Who should be the police? Who is most qualified to protect and defend us? All of us, not just a few of us!
Right now we have a small group of people that have certain rights that other people don't. The rest of us can't carry guns around to defend or protect ourselves or others. The rest of us can't arrest people -- either for actual wrongdoings or for breaking fictitious laws.
Is justice really carried out when some people can do things others can't? What about when they abuse their power and get away with it, while we can;t do anything about it?
How did it get this way? And can we change it? What would it take?
Although the police and military are alleged to be protectors, they are order followers that obey the chain of command. Order followers are stuck in a chain of obedience where they will do what they are told, even if it means suppressing free speech or the right to protest wrongdoings from a nearly untouchable elite class of rulers and masters, such as protesting globalism, the Bilderberg group, or the G-8 meetings where global leaders talk about how they're going to run and control the rest of our lives.
We have *given up our personal responsibility to be eternally vigilant, to have the capacity to protect and defend ourselves. We can't really. In many countries you can't walk around even with a knife to protect yourself. If someone wants to be an aggressor, all you have is your physical stature and muscle to defend yourself. Aggressors, violators and criminals don't care about fictitious laws that prevent people from carrying weapons that can be used to defend themselves.
Things can change, but it might take more wrongdoings on the part of the police, military and government to show us the chaos of our ways. Chaos can be a teacher if we pay attention. As a whole, the populations of various nations are not paying enough attention to understand what is going on and how to resolve the issue they don't recognize or don't know how to deal with. Most people think of the government, police and military as forces of alleged "good" that are there to protect us. Yet, the belief in centralized authority and the creation of government has been the number one ultimate murderer of people, known as democide. I consider war as part of state, national or governmental instigation and management, but even without war the state has killed more people in the past century than wars and rebellion.
Imagine though, if we took up our responsibility to protect and defend ourselves, and we also policed ourselves in our own communities. Each one of us can develop the skills and training to be part of a cooperating community that removes falsity, immorality and evil around us.
If we each take up the personal responsibility, rather than abdicate it to others, and become the force for protecting ourselves and others, then there will no longer be a need for the centralized police force that seems to get away with so many wrongdoings against innocent people.
Rather than trying to fix a flawed model of a small group of people having more power than everyone else, we can all work to create something new so that the old fades away. Trying to fight a combat the current mindset and belief that only certain people have rights to authority that others don't because it's part of their "job", is something many people won't accept -- both the police and military, as well as much of the population.
Rather than fighting them, we can create a new and better way of protecting and defending ourselves within our local communities and render the current centralized power and authorities useless. Then there won't be a need for them at all, and they will lose all of their power and authority over us.
It comes down to us recognizing our power as moral causal agents of reciprocity and redress. But it's not up to only a small group of people to manage and take care of the wrongdoings in our community. It's actually all of our responsibility. This is how we all become more responsible, self-sufficient and self-governing over our own lives and not allow a small centralized group of authoritarians to prevent us from speaking freely, or protesting freely, or other things that don't harm anyone.
Think about it. In all the areas where centralized authority wants to put people into cages for smoking a plant taking some other drug, we as a community don't have to let that happen. We as a community don't have to put people into small cages and throw away the key until they've passed their time quota of spending months or years locked up. That is not rehabilitation. You can send in a completely sane and good person, and they will walk out of prison a different psychological being with possible trauma and other issues in tow.
If the centralized authority wants to continue to abuse their power and other people, then individual communities can act alone or united under an understanding of the principles of nonaggression and morality to stop these abuses of power and reciprocate and redress the wrongs that they have committed just as if it was any other criminal. The centralized authority of police won't have as much power over us because we will be taking up the power and responsibility ourselves in our own lives. And eventually they can completely faded out of existence where they have no power anymore.
Do we continue to let others choose the overall guidance and control of society and the communities we live in? Or do we want to become more empowered and actualize greater degrees of freedom in our lives by becoming more responsible, self-sufficient and self-governing over what happens around us?
One is where we continue to allow masters and rulers (archons) to decide how we live while our voices are basically unheard. The other is where we choose to not allow masters and rulers over our lives (an-archonic, an-archy), where we choose to become our own masters over the domain of our own lives, respecting the sovereignty of other beings and their right to life and freedom.
This is why empowering independence of developing responsibility, self-sufficiency and self-governance is related to this goal of self-mastery, to be masters of our own self-dominion. Does goal to truly improve our lives for the better, to be more moral and more free beings, is called developing self-governance, self-control, self-mastery, sovereignty, self dominion, self ownership, self-rulership, self-"love", and even enlightenment.
