Originally posted by: Foucaults-qalam
@ nietzsche Again the subject of very long diatribes, so perhaps this is not the best forum. State-sponsored interventions by the UK and all othe nations ( including India) are all, without exception, led by real politik than any moral, altruistic code. But society is not equal to state. if it makes any difference, the civil protest against the war during the Blair years was one of the largest the country has seen.
Does this highlight the problems in representative democracy? Yes.
But does this disallow us to conflate state with society? Again, yes.
Societies are not made by states, not even in democratic systems. UK society, ever since the Magna Carta, has taken on board, accidentally, organically, and perhaps unintentionally, the best ideas of the Enlightenment, without its naivete. It is conflicted and imperfect and flawed, but evolving.
Did it allow Empire to flourish and perpetuate a diseased ideology that still has hold over billions? Yes.
But it also allowed for protest against Empire within itself at a time when in most societies this would have been impossible.And most importantly, relies on encouraging the primacy of individual thought. Very weirdly, it is more similar to Buddhist doctrines re the individual than Protestant or CoE ones.
So what I am saying while being extremely sleep-deprived and on my stupid touch screen keyboard is that human societies have been pretty horrible till now. We haven't got a successful model to follow. We've got to make one. And I have come to the conclusion that organised religion cannot be a state or media-supported component of any civilised society.
