Gaia: Knights & Maidens of the Roundtable - Politics

Re: True Leadership

http://singerseeker.gaia.com — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:03:05 GMT

thanks for the link, andrew, I hadn't seen that, very good.

Re: Gross National Happiness

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:44:51 GMT

LOL! Not sure about "givin' 'er" on this site, but I thank you Andrew. Do check, though. If memory serves me, I believe Canada's Head of State is still Queen Elizabeth II who's been on the throne since around 1957 or so.

Charles is not all that popular, I believe, but has increased in stature very slowly over the yeas following the death of his beloved Princess. I certainly like some of his ideas, such as insisting on organic farming techniques.

Now, your Prince William . . . talk about a new paradigm when he should take the throne!!! Wow! Janos may be in the best position to offer comment on the British royal family, I believe.

Under the Commonwealth of Nations system, Queen Elizabeth II is nominally head of over 50 nations. This doesn't mean the British Crown "rules" these independent nations. They're merely "linked" as friends, not unlike links we share here on Gaia. This is actually a great discussion to have on this thread.

Re: Gross National Happiness

http://andrewmarkmusic.gaia.com — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:47:50 GMT

i wish canada had a king like that instead of the mean spirited tyrants that we've been stuck with for 20 years!

good to hear that your still givin' 'er on this site keith.....

Re: True Leadership

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:27:24 GMT

Actually I did too. Quite logical. Quick, decisive. Of course, there will always be those who want to resist.

Re: True Leadership

http://andrewmarkmusic.gaia.com — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:59:38 GMT

i thought moore was being reasonable here....

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/

Re: True Leadership

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 01:58:22 GMT

I concur Janos. A perfect example of your point is health care. In the US the majority of health delivery is via for-profit entities. When "money" becomes a factor, the motivation changes. We now have huge, huge corporate insurance companies doing everything in their power to demand as much as they can from their customers in the form of insurance premiums, while simultaneously doing everything in their power to cut back paying or covering services and even denying care to those who may need it the most. All this so they can turn a profit and meet or exceed Wall Street expectations.

This is . . . idiocy! Yes, this model actually works quite well when applied to tooth paste or hair spray. But not to human beings!!!!! You don't go out of your way to dig up some lame excuse to cancel much-needed insurance coverage after six or seven years when all of a sudden the person is now diagnosed with cancer or needs an organ transplant in order to live!

And the same with our water, a natural resource, an absolute necessity for survival. In today's society electricity to run our homes might fall in the same category, a necessity of life. The same argument could be made for our air waves, or communication in general. I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the US we pay a pretty penny for cable television, Internet and phone service each month. And any attempt to bring in competition to lower prices is shot down.

So, are we talking socialism here? The huge bug-a-boo word that has such a bad rap? Or are we referring back to the Iroquois Nation? Our native peoples held everything in common. Perhaps a compromise between the two, where there is private property, but the remainder is public and held communally.

Our economic system today, BTW, is being held together by band-aids and bubble gum, nothing more. Any sudden shock, such as a great natural disaster or casualty, will send our markets over the edge. We are very, very fragile at the moment. It's conversations like this that may become necessary, should the worst-case scenario become reality.

Re: True Leadership

http://singerseeker.gaia.com — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:34:40 GMT

Sheeple is well-attested on the net - see
Sheeple
Urban Dictionary: sheeple
xkcd

You make some good points about Obama. The changes that are needed are so huge, though, I don't know if they could be achieved within 4 to 8 years.

Love,

Nicole

Re: True Leadership

http://goodworld.gaia.com — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:24:49 GMT

What a great thread! My only source of sadness is that so many participants are "no longer around".
Christine left some months ago driven by impatience with "just talking". But she did leave the warning about expecting too much from leaders whom the system is allowing to lead. I assume she made a play on word sounds: "people"--> "sheeple" (from sheep-like people).
I agree, we should not take too much comfort and go to sleep again thinking that at last we have a true leader that is fit to fight our battle.
I agree that the "Obama phenomenon" represents a unique possibility for change, but it is the people wo voted him in rather than those who allowed him to be voted in will need to make the desired changes by clearly demanding them. But we, the people, need to know what are the real changes we need to demand. And that needs some hard digging to the roots of what is rightly called "systemic evil".
My "digging" convinces me that the benefits of two fundamental monopolies need to be taken from the control of modern-day robber barons.
Those two monopolies are,

1) private control over natural resources (including land, in terms of living an working space);
2) the private control by the banks and the FED (in the US) over the currency of a nation.

