It is my wife's birthday today and to celebrate - we are at the police station.
Nothing bad, we are here to renew her passpost and get the first issued for Smallsteps. However, they haven't planned this well and after 2 years of no travel, we aren't the only ones. We arrived at 7am, an hour before they opened the doors, and there were still over 30 people in front and, 15 mins later, there were 100 people behind. Some brought deckchairs and coffee in thermos flasks.
It really is poorly organized, as there is no booking potential even months ahead, except for one place that had openings - 1200 kilometers away.
At least now, we are sitting inside as the line is out and it is still a bit nippy at -4.
No matter the reason, I don't like police stations, as in the past it has never been for anything positive. Thankfully, I haven't been here for a very long time and hopefully, things go smoothly. Though, beauracracy being a foreigner is rarely an easy or fun experience, but these days at least, most of the people speak English.
I never really understood why they would have people working with foreign passports and issues that don't speak English - it is like they design the system to fail. But that might be the conspiracy theorist in me talking, they wouldn't really do that.
Back in the early 90s, Finland took a couple hundred refugees from Somalia and they integration process was to put them all in a small town that had the highest unemployment rate in the country and was known to be quite racist. They gave them handouts, but no jobs. When there were inevitable problems, they said, "see, integration doesn't work".
After the Second World War, 20 to 30 thousand Finns moved as families to Australia and as soon as possible, they were housed and the man was given a job. This meant that very fast they were adding value and, feeling valued, as they were able to work and provide for their families. This was a successful integration process, because they became part of the community, working with locals and learning, even though they didn't speak English when they arrived.
However, at the same time, Australia failed many others, as it was still "white only" policy.
White Australia policy, formally Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, in Australian history, fundamental legislation of the new Commonwealth of Australia that effectively stopped all non-European immigration into the country and that contributed to the development of a racially insulated white society.
It was abolished in 1966.
My father entered the year earlier under an exception, as they were looking for particular skilled immigrants and he qualified - but it required the sponsorship of an oil company to get him in. He met my mother soon after and my parents were married just after the abolishment of the law, otherwise they couldn't get married in the country. They were the second "mixed race" marriage in the state.
Funny isn't it?
A government decides who is allowed to fall in love and commit to each other? And we support these governments. Because we have been conditioned to subscribe to a national identity of some kind, we want to protect the "purity" of our country, when the only thing we have done to be part of that country was be born there, at no choice of our own. Building our identity and pride around something we had no part in creating or possessing is strange, isn't it? Even when our ancestors fought and died for it, we played no part in that ourselves.
Some people get upset tsliig about these things.
Do you identify?
But people seem to get upset and triggered for all kinds of reasons. For instance, the employees at Twitter complaining about Musk buying it and how he will ruin what they have built. Sure, he might, but what they have built is not actually theirs, they are employees and now, it is his to ruin as he sees fit, because he bought it. I was never theirs unless they own it and even if they have shares, it is only partially theirs and just like on Hive, stake is your voice and Musk raised his voice.
It is funny again though, isn't it? We are happy for a government to control us and make decisions for us to the point it decides who is allowed to marry, but get triggered when a private person spends their money on what they want.
But, from a usage perspective, Twitter was always private.
Do you remember when people were celebrating Trump being kicked off and justifying it because "he broke the terms of service"? Well, now Musk as owner dictates terms and under new governance, rules tend to change.
If you don't like it, leave.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
But, in a private organizational, this is the terms of service and just like under my roof, I make the rules, a private company can do the same - within the framework of the law, of course.
Where does this leave the rules of a decentralised blockchain though? Is it private or public? Well, since anyone can do as they please dictated by the code of the chain, it is far more public than any public public institution. Anyone can participatenas they choose and anyone can react as they choose to the activities of others. The only law is that of the current code, but even that changes with every Hardfork.
Code is law.
Code is always transitory.
Getting too attached to the way things are at present and starting to identify with it will mean that when the inevitable change happens, people will feel personally attacked by the change and the people who are enacting that change.
Better protect what we have built from the outsiders.
It isn't protecting what we built though, is it? As what we have built doesn't care, because it has ml feelings, no thought. We are protecting ourselves and what we think we are due to our emotional attachment to what we have built, or say we have built and, what we think is beneficial for our personal outcomes. It doesn't even matter if the current conditions could be improved, we will still defend staying the same, so we aren't the ones who have to change.
Race, country, culture, sex, gender, religion, color... It just goes on and on endlessly. As I have said, we are divisible down to the molecular level, but how practical is it to identify ourselves as the infinite amount of possibilities that separate us? And since we are constantly changing at the molecular level, who we are right at this moment is not who we will be in the next, and even if we as that individual doesn't realize what has changed in themselves - we expect others to treat us as the unique snowflake we know ourselves to be.
It is ridiculous.
Yet, it isn't going to change anytime soon, is it?
"I am" and "You are" will not disappear, nor will our attachments and judgements made on them, even if we have no staked voice in the competition, no rights to comment at all.
This is life in a society.
High society and Low society are both the same, it is just that the codes people subscribe to, are different.
Is it our turn yet?
No.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]