Purpose of Government is Our Decision

It occurs to me that part of the political issue today between liberals and conservatives, or however people wish to categorize themselves, is that there is a fundemental undercurrent of misunderstanding about the purpose of government in the first place.

Bootie Cosgrove-Mather in an article titled The Purpose Of Government for CBS said:

"Call me old-fashioned, but I still hold with the ancient Greeks who said government has only one purpose, to improve the lives of citizens."

USHistory.org's article The  Purposes of Government says:

"Why do governments exist? One major reason is that they create rules. But what rules are necessary or desirable?"

Originally governments were started to protect the people. Once that is established and effective, government's purpose expands as a natural course of evolution. After having solidified its ability to protect it turns internal, taking on the actions of making the citizenry work more fluidly, enhancing and further protecting the citizens. Making the citizens more productive and enhancing the quality of their lives as a natural and necessary evolution of the purpose of government.

At some point part of the purpose of government is to maintain and protect, the government itself. Then comes a need for balance between the citizens and the government being protected. For the government to protect itself under the mistaken belief that it is more important than the citizens because IT appears to be the citizens, is a confused point of view that has led to entities such as the Soviet Union with it's leadership abuses, Communist China, North Korea, and so on.

It is not unlike the need in a company or corporation, for balance between security and business. Perfect security denies all business. Perfect business eliminates security. Too much of one destroys the other, just as too little of one can destroy the other. 

It is a balance. Just as our Founding Fathers understood and so built into the United States of America, appropriate checks and balances. In protecting the people from the government and the government branches from one another the society as a whole is protected from and within itself. 

When the initial elements of protecting the citizens and the government have been accomplished, and the basic elements involved in enhancing citizen's productivity and quality of life are in place, it is only natural that the government, as strong as it  should be by this point, would continue to strive to find more and better ways to enhancement society. Without getting in the way of the citizens needs and desires and to continue to find new ways to be more productive for the citizens in its attempt always to be considering enhancements to its purpose as time marches on.

That means that government needs to protect the citizens, the individual units from large collectives such as citizen groups and businesses and corporations. It means that rather than allowing itself to be propped up by big money, it recognizes that and takes steps to fix itself, continuing to protect its citizenry.

From time to time any entity needs to reflect, to reevaluate its original purpose, to review if that is truly what it is still doing. By that concept, people should not be working more hours for less, but less hours for more. They should be paying less for more and better healthcare.

If at some point the care by the government reaches the pinnacle of no one needing to work, because they have finally been freed up to do what they wish, it is not for others who think work is the only way to live, to judge and apply their beliefs onto others. If and when the government should be able to support that.

If the government is on that path and at some point it changes direction, someone needs to look to see why that is happening, who or what caused it, and how to get back on track. 

When people have reached a point that they no longer have to work, or even more so, no longer have to work in jobs they find despicable, it doesn't mean people will no longer need to work but that our orientation as a nation has morphed into allowing people to find what they enjoy doing and pursue that. Be it in the arts, sciences, labor force, or what have you.

My personal belief is that work enhances people's lives. If one is doing the right work for who they are.

Not however the kind of work many of us are currently being forced to do now a days. Not the stress and numbers of hours required per week for a family to be able to support themselves. Not the need of some families who have to have two jobs, three, four or five jobs when there was once a time when only one person needed to have a job to support their family. When they didn't have to work unreasonable days each week if not all, and too many hours per day.

We should not be working more than eight hours a day, more than five days a week and yet, many of us are. We have been hearing how we are slackers, lazy if we don't work twelve hour days five, days a week.

Yet we should be striving hard toward working less days and hours per week. We should be striving toward four day work weeks, six hour days. We should be working half days at full pay so two people could do the work of what one person is doing now. Those are directions, goals, we should be considering, working toward.

People may scoff at that contention. But they scoff because of how things are, not because of how things could be. The reason things cannot be that way now is because of how big money has brainwashed us all to think it's not possible. All while corporations and the very wealthy syphon off all the money so there is so very little left for the masses. 

We have to decide first, just what do we want the purpose of our government to be?

Then we can make that happen. 

Try, try again...but, Try.

Is there really a greater threat to human progress than the fear of the unknown, the fear of fear itself?

For it leads to one second guessing oneself,
to the point of inaction, when action is needed;
to fighting to maintain the status quo, at all costs even when it's the wrong thing to do;
it leads to conservationism (and of late) to Republicanism, to fundamentalism,
all out of fear of change,
of progress,
of taking a calculated risk,
of offering oneself the opportunity of succeeding and thereby,
excelling, of raising both yourself and your fellows
out of the muck and mire of what is,
into the possibilities of what could be.

