Trust, Power and War

Society is built on trust. Everyday, we trust other people to be honest and do their work truthfully so that everybody else has a certain level of security. On the plane, you trust that the pilot will get you safely to the desired destination. At home, you trust that electricity will be provided faithfully. And yet, when these trusts are broken, there emerges from the depths of society the unruly tension and chaos that underlies all human existence. What happens when the plane is hijacked? And when the lights go out for good? What happens when a miscalculation causes a building to collapse on top of hordes of innocent and unsuspecting people? Therefore, if trust is so fundamentally important, why is it that the people who rule nations, who make the important decisions, who pick and chose in an almost totalitarian manner the lives of their citizens, are the ones who are the most untrustworthy?

Honest politicians? That's an oxymoron. And yet, we must admit that it is in human nature to make mistakes. You and I make them everyday and are always anxious to be forgiven and allowed another chance to prove ourselves. But the mistakes made by politicians have macabre and extensive consequences. War, terrorism, totalitarianism, massacres - these have all been attributes of government policies (not neccessarily mistakes) in the past. So what exactlly is the problem here? It is not the fact that politicians make mistakes, they are human, they are naturally prone to do so. The problem lies in their power. If their power was not so great, their mistakes would not have such grave and large-scale impacts. While George Bush and his cabinet may have made a mistake (or so they claim now that it is strategically useful to do so) in invading Iraq and forcing modern imperialism on the basis of non-existant weapons of mass destruction, this mistake would not have been possible had the president of the United States been attributed a lesser lever of power.

We must question then, why there are a few, elite individuals making the choices and decisions for a society? Why can the society not do so itself? America is just one extreme example of this hidden dictatorship, and it is one that we should hope we shall not see emerge in our own respective countries.

What is the solution? The solution is a society where everyone works for the better good of everyone else. Where everyone has a voice and that voice is loud and clear, not feeble and ignored as it tends to be in the nations of today. And the demoliton of singular power would aid this cause greatly. We cannot trust individuals to make the decisions for us - we must make them ourselves, collectively. And though this may seem a herculean feat, it can be achieved, through the highest form of democracy - but only once absolute equality is an established and consistent feature of society.

R.A.P