Okay, let me just start off by saying, first and foremost, that I agree (as usual) with the point you are making (I probably totally bum you out with all of my agreeing, don’t I?  Why don’t you write a blog post along the lines of “Why I Think ‘The Ramones’ Suck”, and then you’ll get all the lathered-up, righteous rage you can handle)!  I thought it was a very interesting post, and entirely appropriate considering your recent road trip.  I suppose that my reply will be not so much an examination as it is a “thinking-out-loud” type of musing as a result of your post.  Also, I have had no sleep – none, zero, zilch – in nearly 36 hours, and, while this is not a rare occurrence for me necessarily (well, compared to most folks, I would say), it does mean that I may ramble and – god forbid – make little to no sense in parts.  I hope that doesn’t happen, but you have been forewarned.  Feel free to call me out (I think we’re that “comfortable” now), and I’ll do my best to clarify or retract if I see, in a sleep-restored state, that I made no sense a’tall.  Of course, the truth is that there is no such thing as “sleep restoration” – you never get it back.  Do you realize how grim that actually sounds to me right now?  You cannot “catch up” on sleep.  You don’t regain lost shut-eye.  I think that I may end up shaving a good five years or so off of my life because of a nearly life-long (thus far) series of massive sleep droughts.  One of my buddies, a Navy special-ops guy, once told me that he and his cohorts believe that their initial training, (BUD/S) probably shaves time off of your clock, too.  I suppose in their case it would be worth it, considering the rewards they gain from going through with it, but in my case, it seems to only mean that I get more work done, which I can’t yet say will make me feel better about croaking earlier than I should have when that time comes.  Unless I die a fitting death, which I hope is getting torn apart by lions in the wilds of Kenya.  And now I’m rambling, so it’s time to refocus and actually try to formulate real thoughts…

 

One has to wonder, regarding Rousseau, if his ideas about the relationship between man and society were not heavily influenced, and therefore perhaps a bit biased by the societal treatment he received as a result of his behavior at various points, which conflicted heavily with the norms and expectancies of his time.  Because he was regarded as even a minimal public figure, his personal choices were, much like celebrities of today, on view for more than just the average circle of people most individuals hold close.  Even by today's standards, Rousseau would still be a cad, maybe more so.  Actually, undoubtedly so when you take into account the catapulting of his own children into an orphanage (technically needlessly).  His view that the development of societies only served to create in man unhealthy urges and longings seems lacking to me when you take basic human nature into account. 

 

Long before the advent of organized social structures, humans managed to turn what was once pure into evil, and what was once a given concept of moderation into gluttony and greed.  His philosophy has always seemed unreasonably fatalistic and naive.  Simply setting man apart from society in order to avoid some type of negative dependency or unhealthy comparison is unrealistic and silly.  Man will fuck up what man will fuck up, and as anyone that has half a brain can see, no amount of interaction or isolation, no amount of law or punishment, will quell this.  Self-sufficiency is a virtue of the highest order, but I cannot see where a bond with a number greater than oneself could be its undoing.  If everyone that participated in society actually behaved the way that Rousseau posited most eventually would, nothing would ever get accomplished, because the dependency that he railed against would render everyone impotent in action.  Everyone would be waiting for the other fellow men that they would be so dependent upon to invent and resolve.  As we all clearly know, however, this has not been the case entirely.  True, a good majority of people in civilized societies nowadays could be regarded as exceptionally lazy and far too dependent on technology, but these are merely by-products of the Industrial Revolution, which came about long after the entity known as organized “society” and doesn’t have to necessarily be viewed as a bad thing in and of itself.  It’s yet another perfect illustration that society as an idea does not have to be a negative thing, and there are people whose primary goal in life is only to improve man’s living conditions, not contribute to their deterioration through greed or inaction.  But people, bearing different personalities and motivations, can resolutely destroy even the best of intentions (as has happened with the wellspring of ideas and technology that the Industrial Revolution churned out and encouraged), and I daresay this has always been and always will be the case.  I suppose that what I’m basically trying to say is that one shouldn’t let a few bad apples spoil the entire bunch. 

