Believe it or not this isn't a diatribe against religion, that would be gratuitous. Even I have to admit that were it not for the sanctimonious hypocrisy, cult of superiority, holy wars, pedophilia and delusion, religion could possibly serve some useful moral purpose.
Instead this post, is to put the botched past aside for a moment and contemplate the future. So things got fucked up again. What now? The reset is upon us. Granted, it's a lurching affair, full of headfakes and false dawns, but the Dow notwithstanding, the reset is well underway. And with that reset we can imagine the status quo in due time being fully obliterated, leaving something resembling eventually a clean slate. It will take time for expectations to hit rock bottom, and for the dopamine addicts to give up hope that the consumption oriented lifestyle is coming back. Speculation as to what comes after that realization, is a parlour game to be sure, since everyone has their own definition of utopia - be it communism, libertarianism, socialism or some other "ism" yet to be invented.
Still, there are some very dangerous behaviours that led to the current disaster that will need to be addressed before any new foundations should be built. Because if these errant root cause "bad" behaviours are not addressed, then well it won't be long before things go sideways all over again.
This is my personal list of cultural factors that if not addressed at the core, will merely indicate very strongly that everything is "snapping back" towards the status quo and hence imbalanced latent catastrophe:
Zero Intellectual Curiosity
No society that has a deep aversion to learning will last very long. For some reason this society has decided that education is largely something to be faked for roughly the first twenty years of life and then wholesale abandoned thereafter. Any society that decides to go largely uneducated will have to trust its elites to lead them. And unfortunately, we've only been scammed by the elites now going on three times in a little over a decade. Even today's elites are not really that well educated. They're educated in their own self-serving alchemy to be sure, but when it comes to reality, history and commonsense, they are more clueless than the average idiot.
ZH showed yesterday that only one out of six Americans could correctly locate Ukraine on a map. But the really scary part was that the farther their guesses were from Ukraine's actual location, the more they wanted the US to intervene with military force. Frightening.
ZH showed yesterday that only one out of six Americans could correctly locate Ukraine on a map. But the really scary part was that the farther their guesses were from Ukraine's actual location, the more they wanted the US to intervene with military force. Frightening.
Trust in Game Show Hosts
This gets to a related point - this society somehow holds serial belief in incompetent leaders who are serial liars. Even the most skeptical Darwinist would have to think that at some point that circle jerk will end badly. This high school popularity contest passing as politics is again, something that needs to be addressed at a fundamental level before any rebuilding will lead anywhere except straight back to catastrophe. This concept of politics wherein two parties take turns raiding the cookie jar to the benefit of their own special interest groups is of course beyond broken. Most of the developed world "democracies" were invented by elitists at various points over the past few hundred years, therefore they all have the same inherent flaw.
Belief in the Impossible
I think I hammered this topic pretty good at the top; however, well beyond religion, when choosing from among the infinite versions of the impossible being sold to us, it behooves this society to consider the one version of events that's not aligned with the fetal position. Belief in the impossible is of course a key factor supporting belief in the globalized Ponzi Scheme. In due time, the vast majority of people will feel like total idiots for placing their belief in money printing and debt accumulation as means to solve a debt crisis. The idea is to feel like an idiot before the collapse.
Lack of Social Responsibility
Any sustainable society has to take responsibility for the welfare of the nation, beyond its own immediate self-gratification. Worshipping at the altar of self-interest paved the way for current generations to first go about throwing their grandchildren under the bus and then when those resources were exhausted, proceed to throw their own fellow citizens under the bus as well. The story of ponzi capitalism, communism and socialism is actually quite similar - an ever dwindling circle of beneficiaries drawing ever-more resources from the broader population, amid absolutely zero consideration for the future. These ideologically based "systems" are all collapsing for the same reason. Any society that doesn't systematically deal with the issue of poverty will never be politically sustainable in the long run. Politics always trumps economics.
I think I hammered this topic pretty good at the top; however, well beyond religion, when choosing from among the infinite versions of the impossible being sold to us, it behooves this society to consider the one version of events that's not aligned with the fetal position. Belief in the impossible is of course a key factor supporting belief in the globalized Ponzi Scheme. In due time, the vast majority of people will feel like total idiots for placing their belief in money printing and debt accumulation as means to solve a debt crisis. The idea is to feel like an idiot before the collapse.
Lack of Social Responsibility
Any sustainable society has to take responsibility for the welfare of the nation, beyond its own immediate self-gratification. Worshipping at the altar of self-interest paved the way for current generations to first go about throwing their grandchildren under the bus and then when those resources were exhausted, proceed to throw their own fellow citizens under the bus as well. The story of ponzi capitalism, communism and socialism is actually quite similar - an ever dwindling circle of beneficiaries drawing ever-more resources from the broader population, amid absolutely zero consideration for the future. These ideologically based "systems" are all collapsing for the same reason. Any society that doesn't systematically deal with the issue of poverty will never be politically sustainable in the long run. Politics always trumps economics.
Competitive Consumption
This society has an overriding preference for money and materialism over time. Time is life. Even Bill Gates will have to leave his mega billions behind when he departs - within likely less than 40 years, he will be as broke as the rest of us. So this all-consuming drive to accumulate junk while life is passing everyone by in the background is destroying the planet even as it's destroying the entire point of life in the first place. Granted the reset will do a lot to curb this pointless instinct, however, given enough time it's not hard to imagine a renewed conformist drive to see who can accumulate the most toys and trinkets. The solution here lies in Zen v.s. dopamine. Life at a human pace will engender mindfulness and alpha waves hence reducing impulsivity. Tranquil minds don't need "toys" as manic proxies for fulfillment.
Junky Addiction
This society has a Breaking Bad style addiction to junk food and pharmaceuticals. Junk food destroys health and then pharmaceuticals are used to paper over the underlying damage until such time as cardiac arrest ends the entire charade. Doctors nowadays have morphed into legalized drug dealers. Arguably, addiction to toxic waste is connected to the overall dopamine addiction, but still this roller-coaster ride of feeling good and then feeling like dying has to stop. Somehow there are lawsuits and massive taxes on cigarettes and booze, but junk food which is shortening children's lives by the millions is ignored under this phony auspice of "consumer choice". Even libertarians would have to agree that the costs of diabesity are massively diffused across society and therefore a tax on those who actually make healthy choices. Again, a more humane pace of life and increased mindfulness will help wean people from the addiction roller-coaster.
Mass Conformity aka. Corporate Shrink-wrapping
We grow up in this fake popularity contest called high school and as soon as we are released from it, everyone has an insecurity attack and goes back to conformist norms. It's actually called freedom. It's supposed to be that time in life when we can express our own interests and pursuits without feeling the need to compete with everyone else by doing the exact same things as everyone else. You give people freedom and they throw it away on fucking out-of-state soccer tournaments. It's asinine. Granted, this is highly correlated with corporate shrink-wrapping. The typical corporation drives for behavioural conformity which then drives the social alienation associated with "being different". Bring down these sociopathic greed machines called corporations and there will be a lot less peer pressure to conform.
This could go on all day, but by my own humble assessment is that these are the major cultural issues that will need to be addressed before we can assume that any new *system* won't just lead straight back to collapse.
Be on the lookout for demagogues with simple answers, we will encounter more than a few of those sociopaths in the days to come...
