The majority starts with a minority. None of the latest trends happened overnight. Body piercing is one example. Punx and freaks have been piercing each other silly since the late 70s. Usually with safety pins. Now look at how many people have body piercings. Not to mention the number of people that dye their hair odd colours.
It starts with you and me. If you're not willing to try to make the change, then there will be no change.
"You tell me that nothing matters,
You're just fucking scared...
...You tell me that I make no difference,
Well at least I'm fucking trying;
What the fuck have you done?
It's in my eyes, in my eyes
And it doesn't look that way to me
In my eyes..."
- Minor Threat
If you don't try, then there's no chance of you changing people's minds. Period.
Humans by nature are what we make them. The plain fact that you point out that humans are lazy and ignorant means you will raise your kids to be the same way, because you feel there is nothing you can do to change it. That in itself is ignorance.
I consider myself to be caring (possibly to a negative degree) and at least aware of the fact that there are two sides to every coin, so to say. I know a lot of people out there, whether they use the Net or not, feel the same way.
The reason you'll find many people don't do as much as the could or even want to could be due to oppression, lack of support, apathy of that subject from others, etc. Let's face it, different people have different tastes, and just because not everyone won't hop on your bandwagon doesn't mean you should stop the crusade. There are other people who care about the same issues you do, they just feel overwhelmed by the vast nature of politics in general.
To give you some examples of people that give a crap about something and have made people see their way of thinking:
United Students Against Sweatshops;
Anti-Racist Action;
Political/Social based bands & artists like Jello Biafra, Minor Threat, Strife, Fugazi, etc.
Look at the conferences at Ottawa, Seattle, Quebec City, Vancouver where people have come in the thousands to protest something they feel is wrong.
Granted the average person probably feels trapped, like it's something they couldn't do. Or even something that doesn't tickle their fancy, but the more knowledge they have about things, the more they learn to care about it. Knowledge isn't simply the presentation of information, it's a process of learning. If you can teach these people why to care, then they will. They obviously won't care if you don't teach them anything. And if you don't care to teach them, then you're propagating the ignorance that you're accusing of the rest of the world.
I have a small problem with your reasoning for saying that communism cannot work due to "human nature." The very words "human nature" are in itself an oxymoron, as we define everything we build and do as "man-made" or "artificial." If ou subscribe to this line of thinking, then the words "human" and "nature" should not apply to each other, because as is pointed out, there is nothing "natural" about humans. If all we create and do is artifical, then there is no nature to humans. It is synthetically created by us, for us. So-called "human nature" is more than likely a learned condition that we have passed down to our children for thousands of generations out of a need to survive. After that need had passed and we could live comfortably, there were a few approaches. The "strongest shall survive" in Europe became very popular as feudalism took form. However, if we look into the history of the Native Americans, you'll see that they took a very communal approach, with no real governing body (anarcho-syndicalism). A communistic form of anarchy. Granted, they were technologically lacking, and they did fight amongst themselves, but all in all, a very realizable dream to the modern man. So if we have seen anarcho-syndicalism, which is even more difficult to implement than communsim, why is communism not possible? Granted it still can't happen overnight or maybe not even in a decade. But it is a dream that can be realized. Not impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
It starts with you and me. If you're not willing to try to make the change, then there will be no change.
If you don't try, then there's no chance of you changing people's minds. Period.
Humans by nature are what we make them. The plain fact that you point out that humans are lazy and ignorant means you will raise your kids to be the same way, because you feel there is nothing you can do to change it. That in itself is ignorance.
I consider myself to be caring (possibly to a negative degree) and at least aware of the fact that there are two sides to every coin, so to say. I know a lot of people out there, whether they use the Net or not, feel the same way.
The reason you'll find many people don't do as much as the could or even want to could be due to oppression, lack of support, apathy of that subject from others, etc. Let's face it, different people have different tastes, and just because not everyone won't hop on your bandwagon doesn't mean you should stop the crusade. There are other people who care about the same issues you do, they just feel overwhelmed by the vast nature of politics in general.
To give you some examples of people that give a crap about something and have made people see their way of thinking:
United Students Against Sweatshops;
Anti-Racist Action;
Political/Social based bands & artists like Jello Biafra, Minor Threat, Strife, Fugazi, etc.
Look at the conferences at Ottawa, Seattle, Quebec City, Vancouver where people have come in the thousands to protest something they feel is wrong.
Granted the average person probably feels trapped, like it's something they couldn't do. Or even something that doesn't tickle their fancy, but the more knowledge they have about things, the more they learn to care about it. Knowledge isn't simply the presentation of information, it's a process of learning. If you can teach these people why to care, then they will. They obviously won't care if you don't teach them anything. And if you don't care to teach them, then you're propagating the ignorance that you're accusing of the rest of the world.
I have a small problem with your reasoning for saying that communism cannot work due to "human nature." The very words "human nature" are in itself an oxymoron, as we define everything we build and do as "man-made" or "artificial." If ou subscribe to this line of thinking, then the words "human" and "nature" should not apply to each other, because as is pointed out, there is nothing "natural" about humans. If all we create and do is artifical, then there is no nature to humans. It is synthetically created by us, for us. So-called "human nature" is more than likely a learned condition that we have passed down to our children for thousands of generations out of a need to survive. After that need had passed and we could live comfortably, there were a few approaches. The "strongest shall survive" in Europe became very popular as feudalism took form. However, if we look into the history of the Native Americans, you'll see that they took a very communal approach, with no real governing body (anarcho-syndicalism). A communistic form of anarchy. Granted, they were technologically lacking, and they did fight amongst themselves, but all in all, a very realizable dream to the modern man. So if we have seen anarcho-syndicalism, which is even more difficult to implement than communsim, why is communism not possible? Granted it still can't happen overnight or maybe not even in a decade. But it is a dream that can be realized. Not impossible.