Theos-Talk Archives (October 2002 Message tt00177)

dalval14@earthlink.net wrote:
> If we recognize and practice brotherhood the need for "politics"
> disappears.

True. But the absence of government has historically led to feudalism,
not brotherhood. 

> Party politics are always a compromise with verity and truth. If they
> cannot he honest and sincere, then what have we to do with them? 

Something that's better than nothing, and certainly better than
slavery.

> If we are not honest and sincere, then we invite rapacious and 
> immoral, or even amoral, men, with sly and clever minds, to infiltrate
> themselves between us and our neighbours and create even wider gaps by
> emphasizing misunderstandings.

Which is exactly what has happened in the Communist world.

> To think that humanity needs "government" is also a very fallacious
> concept. -- if we do not act as selfish mad individualists, we need
> not be governed by other mere men. 

But as long as there are people who act as selfish mad individualists,
the rest of us need protection from them. 

> But we do need teachers -- those
> who can show us a higher course and better, more reasonable way of
> living.
> 
> In final fact, everyone has to be their own governor.

But only if they have risen to a certain evolutionary level. 

> If spiritual laws and rules were recognized, and, if Karma and if
> Reincarnation of the SPIRITUAL EGO which all humans are at heart, were
> recognized, the need for this useless trappings of "authority" would
> vanish. 

If wishes were horses, rides would be free.

> I recognize that this is hoping for an Utopia. But there is in
> Theosophy the root and logic of one. It will only come when a
> sufficient number of human beings recognize, it adopt it and then
> practice it, each for themselves.

Which means that, in the meantime, the ideal system of government is
one that would allows and encourages the free flow of ideas. One which
was built on the assumption that the government is a tool of the people,
and that only people have rights; they make a social contract with the
government to ensure that the rights of the people are protected as
fairly as possible, and to do things that are beneficial to all, but
require an investment that is only indirectly returnable. A government
that is designed with the recognition that most people still live in the
kama manas, but that buddhi manas is being developed. A government like
that of the United States of America.

Bart Lidofsky