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.