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Thoughts on the future
12 years ago
General
I received an email today, a photo essay on the downfall of Detroit. (I am willing to forward it to those who are curious about it. Just note me your request, with your email addy.) It triggered this response from me:
As I have said before, the powers that be in Washington and in state capitols are utterly blind to anything that doesn't fall under the aegis of their own goals or if it's something that will impact the next election.
The apathy and ignorance in this country is appalling, and I have no idea what it will take to shake up the voters.
Of course, by the time the sheeple do wake up, any chance they would have had of success will have been legislated out of existence. We already live in a police state here in the USA, it just isn't blatant. Yet.
In many ways I don't really want to be around to see it, and the fact that I am an old man who won't live to see the worst of it actually comforts me. I have an immense sense of pity, and sympathy, for what the younger people of today are going to have to endure in that chaos and destruction. The USA will become a third world country in the not too distant future, if it survives intact at all, and that collapse is going to be astoundingly short. While the destruction of our way of life will be a tremendous loss to the world, we haven't had a bad run, after all. A little short, yes, but not bad, overall. Democracy will be recorded as a failed system of government, and the democratic republic that was the USA will be treated likewise. All systems of government fall under that heading sooner or later, and it will continue so until humanity evolves into something different and human nature becomes, dare I say it?, something better.
The constitution, in many ways, has become just another piece of paper in a museum. That attitude exists among the sheeple and the powers that be. For the sheeple, it's a tragedy they don't recognize yet. For the PTB, the constitution has become a stone around their necks that prevents them from enacting their vision of a perfect society.
A true Utopia is unattainable, and I am immensely pleased that it is so. Those 'Utopians' who try to impose their ideals on others, by force if necessary, are in actuality tyrants of the absolute worst sort. What is utopia to one will always be an unmitigated horror to another. What is utopia to me would not be allowed to exist by the powers that be, here in the real world. It would be far too great an impeachment of them and would be far too appealing to many of the sheeple.
However, the vast majority of those sheeple, in excess of 99%, would not be able to survive in what I see as utopia. For one of the prime tenets of that society would be freedom, the true freedom that doesn't exist today, anywhere. Where the problem lies is that such freedom includes the freedom to starve. Charity would be reserved for the truly needy. Someone who doesn't want to work would be ignored, and rightly so, because the world owes no-one a living. Concomitant with that is a culture of honor and truthfulness that has been long absent from the world. Absolute and total self-responsibility is the third leg of the triangle. You are responsible for your actions, no one and nothing else is. This is another place where the sheeple of today would be unable to cope. The vast majority would be unable even to comprehend the concept.
The American "Way of Life", that is so desirable to other nations and envied by them, is doomed. And dying, with the end in sight. The enemies of democracy have used the protections that democracy gives them to destroy that same democracy from within.
I hang my head in shame at what our once great nation has become.
As I have said before, the powers that be in Washington and in state capitols are utterly blind to anything that doesn't fall under the aegis of their own goals or if it's something that will impact the next election.
The apathy and ignorance in this country is appalling, and I have no idea what it will take to shake up the voters.
Of course, by the time the sheeple do wake up, any chance they would have had of success will have been legislated out of existence. We already live in a police state here in the USA, it just isn't blatant. Yet.
In many ways I don't really want to be around to see it, and the fact that I am an old man who won't live to see the worst of it actually comforts me. I have an immense sense of pity, and sympathy, for what the younger people of today are going to have to endure in that chaos and destruction. The USA will become a third world country in the not too distant future, if it survives intact at all, and that collapse is going to be astoundingly short. While the destruction of our way of life will be a tremendous loss to the world, we haven't had a bad run, after all. A little short, yes, but not bad, overall. Democracy will be recorded as a failed system of government, and the democratic republic that was the USA will be treated likewise. All systems of government fall under that heading sooner or later, and it will continue so until humanity evolves into something different and human nature becomes, dare I say it?, something better.
The constitution, in many ways, has become just another piece of paper in a museum. That attitude exists among the sheeple and the powers that be. For the sheeple, it's a tragedy they don't recognize yet. For the PTB, the constitution has become a stone around their necks that prevents them from enacting their vision of a perfect society.
A true Utopia is unattainable, and I am immensely pleased that it is so. Those 'Utopians' who try to impose their ideals on others, by force if necessary, are in actuality tyrants of the absolute worst sort. What is utopia to one will always be an unmitigated horror to another. What is utopia to me would not be allowed to exist by the powers that be, here in the real world. It would be far too great an impeachment of them and would be far too appealing to many of the sheeple.
However, the vast majority of those sheeple, in excess of 99%, would not be able to survive in what I see as utopia. For one of the prime tenets of that society would be freedom, the true freedom that doesn't exist today, anywhere. Where the problem lies is that such freedom includes the freedom to starve. Charity would be reserved for the truly needy. Someone who doesn't want to work would be ignored, and rightly so, because the world owes no-one a living. Concomitant with that is a culture of honor and truthfulness that has been long absent from the world. Absolute and total self-responsibility is the third leg of the triangle. You are responsible for your actions, no one and nothing else is. This is another place where the sheeple of today would be unable to cope. The vast majority would be unable even to comprehend the concept.
The American "Way of Life", that is so desirable to other nations and envied by them, is doomed. And dying, with the end in sight. The enemies of democracy have used the protections that democracy gives them to destroy that same democracy from within.
I hang my head in shame at what our once great nation has become.
As for Detroit, since Obama now owns GM one of the biggest there, the government owns it and we all know how well they run things.
I saw a motivational poster that said "We live in an age of smart phones and stupid people."
I really hope I'm wrong. But I've felt, for many years, that the year 2020 would be a pivotal one. I'm expecting the collapse to begin within a couple years of 2020. Once it starts, it's going to be abrupt, and it will make the Soviet Union collapse look small. What really scares me is that we will very likely take the entire globe with us. I really, really hope I'm wrong.
What I'm seeing, longer term, is the complete and utter collapse of modern technical society, and if things happen as I foresee, the world will never recover. I want to be wrong in this, but ... I expect that the world will return to a state comparable to the 18th century if we're lucky, and a hunter-gatherer society if we're not.
I read a statement once that said that anything, anything, a government does to meddle with the economy will invariably act as a form of positive feedback. Ask the engineer of your choice how well a machine runs using positive feedback.