. I’m washing my hands of the lot of you.

And this is where I stand.
Stranded in mediocre middle-class life, not wanting to be poorer, not having the means to be richer and not having the guts to kill myself.
Stranded in the mediocre existence of working without fun, living without fun and anything creative I make being censored.
Strand ...[text shortened]... ence, entrapped in a consumer society and doing EXACTLY AS WE ARE TOLD!

I can be arsed no longer.

Shouldn't the title of this thread read "The straightjacket that is society"

Originally posted by mmanuel
Shouldn't the title of this thread read "The straightjacket [b]that is society"[/b]

Originally posted by shavixmir
... Doesn’t it bother you that there are Palestinian terrorist attacks and Israeli incursions?...

Originally posted by Paul Dirac
But see, the Palestinians are rewarded with seventy-some-odd virgins in Paradise, so they don't mind dieing for the cause. Of course, you may say those Palestinians are brainwashed...