It would be nice if everyone could agree what is fair and what is not. In an ideal world a believer in a religion would agree with a believer in another religion that they both have the right to believe as they wish. Instead we find believers in one religion continuously killing believers in another religion.
One of the problems is that the holy books TELL believers to kill, in various dreadful ways, those who do not believe in the holy books, so for a believer the killings are justified. Naturally those being attacked also have a holy book that tells believers to kill non-believers, so we have a religious war.
Most religious believers would probably characterise themselves as “moderate” believers and would probably condemn those extremists and countries that practise killings in the name of the religion. They would point out that when the deity instructed believers to kill, it was in specific historical circumstances (such as when followers of another region were trying to wipe them out) and that to apply the injunction in modern times is perverse.
Most of the time, I’d suggest, the average believer would be happy to get along with believers in another region, but is instructed to shun them by a small number of “militant” believers and teachers. The would be moderates are bullied and coerced by the militants into actions which they would not normally contemplate.
Of course, such things don’t just happen in religious societies. When people see their standard of living fall, when they are thrown out of jobs because the jobs are being shipped overseas, or because technology is making their jobs redundant, they may fall under the sway of someone who tells them that their situation can be improved and that person if the best person to achieve that feat.
It helps if the person is charismatic, if the person claims that he/she is going to overturn the traditional ways of doing things, if the person is not part of the establishment, if the person intends to disrupt the current ways of doing things.
What actually happens is that the the person stumbles when he/she tries to shake things up. Some things will change, but far more things will remain the same. Many processes and procedures have reasons for their existence, though it is good to challenge them now and again.
My point is that the directions of our lives are directed and controlled by a small number of people. They may be politicians, or business people, or religious leaders. We may get to choose between them, but as types, politicians are very similar, regardless of party affiliations. Generally they are leaders while the rest of the population are followers, just getting on with their lives, trusting the leaders to lead us in the right direction.
This is a workable model, and has served us well for the most part. Sometimes a maverick comes along to lead us in a direction that in retrospect seems bizarre or counter intuitive, and the unmotivated majority is dragged in a direction that they would not have wanted to go. Sometime a leader is so powerful that he/she does things that give him/her power over the population that they would normally not cede to the leader, and we get a depot or dictator. But dictators die and rarely are they followed by an equally despotic ruler.
We pretty much expect others to, basically, run the country for us, but I’ve noticed in recent years the rise of a new type of tyranny, the tyranny of the minority. A few people, for their own ends, prevent the silent majority from having what they want.
For instance some people refuse to have their children immunised, which means that their children can catch diseases and while the disease may turn out to be mild for their children, their children can then infect smaller children who are too young to be immunised and who may react badly to the disease. Children die in this manner, and this is preventable.
If there was a law that all children hove to be immunised, then these deaths could be prevented and as a bonus the disease could be wiped out. In my opinion anyone who lets their child become a carrier for a disease should be charged with manslaughter as the very least.
Most people are happy with chlorine being added to tap water. It ensures that tap water is safe to drink. However in the developed countries a militant few are campaigning to stop chloride being added to tap water, and in some places they are winning. They are winning by using scare tactics and misinformation.
This anti-chlorine web page is typical and uses both techniques. Firstly it mentions that “chlorine gas was used with deadly effectiveness as a weapon in the First World War.” This is a fact, but it is also a big scare as the concentrations of chlorine gas used in the First World War were massively higher than the trace of chlorine left in tap water by the disinfection process.
Secondly, the article mentions that “a recent study conducted in Hartford, Connecticut found that women with breast cancer have 50-60 percent higher levels of organochlorines (chlorine by-products) in their breast tissue than cancer-free women”. This is misdirection as there is no evidence that the organochlorines entered the body through ingested water.
Did I mention that the one person quoted extensively in the article was employed by a filter manufacturer? Shame on Scientific American for publishing an article with such an obvious bias.
This is one way that the minority tyrannises the majority. They come up with spurious and unscientific arguments that are plausible to many people and persuade the authorities that they will launch lawsuits if the authorities persist in whatever the minority doesn’t like. They demand their “right” to chlorine free water, or bread without folate, or the right to not have their children vaccinated, or similar.
This denies the rights of the majority, who either want chlorine, folate or don’t want disease carriers giving whooping cough or measles to very small children, or more likely don’t care one way or the other, but accept that what the authorities are trying to do is beneficial. Which stinks, in many ways.
(I add illustrations to my blogs, not because I agree with the points that the illustrations may be making but because they are related in some way to my topic. Please be aware that the words are the important thing, and the illustrations are only decoration and may not reflect my point of view.)
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