 

On the other hand, Rousseau's beliefs that big government was bad for business (i.e. personal liberty) were right on.  In this instance, he was seeing the forest despite the trees, although there is a hint of contradiction in these beliefs because of his feelings concerning man and any sense of natural entitlement, to him a horrid disposition for mankind to possess on most any level.  But largely, he just seems to me to have been discontented and confused with his own station in life, and I think that his writings and concepts were a strong reflection of that.  His feeling that any government's main job was to create a palpable atmosphere of equality for everyone seems flawed to me, and will never be accomplished to perfection (just look to my country as a bad example of a democracy, for instance); he appears to want to ignore the vast differences and variances rampant among the human race.  No two people will view freedom and equality in the same way.  For a faceless, vast entity like a government to take on the task of ensuring a homogenous brand of freedom amongst its people is a contradiction.  In order for this idea to work, Big Brother must choose only one singular notion of freedom to implement and enforce.  There is no such thing.  Inevitably there will be scores upon scores of citizens displeased with its governing body's idea of freedom, because it will not correlate with their strongly-held sense of "right".  Rousseau's neo-utopian fantasy of "general will" required, whether spoken or unspoken, the trade-in of personal ownership and security for a type of pre-communist communism. 

 

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.  One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are".  According to whom?  Rousseau?  Did he acquire some type of secret, mythical unsurpassed knowledge concerning the desires and feelings of every member of the human race?  He issues this as a closed-end declaration, due to what I feel was massive insecurity on his part.  You can't very well successfully argue with such a statement and win; there is no way to prove or disprove that what he is saying is true.  Just as he can make this audacious statement, I can also offer a rebuttal like: "I assure you that not everyone in this world feels that they are in chains, or that they are a slave to anything - ideas or people".  One could counter from Rousseau's point that I was quite wrong, and that everyone was indeed in chains - but many of them were so blinded by the ills of clustered living near their fellow man (society) that they just didn't see their enslavement for what it was.  In fact, I would even go so far as to say that I'm not sure even he believed his own dribble unwaveringly.  Based upon his general outlook, I am not so sure that it would have been possible for Rousseau to truly believe that we are all born free.  He seems so convinced of our inescapable moral bankruptcy as a result of our near-automatic integration into society that I don't know if he could have honestly felt all that different from his fundamentalist Christian counterparts and their frenzied adherence to the maniacal doctrine of "original sin". 

 

Beyond that, there is a really generic phrase that basically everyone has heard at one time or another, but I have to bring it forth in regard to your question: “are not groups more fragile than strong individuals”?  To this I reply: “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups”.  On the other hand, take a man like Adolf Hitler, for example; although we all know that, technically, it was not him as one man, but with the aid of others like Goebbels, etc., Hitler nonetheless managed to hold an entire nation under his sway, even though he sounded like the goddamn maniac that he was.  I have tried to listen to recordings of him, entire speeches and rallies, and hear what the German people must have been hearing, because it cannot be the same thing that I hear, but to no avail.  Still, something in his theories resonated with the people at that time in history, and in the fragmented political climate and economy present at that time.  For all intensive historical purposes, “one man” managed to be stronger than an entire country.  This is a pretty stark realization, even all these years and blood-thirsty dictators later.  What is more useful?  Strength or knowledge?  Well, knowledge, obviously.  But not always the kind I think you’re speaking of.  Even a dummy can figure out a certain type of person and how to manipulate them.  Some of the dumbest idiots in the United States managed to become long-running serial killers, which required knowledge, although no kind that I ever care to acquire, thanks.  A trained monkey has the knowledge to perform any number of basic tasks.  And yet brute strength often manages to win over smarts.  Personally,  I think this just hearkens back to man’s primitive history, our “caveman” days; it never really leaves us, if you think about it, (which you obviously have or I wouldn’t be replying to this post).  We can take on any sort of affectation, manners, or genteel behaviors, but at our core we still salivate at the thought of red meat, sex, and violence (or maybe it’s just me).  Like the trained monkey I spoke of earlier, it can be conditioned out of a person to a certain degree, and I think some personality types are easier to mellow than others, but at the end of the day, we’re still savages.  Civilization does not necessarily remove or encourage this, as far as I’m concerned. 

