Suddenly the door opens and Simon and Léo enter

Well, it seems we're joined by even more people here..

.. Just so you know, the level of the conversation will be lowered drastically now *laughs*

Simon: *grins* .. Okay, let's go home Léo.. *They turn around and leave again*

Thank you for interrupting!

*laughter*

...One of the other things I've spend a lot of thoughts on is Communism. The original idea, I mean. Not the way it's practiced. I would like to know what your thoughts are on this. Do you think it might work?

I think the general idea is very nice. Even though I feel I'm not read up enough to sit and have opinions about 'this is really good' and 'this is really bad'. What we see today is not good.

The general idea of Communism was to share everything and treat everything with equal respect.

Yeah, and I mean, the world we see today that is not Communism is not good. Capitalism is just not good. It has been tried so many times in the past and it always leads to cultural collapse in the end. When some people have huge amounts and some people have basically nothing, it's bound to go haywire. You could say it's a law of socio-politics.
I think Communism is going to return under another name, just like Capitalism. It's a matter of either thinking collectively or thinking individually and that has always gone back and forth in the history of mankind.
Because when some people get access to more and more, it feels kinda good, you know. And the ones who don't have, they will be impressed by the ones who have and that will work for a certain amount of time. But it always leads to more violence and social tension and in the end it has to fail and society will take on a new shape or form.
It's kind of annoying knowing that you always live in a society that is bound to die. It will transform into something else and somewhere in the future, we don't really know how far or close, but somewhere in the near future the way of living, as we know it, will change.

So the Mayan theories, about 2012, would you say those are correct?

Nah.. I've said several times, that, for me, if you look at an environmental point of view, I think 2007 has been a turning point. Or a tipping point. I think up until that point, we always talked about what could happen if we'd do this or that. And I think in 2007 it started to happen. It turned from being something that was in the future into something that has started now.

I'm not saying that it would all just turn in 2012, obviously it has started already. But you can only change things slowly. I don't think that it could all just change in one day.

Yeah, I think that when you look at big social changes, there's never a visible turning point. I mean, if you look at the Roman empire, you can say: here's the Roman empire, here's the death of the Roman empire and here's the New World. But when they lived they didn't realise that. When someone is born, they have a lifespan of like, 80 years. If they're in the middle of the dying of the Roman empire, they don't know. They just know that things are not so good. And 3 or 4 generations later, maybe things will start to get a different shape.

You're saying that 200 years from now people will say 'oh this was the death of that social structure'.

Well, yeah, I think the future generations will talk about that. They will put labels on the different eras. We're trying to do that now, and maybe we succeed, I don't know. We have like a few big eras in the past and now we have like a label for every 10 years. Yeah, like that's really going to stick.

I think, in the bottom of everyone's heart, people do understand that the way we're living right now is not possible in the future if nothing drastic really happens, like a big decrease of the human population. It really is increasing at a scary rate and everybody is wanting to live a special lifestyle which is consuming everything. And it's just not possible.

You can basically see it coming that we have to change.

It WILL change.

We have blindfolds. We know it but..

.. we don't want to recognize it.

Exactly. You think it's hard to do anything of value, because you can only change yourself.

I think everyone feels powerless.

Yeah.

That's just the big problem. Today everyone feels powerless, even to change their own lives. You grow up with the notion that you can be everything, you know, you have all these fantastic possibilities as an individual. Because that's what the individualistic and capitalistic society teaches you. You're not taught that what you do on an every day basis makes a difference. That's something you either have to figure out yourself or you will never figure it out. So you think that your power stretches just until what you want to become, not how you affect the big schemes of the world. You think that to change the world you need to be a Bono. You don't think that you're changing the world by choosing this brand over another when you go to the store and you buy your shampoo. We don't want a society that teaches you that, because it's in conflict with the whole capitalistic idea of being able to have all these choices. And the market controls what's going to be sold and what is not going to be sold. I think it makes more people unnecessarily unhappy, because you will live most of your life feeling powerless.

But isn't that the general idea of the governments at the moment, to make everyone feel powerless?

I don't think so, I mean, I think that's what happens, but no government wants you to do that. They don't realize that that's what they're doing. That's the whole problem.

So the whole thing about European governments being a lapdog for Bush...

The thing is, I don't think that Bush is an evil person.

Oh, no, neither do I.

He's just unfortunate enough to be president. He's surrounded by people who have personal agendas and when everyone has a strong personal agenda, bad things happen.

You know, I was looking at the opening of the Olympics.. I think it was great, because there were so many people collectively doing something.

Enjoying the same thing?

Well, I don't know if they were enjoying it.

I hope they were.

I really hope so too! They were smiling, but anyone can smile. I'm not saying in any sort of way that the way China is run is good, but I can say this for sure; I don't think that any western society would be able to have so many people do the same thing on such a grand scale and actually make it work out. Because, and this is also a part of BE, we're not trained to be part of something. You don't feel successful if you're part of something.

You want to stand out.

Yeah! And that's one thing in BE, you fight your whole life to remain a brick, because your biggest fear is to become a brick in a large structure. You want to be on your own, you want to be your own little universe.

The most important person in the whole wide world.

Yeah and that way, you will live a brick, you will die a brick and you haven't really been part of something bigger.

In a way you are.

Yeah, you're always part of something.

But more or less destructing the bigger picture, in a sense.

Well, I think to us, being forced to do something gruesome together with a lot of other people that is not giving you a big deal of satisfaction, is the worst thing we could imagine. But the next day we're going to work, 9 to 5. And that's also a very new thing, having a job that goes 9 to 5, whether you're done with what you're doing or not. It came with industrialism and mentally, it's really destructive. Previous to that, you would work on things – you would have a task, you would work on that and you would finish it. And then you would move on. Regardless of hours, it wasn't about the hours. But then with the industrialization, you start going to a job a certain amount of hours, regardless of what you are doing. You're going there at this point, you're checking out at that point and during that time, you just do the same thing over and over. And you don't see an end, you don't come to a conclusion where you can think 'okay, I'm done with this, now go to the next task'. From a psychological point of view, I think that everyone would agree that that's not good for you in any sort of way. We can succumb to that, that is okay, but being part of a communist country, where you can do what you want and fulfill your own life.. That, we don't want to do. I don't see the big difference, actually. I can see why they wouldn't be happy in China, on the other hand, basically no one's happy here.
.. well, I'm not saying Holland, maybe people here are happy.

No, no, I can tell that they're not. But I think there's a lot of people in China who are happy.

Or content.

Yeah.

But we don't want to be content, we want to be happy.

I think I'd rather live among 1.2 billion Chinese people than 1.2 billion Swedish people. Because that would be really horrible. We would consume the earth in 2 weeks.

Yeah, definitely, western civilization is doing that.

It's getting hard to use the term 'western civilization' though. It's not geographically bound anymore. We can say 'capitalistic society' but it sounds like 'yeah, I want everyone to wear red clothes' *laughs* I don't know, I think politics is just a manifestation of how you envision life to be. So it's really hard to talk about this or that political movement, because it's just some sort of contemporary equivalent of a bigger idea, of a vision. I think any political idea that is timestamped by a certain era with a certain civilization, will fail to reach it's original purpose, because it will be coloured by the world you live in. And it will be coloured by the people who try to realize this vision, because when they start they will find that they have personal agendas.