Obama's greatest test and challenge is the second one: Who creates the nation's money stock and how it gets into the economy?
The people who voted for him must support him by demanding the democratisation of the money system.

What is possible and what may happen (if enough people do not wake up).

Gross National Happiness

http://keithb7862.gaia.com — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:55:38 GMT

This may not be the correct place to post this, but it's as good a place as any to point out . . . Gross National Happiness . . .

But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea.
In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan's newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation's priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness.

The official government web site is here. A site promoting Gross International Happiness is here. The Coronation address of H.M. King Khesar of Bhutan, recently crowned, is here.

Re: True Leadership

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:53:42 GMT

Obama is the chosen ONE.

Chosen by Chase, HSBC, Exxon, Haliburton, the Queen and the Pope. And let's not forget Oprah.

They're no dummies. They know that the sheeple yearn for a true leader (like Hitler) to admire and follow in tough times like now.

Re: True Leadership

http://jlz.gaia.com — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:20:29 GMT

To be an Altruist BEYOND contemporary procecural and propositional knowledge bases .....yet grounded as clay and free as the wind.

Re: True Leadership

http://jlz.gaia.com — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:59:58 GMT

Well done Alan... you predicted Barak Obama in Power +- one year prior to the actual event ...

... I better watch the matrix again ... so you can do some more forcasting...lol

Nzira

Re: True Leadership

http://songofstorms.gaia.com — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:45:59 GMT

The fundamental essence of true leadership is service. Leadership in it's purest form comes from the understanding that everything is one, and that all people are essentially one. (I'd say when the royal "we" was pure, it was a pronoun based out of this understanding.) It's not a boon to be a leader, in a sense it's a sacrifice that paradoxically leads to a higher existance, a higher joy. But the base of this joy even can be found in a simple song: "love is something that you give it away, give it away, give it away-- oh, love is something that you give it away, you end up having more..." Or another song: "in the end, the love you make is equal to the love you take." The true leader makes his love in order to take more, in order to take that love and send it back out to the community. A leader is he or she that gives and gives only, thoughtlessly, automatically. As to "Why not just live my life," that's a fine way to live, and a true leader's role is to allow that person to live that way, happily. But if the world is yet in a phase of existance where that person's continued happiness would be threatened by inaction, then it's the true leader's calling in a sense to find action and take it, so that those who prefer to hear and see no evil won't see or hear evil unintentionally, by ignorinig the reasons causes and realities of that which we, in our misunderstanding, label as evil. Kind of like being a janitor but one thousand times as complex. : ) Barak Obama is the only qualified cantidate possible of true leadership because he was the only one that was urged to run and thought about it, as far as I know. The rest of them desire leadership and only a fool would understand true leadership and desire it. It's the wise fool who finds it at his doorstep, like Obama and his presidential bid, and joyously excepts what is in some senses grave responsibility. The responsibility in essense is the fact that due to the ammount of effect a true leader's actions can have-- any action-- a true leader must stay acting out of the grand design and his highest selves, at all times, in all situations, or strive to. Which is why none of us liked that video of Edwards doing his hair-- instinctually, we understand that small-scale vanity and true leadership are not compatable. Because, as in the movie Akira, when anyone recieves large amounts of what they percieve to be "power," they misuse it, because they fail to understand that there is no such thing as power, only service.

Re: True Leadership

http://jlz.gaia.com — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:25:09 GMT

Sept 7th --- Now December 10th

Last Night I Re-Watched the Matrix ... great fun... the fact that we are all Duracell batteries until we unplug ... C'me on peoples are you all voting labour, Tori or Zanu I dunno

... IM VOTING that once we have 144 "ACTIVE" Knights & Maidens then this Planet can Change. Till then your life & opinion & action is F U T I L E

its all written on the sands of Dune ..

