Imagine a busy intersection where one main road meets twice with one minor road. Let’s call them Government Drive and Opposition Crescent, respectively. One of the intersections is controlled by traffic lights and the other intersection is controlled by give-way signs.
Imagine that all people living on Opposition Crescent drive red or green cars with only a couple of cars that are red & black with a white stripe. These cars are allowed to cross Government Drive but never to turn onto it unless they have a blue, blue-green, black, or yellow adult in the front passenger seat, a restriction similar to those for inexperienced youngsters on a Restricted Licence.
Imagine that all other people not living on Opposition Crescent drive blue, blue-green, black, or yellow cars. And they only ever drive on the main road. Sometimes they have another person sitting in the front passenger seat. Most of those cars are blue, followed by black, yellow, and last but not least, a few blue-green cars.
Imagine a blue car approaching the intersection controlled by traffic lights and the lights turn orange. The blue driver speeds up and runs a red light but nothing happens, fortunately. The one and only cop car is rarely paying attention to what drivers on the main road are doing and he leaves them unbridled and rarely enforces traffic rules that appear to be subjective & selective.
Imagine another blue car speeding on the main road and the same things happens, the light turns orange. However, this time a black passenger pulls the handbrake, which will make the blue car skid, almost lose control, and cause an accident but stop in time before it crosses the intersection on which there are now red and green cars slowly making their crossing. There may be rare cases when the speeding car doesn’t stop in time before the intersection in which case people will have to brace themselves for impact and hope for the best as safety strategy.
Such nerve-wrecking near-collisions may fortunately just be figments of our imagination and most of the time, blue, blue-green, black, and yellow cars will keep moving unabatedly even when they occasionally do something stupid or hoon around like idiots on the road.
There are other times, though, when blue, black, and yellow cars may go way too fast and over the speed limit on the main road and they may overtake dangerously. Their drivers may be time-short very busy people who hate the inefficiency of slow speed and love to beat other traffic and traffic jams even if it puts others and themselves at risk. Sometimes, blue-green passengers will talk to those drivers to slow down a little, but there are not many blue-green cars around and therefore not many blue-green passengers, as they tend to want to drive their own little cars, as they do. Over time, blue, black, and yellow drivers may even stop giving lifts to blue-green passengers because they don’t appreciate their handbrakes being pulled and actually don’t like the idea of car-pooling and sharing the cars with others.
There may even be instances in which a blue-green passenger tries to pull the steering wheel hard to the Left. Those passengers will no longer be allowed in the front seat and will be relegated to the back seat, next to the strapped in dog and child.
Unsurprisingly, as you can imagine, there will be many traffic incidents on the main road that cause a lot of costly material damage and high insurance claims, traffic delays, and high medical bills and health insurance claims, and people having to take time off work to recover from their injuries. One would expect that there will be calls to make the roads safer and more accessible for all users, also for those who don’t own a car and/or don’t drive. But imagine that the blue, blue-green, black, and yellow cars hold a slim majority and that black cars my not want to risk losing their privilege of driving on Government Road and thus they’ll vote as a bloc against any changes or improvements. At best, they will be willing to block one lane, temporarily, with no more than 3 road cones, to fix a pothole. But other than that, it’ll be business as usual.
So, take the Green and Red TRAIN!
Is this a place where one can put a thought, pondered, about how things should be done differently? I hope. I want to put it down for some future thinking.
We have to be prepared to work at democracy, learn and understand the needs, issues, costs, advantages; also participate and take a real communal interest, not just sit back and say we're good, we deserve it; like kids who have had all the hard work of forming society done for them by older others. (Do we have real democracy? I put an extract from discussion site on this below.)
And we have to accept that sacrifices and responsibility are needed. Health costs? Allow people to design a euthanasia option that they want and make it legal with required actions and a Commissioner of Choice of Dying; don't sentimentalise or muff it.
Add that to Mac1's list* which is based on 20th century wishes. I like the old adage 'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.' Make our living rational, kind, practical and visionary with music along often, home-grown food and regular small feasts, and celebrations and rituals. So we know how great being human can be. We've gone as far as we can go with scientific development while still retaining humanness, understanding what humanity, humaneness and discernment are, and that they are central precepts for us.
* https://thestandard.nz/the-health-crisis-and-the-election/#comment-2076111
Democracy – would ours pass a test? https://thisvsthat.io/democracy-vs-representative-republic
Democracy and Representative Republic are both forms of government where the power is held by the people, but they differ in the way that power is exercised.
While both systems aim to ensure that the government is accountable to the people, a Representative Republic allows for a more efficient and organized decision-making process, as representatives are elected to focus on the complexities of governance and can make informed decisions on behalf of their constituents.
(Does this concur with what we observe and receive?)
Yep – a brake will slow something down only if it exerts a force in the opposite direction. But if the brake is not doing that, but is actually introducing a bunch of morally, intellectually and spatially deviant mutations of the same general direction, even more people get killed. It becomes an even bigger CoC-up.
Having been a professional driver ie Truckie (FYI in a recycling/sustainability area) I know about brakes incl exhaust brakes.
Luxo and the NACT1 crew have exhausted their toxic 18 wheeler exhaust brake. The EMG brake is running on the rivets. A terrible grinding sound is building as they head inexorably toward the cliff of First Term exit. There may be some survivors. An ambulance at the bottom. Or not : )
For thought later on. This is not the time to engage in banter or battle. I've just read about 4B in TDB. That seems like a handbrake on seeking a better future; practical and kindly govt, which I think forms the base of our considerations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4B_movement
Ir started in South Korea about 2019. I wonder – North Korea so close and threatening – producing the 'locust effect' – changing normal behaviour to rapid, rabid and destructive of norms.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/toxic-masculinity-vs-toxic-feminism-algorithmic-polarisation-of-course-400-000-kiwis-are-now-permanently-single/
Women have protested, fought down the ages for more autonomy, fairness, consideration. To go for separatism is the equivalent of being a 'conchie' in a very important engagement which brings the two sexes' bodies and souls together. What is needed is more soul, limited throwing bodies around while lacking meaningful respect for oneself and the other. We have not used our smarts kindly.