Do we realize & understand & grasp that we are living in a pivotal moment of history?

[haele]

15. Marley's Ghosts is a very good description of where we are now -

Last edited Sun Mar 16, 2025, 03:14 PM - Edit history (1)

Our immigrant parents and grandparents came to this country pretty much due only to Want. Want of opportunities, of an open land.

For a while, this country were able to address that.
And we became complacent.

We have a big, huge, problem that neither the Christian Nationalists or the Tech Bros who want to rule the Corporate States of America realize.

We (the Societal "We" ) have let our children become Ignorant.
We don't make very much any more. We are a service economy.
Our children assume the basics will always be available to them, the stores will always be open and energy to power their devices will always be available.

Where do your basic items come from? Who makes your clothes, your shoes, your medicines; ready-made foods, flavored drinks, furniture, paper items, glass items, metal items, plastics...?
The tools, and more importantly, the knowledge for basic manufacturing, farming, and home economics has pretty much been lost to all but a few history buffs or experimental archeologists.

With millions of people - especially the wealthy - dependant on imports and shipping for just the basics, what happens now that we are becoming untrustworthy, our currency devalued, and isolated?
When we kick out immigrants and ridicule the "educated elites" with all that soft, woke knowledge of liberal arts, especially as practical economics, education, history, and philosophy?
What happens when the power shuts off and the stores close?
What are we going to do when society collapses?
Corporate Farmers can't just suddenly switch from the exportables (and sterile) mono crops, bio-fuel, and feed grains they've been growing for decades to enough eatable grains, vegetables, and fruits to feed hundreds of millions of people in this country, especially since we have a serious food waste problem to begin with.
We don't have enough small parts, fabric manufacturing to quickly tool up to make cloth, ceramics or plastics, various types of containers; just the basic "nuts and bolts" to keep us as a society going and comfortable. We've been exporting all that manufacturing out since we went to a supply side economy in the 1980's...
Americans are Ignorant when it comes to being able to survive in isolation.

All these wanna-be dictators in their Pride think their wealth in dollars or iterative techno-babble coding will mean anything to the rest of World, who have learned the hard way how diversity and cooperation leads to breakthroughs in science and technology, and how regulation to maintain a level playing field and availability of resources insures innovation.

To all you "Dark Enlightenment" Tech Bros - as it stands now, AI and Robotics might be able to make some lives easier, but it can't feed, clothe, or sustain your life any more than your favorite Video game can.
Technology is "not there" yet, and won't be unless some major philosophical and technological walls are broken, instead of just taking clever coding shortcuts and leveraging on Moore's Law.
At this point, to fully replace humans in any particular field is still only at the equivalent point of asking a 4 year old to go out and get a job.

To all you Theocrats and Supremacists - how long does an isolationist plantation economy - because that's what you're proposing actually last before it falls apart?
History informs that Autocracies, Oligarchies, or Theocracies (plantation economies of very wealthy ruling over a captive work class) can't last much past three or four generations without expanding through breaking up or revolution - and if they do expand, they become diluted; any hard held beliefs or connections to the leadership behind the founding "Government" organizational philosophy becomes individually tribalistic and perverted from the original.
Example - history shows how both Christian and Islamic beliefs split and became embattled when religion forced it's way into a local governance just within generations.
If Autocratic type societies don't expand, they become stagnant, miserable slums that fall into a zero sum anarchy as the strongest figureheads try to force themselves into ascendancy.
They all die off, one way or another. Some sooner, some later.

Isolated Autocratic governance or "plantation economies" can't survive without becoming benevolent or cooperative societies, but that's one thing Theocrats and Nationalists that rule with iron boots can't allow.
Autocrats require four social conditions to hold on to power - Pride, Ignorance, Fear and Want.
They need to maintain Marley's Ghosts. And they refuse to heed the warnings that come with those Ghosts that will always lead to their downfall.

And so ends my online essay.