Theos-Talk Archives (December 1999 Message tl00003)

	A farmer used to sow his seed in the spring. He decided that this was
not enough of a growing season so he started sowing his seeds in the
winter. And they all died.

	Extremes of socialism causes the individual to give up his individual
karma for a group karma. The individual is thereby kept from paying off
his or her own karma, and is placed in an evolutionary doldrums.
Extremes of conservatism make selfishness rule, and leads to individuals
taking power over groups, once again preventing the individuals from
being about to generate or pay off their own karma. In order to evolve,
at this stage, people require the element of choice. The ideal
government at this point in our evolution, theosophically speaking, is
the one that maximizes the amount of choice available to the individual,
to allow the individuals the opportunity to evolve. I doubt that any of
us are sufficiently enlightened to KNOW how to do it, but every person
has their own opinion. The key is the intent behind the opinion.

	Liberalism can be an attempt to impose one's own values on others.
Conservatism, for all the talk of personal responsibility, can be an
avoidance of responsibility for the consequences of one's actions on
others. Liberalism, on the other hand, can be trying to ensure that
people are not trapped by simple attempts at survival. Conservatism, on
the other hand, can be an attempt to allow people to receive, and
thereby learn by, the consequences of their own actions. Do prisoners in
a jail deserve medical care? Blavatsky said that they do; that bein sick
is not part of their punishment. But in our world, we cannot tell what
is part of the punishment, and what is not. So all we can do is examine
our own motives, and try and do what we, individually, think is best for
humanity.

hesse600 wrote:
>
> > On the other hand, it appears you have taken the notion of "oneness" and
> > imposed it politically, economically and socially such to create no
> > differences among people
> > so that everyone receives according to need and each produces according to
> > ability(sound familiar?).  This just does not work because when you suck
> > personal initiative out of people(which communism/socialism always eventually
> > does), society is doomed.  When that happens you will have human suffering
> > and tragedy on a scale far beyond anything you presently envision, or even
> > imagine, that results from conservatism.
> There are some ways to find a middle ground between
> socialism and conservatism. To see them only as different
> and black and white, seems  to me a simplification. Is
> holland a socialist country (or communist) because it has
> more of a system of wellfare than the USA?