Someone with my political inclinations might reply, "How can you even ask such a question? Sure, the signers of the Declaration had good intentions, but you know what road is paved with those: look where it got us! [Insert my list of the terrible things the United States Government has done not only to the rest of the world but to its own citizens.] And you're asking whether the lines were straight?"
But can't a question be interesting all on its own? How the heck did they get those lines so straight? And was every document in those days like that? (Read the thread to find out.)
At the height of the Cold War, I was into ham radio, and I had friends in the Soviet Union who I would have Morse code QSOs (chats) with. It being ham radio, we couldn't talk freely about everything, but at least we could compare notes on our radio gear, find out the weather, and ask how the family is doing. It wasn't perfect, but it was something. And I always signed off with:
_ _ . . . _ .
(MIR) [Peace]
I won't dare compare my situation with someone living under the DPRK, but I'm fairly confident that the graphics designers who live there are not murderous dictators. Maybe we can grab whatever little chances we have to get to know each other as people?
I wasn't sure where you were going with your comment and when you added the Reddit question (which I had also seen),I braced myself for what might come next. I was genuinely pleased by your thought process and how you brought me from reactionary thinking to a more helpful and mature point of view. Thanks for taking the time to make your point. I need more of that kind of thing on my journey.
No it isn't (what you said) - This piece is purely an observation.
To understand something, you have to observe it. To really understand something you have to observe it in minute detail and ideally experience it.
Anyway, this is a small piece of research that provides us with a small detail about a culture that we, as outsiders, have little real contact with. Make no mistake that the vast majority of Norks are people that are just like you and me, except that most of them live way below a "bread line" that you or I would find intolerable.
Why not take the opportunity presented to discover a bit more about something that you know little about, instead of deriding 25 million people for being who they are or living where they do.
> To really understand something you have to observe it in minute detail and ideally experience it.
Call me squarehead but I refuse to "experience" life in North Korea, not even close to this.
Also, I think if I were ordinary North Korean experiencing all the atrocities of the regime I would be really bothered by this act of "observation"; it feels quite a bit like being an animal in the zoo cage being stared at by the bored public.
It's disturbing that people are engaging you in discussion without mentioning that Galt's Gulch would be impossible without a free energy device and invisibility cloak. Pure science fiction.
Let's totally discuss that in depth for a while, then get back to your TV/talk-radio politics, and then finally we can talk about graphic design if there's time.
It's not starving its people to death though. Many people are on the edge of poverty, sure, but you will find exactly the same thing in USA, South Africa, Phillipines etc. I have been to Pyongyang and driven though country areas in North Korea so I've seen how good and bad it is.
The human rights abuses are what is truly shocking but again some of the things that go on in China, USA, Phillipines, Israel/Palestine for example are also truly shocking.
Poverty in the US is a big problem, but it's not remotely on the same scale. If you've visited NK as a tourist, you've only seen what they want tourists to see.
Obviously there are bad things about North Korea but the amount of Americans running around in circles and screaming about it as if there are no comparable human rights violations in capitalist countries will never cease to amaze me.
It's really weird for me to observe how Westerners fetishize NK. On one hand there's all this exaggerated hysteria of "NK is going to bomb us" (never going to happen), where people fall for obvious posturing (oh, and the dictator of Korea is constantly portrayed as silly, while at the same time condemned; pick one). Then there's the overt "concern" for its citizens by people who haven't even taken a second to research how the situation came to be or what to do to alleviate it. No shit a country under heavy sanctions [0] and with its manufacturing centers razed after a war [1] isn't going to do so good. I don't think democracy is the citizenry's main concern, nor is its situation only of the country's own making. If people cared, they'd donate to international food banks and contact their congressmen about the matter instead of gloating about how "free" they are in their homes and how grateful they are to not be under the C-word menace while their own country goes around suppressing democracies and murdering innocents in the name of "freedom". As an American, I've noticed that my people tend to revel in ignorance and will readily eat up any propaganda thrown their way without any critical thinking involved (and to the obligatory comment saying you can't generalize 50 states: well our President represents those states and he's emblematic of the problem).