 

A truly civil world?  Might make for a decent fictional piece, but I don’t think we’ll ever actually see it materialize.  What is civil, anymore?  What does the word mean to different people?  I can tell you that “civil” to the Aborigines, or the Pokot tribe in Africa, would not mean to them what it means to us.  Even within the same country, it will not mean the same thing to any two people.  In your case, it would appear that you are basically saying that, in a brief nutshell, “civil” is the concept of right overcoming brute might.  But who decides what “right” is?  What about the rest of the world?  If China decided one day that we were not only “wrong”, but dangerous to them, their military power has become sufficient enough (though many here may not want to see that), that they could feel it necessary to not only make it clear that they thought we were dead-wrong, they might also feel it necessary to physically drive their point home.  (Golly, this scenario sounds oddly familiar; oh!  That’s right!  My country’s fucking retarded President, I forgot!).  So since we know that never, at any time, will the entire globe truly adopt a policy of “right over might”, and yet hypothetically we on the North American continent would have, what do we decide then?  If we do nothing, well, then our civility remains in tact, but that may be about it.  If we retaliate and/or defend, then our previously-enjoyed philosophy is crushed.  Which all leads me back to an earlier point of mine: right triumphing over might is a lovely idea, but it will never happen, thanks to human nature’s inherent and ultimately destructive tendencies.  Does this mean we give up?  No, of course not.  Each generation does, hopefully, the best that they can to improve their part of the world, at the very least to maintain, if not to better it.  But I think we are limited when it comes to the grand scheme of things.  Evolution and natural selection help us out in some ways, killing off the weaker, limiting the amount of time each human has.  People think things are bad now as far as the world population and the environment; imagine if we lived a few hundred years apiece, which would most likely mean a longer period of fertility, which – lengthened fertility or not – would also mean a lot more reproduction going on.  No thanks.  I’m not trying to offer solutions in this reply, I need to make that clear.  I’m simply stating my views on the main issue of strength someday becoming less of a hot commodity.  I just don’t ever see that happening. 

 

Why should the wise bow to might?  Because unless they’re clever and flexibly adaptable enough to continuously and successfully DEFEND, they’ll get stomped, that’s why.  I’m not saying it’s right, but it is what it is.  You are very eloquent and quite on-target with your various descriptives of right and its characteristics, but perhaps therein lies part of the problem: there are a number of conditions that must be met in order for a particular “right” to become a truly universal “right”.  These are very, very rarely met.  Defining “right” could take eons; brandishing an AK-47 or a machete in someone’s face can accomplish mountains of work in a matter of a few seconds, and there usually isn’t much argument at all.  (Just ask the Hutus and the Tutsis).  Again – it isn’t RIGHT, but it’s reality.  I can’t argue with much of what you said at all, but I can simply respond with: “It ain’t happening, and here’s why I think it ain’t”.  You noted that anytime we as humankind perceive a dire threat, we get to work making it disappear; this is true, but it’s also, once again, ingrained in our nature.  That’s the whole point, to survive.  But not only to survive, to try to thrive, each in our own little corners.  We may be small pieces of a larger whole (society), but most of us are also still quite private and self-concerned.  Not necessarily self-sufficient, mind you – but definitely self-absorbed.  It’s not popular to actually admit that, but it’s true.  Technology, which has made many lazi-ER, has also served to separate many people from others around them.  This is not news, but then it shouldn’t be.  It never should have been.  This is humanity.  This is what people do.  There are things that I see in others that makes me literally want to vomit, but who the fuck am I?  I determine “right” in my own little universe.  I could never as one woman MAKE an entire country agree with me.  Adolf had the MAJORITY snowed, but there were also many dissenters.  The individual as capable of truly duping a massive population is a myth; an individual influencing ENOUGH people, however, which would constitute a GROUP – they become very powerful then indeed.  Individuality is mostly an illusion, and this is clearly evidenced by how much emphasis we Westernized countries just LOVE to place on individualism.  It’s why marketing is such big business.  It’s partially why punk has managed to sink, even shallowly, into the mainstream.  Everyone wants to be “different” and “unique”.  There is another stupid saying: “Sure, you’re unique…just like everyone else”.  Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it?  It is true that, in a perfect world, might could never outwit the question of “why”?, but then, this is not a perfect world.  When will the 100 or so men responsible for global relations ask the question?  When will there be a sizeable enough part of the population rearing up and putting enough pressure on these same men to ask the question in the first place?  A few cannot do this.  The politics that would be irreversibly harmed by this being done influence and hold power over too many vital arteries these days.  And too many civilians.  Might wins because it is rarely challenged.  This is why fairy tales are just that – fairy tales; in real life, good doesn’t usually win, and right doesn’t generally even get consulted.  Whoever has the bigger guns and the bigger caches of green wins.  This has gone on since the beginning of time, whether you believe it all began with Adam and Eve, or whether you believe like Darwin.  Only the currency has changed.  Your thoughts…

Now that's what I call a reply. 

