The European Union. Benefactor, malevolent. In my country, like the French, we have voted off a European Constitution. Even before that even came into the public discussion, I was very active in another part of the EU legislation; software patents. It was a close call, but the proposals were all swept clean of the table. Eventually, we haven’t made idiotic legislation for software patenting and it turned out all the better.
The European Constitution allows more power to the EU congress; an entity that has shown itself to be sensitive to lobbying, prone to mass expenditure (like moving to Straßburg every now and then, slurping up millions just because, well, people love to just move the entire congress over the continent every now and then) and well-versed in overseeing the most important matters in national cases.
Lately, with the PR campaign that is meant to facilitate a general feeling of helplessness and fear for the most minute minority of our populace, it’s become a much more scary regulatory organ pushing for continent-wide regulation of data retention (you email, your browsing behaviour, and more), radio-frequency chip enabled biometric passports, mandatory ID-checks, centralized databases of genetic, biometric, and private information and more scary things. It’s in a race to becoming the US Congress for Europe. Only worse.
And today, Sarkozy takes presidency in France. He is an absolute fan of the European Union, and he won’t poll the French population for such matters again. Germany, now under conservationist Merckel, will also bend in any way the EU wants. And us? The progressive Dutch? Ah, our government has been conservative since ages. We’re in Afghanistan, we’ve been in Iraq – hell, we are the only participating country in the war in Iraq that did not launch an investigation into the absence of WMD’s. Progressive? Think again.
it’s astonishing to see the Western world of politics heave in wave after wave of conservative political reform that regresses us in our rights and privileges. I see the gap between immigrants and native citizens of countries widen, poverty increasing, education falling into a state of profit-driven farms that put out students with no real skills. The world we are making is an alienating place, where there is an unspoken and unseen fear between all human beings. The collective feeling of only being able to march in one line, and keep strict tabs on your left and right neighbors. We’ll continue aggravating ourself until the bubble collapses; the incredible overload of wealth draining away.
As it stands now, countries like India and China grow so rapid that in the time you have read this, there were about 40 new human beings born. We won’t be able to sustain our growth. Have you ever imagined how the collapse of humanity would look like? I am starting to ponder about it. When will the breaking point come, where oil and food becomes too expensive and all countries, worldwide, will run into struggles. If you analyze our history, you will see war is one of the most likely scenario’s.
Perhaps one day a more progressive race will land on our globe and look over the scattered remains of our society and sketch out the outline of a race that outgrew itself.
