More stringent than the gendarme

Without a change in mentality,
absolutely nothing can be done.

I do not think, however, that police and
repressive measures are the appropriate
means to change attitudes.

On the contrary.

The existence of a police force will reinforce
the mentality of any "potential trickster" who
will always try to find a way out.

And the stricter the police get, the worse
this mentality will became.

Apart from that a strong police

tends to be autonomous, to become independent
from the state and then it begins to oppress the
citizens.

Don't all dictatorships end like this?

I don't think that at the beginning they intended to
torture people. They are gradually forced to result
to this because they rule is based on enforcement
rather than on persuasion.

A good society should educate its citizens

in such way that a police force would be superfluous.
If it needs the police to enforce civilized behaviour,
then it lost the game long ago.

       But, will we let the criminals do what they want?

Of course not.

We need to find out why some people are led to
illegal behaviour.

Ουδείς εκών κακός.

No one is voluntarily evil, Socrates said.

Something has forced him to do this.

It is our duty to identify the causes and to cure them.

Foreseeing and prevention.

If someone has loaded his rifle and has shut some pupils,

then it's already too late.

We need to have an department

with educators, psychologists and doctors whose
aim will be to timely diagnose and combat the
reasons for crime.

Not to fight the criminals since there will not be any.

Not because

we have put them all in jail or executed them,
but because we have not let people develop
into criminals.

But let us now return to the issue of waste.

Everyone should decide

on his own, to limit himself.

And that's not so easy.

There are perhaps some people already today,
amid the general rapine and pillage, who from
self-esteem consider it beneath their dignity to
be wasteful.

It is not necessary for the gendarme to tell them anything.

Their sense of dignity is stricter
than any gendarme.

They wouldn't deign to take one
extra litre of water from someone else.

How many of these are there though? Five, ten?

The great majority, in whom the system has implanted
the spirit of wastage, of selfishness and of greed, where
will they find the strength to limit themselves?

They do not have this power in themselves.

Otherwise they wouldn't deign to be plunderers.

They would stand apart, like the few strong characters
and would restrain themselves.

These weak types need some support.

Not, however, from the forces of law and order.

They cannot change people's mentality.

We have to look for these
forces elsewhere.

And I think that there are two such forces
which are worth taking a closer look at.

The force of public opinion and
the power of education.

Both have the disadvantage that
they take a long time to bear fruit

(while the police grab you by the collar
and immediately enforce the law), but whatever is
slow to take effect, is that which lasts longer.

Besides, a change of attitude is a process
that takes a very long time anyway.

What can we expect though, from today's public
opinion, which is completely misinformed, basically
clueless and indoctrinated?

Steeped as it is in the robbery- and consumer-orientated
spirit of the system, what can you expect from it?

The answer is:
absolutely nothing.

When I said, public opinion, I meant another kind of public opinion.

The opinion of the close social environment in
the neighbourhood, in the village, in the workplace.

Where everyone knows everyone else.

There the weak man could find support, in order to
become strong. To be able to decide by his own free
will and without having it imposed on him, to give up
some of his comforts.

For this public opinion, let's look
at an old and a new example.

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