Social Perspective

Let me see if I can get this straight, even for a minute.

We are living beings; supposedly the most intelligent on the planet. We have built for ourselves the most elaborate and complex of worlds, one of social, political, economic, and other untold numbers of dimensions. Each of these aspects inter-plays with one another with emergent qualities: the media, the market, the military, management structures, institutions, nations, societies, religions, and so on. Humanity is subdivided, fragmented, and categorized by as many dimensions as we find it possible to dream up. Every time there is a new idea and every time that new idea is put forward to a bunch of "smart" people a new category is born. Yet, beneath all of this complexity, there remain only a few rank necessities for us to continue to survive. The most fundamental of these; sustenance and secure shelter are enjoyed only by a small subset of the human population, perhaps 20%. Much of the remaining 80% of the world has neither of the two.

Humans, in our infinite wisdom, bear the capacity to reflect somewhat clearly on history. Each fragment of the human population, certainly each person, would have a different story to tell. Any individual, given the responsibility of acting as compendium of all human knowledge, could tell only one side of the story. Perspective is a dangerous but necessary aspect to our experience. Yet, the notion that every person is an individual is roundly rejected in favor of a sense of belonging. Whether membership is in a political party or a national identity or a religious group, or any discrete combination of these groups, the result is identity, a means of maintaining predictability. Maintaining predictability, another form of security, is a primary responsibility of the wise, for, prediction of the future is the most hallowed of responsibilities in society.

As such, all aspects of amassed power and authority have funneled their enterprise to make all things as predictable as possible. Antiquated notions of nationality in a physical world are maintained when a virtual cyberspace exists. Antiquated notions of proper behaviour are maintained within societies when there has never been a time when human populations have been less homogeneous. International travel and immigration/emigration patterns have spread people across the globe. Despite the spread of ideas and the shrinking of the global community, there still exists a mandate in power centers, within governments and other such bodies, to maintain tight controls over people and their ideas. Recent observations, though cast as speculative paranoia, suggest that captivation by media outlets pushes the agenda of pacifying the population; that technology has enabled governments to suppress dissent with massive monitoring and propaganda. In so doing, the enterprise of humanity has sought only to secure its place in existence against the clear and present need for change. The mandate for change, according to conservative wisdom, is unwise.

Once, a much longer time past that anyone cares to mention, humanity was in possession of a simple freedom. That freedom came with a price, it was for each member of the society to hold adequate trust in others. Since that time, humanity has begun to overlay society with disingenuous superstructures that, each in turn, can be manipulated by those with the right information or resources. Laws were enacted, governments formed, coalitions with neighboring territories were forged with trade agreements, intermarriage between out-groups occurred, religious rites were performed, armies raised and wars fought, economies established, empires rose and fell. With each successive turn humanity spiraled farther from its center. History taught hard lessons, there were bitter pills to swallow, but, each added sophistication became incorporated. Rarely, if ever, was a solution adopted that made a society less sophisticated. Every day, technology is adopted to make life "simpler," but this really is euphemistic. Simple is undesirable; it is lower than the sophisticated. No one wants to return to living in caves, cooking by and open flame, or to foraging or hunting for food. It is beneath the dignity of humanity as we now know a "better" way.

For all of the information and perspective that humanity has amassed in the past six- to twelve-thousand years, it remains impossible to obtain the few key comforts of a global civilization. These imbalances are the folly of human stewardship of the world. There exists an immense imbalance between the supremely rich and the desperately poor. The poor people of rich nations remain incredibly wealthy if measured against the poverty stricken of the global community. The health and welfare of more than two-thirds of the people in the world, in both rich and poor nations, is neglected for political and economic reasons. More resources are spent on destruction of the world itself than are spent on investing in its health. All of these things are well known, well-documented, and plain to see for any who look. However, the trick to maintaining the status quo is to ensure that few people, if anyone, thinks this way. That this perspective, the one that admits a desire for wholesale change, does not gain force in the world. That ignorance of truths held self-evident is the new world order.

The level of sophistication that the world has presently achieved makes it a system that is virtually impossible to completely understand. I've tried. I will continue to try. From my perspective, the one that holds self-evident that humans cannot continue on our current path and expect to survive for more than the next century, change is not optional -- it is mandatory. Humans cannot continue to have industry and economy that is based on inexpensive fossil fuels. Humans cannot continue to pollute the planet with impunity. Economy can no longer be the fundamental value to which we ascribe policy. Military enterprises must cease as, presently, any motivated individual is easily capable of killing hundreds if not thousands of people. Essentially, all of the things we value must be re-evaluated. Blind enterprise has brought us to this point. I was born into a world run amok. It is time to simplify. To distill the best of human enterprise and remove the glut. To do this, priorities must change.

As usual, money confounds everything.