ºjlz

The Hill

http://psychicsurgeon.gaia.com — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:04:20 GMT

I am voting for Hillary: that was a premeditated choice I made before she ran for President. That is the facts. If you want to know more, please read my Blog, "Hats Off to Hill".

Re: East Germany as an example

http://goodworld.gaia.com — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:14:11 GMT

Thank you, Crystal for this intitial list of of threats to our project of ushering in the possible good world (PGW).

It is vital to understand the "enemy" (only in "..." because he is part of us). Hence the need for a theoretical base for any action. This phase itself can take weeks, month, maybe a whole year, depending on the intensity of the attention we "pay" to the need for understanding.

The ruling class has always feared the latent power of the majority. And rightly so. That silent, long suffering, majority can so easily be turned into a mindless, ferocious, mob by hate-filled demagogues and "agents provocateurs" who want to discredit the cry for justice. Phases of the French Revolution and of many modern revolutions is a terrible reminder of this.

Democracy and mass protests only work if the majority is fully informet and well educated--something that the modern education system tries to prevent. Otherwise protests and public opinion can be easily dismissed by the minority ("..the people are not ready to know what is good for them").

So, Knights and Maidens of the Education Team, get to work on reforming the education system. It will take a few years but it must be done. Who will do it if not you? True, other groups are also working on this, so you need to from an effective collaborative coalition with them.
(By the way, don't forget the need for economic literacy because the current ethos of education is the result of the perception that the purpose of education is to ensure that youngsters turn out to be "job worthy" adults with a narrow, materialistic perspective.)

Re: True Leadership

http://jlz.gaia.com — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:29:27 GMT

My views today on true Leadership, from the heart.

When I post, know that it comes from a source of an impetious abstract integrity .... in other-words, I'm considered a bit querky....

I have nothing to say as of yet, other than if you take me out of my enviornment, say, like in the "lord of the flies" .... I will hide away & leave you all to it... and that IS a QUOTE !

In the film 'the matrix' I KNOW I am not NEO or TRINITY .. I missed that "romantic potential" 10 years ago...as with most of you.. I feel like the key-maker trapped in some evil french guys dimension.... if you remember the film.

Expression ... I love re-visiting my posts to view how immature, and scatty I was
... Thats humility.

lite ºjlz jlz.zaadz.com/blog
I just re-vampt my dragon-fly story ... to cre8 a smile in everyones minds eye.

Re: East Germany as an example

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:04:28 GMT

Have you watched the movie "Good Bye Lenin"? if you do, how close is it to the story that you told us?

South Vietnam suffered somewhat like what you describe when the US Troop left Vietnam in 1975. However the political situation is the opposit with what happen in East Germany. We went from Capitalism to Communism over night. Doesn't matter wich system you are in, when it changes, our way of life suffers a big shock and it might take a few years to balance it back. It took our family at least 5 years to get back on our feet again, that because we determined to live not to give up.

Re: East Germany as an example

http://faerydragon.gaia.com — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:04:33 GMT

I am so grateful for this story. Thank you, Chrysalis.

I found several correlations to things I am afraid of in my own country:
-a government department set up to maintain the status quo
-a country distrustful of its own people
-capitalism creating more and more of a wedge between community members
-a foreign government putting capitalism in place and wiping out the previous system
-growing hatred of the "colonized" people against the "colonizers"
-a wall going up with orders to shoot (Mex-US border)

Seems like people in power can't help themselves but fall into the same destructive patterns. and it seems like capitalism is so powerful that those making the money can always stamp out those who see what's going on.

will we forever be victims of this brutal consumptive system? I wonder.

I appreciate knowing the sad story of a loss of the opportunity to create something new and something that is strictly East German and nothing else. I sincerely hope that there are some distinctly East German things that will remain that way.

It is a lot to think about. thank you so much.

Re: East Germany as an example

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:54:43 GMT

Thank you Li. The point of my description was to give an example. Keith was wondering if there would be things to consider while changing the world, and because I have lived through the transition of one system to another (which was merely a replacement over night), he asked me to speak about my experiences. I hope it will help.

Best wishes