The Sediment of Wisdom
There are all sorts of little nuggets of distilled wisdom summarizing the modern problem of politics. One appears in various guises like "elites," "bureaucracy," "deep state," aristocracy"--all referring to a distant, unresponsive, arrogant, self-important subset of essentially social engineers who have their own ideas of how we should be and live. Through their good edicts, we are gradually changing our identity from the land of the free and home of the brave to the land of two-flush toilets, meatless hamburgers, and long, long showers.
Bordeaux has a funny article about this subset as he writes about the new film “Mine Your Own Business.”
"This movie is a documentary centered on a small Romanian town, Rosia Montana. A poor mountain village, Rosia Montana was chosen by a western mining company as a site for a new mine — an enterprise that would have offered higher-paying jobs to the mostly peasant, rural population.
Environmentalists, though, opposed the mine. Among their chief reasons was their insistence that the mine would “destroy” the way of life of residents of Rosia Montana. On this point, the environmentalists were correct: The mine would indeed change the way of life in that town. But as the film documents, that’s precisely an outcome that the townspeople wanted.
Their rural way of life — with chickens scampering along the dirt roads and outhouses rather than indoor plumbing the norm — was no joy for them. Most of these townspeople welcomed an opportunity to integrate with the modern, industrial, global economy.
The environmental congregation, however, paid no attention. Living in cities far away from Rosia Montana, environmentalists — against all evidence — insisted that the townspeople really don’t want the industry, jobs and greater prosperity that the mine would bring.
One environmentalist, a Belgian woman, confidently shared her revelation that the people of Rosia Montana prefer to travel by horse rather than by automobile, so the added wealth that the mine would bring to enable the townspeople to afford cars would be pointless.
The townspeople, alas, have very different ideas. Being human, they’re capable of thinking for themselves. And when asked if they’d prefer a horse to a car, droves of them looked at the questioner as if he were stupid to ask such a thing. “A car” was the constant and unambiguous answer of each person asked.
There are all sorts of little nuggets of distilled wisdom summarizing the modern problem of politics. One appears in various guises like "elites," "bureaucracy," "deep state," aristocracy"--all referring to a distant, unresponsive, arrogant, self-important subset of essentially social engineers who have their own ideas of how we should be and live. Through their good edicts, we are gradually changing our identity from the land of the free and home of the brave to the land of two-flush toilets, meatless hamburgers, and long, long showers.
Bordeaux has a funny article about this subset as he writes about the new film “Mine Your Own Business.”
"This movie is a documentary centered on a small Romanian town, Rosia Montana. A poor mountain village, Rosia Montana was chosen by a western mining company as a site for a new mine — an enterprise that would have offered higher-paying jobs to the mostly peasant, rural population.
Environmentalists, though, opposed the mine. Among their chief reasons was their insistence that the mine would “destroy” the way of life of residents of Rosia Montana. On this point, the environmentalists were correct: The mine would indeed change the way of life in that town. But as the film documents, that’s precisely an outcome that the townspeople wanted.
Their rural way of life — with chickens scampering along the dirt roads and outhouses rather than indoor plumbing the norm — was no joy for them. Most of these townspeople welcomed an opportunity to integrate with the modern, industrial, global economy.
The environmental congregation, however, paid no attention. Living in cities far away from Rosia Montana, environmentalists — against all evidence — insisted that the townspeople really don’t want the industry, jobs and greater prosperity that the mine would bring.
One environmentalist, a Belgian woman, confidently shared her revelation that the people of Rosia Montana prefer to travel by horse rather than by automobile, so the added wealth that the mine would bring to enable the townspeople to afford cars would be pointless.
The townspeople, alas, have very different ideas. Being human, they’re capable of thinking for themselves. And when asked if they’d prefer a horse to a car, droves of them looked at the questioner as if he were stupid to ask such a thing. “A car” was the constant and unambiguous answer of each person asked.
In another scene, a local man in his 20s, after expressing his support for the mine, was asked if he shared the environmentalists’ concern that the mine would destroy the town’s beauty. Looking momentarily befuddled, the young man glanced around his hometown — at the dirt streets, the shacks, the ever-present farm animals — and said matter-of-factly that “It is not so beautiful.”"
But these people will never stop their noble work because they are people of The Ideal; they know what is best and only they can lead us to it. After all, if these places all modernized and became comfortable, where would the people from "90 Day Fiancé" come from?
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