Vivat Libertas

Apparently, ideas are dangerous. In a way it sort of makes sense; an idea is, essentially, a plan or model for doing something. If that plan or model is developed and then carried out, it could...ahem...upset people, from the grey shades too frightened of change to even consider it to the people who have vested interests in resisting certain changes. And ideas are intangible, so (the line of reasoning goes) you can't kill them/evict them/whatever the slogan is at the moment. "Books, pamphlets, newspapers, plays are burned" Pardon my cynicism and my bad language, but bollocks to that. (Actually, that's probably an insult to bollocks.) Ideas can and will die; people are silenced or killed, or they simply change their minds. Books, pamphlets, newspapers, plays are burned, locked away, or forgotten; people, too, forget, as do ages. Music dies and disintegrates. Art fades. Maybe some future generations happen to chance upon those ideas, but few seriously revive the...

My head is a weird place - oh, it's weird enough just by virtue of sitting on top of my neck, but what goes on inside it is even weirder. I spin wild, ludicrous stories there, fragments of ideas and scenarios flashing into my head. Memories, breaths of memories, touch the surface of my mind. One did so last night, as I went to bed...I remembered an English lesson, one we'd had last term, I think, a group discussion. I fucking hate those things. Not because I hate discussing things, but because I hate groups  - there's nothing quite like a committee of stupid, uninformed people for obstructing progress. And there are a lot of stupid, uninformed opinions flying around. We tried having an open discussion, I remember, where everyone was equal and we were left to self-govern. Nothing happened. Nobody wanted to discuss anything, so the teacher loudly and proudly crowed that we needed a leader, and promptly appointed someone to exercise this role. I countered that if we'd ...

Something I've noticed more and more, and something I really should have been seeing less and less of, is that even though we're supposed to have a democracy - you know, rule by the people and all that - most people are very passive. They put faith in their elected leaders and in the unelected corporations who, directly or indirectly, run much of the world, trusting that these smart people know what they're doing. Well, the financial crisis should have put paid to that notion, but some people just don't learn... ...I've noticed something else as well. Quite a lot of these people are hung up on the notion of personal responsibility, which once upon a time used to mean acting wisely and is now an excuse to blame the oppressed for their situation. Yet they're not willing to take responsibility for themselves or their society; they're not willing to stand up for themselves or for other people, because they think that it's not their place to do so. In a...