I half-ass nothing!

i’m a firm believer that our earth days should be at least 30 hours long...  that’d make the compromise of sleep much easier to swallow...  (on a side note, and i’m not trying to start anything here, just being honest, i really do think the ramones suck ass, though i couldn’t write a blog about why i think so, because i know next to nothing about them because they suck...)

 

i believe you about wanting to die getting torn apart by lions, and i respect that desire...  if we had a choice between that and dying in our sleep, why not get one last bizarre experience under our belt?  i always tell peeps i’d rather be eaten alive by a great white shark than die in my sleep...  before i faded to black i’d get to know what it felt like to have no legs, or abdomen, or whatever...  plus, humans have dicked around with all top predators too much, so it really would be poetic justice (although that justice would be short-lived due to the fact that our deaths would probably spark a mass-murdering of all lions/sharks within a thousand mile radius of the one that got us...)

 

rousseau’s beef was definitely with human nature...  i think he saw society as a natural extension of it, and wanted to change them both...  he knew that most wrongs are totally avoidable and are the results of consistent bad decisions, and he wanted to put his finger on the mechanism that leads us to make bad decisions...  his awareness of right and wrong did not omit him from doing wrong, but it did put his conscience to work...  i don’t think he attacked society out of bitterness or revenge, i think a wealth of factors made him see its faults, and he simply wanted to bring these to light to give future generations a head start/something to work with...  and he was more than just a critic, he offered alternatives wherever he could...  i think he set man apart from society so he could brainstorm up a society that was better suited to man’s good nature...  he was searching for an ideal society, one that would bring out the best in all of us...  he was worried by the fact that society seemed hopelessly static, and he didn’t want to sit back and watch it become a runaway train...  everything in nature is dynamic and i think he wanted society to be likewise, a thing in a constant state of improvement...  and sure, sometimes in order to improve we have to take steps backwards and make mistakes, etc etc, but as long as we learn from our fuck-ups, they are just as valuable as our triumphs...  i think he was pissed to see nations and individuals making the same mistakes time and time again, and he wanted to nip that shit in the bud...  society is inevitable, a good society is not...  i think rousseau realized that many people in his society who were generally regarded as good apples were actually doing more harm than good, and he wanted to bring this to light...  there will always be really bad apple-types (though ideally fewer and fewer as time goes on), the hard-core criminals and selfish degenerates, but rousseau was trying to make people see that there were wolves in sheep’s clothing in abundance in every corner of society...  maybe he was one of those wolves, maybe not, but either way he knew that our societies excel at masking truths and leading people to faulty assumptions...  now i’ll interject this thought with a shakespeare quote (my favourite) that sums up how me, he, and rousseau view the over-arching hypocrisy in our societies:

 

“thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!

why dost thou lash that whore?  strip thine own back.

thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind

for which thou whippest her.  the usurer hangs the cozener.

through tattered clothes small vices do appear;

robes and furred gowns hide all.  plate sin with gold,

and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks,

arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it.” 

 

dig?  one’s social standing denotes nothing particular about them beyond their social standing, which has no bearing on the make-up of one’s character...  rousseau saw that people were getting lazy in that they were letting the arbitrary beast that is society replace their better judgement...  people in societies become dependent on them to tell them good from bad, but societies are voiceless, lifeless things, without consciences or principles (except for a handful of laws that outline blatant transgressions)...  i think rousseau (or maybe i am just speaking for myself now, i haven’t read all that much rousseau, but i think i might have gotten the gist of where he was coming from...) wanted to see more heart in society, he wanted it to reflect and magnify our best qualities, instead of just justifying all of our qualities...  society shouldn’t simply provide a forum for all things good and bad...  it needs more balls, always has...  either that or it needs less influence...  “man will fuck up what man will fuck up”... true, but society has to extract some use/goodness even out of our fuck-ups, so fucking-up does not become the norm...  our mistakes must be understood to be mistakes...  societies lack the mechanisms to distinguish right from wrong, so they serve and reward and give creedence to bad apples along with the good...

 

i don’t think jj could have found a station in life that would have brought him peace and contentedness...  his type is never satisfied, knowing there is always more that can be done... 

