The injustice of scapegoating the few dangerous drivers unfortunate enough to cause death

According to an article in today's Guardian, Teenagers jailed for 90mph crash that killed rising rugby star, "Sean Goodfellow and Murray McAllan, both 19, were both jailed for four and a half years . . . [and banned] from driving for 12 years . . ".

That's not justice, but scapegoating . . !

Dangerous driving is ubiquitous, goes generally unreported and unpunished, and even when culprits are brought to book, they get away with the lightest of punishments (a small fine or short ban at the most), which manifestly fails to deter them or others from offending again - unless, of course, they cause an accident which results in serious injury or death, as in the case reported here, when the law comes down on them like a ton of bricks, in what can only be described as vindictive injustice, to compensate the state's failure - because of public, i.e. media, pressure - to provide a proper deterrent against dangerous driving, especially speeding.

Sean Goodfellow and Murray McAllan are no worse, or deserving of such serious punishment, than the thousands (probably millions) of others who get away with dangerous driving. They were just UNLUCKY that in their case it resulted in someone's death.

All that's needed to virtually eliminate deaths due to dangerous driving, is a comprehensive monitoring system of our roads, such that dangerous driving (usually speeding) is readily spotted and offenders brought to account, first with a warning, followed by increasingly lengthy driving bans for subsequent offences: one week for a second offence, a month or the third, and so on, so that those who repeatedly offend are simply banished completely from our roads. No need for fines or prison sentences, unless, of course, the bans are violated.

But because lots of people, including many in high places in politics and the media, want the FREEDOM to violate speed limits whenever they see fit, with little risk of being caught or seriously punished when they are, reducing deaths through dangerous driving remains impossible. Instead the law comes down, quite unjustly, like a ton of bricks on the unfortunate few whose dangerous driving results in someone's death.

Collectively humans are behaving like a batch culture of microorganisms

In response to recent reports (Guardian article 1 and 2) that Afghanistan has mineral deposits worth trillions of dollars, on which a prosperous Afghan economy could be based.

To base an economy, or a large part of it, on the exploitation of finite mineral resources, which sooner or later are going to run out, is INSANE.


Thereby you create an economy which comes to support a population and standard of living, which are non-sustainable in the long term and can only end in tragedy.

It is not just individual countries which are behaving thus, but the human species as a whole, and in so doing are following the same blind Darwinian logic as the well-known growth curve of a batch culture of microorganism:

Taken from, Ch. 6 in Prescott et al, Microbiology, 4th Ed. (Link).

The lag phase is when the microorganisms are adapting and developing their metabolism to make use of the nutrients available to them and corresponds in this analogy to human history prior to about 1800 - 1900.

The exponential phase is when the microorganisms are able to make optimal use of the nutrients available, corresponding to the modern and present period of human history (notwithstanding that man's ability to exploit resources continues to increase at its own exponential rate).

The stationary phase is when the limits of growth have been reached, because the nutrients necessary for growth have been depleted and the accumulation of waste products inhibits further growth anyway, even if nutrients are available. This is the situation we are rapidly approaching.

The death phase is when an acute lack of nutrients and the accumulation of waste products causes the microorganisms to die off, which is what awaits us, i.e. our children and grandchildren, if we continue as we are, whereby climate change and environmental degradation, as well as resource depletion and the accumulation of waste (pollutants), will also play an important role.

Microorganisms do not have a brain and thus cannot possibly understand their situation. They are bound to follow this growth curve, and are adapted to it, producing spores or the like which can survive extended periods of unfavourable conditions. The fact that millions or billions of them die at the end of each growth cycle is not an issue for them, as it is, or should be, for humans.

We have a brain which gives us the potential to understand our situation and adapt our behaviour accordingly, which we collectively deceive ourselves into believing we are making use of.

In fact, instead of using our prodigious brain to understand our situation, we use it primarily to rationalise it, to interpret reality (our environment) so as to serve our own personal, narrow and short-sighted, self-interests. So deeply immersed in, familiar with and dependent on a rationalized and delusionary understanding of our situation are we that it is very difficult to recognise, thus causing us to behave, from an environmental perspective, as if we had no brain at all.

In the natural sciences we apply our brains to understanding the material world, with great success, as evidenced by the technology which has transformed, and continues to transform, our lives; but in the political and social sciences we use it primarily to rationalise our understanding of ourselves and the human environment we live in and depend on, seeking to maintain or change it to our own narrow and short-sighted, self-interests, social and political scientists no less than anyone else, or perhaps even more so.

To make any real progress in the social and political sciences they need to be placed on a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, foundation. See BLOG.

"Progressives" standing in the way of progress

Society is being screwed by capital and the political right, of course, but most insidiously, also by the liberal left and self-acclaimed "progressives".