Alfred Lord Tennyson said:
"'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

And so it is... better to have tried and failed,
than never to have tried at all.

T.S. Eliot spoke of being

  .   "Only undefeated
  Because we have gone on trying..."

Or as the Zen master Adam Richman of "Man v. Food" put it:

"He looked his destiny in the face, and he ate it."

That reminds me of a film I shot for a couple of Professor's at my university on Phenomenology toward my degree in Psychology wherein there is a section that says (to paraphrase):
"When we meet, we eat one another."
Of course I meant that metaphorically.

Then this....

Some say risk nothing, try only for the sure thing,
Others say nothing gambled nothing gained,
Go all out for your dream.
Life can be lived either way, but for me,
I'd rather try and fail, than never try at all, you see.

Some say "Don't ever fall in love,
Play the game of life wide open,
Burn your candle at both ends."
But I say "No! It's better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all, my friend."

When many moons have gone by,
And you are alone with your dreams of yesteryear,
All your memories will bring you cheer.
You'll be satisfied, succeed or fail, win or lose,
Knowing the right path you did choose.

-William F. O'Brien

The world is there for you to live in, not for the world to live in you, or to usurp your life. But for you to use it as a vehicle to expand, enhance, experience.

But you have to take hold of it, of Life, and never let go.

Then on occasion whipcrack it to your intentions.

"Qu'est-ce que le cinema?"

"What is film?" Director Jean Renoir used to ask his friends before viewing one of his films. He would say that movies are more than mere flashing images on the screen. That, "they are an art form that becomes larger than life."

As is cinema, so is your life.

Should you choose to allow it to be so, anyway. When life goes against you, try harder, do something different. Make it, interesting.

Especially when it is trying to do the same to you.

Don't just live life, don't just exist, don't just survive.
Eat it, love it, immerse yourself it it.
Make love to it.

And it will love you back.

Allow me to close on a passage from the great Syd Field's must read screenwriting book, Screenplay, The Foundation of Screenwriting:

"I've learned there are two or three times during a lifetime when something happens that alters the course of that life. We meet someone, we go somewhere, or we do something we've never done before, and those moments are the possibilities that guide us to where we're supposed to go and what we're supposed to do with our lives...I've learned not to believe too much in luck or accidents; I think everything happens for a reason. There's something to be learned from every moment, every experience we encounter during the brief time we spend on this planet. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it what you will; it really doesn't matter."

According to Field, auteur director Jean Renoir whom he once knew, son of the famous painter Renoir, used to tell them that, "Art, should offer the viewer the chance of merging with the creator."

How does one do that? How do you go about sharing with others you will never meet, a chance to merge with the creator of what they are viewing?

What matters in all of that is what you do with it.

Recognize it when it happens. When those moments of greatness are offered to you and then make good use of what you have experienced, of what you have hopefully learned. Then share all that in a way that others can "see" what you are trying to tell them, to share with them.

Now. Go out and be brilliant!

NOTE: Last night I was updating this blog, mostly about at the top and I twas going well. There is a nuance of this software where if you paste something it selects a group of text. I dropped down, typed some more then realized all the text at the top was gone. I quickly existed and reentered and it was gone permanently. This has happened a lot when I use my laptop and not just here. It's very annoying. I just wish software would allow me to lock it into writing mode so that only typing words would be allowed as other functions crop up if you have the wrong key accidentally. Usually CTRL Z will save it or some other thing (like quickly existing and re-entering a document but when it autosaves (it had looked like it hadn't saved) you're lost. I just wanted you to know, this blog was a better blog with more elements about Jean Renoir but I was so frustrated with what happened I just left it as the original. I've had this happen with entire blogs so that I got used to using Notepad and copying and pasting but when you're just updating you sometimes mistakenly believe it will be okay, and then...it's not. My apologies for the blog you may never see. Though I may try to update it sometime this week when the pain of the event passes. It's just hard when you word something well and lose it, then when you redo it, it never seems to be as good as what you had originally done because at that moment you had been inspired.
I've told this story before but back in the late 1980s I had a dual 5.25" floppy drive system, no hard drives yet on home PCs. The left side was the OS disk, the right, the document disk. If one or the other filled, you lose everything. I had sat one afternoon in my living room and written a short story that I felt was the most perfect short story I had ever written. I went to save and it said, the horrid, "Disk Full" warning. I sat there for an hour, frustrated, angry, depressed, trying anything to save it until finally I realized my only recourse was to reboot, then write as fast as I could to reclaim all that I could remember. I was able to rewrite the story from memory, but not with the exact wording, and so it was never as good as that period of writing with inspiration, after re-writing it with a period of frustration and sadness. Computers. Our best friend and sometimes our worst enemies.