 

the role of government is to establish what ties bind all its people, and protect the integrity of those ties...  the commonalities between all people are greater than the differences between any people...  we all desire the same fundamental things...  we all have the same rights...  and we are all distracted to a point where we confuse rights with priviledges...  freedom should not be homogeneous, but it should have parameters...  societies pussy-foot around these parameters because the people who conjure up societies’ laws are pussies...  self-interested, powerful people who want to maintain their positions of power above all else...  so they invariably create loop-holes for other like-minded sods...  i guess what i’m saying is that societies tend to lack true accountability for people at every “level” of society...  people are only held accountable for a requisite number of blatant offences...  so how do we create a society with more rules AND more freedom?  that’s the million dollar question...  excellent...  you mentioned communism...  i sensed our discourse was headed in that direction...  one thing all governments should always be is subject to change due to popular demand...  right should never have to be enforced with an iron fist, and if it is, it immediately becomes wrong...  many people see communism as the opposite of a democracy in which everything is permitted so long as one’s willing to risk losing everything...  what rights and freedoms, in your perception of a communist state, would automatically be negated?  what does communism stand against?  the right to own five hummers?  the right to become a billionaire?  the right to bear arms?  have i ever told you about my crazy idea of implementing a maximum wage?  what harm would having a maximum wage do?  owners of relatively big businesses, who rake in more profits than they are legally entitled to have, would be forced to invest in their business by hiring more people to share the wealth with (or just give their current employees frequent raises which could only serve to enhance the living standards/contentedness of those people and make for a loyal, dedicated workforce...), to make their business environmentally sustainable, or to give a higher percentage of their money to charity or to their government...  sure this would dissuade many from becoming big-business barons, but this is good as smaller businesses tend to have greater ties to the communities in which they operate, and would thus operate more conscientiously to enhance the well-being of their community...  shit would have to be a bit more expensive, but shit’s ecological footprint would diminish significantly...  also, such a system would better ensure that people do what they do for the right reasons...  if many professions had comparable wages, people would be more inclined to pursue their passions as opposed to pursuing the biggest paycheque possible...  and i’ve always believed that vital industries like energy, health, insurance, banking, and infrastructure maintenance should be the sole realm of government, so if you forsee there being a shortage of people with dreams of becoming manufacturers of industrial lubricants in such a system, i say put industrial lubricant manufacturing in the hands of the government, or at least offer incentives and subsidies to those willing to become industrial lube manufacturers... 

 

full-out communism is inhuman...  too extreme...  too machine-like...  but we do need more limits on what constitutes freedom, non?  i don’t think anyone deserves to buy whatever they can afford...  one’s freedom should not be circumscribed by one’s bank account, because one’s bank account does not account for the damage that one does (to the freedom of others, present and future) in the pursuit of a fat bank account...  do you think i’m just saying this because i’m accustomed to making $10 an hour?  no way...  and in the same way i don’t think rousseau attacked society because it didn’t reward him in a way he considered he warranted...  i think he would have admitted it at some point, if his attacks were motivated by a personal grudge...  is that naive?

 

aspects of communism are good, aspects of democracy are good, neither is all good or all bad...  i like the idea of big government, but i’m an idealist/optimist...  i think government could and should be bigger and better...  here’s a question and a half for you:  which statement is truer: a) everyone is the same, or b) everyone is different?  i think we both know how both of us would answer that, but i’m just fishing for some clarification... 

 

about your “man is born free...” quote, i agree with it, because i think that the man who thinks himself the master of others is a slave to his delusions...  i think possession and mastery in general are delusions...  i never make people throw me cash for weed i smoke them for that very reason, i don’t see it as mine to sell...  it just IS...  the man who thinks himself master of others could also be said to be a slave to his desire to master others, or a slave to his pride and arrogance...  i think the man who sees himself as a master of men would be the insecure one, having to see himself as more than just a man in order to feel pride/joy/purpose/power/whatever...  people who need some high station in society to use as a crutch to support their insecurities, to make them feel important, are all slaves of this need...  there are no true masters of people...  sure some people prefer to follow in the footsteps of others (or are compelled by law to do so), but that is a choice that people make for any number of reasons...  a choice...  an expression of freedom...  one can choose to TRY to master others, but such a choice hinges on the willingness of others to be mastered...  one who sees himself as master does not understand the nature of freedom...  so maybe that guy would be the slave of his ignorance too...  and about your rebuttal to rousseau, don’t you think that everyone in the world would admit that they are slaves to certain things (hunger, time, love, beauty, etc)?