This is the potential we can achieve, and we have the power within our consciousness to do it.
It really doesn't even need to be all of us; as long as enough people take responsibility for ensuring justice, or do what they can do (I think here of a man in a wheelchair who might have to yell for help rather than confront a mugger), there would be no need for central authority.
But there are some problems humanity needs to defeat within itself.
It is not the government that called for Prohibition; it was a mass movement of people that put more of a moral hazard on drinking than on the intrusion of government into personal rights. This set the stage for the "War on Drugs" fiasco. Of course, rent-seekers within the government have taken full advantage of these situations to increases their own power.
2 We are kind of cowards.
We pass on our own power to the state because we don't really want to be the one that confronts the mugger. The State and/or Society can socialize people to be more aggressive or more passive, but there is only a certain amount of people who are naturally confrontational. Most people don't want to do it, and it takes aggression to counter injustice.
These are not insurmountable problems. We need to push for a personally accountable and personally responsible morality that recognizes the moral duty to act when necessary.
All free men fight, all fighting men are free
Good analysis.
I'd say it takes action to counter aggression, violence or injustice, if we go by the non-aggression principle hehe. We can be aggressive indeed to counter it. Courage is required as you say. For the most part though, that cowardice could be remedied, as the ignorance and apathy for truth lead to that cowardice and laziness to act as we learned to be helpless and not know how to change things.
Knowledge can empower us to develop the courage and willpower to act. It will take a large portion of people to change their way of thinking in order to bring about change in many areas. The knowledge required is moral truth, the knowledge of the difference between right and wrong. That's what most of my original work is about ;) Thanks for the feedback, good points.
The police are NOT there to protect you. They are there to protect the people that pay them, aka your slave masters.
Yup. The follow orders of the masters, but people believe that they are here for "good", as "protectors".
You nailed it @krnel! It's always bothered me how in Canada we can get thrown in jail for simply arming ourselves for self defence! Or should I say if we tell it's for self defence and not hunting.
One thing I've learned from personal experience is that the Police do NOT care about the truth at all and well go to great lengths (even spread lies) to get convictions! I'm sure the fact that more convictions means more funding and justification has nothing to do with it (sarcasm)
Luckily in my case the lie was great and obvious which still didn't stop the police from placing an article in the local paper claiming it was factual! (no allegedly comment)
It cost me over 13 thousand dollars to clear my name! Is that justice?
Yeah, don't trust the powers, they have hardly any accountability and abuse their power as they see fit. Thanks for the feedback and that sucks about hat happened to you.
Police are a tool, like a hammer. And hammers can be used to build houses or break windows. All depends on who is wielding them.
I like your approach. The police are not supposed to bring peace and stability. We are. Police are the tool we use to bring peace and stability.
For example, in many neighborhoods, the police are not trusted and therefore citizens don't cooperate with the police for investigations. Thus they choose to not use that tool, and the neighborhood stays unsafe. ( There are many valid reasons why they don't trust the police, just to be clear.)
Two major reasons why the police have become something they didn't use to be:
criminalization of non-criminal activity, aka drug war, gambling, prostitution. This forces the police into the role of imposing one group's impression of "proper behavior" on another, which makes those being imposed upon resentful and rebellious. This is a perversion of the relationship between society and police -- their role is supposed to be a tool to prevent violence, not a tool to impose one group's will on another.
Enlarging society. Police are restrained in behavior and impressions when they know the people they are policing. They tend to objectify those they are policing when they don't know them, and treat them as non-human.
You bring up good points. I'm talking about an ideal way, but I recognize that a separate force could do it as well, accountable to everyone and directed by everyone. It would still require people to unite on the same moral level of living and operate a force in their area according to their rules. Non-criminal activities excluded in most cases. Then everyone would be agreeing and unanimous in how the protection of their area was to be conducted. In the end, if a force does wrongs as a group, it's still up to the community to stop them. How to ensure our own freedom and security... If we outsource but still act as individuals united to not tolerate any abuses at all, then that would probably be better all around. We would still have to be vigilant to their power, all the while still being able to defend and protect ourselves if we want to. Thanks for the feedback.
