About dictatorship and oppression
I am again using Cracked as an inspiration for a blog post, but hell. Whatever works.
It all starts from this article.
It really makes a good point, as far as I am concerned, but I would raise yet another point.
What movies do, is that in most cases they split the movie characters in The Good One and The Evil One. There are certain nuances, like The Good and Weak One who is afraid to fight unless properly motivated, the Evil Stupid One and the Evil Smart One. But basically you know around the half-time who you should root for and who will, eventually win the fight (because movies where the Evil One wins are rather rare - and even there the movie will leave a ray of light available, like in the True Detective Season 2 finale).
The reality, however, is never that simple. You will not be able to tell who the Evil One is, the Evil One is rarely an actual person and it will rarely be as simple as just getting rid of the Evil One.
OK, there are exceptions. There's Hitler, for example. But, for example, the very good example the article gives - North Korea - is not just about one evil person. It's about a system that sustains itself. Killing Kim Jong-un would probably start up some sort of unrest, but it is not enough. I am not sure if you saw that documentary about a doctor who cured people in North Korea (Inside North Korea) and after each and every one was cured, the cured person would thank Kim Jong-un rather than the doctor.
Yes, these people would probably be confused if someone assassinated Kim Jong-un, but I think that a system that was so deeply ingrained into people's minds will not disappear when its head is cut. There would be constant fighting between the people trying to destroy it and the people who are too lost in it and don't know how to live without it (and I am not talking strictly about the higher-ups who are doing well - think about the Matrix and how Morpheus explained to Neo how the people would resist getting out of it in many cases. Yes, I know, I am using a film as an example, but it is a very real issue).
Think of 1984 (if you haven't read that book, go read it). This is pretty much what North Korea is nowadays. Changing that is not as simple as killing its leader and then it's all flowers and love for everyone.
Also you can take into consideration that just because for us the nasty situation is not as obvious as for North Koreans, it doesn't mean that we live in this great world. Yes, for the majority of the Western world, the basic issues of food, water, air, shelter are taken care of. That doesn't mean that we are not controlled at a more subtle level. Think of all the cameras that are being installed for public safety reasons. Think of the way we are slowly but surely being encouraged to place our lives online (how many of your Facebook friends post really intimate details of their lives there?) - computers break, but we need our information, so we save it in the Cloud - which is a server hosted by someone else and we simply count on them that they will not check it.
We keep our money in banks and use online transfers and we just count on the fact that the online system will work correctly.
Google, if it would want, could create a profile of your likes and dislikes in a matter of seconds.
Every information about us is stored in servers outside our reach. And we count on the people handling them that they will be fair about it.
Think of what could go wrong if a guy like Hitler knew how to get a hold of all that information. Holocaust and Nazi dictatorship would be a whole lot easier to happen nowadays, if you just had the wrong guy in a high enough position.
But it doesn't even have to be that obvious. People who we trust are doing what's good for us have the power to do bad and access to a lot of information. We have slowly but surely given up on privacy for the sake of comfort and safety.
Call me conspiracy theorist, but that makes me a tad uneasy.
It all starts from this article.
It really makes a good point, as far as I am concerned, but I would raise yet another point.
What movies do, is that in most cases they split the movie characters in The Good One and The Evil One. There are certain nuances, like The Good and Weak One who is afraid to fight unless properly motivated, the Evil Stupid One and the Evil Smart One. But basically you know around the half-time who you should root for and who will, eventually win the fight (because movies where the Evil One wins are rather rare - and even there the movie will leave a ray of light available, like in the True Detective Season 2 finale).
The reality, however, is never that simple. You will not be able to tell who the Evil One is, the Evil One is rarely an actual person and it will rarely be as simple as just getting rid of the Evil One.
OK, there are exceptions. There's Hitler, for example. But, for example, the very good example the article gives - North Korea - is not just about one evil person. It's about a system that sustains itself. Killing Kim Jong-un would probably start up some sort of unrest, but it is not enough. I am not sure if you saw that documentary about a doctor who cured people in North Korea (Inside North Korea) and after each and every one was cured, the cured person would thank Kim Jong-un rather than the doctor.
Yes, these people would probably be confused if someone assassinated Kim Jong-un, but I think that a system that was so deeply ingrained into people's minds will not disappear when its head is cut. There would be constant fighting between the people trying to destroy it and the people who are too lost in it and don't know how to live without it (and I am not talking strictly about the higher-ups who are doing well - think about the Matrix and how Morpheus explained to Neo how the people would resist getting out of it in many cases. Yes, I know, I am using a film as an example, but it is a very real issue).
Think of 1984 (if you haven't read that book, go read it). This is pretty much what North Korea is nowadays. Changing that is not as simple as killing its leader and then it's all flowers and love for everyone.
Also you can take into consideration that just because for us the nasty situation is not as obvious as for North Koreans, it doesn't mean that we live in this great world. Yes, for the majority of the Western world, the basic issues of food, water, air, shelter are taken care of. That doesn't mean that we are not controlled at a more subtle level. Think of all the cameras that are being installed for public safety reasons. Think of the way we are slowly but surely being encouraged to place our lives online (how many of your Facebook friends post really intimate details of their lives there?) - computers break, but we need our information, so we save it in the Cloud - which is a server hosted by someone else and we simply count on them that they will not check it.
We keep our money in banks and use online transfers and we just count on the fact that the online system will work correctly.
Google, if it would want, could create a profile of your likes and dislikes in a matter of seconds.
Every information about us is stored in servers outside our reach. And we count on the people handling them that they will be fair about it.
Think of what could go wrong if a guy like Hitler knew how to get a hold of all that information. Holocaust and Nazi dictatorship would be a whole lot easier to happen nowadays, if you just had the wrong guy in a high enough position.
But it doesn't even have to be that obvious. People who we trust are doing what's good for us have the power to do bad and access to a lot of information. We have slowly but surely given up on privacy for the sake of comfort and safety.
Call me conspiracy theorist, but that makes me a tad uneasy.
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