 

did rousseau really consider society to be man’s exclusive source of corruption?  i thought he would’ve given human nature more credit...  i’ve always considered our societies to be pretty obvious extensions of human nature...  where else could they have come from?  maybe he put human nature on too high a pedestal...  people with power and wealth tend to try to maintain that shit, even at the expense of others...  this is, as i see it, the guiding light of our societies...  people do not want to lose what they feel they possess, and people want to possess more than what they feel they possess...  c’est sa, non?  consume or decline, kill or be killed, master or be mastered...  fuck    that    shit. 

 

i think hitler was simply a crazed opportunist...  he preyed on people’s hunger, desperation, and hopelessness, and turned it into hate and arrogance...  the germans wanted a master and he wormed his way into that role somehow...  wow...  solid paragraph...  i definitely agree with your caveman assertion...  “mankind is three missed meals away from anarchy.”  when are stomachs are grumbling we begin to see cute little bunny rabbits and graceful bucks and does and such in a very different light than usual...  when our hormones are cranked up, we see each other in a different than usual light, and likewise when our anger is piqued or our security threatened (or made to seem that way on tv)...  we are still cavemen...  take any kid from back in the cave days and raise them now and they’d be more or less like anyone else...  our species has been pretty static for tens of thousands of years as far as i can tell...  it is too easy to feel the call of the wild still, in spite of our societies and other distractions... 

 

there have to be some universal “rights”, non?  when i speak of “right” i mean stuff that transcends cultures and time and opinion...  what is right?  to cause as little suffering as possible.  couldn’t everyone agree on this?  (yes, that would mean that we’d all have to become vegans, but hey, the alleviation of suffering warrants some sacrifice...  (and if you’re thinking of bringing plants into this fray, go ahead, i’ve got an ace up my sleeve for that one...))...  maybe brandishing an AK causes more problems than it solves... 

 

fuck, i gotta go, but i made it to the last paragraph and i’ll finish responding to it ASAP...  this was a good one...  sorry for waiting a bit to get back to you on it, but i had to catch up on others (i read your global nastiness blog btw, and it was really top-notch stuff...  i’ve got a few words to say about it too, in good time...) and when i saw the breadth of it i wanted to save it for a time when i had some time...  kind of in the same way i save certain books for a later date, knowing that i’ll never get to read them again for the first time...  peace out yo                            

Good god!  Do you know how long it's going to take me to sit down and respond in the appropriate fashion?  I hope you're proud of yourself!  You should be!  I do believe that you outwinded me entirely.  I can't say when I will have the shot returned, but I'll try to work on it throughout the next few days.  There is so much information contained just within your reply that my brain went into overload reading it.  Again, I hope you're pleased with yourself. 

That emoticon is creepy as fuck.  I kinda like it!

"brevity is the soul of wit"...  or so shakespeare says...  i guess that makes us a couple of donkeys eh? 

i dig what you're saying (in the last paragraph), but still feel uncompromisingly that right should never bow to might...  sure, right might lose the occasional battle, or every battle, but winning in the short term doesn't really matter...  like william wallace's pa said in braveheart: "we don't have to beat them [the mighty english], just fight them."  such is the case with right vs might...  if right/wisdom just rolled over and died in the face of might, pretty soon there wouldn't be any right/wisdom worth fighting for...  people all have short-term memories, remember...  as long as right's around it's a threat to might, and an alternative to might...  people need to know there are alternatives in order to keep hope alive...  sappy but true... 

also, i think there are universal truths...  like, it's right to create as little suffering as possible...  and it's right to create as much of the opposite of suffering (sustainability/peace/harmony...) as possible...  i don't think there are many out there who would disagree with that...  do you? 

might can only take us so far...  we can only thrive so much using it as a tool...  then it will become obsolete and drag everything down with it (and this has been happening for hundreds of years)...  right is a threat to might, but not a threat to life...  sure, we each define right for ourselves, but don't you think there are common threads in everyone's definition?  it's easy to filter the personal rights out of the collective rights...  whatever everyone agrees upon is collective...  if we have to use very simple, seemingly abstract, terms to get everyone to agree on something, so be it...  start there...  i think the internet is an immensely useful tool in this abstract, foggy war...  it allows like-minded people to unite in their like-mindedness, regardless of where they're situated...  it provides anyone who's interested with the opportunity to check in on ongoing right vs might battles around the world, and offer whatever support they can...  sure it's disheartening to see right lose time and time again, but it is hopeful to see that it's still in the fight...  your thoughts?