Protests...

The wave of protests all over the world... the Arab springs, and now the second wave from Egypt, and new ones in turkey, Brazil and of course, the occupy moments, what do they indicate?

One way to understand is through analogies.  Centuries ago, the medical science struggled with diagnosis and treatment of diseases. The treatment was focused on symptomatic relief – because we as human beings had little knowledge about the complex physiological system.

Similarly, we are struggling with problems which can be termed as social diseases.  To work together, we need systems that ensure fair and equal treatment of all the group members.  Democracy, socialism and such political systems try to bring solutions to these group level functions. 

Along with that, economic systems too try to keep the majority satisfied with efforts and benefits distribution.  How much effort /input each human has to make and how much resources will they be awarded is decided through a combination of economic-political systems. 

We try to push our body too, to find out what all excesses it can survive, alcohol, tobacco, overeating, under-exercise, and so on..  just like that, we try to push our eco-political systems too, and try to figure, how much can injustice and inequality can the majority suffer without exploding.  And when such a social disease occurs (the protests can be seen as an allergic reaction or skin disease), some treatment is given. 

If you were a governing body member, or ruling political party leader, how would you view these protests? As a first step, every ruling party would try to see no major cause for huge gathering should happen in the media. And even if such an outburst does occur then, try to see how it can be dissipated and some sacrificial lambs could be thrown away.  Thus treating the symptoms, just as the earlier medical science did. 

The body is the media (now internet being an addition), and the eco-politicians try to harness media, or focus on symptoms.  The belief is that, if the symptoms are not seen (in the media), then it doesn't matter.  Or another media campaign is used to counter the current (media) symptom outrage, without realizing the focus needs to be on the root cause of disease.  Thus such protests will keep re-occuring without any major change, because the current system doesn't have mechanisms to detect public discontent change eco-politico policies, until there is coup.

And one of the major root causes is inequality.  Something like 40% of the resources/wealth is cornered by 1%, to put it in a very rough manner, and some 40% of the population less than 1% of the resources/wealth.  How do we address this? How come the current system still has no answer to dealing with such blatant human rights violations?

If any other system/science than economics or eco-politics performed at current level, the leaders of that system would have been fired long ago.  The current eco-political administers or CEO’s have failed very badly... performed worse than the recently bankrupted financial behemoths or even Municipalities... (But then they are part of eco-political system).  So, basically there is no scale to measure their level of failure.  Compared to medical science, it would be like saving 1% of the patients they treat... but, we, humans fear ‘change’ more...  

Maybe we should start anew from scratch.  There are too many maybes, but one thing is clear.  The current eco-political system needs major overhauling.  We need very good doctors to treat the rampant social diseases, before it’s too late.