The Who, What, Why, Where, When, And How
“Nothing in ancient alchemy was more irrational than the notion that increased ignorance in an elected body will be converted into increased capacity for good government in the representative body; that the best way to improve the world and secure rational progress is to place government more and more under the control of the least enlightened classes.” William Edward Hartpole Lecky. Irish historian
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The answer to the ending question in the last essay of why the political parties failed as well as the economic and political systems is, of course, because of the psychology and physiology of humanity. We have certain psychological and physiological wants and needs (often shallow and irrational) and in fulfilling them, or attempting to, we often collide with others fulfilling theirs, or their attempt to (needs also often shallow and irrational). These collisions create problems for society which sometimes end up on the desks of politicians who usually exacerbates them. But, of course, knowing the causes leads to the ultimate question of what to do. That requires critical examination, analysis and thinking and the shelving of emotions. All things that are becoming rare in today’s world. I have been an avid reader since junior high school and over the years many things I’ve read, heard or experienced have found their way into some file cabinet of my mind only to be retrieved when some event, either on a personal or an external level, triggered their retrieval. Also I have always been a brooder thinking about the who, the what, the why, the where, the when and the how of things, the meaning of life and existence and sometimes even if there was a meaning. Years ago while listening to a radio talk show the host said “what is the meaning of life is the wrong question“. He said it should be “what is the meaning of YOUR life.” Valid question. I have especially liked science fiction and history because history is what was and science fiction is what could be or, as we have often witnessed, what would be. Many have a pessimistic outlook on the future but should try to muster a glimmer of optimism and think of the words of the Jedi Master Yoda of the Star Wars saga: “Always in motion is the future.” I personally find that hard to do and as time marches on it becomes more and more difficult to be optimistic. When I began reading history in earnest while in high school I got the unshakable feeling that the human race was heading for disaster and nothing has altered my thoughts. My fears have only gotten worse. In this essay, as in all, I will quote from numerous brilliant authors that have given me some things to think about and when I put the thoughts together like pieces of a puzzle I see, if not stopped by draconian measures, an ugly, dystopian future for humanity globally.
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When in my twenties I used to say that I liked everyone even the people I hated. Now old, cynical and with a lifetime of experience dealing with people I say I hate everyone even the people I like. It is of course a facetious statement but it conveys a tongue in cheek cynical attitude that age and a lifetime of experiences dealing with people gives you. Some say it is being cynical but I prefer to think of it as being realistic or pragmatic. People are flawed and imperfect and unfortunately flawed and imperfect people often run the political and economic institutions of society. Often these flawed, imperfect people are placed in positions of authority and leadership by equally, or often more, flawed and imperfect people so it is logical and inevitable the system(s) will, and does, reflect those flaws. These flaws run the gamut from simple to complex. From being merely benign and eccentric to being selfish, dishonest, vicious, cruel, and outright evil. A perfect world will never be created by or with imperfect people and sadly the reality is the imperfection of the world will directly correspond to the number of imperfect people and vice versa. Unfortunately evil does not always look evil but often will come as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Some religions claim the flaws are due to original sin which we are born into and many atheists claim we are born with them naturally (despite their belief that we are born blank in which case they blame society but in reality society is a reflection of imperfect people). Overall most people are not evil but flawed and the flaws often help the evil to exist, function and thrive. Those that are evil prey upon humanity by catering to and exploiting their naivete, weaknesses and flaws by manipulating their emotions. I remember an episode of the 1960s television series The Outer Limits with the title: Don’t Open Until Doomsday. It ended with the narrative: “The greatness of evil lies in its awful accuracy. Without that deadly talent for being in the right place at the right time evil must suffer defeat. For unlike its opposite good, evil is allowed no human failings, no miscalculations. Evil must be perfect–or depend upon the imperfections of others.”
