God’s place in a humanist society (9) [Locul lui Dumnezeu într-o societate umanistă]

Centuries later after agreeing that ‘there is no God’ – and thus replacing the absolute truth of a theocentric world with the absolutization of their ‘everything is relative’ belief – humanists realized that the world is pretty unsafe and countless things threaten us.

The comfort of ‘I do what I please’ needs to be secured by a surveillance system, and the UK appears to be the stage of an experiment with no match anywhere in the democratic world. The Brits threw God away, but they must be wondering what to put in His place.

No matter how ‘primitive’ the idea of God may appear to these ‘wise’ humanists, they probably admit that God-centered societies had a certain cohesion, and many other good features which should be substituted.

While people’s minds should not be fenced in any way – there is no God, therefore anything is permissible! – their actions should be carefully watched. People shouldn’t be allowed to do anything harmful to others, should they?

This apparently generous ideal means that people should be controlled – but who has the right to do that? What entity could be as omniscient and impartial when pursuing its surveillance as God was supposed to be have been?

Are politicians trustworthy? Are scientists reliable? What impersonal democratic and judiciary system could be impartial enough to be granted the privilege of overseeing all citizens of a given state? On what rules should such a system be based upon?

Before having reached any definitive answers to these questions – and of course there are no absolute truths in such a relativistic world! – some wise people in the UK started setting-up a surveillance system rivaling the one in Communist China.

It’s not I, a lonely madman, who claims that, but an NGO based in… London. I am refering to Privacy International (PI), which is described as “watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations.”

The above map issued by PI says it all. I can see only five countries coloured in black, meaning that they are “endemic surveillance nations” – the (Big Brother’s) UK, the USA, (Putin’s) Russia, (Communist) China, and Malaysia.

In spite of its founder (Simon Davies) being considered a controversial character, PI’s website is certainly one I recommend. Their reports about national ID cards, biometric passports, and all types of surveillance are very interesting.

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]