Thread:Ragnarok6354/@comment-24187738-20150327154858/@comment-24187738-20150329202848

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts. It's not an easy topic to put into words and I do appreciate everyone's time spent in trying to formulate an answer.

I guess the crux of the issue here really is in perspectives and standards. I see a general consensus here, but I am pretty certain we lack perspectives from the European and American side.

Philippines, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries tend to face the same problems: corruption, slow economic growth, general political instability, and that may be why they are more than willing to trade off political and social freedoms so long as stability and growth can be ensured. I guess one can hardly be concerned about whether or not you're allowed to defame people when you're trying to make ends meet (not to that extreme mostly, but you get the point).

And I would say with regards to social freedoms, Australia is closer to Singapore than it is to Europe and America, with its laws such as gun control, no public drinking, etc. Though I don't think it has any restraints on its political freedom, not in the same way people would say Singapore has.

MPA (and Eien, in a more roundabout way) raised a good point about trade-offs. I guess that's where the difference between ideals and actual governance lies. Ideally we want everyone to be free. But because there are those who would choose to get ahead at the expense of others, we can only settle for we want as many people as possible to be as free as possible. In a way it's something like hedonism, the philosophy that pleasure is the only thing that is good in this world and trying to maximise it as much as possible to the maximum amount of people.

I don't really know where I am going with this so I'm sorry if you people expected some sort of conclusion. I just wanted to gather opinions to help formulate my own arguments because I foresee a lot of such discussions in my near future.

For me I guess the main reason why people cannot agree in my country is because everyone is using a different standard. Most of the people/elder generation compare us to the surrounding countries, plus they know how far we've come in just 50 years alone, and they say it was worth it. Some others, especially the younger people who have been exposed to Western views, compare us to Western countries and argue against the alleged political suppression that we face.

Well. As always, I guess it's simply true that there is no right or wrong, and that it's a matter of preference. And that's where democracy comes in: the much-lauded right of the minority to be led around by the whims of the masses.