Do any of you's agree with the statement that "If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem"?

Paradoxically, according to M. S Peck, the author of 'The Road Less Travelled, we all cannot all be held individually responsible for the future of the planet, yet we are.

Whats the problem?

I suppose that statement would be rather relevant to a statement such as "Were ordinary German folk in any way responsible for the holocaust?"

Because you do nothing to aid a problem, are you guilty of it? A good question. I await an interesting debate on the subject.

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Nár mhéanar do Sheosamh Mac Grianna é nuair a dúirt sé gur chuma leis

Since they freely admitted that they were "2nd and 3rd generation FF/FG supporters" I've always found it hard to sympathize with the Rossport 5. This is harsh I know, but I just can't get away from it.

I don't necessarily believe that a failure to act makes you responsible for the suffering of others, but I'm 50/50 on whether a failure to act makes you responsible for your own suffering.

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The only way to change the world is to win elections.

Scott Peck tallked about the majority of Americans cooperating in the Vietnam war. He says that the reasons why most people don't do anything is because of laziness and narcism.

That statement would make Irish farmers part of the problem of Third World poverty.

Here is most of the section called "The Unreality of the American Presidency" (pages 313-315) from the book "The Different Drum" by M. Scott Peck.

The book was written in the 1980's and he was primarily talking to U.S audience but most of it is still appropiate to today, and to us, in my view.

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“Like the nation-state system at the end of the twentieth century, the institution of the presidency of the United States has become obsolete. When that office was established by the Constitution two hundred years ago the population of the nation was less that one hundredth as great and the complexity of its problems were smaller still. Despite a hundredfold increase in the magnitude of the tasks it must accomplish, the basic structure of that office has remained unchanged. In this regard the Constitution requires no alteration. But the manner in which the president performs his or her role desperately needs to undergo a radical revision.

Americans currently expect the president to greet the Boy Scouts on the White House lawn, meet visiting heads of state at the airfield, make ritual speeches to the VFW and the National Press Club, twist the arm of each member of Congress on every important piece of legislation, campaign for any party member in trouble, know all about El Salvador and nuclear energy, and so on ad infinitum. And to make informed, contemplative decisions. It is all impossible.

It is hardly President Reagan’s fault. Since the time of the Roosevelts we have developed a macho image of the president as a superman who can know everything, who can be almost everywhere at once, who can single-handedly in total control of the entire ship of state. An image is exactly what is its, and it is utterly unreal. No wonder that in 1980 we finally had to elect an actor to fill the roll.

Images worry me. When we go to the theatre, no matter how engrossing the images, we know they are unreal. They are just theatre, and when the lights go back on, our consciousness returns to the world of reality. But this is not they way it is with our presidency. A recent presidential seeker who had consistently voted for routine increases in the Pentagon budget attempted to portray himself as a proponent of disarmament. Reagan “acts” as if he wanted to balance the budget. Yet despite all the hype with which the candidates and the press and the networks attempt to create an entertaining spectacle out of politics, we must try to remember that politics is real. It should not be the drama of images. It is the drama of reality. Millions, billions of real lives are at stake.

…
Radical change is ultimately not the responsibility of a democratic government itself. Whatever its other faults, our government does succeed in being responsive to the desires-not necessarily the needs- of the people. Consequently the healing required for the presidency must begin in the minds and hearts of the ordinary citizens and anyone else whose eyes they might help to open.

The macho image if the president as a kind of superman has been created and maintained because the people have wanted it. We have wanted a Big Daddy who has all the answers, who will take care of the bully down the block, who will not only give us a safe and secure home but one that is luxurious and where we will be protected from all hard knocks. The American presidency is the reflection of the task-avoidance assumption of dependency, a creation of our own childish fantasies. And a vicious cycle has come into being. In order to be elected or re-elected, candidates vie with one another as to whose image can seemingly best fulfil the unreal expectations of us, the people. Moreover, administration after administration uses the media to perpetuate the image and convince us of it realism.

Paradoxically, the presidency has become too strong and too weak. It is too “strong” because, in attempting to fulfil this macho image of superhuman strength, it tries to do too much, to meet too many needs, to manipulate too many factors, to meddle in the affairs of too many other nations. It is too weak in that it does not exercise true leadership. It lacks the courage to refuse to fulfil unrealistic expectations and direct the country toward greater health, realism, and spiritual power, no matter how unpopular such directions might be.

Two changes need to be made. The major one is in the peoples’ expectations of our president. We must come to expect a leader, not a caterer; a real person, not a superman; a spiritual director, not a Big Daddy. We must prepare ourselves to accept- to celebrate- not an imperial presidency but a “poor-in-spirit presidency.*

President Carter had the courage to make an attempt at creating a poor-in-spirit presidency, but given the institutionalised nature of his role, he somewhat understandably lacked the courage, in several instances, to make it stick or work. This is a particular shame, because his failure suggested to people that a poor-in-spirit presidency must inevitably be a weak presidency and one that cannot work in the “real world.” So with his successor we retreated with gusto to our primitive images and notions of power.

…
I look forward to the day when, asked at a press conference something such as “Mr. President [or Ms. President], what do you plan to do in El Salvador?,” our Chief Executive will be able to respond: “Frankly, I don’t yet know much about El Salvador. I’ve been studying it for several months, but it’s a complicated situation down there. The people have a long history and a culture very different form our own. To the best of my knowledge their situation doesn’t seem to be critical, so until we have a more complete understanding of things we don’t plan to do anything in El Salvador.”

We are not, however, ready for that day. The world is ready, but the American press and the American consciousness are not yet ready. We still want a fantasy Big Daddy in Washington. But we must, for our own salvation, begin a concerted effort to educate ourselves out of the task-avoidance assumption of dependency toward greater maturity.

We are all confronted with the task of achieving maturity. And nowhere can this task be more effectively accomplished than in community, where all members learn to exercise leadership and combat their own tendency to depend upon an authority figure. But media professionals in particular should pick up this burden. In their hands lies the most critical power to decide whether to support or to ridicule a realistically poor-in-spirit presidency. It is the primary responsibility of journalists, TV, and radio commentators to educate the public toward political maturity and restrain its capacity to infantilise us.”

It’s a bit like a bully’s charter though, If ‘you don’t join my gang then I’m morally justified in kicking your head in.’
The whole idea of what 1) the problem is, or indeed, if there’s a problem at all , and 2) what the solution to this perceived problem is, are entirely subjective in the first place.

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"Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly ...."
- V.Giscard D'Estaing, 14 June 2007

sean1: I found myself trying to apply your quote to the present US puppet but kept on bursting out laughing! Especially:

Hilarious! Thanks for that. It should be in the humour forum.

Seriously, the 'for us or against us' nature of your original statement is as we all know far too black and white to be truly useful.

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We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when creating them