OK – I did not look up the quote exactly: if I picked up the book, I’d end up reading it (again) instead of writing this post… Still, the sentiment is expressed accurately.
The speaker was Leto, the millennia old, human-half-morphed-into-The-Worm God Emperor of Dune in Frank Herbert‘s most illuminating books on human nature. This tyrant (who only did things ‘for the good of his people’) ruled with an iron fist. Part of the method which he used to maintain control over the population was by controlling all means of transportation except for walking/jogging.
Leto controlled all the vehicles, in the air and on the ground. At one point, he explained that the reason for this was that a population that walks is easier to rule.
Now, let me digress to my childhood ‘behind the iron curtain’… I’ll connect it up, I promise!
The defining thing, the one aspect of life that took up almost all the ‘free time’ of most of the people I remember from my childhood, was ‘supply logistics’.
First of all, I did not know any family – not a single one – where there was a ‘stay-at-home-parent’.
The socialist state instilled, as the most supreme of all ‘human rights’, ‘the right to work‘. This meant that every single person had a right to a job. Zero unemployment! Nobody starving on the street! Heaven on Earth!
Of course, nobody was permitted to ‘opt out’ from this ‘right’. After all, The State could not appear to be failing anyone in upholding this ‘human right’!
The upshot of this was that, whether a parent wanted (or could afford to – the economic reality would have made this very, very difficult) to stay at home longer than the permitted 6-month maternity leave, their ‘right to work’ trumped their wishes and they had to go off to ‘a job’.
After a full day of work, one had to find a way to buy necessities of life: from food to toothpaste and toilet paper. Because everyone walked to shops, or took public transit, shopping for food for a week’s worth of ‘stuff’ at one time (as is the norm in North America) was not an option: even if you could carry it all home in your two hands (often walking up many stories in apartment buildings where elevators either did not exist or did not work), there would not be enough room in your tiny fridge and ‘compact’ kitchen for all that much. So, ‘food gathering’ was a daily task.
It had to be planned well – the shops were not open in the evenings, so one had to rush off straight from work to the bus, so one could get to the store on the other side of town which had supposedly got a shipment of toothpaste. Or to that clothing store that got white/yellow t-shirts which were the required gym uniform for the kids, but of which there was constantly a shortage .
And you had to leave yourself enough time to make it to at least 2-3 stores: even though milk and bread were usually available, they weren’t always… And that does not even touch on the meat situation…
An average woman could expect to spend at least 2 hours a day ‘shopping’ – running from one place to another, standing in one queue after another, just to keep the household supplied with food and soap… This was true of ‘everything’: many men spent a lot of their time trying to find supplies and professionals who’d help with any household repairs or renovations, car care, and so on…
Plus people had to try and have a supply of luxury items, like, say, packages of ‘Western’ coffee: one had to bring these when one went to see a dentist or a doctor or any other kind of ‘professional’. Needless to say, much of people’s ‘private’ conversations were about what one could find where, when.
This did not leave most people much time or energy for ‘political unrest’….
Which was the point!
Some of the shortages were real – but others were completely artificial: an item of which there was a shortage in one area was temporarily over-supplied in another. This was actually very, very clever: not only did it keep most of the people too busy to want do anything about the political system, it gave them a chance to ‘succeed’ – and to feel the satisfaction that comes from succeeding!
OK – it may seem petty to us. But, after a while of living in a system where necessities are not easily obtainable, people quickly begin to derive their self-worth from how good a ‘gather’ they are!
This makes sense: humans started out as hunters and gatherers. It is only natural that giving people these daily obstacles to overcome, giving them the opportunity to have these little successes over and over and over, makes the population relatively docile. In this type of a society, it is only if the shortages are too big and numerous and the majority of the people is denied the warm feelings they get from overcoming these daily ‘little obstacles’ that the population is likely to turn militant.
That is human nature.
So, what does that have to do with ‘people who walk’?
Driving from one place to another is too easy: it does not take anywhere near as much time as trying to take public transit (and to bring your shopping back home on crowded public transit), it also takes much more physical energy to walk than it does to drive. Living like this, people don’t have time or energy to do much more than grumble about ‘the system’…
Plus, it is the government who controls the public transportation systems: if you want to stop a lot of people getting to a specific place to protest, just delay all the trains coming into town that day. Or, cancel the bus runs that day. Let’s see how many people will show up at the demonstration, when most are stuck in ‘in between stations’!
Let’s face it: having control of one’s mobility enables one’s independence!
Which brings me to my actual point:
What are the ‘carbon caps’ focusing on?
If you follow all the ‘recommendations’ of the UN and their warm mongers, what kind of public policies flow out of them?
PUBLIC TRANSPORT = GOOD
PERSONAL VEHICLES = BAD
Now, more than ever, we are bombarded almost daily with more and more evidence that the IPCC recommendations are not founded on any scientific observations but are 100% top-down policy driven. Today, one of the top IPCC people (a prof of climate studies at East Anglia, none-the-less) published a paper that claims there was NEVER a consensus of thousands (or even hundreds) of scientists behind the IPCC reports!
Of course, those of us interested in the actual science of ‘Global Warming’ and not the politics have been pointing this out for a long time – not that it got much play in the ‘balanced reporting’ by the MSM…
WHY?!?!?
The IPCC report claims a crisis of global proportions – which could only be solved by the establishment of a global governance structure, controlled by the UN. Now, even as the credibility of those claims is melting away into thin air, the UN is already laying the groundwork for another ‘catastrophe of world proportions’ which can only be brought under control by a world-wide effort – co-ordianted, predictablky enough, by the UN whose appointed committees would have the right to shape all the national governments’ policies…
You’d better get ready for all the new buzzwords!
Oh, and by the way – their suggested ‘solution’ to the artificially induced ‘banking crisis’ is to levy a ‘world tax’ on each and every banking transaction: giving the UN the first direct ‘global taxation’ revenue and powers.
Hey – where is that a ‘Muh-ha-ha!’ sound coming from?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 