Advice From The Heartland

My inlaws flew in to visit for a couple of days last weekend. Audrey told us a story about the small town in Iowa where she grew up. There were six Lutheran churches, and they were all of the same Synod, which basically means they couldn't accuse each other of heresy. Now you have heard of Catholics and Protestants not getting along, and likewise Jews and Christians, and you might understand that a couple of mixed faith might find a certain amount of opposition to their union. But in this small town in Iowa, marrying someone from a different church would give rise to just as much opposition. Audrey married someone from another town. That probably created the scandal of the year.

Roberta X posted a link to a story about loneliness, isolation and crazy. I read it, it's a good story, it was so good I forwarded the link to my peoples. California Bob liked it as well and replied:

Very good.  In Soviet studies, you used to frequently see discussion of "alienation" in the literature -- alienation of the individual, and how it was destructive to social cohesion.  In fact that was the pat response from socialist societies to criticisms of lack of freedom -- they equated individual freedom with alienation.
    Of course, political indoctrination and  thought control were critical to those societies.  Although you could argue that all societies engage in thought control to a greater or lesser extent.
    I liked this comment from a Chinese political scientist, quoted very matter-of-factly in Businessweek:  

"No one believes in communism anymore.  But one man, one vote doesn't work either," says Bai Tongdong, citing massive budget deficits and global warming as problems that democracies aren't well-equipped to handle.  "the modern state is too big and too complicated for average people to understand.  And people don't have time anyway." 

That immediately made me think of the ridiculous proposition system in California, where all kinds of terrible propositions are voted in as terrible legislation.  And the amount of time I have to spend educating myself on these things.  It's a poor way to legislate, we hire lawmakers to be the experts, so I generally vote "NO" on all propositions.  You could say, by doing that, I'm voluntarily renouncing some freedom, but this is an example of how too much freedom is a bad thing.  

"And people don't have time anyway." That's a big one. Not everyone who votes is inclined to spend endless hours researching and discussing the issues of the day. That's why politics has devolved into big media sound bites. Ain't nobody got time for that.