In reality I think there can never be the situation that ALL from the local community will be able to support protecting the local community. Also I think there will always be some kind of 'authority' required, even if this is local arranged. In the end, when agreeing with the local community a way what and how to protect the local community and when this is carried out with members of the community protecting not only themselves but the complete local community, there is some kind of organisation required, including procedures and what and what nots. That in itself is a kind of authority. However, I understand what you are saying, get the general authorities out and create more local 'authorities'. It may indeed be a good way forward, especially for those countries where police brutality is big. In the country I live (Netherlands), I can honestly say that we hardly have police brutality. Our police officers will be send home whenever the fire a firearm, or do something that is not handling citizens with respect. Our police mostly warn people, rather than taking them of the street. Therefore in out culture in the Netherlands, I would argue we are quite pleased with our police force and how central organised police force operates.
Indeed, some people will care to get involved, and others won't. The ideal is all, but just because we can't probably get "All" to do it doesn't mean that ideal isn't the goal to try to reach for ;) Rules don't mean you have a master or ruler deciding things over your life ;) Unanimous decisions in small communities enables interaction in community direction to understand where to go and why or why not. The authority is ideally everyone involved, but the reality might be 99%, or less, etc.
Do your police give tickets for not wearing a seat belt? :P
Thanks for the feedback.
They sometimes do. But they for instance do not give a ticket for walking through red light, or driving around without you driving license. Taking a turn that is not allowed. Whenever it was not directly a danger to someone else, the police is pretty much into closing their eyes, or approaching you with a warning. When it becomes dangerous to other, than you may get a fine.
For sure we do not have USA type of environment in NL. Our police do not approach you with their hands on their guns. Or in any aggressive manner. There are no citizens who kills police officers in our country. We may only have a couple of 100 murders per year anyway, and most of them are crazy people murdering their loved ones (or once loved ones).
Steemit would be a great place to begin effecting this kind of change.
Your post highlights some of the very same problems that currently exist, i.e.
If we can't fix a system abused by people who simply have the money to buy votes, what hope do we have against a system that has guns, courts & prisons?
Once we overcome these growing pains with Steemit, we can point to an example of what we want to achieve elsewhere in the world.
Because in real life, we have physical action. On Steemit, you can't physically act, it's a virtual reality. Most of the older user popular-liked people on Steemit don't like me because I speak about morality that they are not interested in and I spoke against the problems of Steemit and the concentration of power. People are stuck in a "positivity mask" and don't want to deal with doing something about the negative issues here. Thanks for the feedback.
Thank you for having the courage to acknowledge the un-pretty things.
Things like Cell-411 will destroy police-as-the-protector.
Now, we can contact all of our closest neighbors and friends in any emergency. Those who are seconds away can react to threat that needs immediate response.
Remember, when seconds count, the police are minutes away (at minimum)
The entire police downward spiral always goes like this. Give up a little freedom for a little security. And what it usually ends up as, the people give up the freedom so the police can have some security. The police are, after all, their to protect the police first. They are to protect and serve the govern-cement.
There ya go. We take care of each other locally ;)
Basicly said, who watches the watchmen?
Yup, that's a problem we have. If we are all watchers and doers, then we all watch each other and protect each other ;)
The idea with which they were born from is good but the reality isn't as pretty. There are good cops though but in general, a lot are there for the protection of the masters. And the public is left without any means of protecting themselves from bad people. The rulers would do anything to keep their power even if it means disarming everyone else while they keep personal and armed armies.
"There are good cops" - this unfortunately is a false statement. This is not to say that outside of their profession they are terrible human beings, probably the opposite for most. However, when you become a cop, you take an oath to uphold any and all 'laws' that the politicians pass. So immediately upon accepting the position of law enforcer, they agree that whatever their masters say they have to do, they will do.
Very interesting. I meant the less brutal I guess? If that makes any sense. Or maybe it's different from country to country. There was a riot during the time our then-president was getting ousted. The police force were dispatched to contain them and it escalated. But instead of open-firing when a few of them were mobbed, they opted to back away. Another instance here, martial law in the Philippines, too. During the standoff/EDSA revolution, it became a peaceful revolution when the soldiers of the masters didn't just roughly "enforce" the law. Sorry, I'm guessing that didn't make sense lol
"Good cops" in totality? No not really. "Good intentions" sure, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions ;) lol
Sorry, I meant some good cops? Idk. I guess it was just a little different here in certain instances. But yeah
Well some good intentioned cops, but they "job" they take makes them not good by definition ;) They support bad thing automatically and have no choice. They are not free thinkers who do whats right, they obey orders.
Aww man :( Fiiine. Throwing the towel on this because if you put it that way, then yeah not good at all.