Thursday, May 21, 2009

People are only human

I could have started off with "To err is human", but the truth really is that to err then cover it up and blame someone else is human. It's sad that the default reaction of people to mistakes is

1) Hide it
2) Deny it
3) Admit it

and this applies to so much in life we barely register it. It's always someone else's fault, now if you're in power this means firing someone; if you're not then there's little way to vent your frustration. So how would you feel if someone turned up and said "You're right it wasn't your fault it's someone else's"? Well sadly being human we'd problem feel quite justified.

And this is what every political party does. They all take a bunch of powerless people who are angry at the way society currently runs and say "It's someone else's fault"; then once hooked they reel you in by telling you exactly who to blame be it 'foreigners', the EU, the wealthy, the poor, the religious, the non-religious. They'll all blame someone who's not like you.

It's not your fault you're unemployed it's those foreign workers taking those jobs you didn't want to do. It's the bankers fault for the crash, not the fact you wanted cheap loans and 110% mortgages. It's the MPs fault for the faithlessness in politics, not yours for voting them in or not bothering to vote at all. It's not my fault my business fell it's all the red tape I have to deal with.

It's all someone else's fault and I'll tell you whose. I'll deal with it all for you if you just give me the power; just vote for me.

2 comments:

Orphi said...

In summary: Politicians are good at manipulating people.

IIRC, it was Douglas Adams who remarked that the best people to be leaders are the people who don't want to be leaders, for precisely this reason.

To quote Adams: “In short, people are a problem.”

FlipC said...

The best person for any job in power is the one who doesn't want it.

One of the general points of a demarchy is that it selects 'rulers' by random. Other methods involve drawing a name at random from those who put themselves forward or from those put forward by others, or simply counting names from those put forward.