The constant drive for "more" not only made collapse inevitable, it made the Idiocracy inevitable as well
"capitalism is a revolutionary force, it commodifies everything, human beings and the natural world - which it exploits for profit until exhaustion or collapse"
[Chris Hedges, Oct. 10, 2011]
A Stagnant Monoculture The drive for more turned human beings into undifferentiated robots
Mass production is the critical driver of the Industrial Age. In order to mass produce something, it first needs to be conformed and standardized, so that each resulting "widget" is identical.
At each stage of the mass production process, the factors of production - materials and labour - therefore must be likewise conformed in order to enable the scalability of production.
Hence it should come as no surprise, that human beings along the way, not only worked on the corporate assembly line, they became the corporate assembly line. Conformity was critical to efficiency.
Meanwhile, the commodification process requires ever-greater "simplification". A task which is time consuming and complex is eventually "re-engineered" and otherwise broken down into minute sub-tasks, each of which is inherently facile, rote and mechanized.
Human beings were put through this same process in these past decades. Craftsmanship and skills that were critical to previous generations were eventually whittled away, leaving behind an ever-less capable generation of descendants. My grandfather could strip and rebuild an engine. My father could repair an engine. I can change the oil. My kids can turn the key to start the motor.
More: The Genesis of the Idiocracy
Junk culture is merely dumbed down entertainment built to suit a generation that doesn't want to know anything, increasingly doesn't need to know anything, and worse yet, is increasingly incapable of knowing anything.
The Idiocracy was the inevitable result of "more". Undifferentiated human widgets who perform a single routine function and otherwise have no other capability or knowledge.
