government "cure" much worse than the ill it supposed "to cure". The government has much less feed-back to make the necessary adjustments as we go, and the government consist of very few politicians and "experts", that know nothing about how complicated these process are, but still they have audacity to interfere under pretext of "solving" created mainly by the governemnt itself problems. In reality all they want is to get more power, more money and to ruin our lives. Only self-regulation with tight feed-back loop and high degree of freedom (in another words– free market in both economics and society) can optimize the outcome. So, don't let the Washington, DC bureaucrats regulate your testicle movements– use your cremaster muscle instead. Seriously, just keep in memory the simple fact that whatever government does– it does it wrong. Any government action is doomed to cause more harm than good, and that's why T. Jefferson said "the good government is the one that governs as less as possible". If government hurts anything it touches– don't let our enemy government touch American people, let it touch only our enemies abroad and inside (criminals, terrorists and the like).
Our present action affect our future. There are many technology and science advances but everything has a risk/benefit ratio, all the successes have some drawbacks and unintended consequences. Many millions underwent organ transplants that is folowed by the immunosuppressive therapy. Many more millions have HIV/AIDS immunity deficiency. Humans have natural total or partial immunity to many germs that are specialized on other living creatures. For example, human TB is caused mainly by human form of TB bacteria while about 10% caused by bovine (cows) and 1% avis (birds) bacteria. Those millions of immunocompromized patients represent a window of opportunities to many germs that can break through the "weak link", and then to specialize on human metabolism good enough to pass on to the healthy individuals as well, which creates a potential for more and more new diseases. Fast growing world's population and extensive communications turn the world into an an ideal exprerimentation lab where the germs conduct experiments on our bodies, thus, perfecting themselves. We figth back with antibiotics and the like, but the fast turnover rate (some germs multiply every 20 minutes) gives them an edge of advantage in the natural selection process. New and new disiease (such as already evolved HIV, Ebola virus, FSM, bird flu and the like) will keep emerging with the increasing speed as the successes of medicine increase the percentage of these "weak links" and bad genes in the genetic fund. Severe genetic disorders patients (congenital heart conditions, cystic fibrosis and so forth) used to be doomed to die before they could produce the offspring with the bad genes, but now they are saved and can do so. Lack of sunlight during childhood causes shortsightedness. Chemicals in our food and envorinment, increasing incidence of obesity, diabetes and many other unintended consequences of the civilization– all these factors give a worrysome prognosis for the future. Any forced measure by the governments (such as forced sterilization, forced use of "healthy products and practices") are doomed to make things even worse, giving more powers to the governments and, thus, accelerating the destruction of society by the Nanny State. A government can provide us with the advisory so we can make an informed decisions but our enemy government must not mandate anything. All we can do is to provide everyone with the pertinent information and hope that people will do right decisions. If not– Mother Nature will eventually use its powers of self-regulation to balance things out.
Let me throw in some random facts to illustrate how to err is human, and how every "well intended" interference with the self-regulation with 100% guarantee resulsts in the unintended consequences. Say, H. pylori bacteria are know to cause stomach ulcers and cancer. OK, antibitic therapy in the US eradicated the H. pylori in 95% of polutation. Great news, right? Well, not so fast. Turns out, the bacteria was part of our system for over 20,000 years, and became part of the balance. It served as a target for our immune system to keep it busy, and after eradication the idling ummune system attacks our own body instead, causing autoummine disieases like asthma. H. pylori also decreases our appetite, so now we want to eat more, which leads to the at least 2 chains of unfortunate events: 1) obesity => diabetes, hypertention=> heart disease with billions, kidney failure with $ billions on hemodyalisis, blindness, arthritis and so forth; 2) GERD (gastro-esophageal refluz disease) => esophageal cancer, aspiration pneumonia and asthma, COPD and the like. Got it? Any intervention in the self-regulated processes has unintended consequences, and that's why the government-thing cannot possibly work because it's against the laws of nature. Some people can resist the urge, they are focused on the "short term pain for long term gain", and they become winners. Some people have lazy souls, they just go with the flow, with their animal instincts, preferring "progressives'" logo "short term gain for long term pain" – they get fat, they become losers. And then they blame others for their own faults.
IV. What we are in a social sense
The wisdom of ages reflected in the Roman proverb "Homo homini lupus est", which means human-to-human is a wolf. For majority of us it holds true although the nature's demand for the variability, variety of selection choices, the genetic diversity creates some of us more resembling tigers while some other dolphins. Let's say for the sake of discussion that 90% of us wolves, 5% tigers and 5% dolphins. Wolf is also a social creature with certain non-genetic skills and knowledge passed along by learning "wisdom of ages", by learnin from other pack members. It also has elaborated social hierarchy, some law system (both instinctive and established by their "society"). For example, they don't attack females (what the gentlemen they are!), and if during the conflict one in a display of submission exposes his bare neck– another just physically prevented by his instincts to bite . Some youngsters abuse this instinct– time after time they steal the stronger wolf's meal, and when attacked in response– just expose their neck in the "I surrender!" move, and 5 minutes later repeat that trick again. Wolves, like human, express different patterns of behaviour during good and bad weather times. In a summer, when the food is abundant, the grass is green, and the life is easy– they split into families or lone wolves. When the times are tough, like winter season, then they stick together in packs because it is easier for the species to survive that way: the pack can take on a moose, and even if a wolf gets killed, the pack will survive. So, yes, majority of us do resemble wolves, we do prioritize our own interests, self-preservation, our family over others though we do take care of others when it's beneficial to our wellbeing and survival.
Tiger (and I don't mean the cheatta' ;-) is selfish, egoistic, egocentric, territorial-and rightly so– because they consume so much meat in the food chain that they wouldn't survive in packs or even big families. Mom teches her offspring how to hunt, and when they are 6 months old or so– she kicks them our out. Since now on they are competitors for the individual survival. If you don't like giving to their human analogs such a noble name "tigers"– oh,well, you can call them "hamsters" that kill each other if they get closer than 100 meters or call them any other solitary animal, for that matter. Mother nature doesn't take it as an offense– whatever it takes for the species to survive.
Dolphins , penguins, whales, who live in a very hostile environment and depend on each other to survive. That would be an ideal material to build utopian society, so I suggest we collect all communists, "progressive" Democrats and other totalitarians and send them to the ocean to realize over there their day dreams rather than ruining our real human world, populated mainly by wolves. Of course, the totalitarian "social engineers" keep trying to make "new men" = dolphins out of us, and of course they fail, creating another blood bath– French Revolutionary terror, Stalin's, Hitler's, Ayatolla Homeini's, Mao's and Pol Pot's "noble intended" attempts to create "new men" zombies and robots. If you let them– they will keep trying to change your nature until the very last of you is dead, using the coercive powers of the Big Government. So, minimize the powers of any government to minimize the inevitable abuse and try to prevent totalitarians' power grabs. All totalitarians are the same, they all are criminals against their own people, just committing different crimes.
Other things to aware of ourselves: We need mythology, we want our leaders /ideologues to explain us why we are better than others. American exceptionalism does have a true base because it is based on the popular sovereignty and the un-alienated rights (at least until totalitarian "progressives" started eroding the Rupiblic since 1913), which made it the freest coutnry in the world, though Obama wants to destroy it. Others don't have these grounds, but still want the sheppards to explain them,