Assertion of Power

I think I have discovered what it is that pisses me off about scouts as well as many classes at school and it is this: The teacher/leader's obsessive habit to assert their authority over those under them. Basically they seem to feel the need to not just be in charge, but make sure that we, the underlings, know this beyond and reasonable doubt. I can sort of deal with this at scouts due to the fact that, me being an eagle scout, I have some authority within the troop. When I say things people listen. I can assert myself and raise myself up so that they have less power over me.

At school it is a completely different story. The teacher needs to make sure the students know that they are the teacher and as such in charge. But I see a teacher more as one who begins and leads a discussion, not as one who sits at the front of the class and drones and lectures. In my view, lecturing is one way of a teacher reassuring themselves that they are in charge. The problem with lecturing though is that, unless you have the very rare ability to make it interesting, it does not enable the person doing it to gain the respect of their listeners. Granted, if the lecturer is extremely smart and is able to lecture effectively, I would be impressed and they would have my respect. But frankly I respect teachers who are able to use Socratic satire to lead and direct a discussion in which their students are directly involved far more.

Student involvement is essential to gain respect in a classroom and frankly, anywhere. Maybe not student involvement. But this is why democracy, when used correctly, works over any other. There is, of course, leadership but there is also citizen involvement. Hence voting. We as citizens are supposed to be intricately involved in the government. This is why it has worked for so long. This is why dictatorships, fascism, communism and others like them have traditionally failed over the course of time. None of them allow for any input from those who are ruled.

This is why America has so many unhappy citizens at the moment. Because around half of its population has very little say in what goes on in the upper regions of our government. This could have very easily been predicted.

Think of America as a very large scale. One of the really old scales that had the two platforms hanging on either side of the central pole. At the beginning, the scales were perfectly balanced; there were an equal amount of federalists and democratic-republicans. Over time more parties were added, many died and disappeared, but eventually two dominant parties appeared. They fought for over a century and the scale leaned back and forth as each side added more members or lost some. Now after a very long time of adding and subtracting the scale is finally balanced, but another problem has presented itself. The balance was not built to hold this many people. It is beginning to break.

The people on the right side of the scale have a slight advantage but our founding fathers never designed this system to have so many dissatisfied citizens on the other side of the scale. In communism the other side of the scale represents deportation or death as it does in fascism. So what do we do now? All I know is that the ultimate form of citizen involvement is anarchy. But many have claimed that communism, if used correctly, could be far more successful than capitalism has ever been. I vote fuck the system and just accept each other, regardless of political party or in fact any label, and move on with life