Tuesday 20 April 2010

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]

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

unfortunately we try (hard) to copy-paste the black colour.
We are so good to copy-paste the "black colur" (generally speacking) from different parts of the world. Even if we know that is black, we accept it (quietly maybe) like pink.
C.L.

MunteanUK said...

@ C.L.

Do you mean 'we' (Romanians), are you refering to 'we' (Britons) or to 'we' (people in general)?

Anonymous said...

this time we=romanians :-(

MunteanUK said...

@ C.L.

According to the quoted report of Privacy International, Romania didn't fare too bad.

However, their research is based on data up to 2007, therefore before the 'biometric' scandal of early 2009, and before Emil Boc's proposal of an 'e-society', where everyone should have an electronic signature.

There are some signs that Romania is following in the footsteps of the British Big Brother, yet things are far worse in the UK!

Of course, this doesn't mean we shouldn't be on guard!

Anonymous said...

good point "yet" (but it's such a rush...don't you think?)
C.L.

MunteanUK said...

@ C.L.

I don't know if we can talk of a genuine 'rush' - people who want to control other people take their time in pursuing their agenda.

As a matter of fact, I'd say that the process of 'banishing' God away from His Creation is a millennial one, starting even before 1054, when the Church so gravely split, and its Western half fell into the abyss of heresy.

After saving manking from this 'obsolete' concept of God (they think), His enemies want to take His place, to rule the world, to control everything.

They will eventually - in our lifetime, in a couple of years. this year, after more decades?! - succeed in destroying the world, but not in controlling it.

We can't prevent what our Lord said it's not due to happen; all we can do is be 'prepared' for anything.

The 'end of the world' is not necessarily a 'great event'; it comes for each of us when we die. And we can die anytime.

Anonymous said...

true.
C.L.

Mihai said...

I think we are not that close yet of being a "black colored" society on the PI's map.
For now (and probably for some decades from now on) our politicians are much more concerned with looting the country. They think in terms of: grab whatever you can and don't care about the rest.

You mentioned Boc's project: "e-Romania", which is supposed to be a huge national system that will supervise all our economic activity.
The project might sound as a scary first part of a dreadful plan, but I don't know exactly why, I started laughing when I heard about that.
And yet, at a second thought, I do know why. It was the predicted cost of the project: 500 milion euros.

So unless Boc is planning to create some e-system that will not just supervise our economic activity but also automatically read our minds and send a robocop - for each one of us - to protect us (if we pay our taxes) or to shoot/torture/beat us (if we don't), I say this is just another "looting project".

Gregor said...

Hi Bogdan

I am pleased that you could make use of the map; I am sorry (but not at all surprised) to hear that things are changing in Romania.

Still, I think things like this should show Romanians that being a part of the West no longer means being a part of 'the free world'.

Gregor

Gregor said...

But one caveat, I don't think of it as 'Putin's Russia'. As a Russophile I don't think Russia has ever been a free country, and will not be for a while. Yeltin was no better than Putin: he was just more of NWO lapdog.

Still, as the scriptures say 'Put not your trust in Pprinces, in the sons of men'.

MunteanUK said...

@ Mihai

We may not be 'close yet', however, the direction towards which we are heading is pretty clear.

And if it's still unclear, this happens because of the general ambiguity & confusion that affects all spheres of human activity in Romania.

Some would consider that you are 'hyperoptimistic' when you imagine that we are still decades away from when things will turn from this perpetual 'worsening worse' to 'the worst'.

Obviously, we are all witnessing how 'backward' Romania is, how poor, and how inefficiently state structures function.

But let us not forget that there are worse places in the world, where the State is trying to 'count' all its citizens and give them biometric ID cards:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/16/india-population-biometric-id-cards

***

I personally couldn't tell how much time of freedom we are left with. This is both 'impredictable' (only the Lord knows), and also 'variable' (He may grant us more time or shorten it, according to our prayers).

It's silly to say that Big Brother will take away our freedom 'today' or 'over the next decade'. What matters is to be on aware of any outright or only 'potential' abuses.

***

What you say about Romanian politicians being concerned with "looting the country" doesn't contradict any surveillance plans.

Precisely because all they care is to get rich, they are recklessly willing to make Romania a stage for such experiments.

All surveillance systems are very expensive, they come along with big bribes offered to politicians, with costly 'consultancy', with all kinds of expenses beyond the initial projected amount.

Maybe the implementation of a 'thought police' is still not technologically possible, but in order for it to turn into reality one day, there must be other prerequisite surveillance mechanisms already put into practice.

What if Boc's plan - of whose details probably not even Boc himself is aware! - is just a little but necessary step towards a suffocating surveillance society?

MunteanUK said...

@ Gregor

Indeed, Romania is not as 'free' as it has once been - in the early `90s, for instance, when the legal vacuum allowed people to do anything.

Apart from murder and other crimes, people could do anything; there was no awareness of 'economic crimes'.

In a paradoxical way, the more we got integrated into the 'free world' (NATO, EU), the less freedom we received :-(

***

I don't put my trust in "Princes, in the sons of men", and none of us should!

Maybe you don't like my sintagm 'Putin's Russia', but I certainly liked yours - he must be a 'NWO lapdog' as well as Yeltsin was :-)

Anonymous said...

it's awful what I just read about the sterilization (forced to be) of 10,000 chinese. it's awful.
God's place in this society? :-(
C.L.

MunteanUK said...

@ C.L.

That's happening in the 'Communist paradise' of China, while in counties like the UK, they have other means for achieving the same satanic goal - make people fewer & fewer.

In the UK, people are gradually thrown into promiscuity, so that - as a result of the 'Pill', many abortions + other excesses - they would eventually become sterile.

***

On the other hand, some people are getting convinced that they are 'saving humanity' (from the 'threat' of overpopulation & global warming) if they agree to be sterilized:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/magazine-promotes-sterilization-for-women-in-their-20s.html
http://agw-heretic.blogspot.com/2007/11/abortion-and-sterilization-as-moral.html
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43159
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/11/23/stop-global-warming-get-sterilized-ride-horse

Anonymous said...

look at this pictures.
http://saccsiv.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/fotografii-terifiante-cu-poluarea-din-china/
e cumplit.nici nu mai am cuvinte.
C.L.