"Insidious", because they deceive many of us - along with themselves - into believing that they are serving society and the individual, especially those who are exploited and "disadvantage". It used to be "the workers" they were so keen to help, but has now shifted, not just, but mainly to ethnic minorities. Thus their embrace of and enthusiasm for mass immigration and multi-ethnic society. They'll have no sympathy for the indigenous population, which they themselves belong to, but fail to recognise or identify with, until it's been reduced to a "disadvantaged minority". Then, of course, they'll be all over it . . .

From an historical perspective it is clear that "progressives" have taken over the role (and social niche) once dominated by the Catholic Church, securing power, advantage and privileges for themselves not by force, as their partners in power, the aristocracy did (itself now largely superseded by the "meritocracy"), but by laying claim to and exerting the power of the "moral high ground".

Speaking truth to POWER

Speaking truth to POWER means, above all else, telling the STATE that its historical claim to nationhood, along with the loyalty and obligations that go with it, is based on long-standing deception and misunderstanding, and is therefore invalid.

 

Having spoken truth to POWER, either it didn't hear, or choses to ignore me, in the hope that no one will believe what I am saying and that the deception can be maintained.

All this talk of DEBT, but no mention of the CREDITORS

All we hear from government and the media at the moment is about the size of public debt, the need to cut public expenditure, along with demands and assurances that "we are all in this together".

 

Who exactly are WE? And does it include those amongst us to whom at least part of this huge debt is owed . . ? Or is there not for every debtor a creditor . . ?

 

To whom exactly are these billions of British and trillions of international debt owed, and what are THEY doing to help the situation . . ?

 

Or, as I strongly suspect, is the whole rotten system coiled around its own throat; notwithstanding that some (those in power, wealth and privilege), have their own, relatively secure supply of air . . ?

The deeper significance of "Bigotgate"

What I find most revealing about Gordon Brown calling a dedicated, life-long Labour supporter a bigot, because she dared express concerns about immigration ("It was the question about immigration that I think was annoying", he said in an interview directly afterwards), is the light it throws on how the Labour party, for decades, has suppressed all criticism of mass immigration  (and of the multi-ethnic society that comes with it), not just within its own ranks, but in society at large, by branding it as "bigoted" or "racist".

Understanding the madness of mass immigration and multi-ethnic society

Before one can understand the madness, one first has to recognise it, although it has been made very difficult by the social and political taboos which evoke accusations of "xenophobia" and "racism" against anyone who does and dares to say so publically.

I'm sure that many people do recognise this madness, at least from time to time, but dare not say so, certainly not in public, for fear of being branded a "xenophobe" or "racist"; and because it cannot be expressed publically there can be no shared debate, testing or evaluation of this perception, which we are thus left alone to doubt and, in the face of such overwhelming social pressures, eventually reject the validity of, bravely seeking to suppress our own "xenophobic" and "racist" tendencies.

The human brain is such that it can be prevented from recognising even the most obvious things if the taboo against doing so is strong enough. Such taboos can be put in place artificially by post-hypnotic suggestion, for example, or, more naturally, by social and political conditioning, through a regime of rewards and punishments, or promises and threats thereof. Just as we train and condition dogs, so we are trained and conditioned ourselves, to be obedient subjects of the state, as well as a "human resource" and consumer for the economy.

The state wants mass immigration and a multi-ethnic society, and thus trains and conditions us, its subjects, to accept it. And if that fails, we are simply bullied into submission by being branded as "racists", just as in the Middle Ages people were trained and conditioned to accept church dogma (and authority), and those who resisted were bullied into submission by accusations of being "heathens", "infidels" or "heretics".

Mass immigration is madness because our country and subcontinent are already, natively and unsustainably, overpopulated. Mercifully, Europe's native population has peaked and is now slowly declining, which, for sustainability's sake, is exactly what needed to happen. To reverse this natural trend, by encouraging people to have more children and through mass immigration of people's with a higher fertility rate, is utter insanity. It beggars belief that our politicians could be so stupid.

The creation of a multi-ethnic (multi-racial and multicultural) society, which the madness of mass immigration has given rise to, is madness in its own right, because it is difficult enough for people with everything in common to organize themselves harmoniously and get along together. The less we have in common, the more difficult (if not impossible) it becomes.

Which brings us to the method, i.e. purpose, behind this madness and thus to understanding it: the state and capital do not want us organizing ourselves, but as has always been their way, want to keep us dependent on them and do the organizing for us, thus facilitating our self-exploitation as a human environment and resource.

State and capital are so overwhelmingly powerful, and we so utterly dependent on them, that it is difficult to imagine how we can possibly escape their clutches. But if we want our civilization to survive, that is what we must do.