I've been visiting the Soviet Union and Russia since 1987, i.e. when it was still the "Evil Empire". and that name was actually very exact. The people were incredibly friendly and nice in private, but the system was really nasty. Back then, and even now, I felt a distinct relief when my plane would take off from Moscow to take me back home, because I was away from the clutches of the local authorities, the potentiality of arbitrariness had disappeared. This may sound paranoid, but it was true. Most of the time, nothing ever happened to you, but it could, people knew it, and acted accordingly. Fear, permanent bureaucratic CYA-ism and lack of trust were prevalent. One major consequence was that people lived in the present, because there could very well be no future the next day. They would concentrate on enjoying the moment and spending time much more intensely with their friends and close relatives. For human relations, it was great, but for the economy it was not so good ( "you pretend to pay us and we pretend to work" was a pretty accurate summary) and after the breakdown of the system it was a catastrophe - no investment, no trust in institutions, and a field day for predators of all kinds.
I was quite young on that first trip (still a teenager), and I've never forgotten the vivid impressions from then. Civilisation is but a giant illusion: basically, it exists because all of us pretend that it does, and act accordingly. Other systems are similarly based on the illusion of their omnipotence and irrepleceability (sp?). As soon as facts do not coincide with that illusion, everybody switches back very quickly to survival mode (in Hobbes' Leviathan style) and things get nasty very quickly - you live day-to-day, looting is prevalent, people take security in their own hands very quickly, you trust no one.
The Soviet Union was the Leviathan - a nasty tyrant, with the monopoly of violence, propped up by everybody against their individual will. Russia was then for a few years man without the Leviathan, and it was terryfing: no tyrant, but no other way to organise relations and to channel violence. People retreated to the most basic principles and were totally vulnerable to violence from any source, which duly appeared, in the form of extorsionists, bureaucrats-turned-racketeers and so forth. Now these "mafias" and other organised violent groups have coalesced and structured again and Putin has pretty much recaptured the monopoly of violence for the State - and while it looks bad from the West's point of view, it is a real progress for ordinary Russians, which is why he is so popular. Security is the first liberty. (This lesson is fully applicable to Iraq today).
I often think about these past 15 years in Russia whenever I take a hot shower. Hot water, for some reason, is the embodiment of civilisation in my mind, and I enjoy this luxury every single day, thinking that any tear in the fabric of our Western world could bring this down and tragically make hot water disappear from normal daily life. (Of course, the paradox is that hot water is one of the few things that were never put in jeopardy in Russia's recent history!)
For further thoughts on this, I can recommend two great French science-fiction books dealing with that them:
René Barjavel "Ravage" (Can't find a translation in English)
Robert Merle "Malevil" (same title, trans. by D. Coltman in English)
My point is not to depress you all, but to remind you of the luck we have in living in the Western world, with its openness, its (relative) freedom and its (imperfect) ability to contain evil within man and improve itself.
If you look at all the big ideologies like communism, anarchy, etc... they basically are utopian and are premised on an ideal version of man. If man was good, fair, etc..., communism would indeed be easy to get to work - and would indeed be better for mankind, taking into account the public interest. The problem is that any system would work if man was perfect - capitalism, aristocracy, enlightened dictature, etc... but man IS NOT perfect.
Man is complex, with a real capacity for evil, and a basic tendency to be lazy and selfish - and these are good survival traits!
Democracy - checks and balances - and capitalism - based on the rule of law, with a strong State to enforce them fairly - work because they are built on realistic assumtions about man, not on an idealised vision, and structure their institutions accordingly - the main goal being to not allow impunity (see a previous post above in this respect) and to protect each and all form the nastiest instincts of the others.
Of course, it's never perfect, and people still do bad stuff and worse, still get away with stuff, but it is meant to be a self correcting system, and, for the most part, it does work. However, it works only if most people do believe that it works, trust their institutions and trigger them when necessary to correct any deviation or excess.
Religion usually starts from a similar premise (man is imperfect) and provides rules and institutions that can work. However, the injection of absolutes into politics makes it a sometimes very blunt - and easily corrupted - instrument to channel human behaviour.
Anyway, I don't even remember my initial point - is it "enjoy your showers"? In a sense, yes: do enjoy life every day, and remember that we live in a system which we all contribute to create and should defend.
