Never judge another's grains with your own bushel.
Translation: Your own standards are not accurate when it comes to the actions not of your own.
This is entirely logical. No two person can think completely alike. Therefore the same action can be done by 50 different people for 100 different reasons. Precisely why "there is the truth, and there is the truth." There is the truth that you perceive, and there is the truth that really is the ultimate truth. And (Surprise!) it is the truth that one perceives that matters the most. What really happened, what really is, does not truly matter. Just think of the legal system. We rely of proof, and witnesses to guess what happened. There is NO way we can actually see what really happened, unless we were there. Proof only provides clues. Witnesses cannot be always honest. Thus people are judged by the perceived truths. This is inevitable, but this is not entirely correct. We have no choice, but no one should care if it is wrong. "Truth is perception", as said by someone in the Sword of Truth series.
But to judge someone using your own standards can be fatal to your interpersonal relationships. Euthanasia can be seen as murder, or mercy. If a friend of yours has euthanized someone, would you see him as a killer, or the kindest soul you've met? If you can adjust your standards to as similar to that friend's as you possibly can, you will see him as the latter. You can either try to understand his pains to alleviate a person's useless pain, or you can try to hate him for killing an innocent life. Both ways, you can only see the perceived truth, but only one way is the right way to judge the person.
To change your standards to suit another person's, you must first understand that person. This is a very hard thing to do, but observation is the key. A quiet person sees the most, but silence doesn't really do shit. Talking is another way to observe. Ultimately, it is really useless to do this for a stranger. It takes too much time.
Democracy is a farce when it is used by a society that is at least large enough to be referred to as a city. To let the people vote is ridiculous in a society of such scales. Before voting for a leader, one is supposed to know who one is voting for. One must vote for the person in that society who wants to lead, and is the most suitable to lead them. This is one critical point that is being ignored. People do not truly know who they are voting for. All they know the leader is entirely from the country's media. Do not imagine for one second that any government has no hand in the media of their country. When it comes to an important event as this, where democracy is proving to be still in existence in that country, no government can let the process go uncontrolled. And even before that, the candidates are "filtered" by government officials. It is good to know that no one we vote for has any serious criminal records. But there is no way to know anything deeper than that.
Even for a town-sized society, people barely know everyone else. They may be able to recognize some faces, gossiped about the others, but that is as far as it goes when it comes to recognition. But at least, most people in such a society may know someone who knows someone who knows the person being voted for.
The smaller the society, the better democracy works. This is unavoidable. Democracy requires the people to trust in the leader who wins the election. How can people trust someone they know only from the papers??! Hell, there is probably just barely 7 degrees between anyone in the country and the leader. In a democratic society, we trust someone who is a total stranger to us!
The fact is that democracy requires more efforts than is being spent by most governments of the world. They know that people can be "tuned to the right frequency" with an education system that is controlled by them. To hear something being repeated over and over again for years is a form of brain-wash. Therefore with this shortcut they can minimize the efforts they need to maintain this mockery of democracy, and maximize revenues. This world is being dominated by people who exploits the ignorance of billions of people. Singapore may be seen as trying to do something about this by introducing the idea of "grassroot leaders", representatives of the government who interacts with the general population regularly. This is not enough. The only way for the people to have complete trust in the government, to make an indestructible bond between the leaders and the people is to emulate some useful ideas in the leadership system in the military. They have to go deeper into the population, to the basic units of the society. Just like in the army, several men form a section, with a section leader to tell them where to go. Among section leaders, there is a platoon leader. And so on. So it must be for the society as a whole. Every family should have a representative, who in turn chooses a leader for each street, or road, who in turn votes for a leader of that "zone". These "zone leaders" should then choose their own leaders for the town/city and so on. People will trust in whoever they choose to represent their families, and trust their opinions. And this chain will apply to the whole process all the way to the top.
Only with this method can the people have complete trust in the leadership of their government. Thus can peace be maintained indefinitely, and maybe even permanently. It may sound ludicrous to some, but in chaotic times like this, even dry straws on the side of the cliff is hope for the falling man.
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