Compassion and Wisdom
Politicians have to be watched at all times.
I watched a lecture of a Zen monk talking about meaning. He talked about how we need to see the pain of others and have enough wisdom to see our pain in perspective. Seeing other people’s suffering reminds us of our suffering. It brings us to the understanding of the impermanence of all. The impermanence brings suffering. To combat the suffering we need a method and that method is compassion. Compassion for ourselves and others.
This brings me to what I wanted to write in this piece — politicians and their actions.
Politicians are where they are for one reason — to control society. They have tools at their disposal — laws, bureaucrats, behaviour scientists, mass media, the police and the army.
Politicians by default assume that society without control will destroy itself. Politicians think that they know better. They were trained to see people in that way — a bunch of not very intelligent individuals. Any action of an individual which contradicts the status quo of the law is a danger to society. This is simply the wrong view, there are plenty of examples of individual people fighting totalitarian systems by disobeying the laws.
Every individual must oppose and question the political system. Society must oppose politicians by default. Only by the questioning actions of politicians, society can control them. You read it right — societies must control politicians by questioning and opposing their governments.
The governments don’t know better than individual people. Politicians work from the point of suffering — they are mortal humans like I and you. They feel the same pain of desire and aversion as the rest. Greed, ignorance and envy are with them at all times.
How mothers watch over their kids, every individual must watch over politicians. It’s our responsibility, if we let them do whatever they like to do, they will get us into trouble. History shows us that it is the case.
We live in times when the world is changing at a super rapid pace, there is no time to be negligent. If we are not careful, politicians will cause even more suffering for us and themselves.
The ride called “life” is a bumpy one, we can’t let somebody else set the rules without questioning them.
