Travel and vacations - Holiday in Cambodia

DÃ¤nk 1010011010 wrote:

On Dec 4, 10:38 pm, Fred Williams wrote:
DÃ¤nk 1010011010 wrote:
Tomorrow I take a 12-hour bus trip from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam to
Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The Cambodian people are still recovering from a horrific Communist
revolution/genocide that occurred in the 1970s. Pol Pot believed that
the bourgeoisie must be purged if the Revolution to succeed, so he
killed everyone educated in the old ways, including doctors, lawyers,
engineers, and even people with glasses because he thought they looked
educated.

It wasn't communism then was it?

It was probably a purer form of communism than other communist
revolutions, which typically stop at the socialist stage. Socialism
differs from theoretical communism in that communism is classless,
while socialism has two classes - the ruling elite and the
proletariat.

Well, I think socialism does something to mitigate the class differences
and it puts some power in the hands of the people. Of course my theory says
that if it is based on scarce money, then it too will eventually degrade
into capitalism and destroy itself.

Of course, after exterminating the old elite, the Khmer Rouge became
the new elite, so it wasn't a truly communist society. True communism
is leaderless, which is unnatural for human beings and thus an
impossible form of society.

Leaderlessness may not be that unnatural. True it has seldom been tried
and the Unprogrammed Quaker meetings are an example, but they tend to get
more involved with process than results so while they attain a certain inner
peace, it does little to help the rest of the world.
Human nature is tough to pin down, because it is so flexible that humans
can adapt to just about any conditions. A leaderless society, (which is
anarchistic process in essence), would be no harder to take than being
enslaved to a leader. Equality, (which is basically another name for it),
would be marginally better because each person gets to put in their 2 cents
worth and be heard. Although when the numbers are large it may seem like
you've given up control, but no more so than if you work for a company that
has the only objective of making more profits in an artificial economy that
is in the process of destroying itself. You have no control at all there.
When everybody gets to participate equally in the decision making process,
then at least you get decisions that benefit the masses, assuming that the
masses are reasonably educated. Seeing that your neighbours *are*
reasonably educated then becomes in the interest of all, because these are
the people who will be participating in decisions that will affect you. In
domination and control models, power figures have it in their own best
interests to keep the population uneducated, in order to make them more
controllable and dependent on the more educated ruling class. Now you know
what drives the education levels in various countries.

--
Regards,
Fred
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