We entertain notions of governance because on some level we all know most people are completely incapable of governing themselves with logic or ethic. But then we get shocked when most people continuously vote into power the absolute worst among us. Further complicated by wealth nor power nor authority ever coming by way of good intentions. In fact we proactively hero-worship and celebrate the biggest arses we will never meet with. “If you don’t unbar me from and outright praise me for insuring others have less rights than myself then you are the bad guy.”
Contrary to the marketing of every religious leader, politician, executive and law enforcement officer ever and without exception, pursuing an entitlement over their resources and opportunities or authority over their lives is actually not at all how you help people. It’s no different for you and all those ever in your reach. Thine will being done is bullshit when others must make every sacrifice. Doesn’t matter if you feel your aim is good and true, no fascist in world history felt differently.
“Eco-friendly” is very much a for-profit thing, especially with products doing half the job while costing twice as much. But that doesn’t undo the fact of our species openly poisoning the land, air and sea and thus ourselves. Same sense, the self-entitled were ultra-casual about pandemic precautions, especially those affording healthcare or those wanting Taco Bell despite dangers of being asymptomatic carriers, but that doesn’t undo the fact of millions dead around the world because of it. No matter how bad a circumstance there will always be those believing their farts smell of lettuce. Those people are congested from letting go and letting the god of their ego be, at further cost to everyone around them. This whole concept that a thing must not be real or true or allowed to exist unless servicing me me me, has got to go. TV shows, contagious diseases, political leaders with pants perpetually down to their knees, whatever. The function of truth is not flattery. Reality is objective, your thoughts and feelings are most assuredly not.
Unless you make your own, every fiction you meet with is in the service of interests other than your own. But as with the inherent DIY segregation that is online social media, nobody learns or evolves or grows when surrounded only by what they like and what comforts them. It is pure arrogance to suggest our own fantasies and fictions hold appeal for others. Schools and news media flounder for trying to appease whichever partisan ego, failing to educate or inform. Every person you block online or off is another brick to your self-confinement. Gated communities physical or metaphysical are designed to block out the mass of reality contradicting the fantasies inside. No matter who you are or what your beliefs are, being challenged only with what you already know or what pleases you means you will be informed about nothing. In another life I interviewed over 400 different people, writers and artists of diverse media, and I loathed them all. But they caught no wind of that, because the purpose wasn’t to vent my subjective anger but to try to understand how they reach the conclusions they do. If writers can only write about what they know, they must expand their range of experience and come to know a lot, or else their work will be less compelling or believable to those who do know differing experience. Learn about what you disagree with. When the definition of heroism is self-sacrifice, any heroic ideal must aim higher than an idealized form of its authors. If we are to identify with a heroic ideal, it must be for what we hold in common, what we might part with in the service of others and not for how we might be enriched or perfected. Fictions or IRL news conveying good guys who kill are not portraying any form of heroism, for when a trigger is pulled it’s not the self that’s sacrificed but the other guy. What’s conveyed is propaganda servicing something other than anyone’s better angels. Egoism is the opposite of self-sacrifice, it’s mandating one’s thoughts and feelings be replicated and praised by those suffering their own. And there is no greater form of egoism than stopping the non-compliant autonomy of others finitely. Whether heroism is regarded within traditional fiction or the fictions of church or state or industry, heroes save lives in service of a better tomorrow, for whomever, when ending a life is limiting what that tomorrow may offer.
Even where regards a death by degrees, self-dependent persons do not have to overwork or underpay or price-gouge anybody. They do not have to lie, cheat or steal or justify lying, cheating or stealing even if those affected pose the greatest existential threat to their self-interest. That’s just another codependency. If believing in a particular person, place or thing is not at once co-signing on responsibility for it, you contribute only to the lack of (and demise of) problem-solving. With great power comes great responsibility, sure, but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But were responsibility itself more common, personal responsibility, none would find themselves with power over others.