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We are born with instincts of which fear is a primary one. Many say survival is primary but it is fear that is a, if not the prime, ingredient of survival and has made survival possible. Without fear there would have been no survival because there would have been a lack of caution which kept us constantly on alert for dangers which were everywhere. Fear is an emotion and while not all emotions are destructive most emotions usually do not make a sound basis for complex, long term decisions. The reaction to fear has often been acts of violence and/or irrationality. Violence is usually, but not always, irrational. Sometimes violence is necessary for self-defense but rational actions prior to the situation can often avoid being placed in that position. Starting out in small tribes we were fearful of the dangers other tribes, animals and nature surrounding us represented. We have a more complex brain than other animals which allows us to imagine and anticipate unseen but potential future dangers. Animals use instinct rather than long range anticipation. Instinct is good but instinct alone does not promote the type of thinking that ultimately leads to species advancement and creating a technological civilization. As well as a brain we were blessed with a body constructed with things as opposable thumbs making holding things easy and an erect stature and agility that made so many avenues and abilities to advancement possible. We are also self-aware and that awareness includes our realization we are vulnerable and stretches beyond simple instinct. They have conducted studies with other animals and found only a few others to be self-aware (including some ants believe it or not, or so some claim anyway) but due to our more complex brains we have a greater sense of self-awareness that consciously extends into the future. Because of this self-awareness we also have widely varying individual personalities with widely varying individual wants and needs. Some say human needs are all the same but they mistake basic needs with individual needs which are often of a unique, personal, psychological nature and as I have said often shallow and irrational but even so with humans personal wants are sometimes very real needs. Bertrand Russell in his book “Power” wrote: “Between men and other animals there are various differences, some intellectual, some emotional. One of the chief emotional differences is that some human desires, unlike those of animals, are essentially boundless and incapable of complete satisfaction. The boa constrictor, when he has had his meal, sleeps until appetite revives; if other animals do not do likewise, is because their meals are less adequate or because they fear enemies. The activities of animals, with few exceptions, are inspired by the primary needs of survival and reproduction, and do not exceed what these needs make imperatives. With men, the matter is different.” We also, unlike other animals, have an advanced understanding of death. We know we are going to die which figures greatly into the human psychological equation. Our brains and our physical structure give us the advantage of tool making which the knowledge of has allowed us to survive and advance, often by killing others of our species. Steven Pinker in his book “The Blank Slate” said: “Our species’ vaunted ability to make tools is one of the reasons we are so good at killing each other.” The entire recorded history of humanity can be described as a pendulum swinging back and forth between anarchy and organized society and our direction now is towards anarchy. While there are many examples of positive and benevolent human activity throughout history it is safe to say that weighed on whatever cosmic balances exist there is at least the same weight in acts of barbaric cruelty and insanity.
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War, seemingly humanities popular pastime, has existed since man has existed. No society or civilization that survived and developed to any degree did so without warfare. In the past it was always violent but today it can be psychological, financial or technological but even without the physical violence it is still war. Our primitive ancestors constantly went to war so unfortunately it is in our nature. It has helped us survive and advance but like a two edge sword it cuts both ways. While working for us war has also worked against us and the other way around. It gave us the incentives to develop tools to make life and killing, whether man or beast, easier which makes us safer from all other animals except our fellow human creatures.
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Many of the touchy-feely crowd will say our primitive ancestors only had ceremonial battles which is false. The “noble savage” has been debunked so many times only the extremely gullible continue to believe it because it fits their fantasies. We are all the descendants of people that somewhere in the past engaged in a conflict, individual or group, and won. Good guys finish last was usually the way to bet in primitive conditions because in the fight for survival the strong and the clever usually prevailed and the weak and less intellectually endowed perished. They may not have perished in an actual fight but perished because they failed to get the rabbit which, the nourishment of, meant the difference of life or death or they were beaten in a fight and if not killed were wounded and were stripped of their spear, bow and arrow or whatever and clothes which was usually the same as killing them. That is why stealing a horse was a hanging offense in the American frontier west. Steal a person’s horse and you pretty much condemned them to death. A tribe of good guys perished because the tribe of bad guys overpowered the good and took the food, the territory and the women necessary to survive. (I use the terms good and bad as merely easy to understand descriptors as often it was not bad as in evil but merely the drive to survive that determined actions.) The touchy-feely crowds also take great pride in constantly bringing up the West, the United States in particular, as being the violent, always wrong aggressor and always at fault for every global problem which is a crock of manure. War has been around long before Western civilization hit the scene. It has been around since humanity has existed as I just spoke about. Wikipedia under the entry on war has used the figure of 1,240,000,000 killed in war in the last 14,000 years not including an additional 400,000,000 that perished in war caused famine and diseases. That was globally as somewhere on the globe there was always some conflict going on be it in Asia, Africa, Europe or the Americas and it more than likely is a conservative estimate. We in the West are no worse than all others in history we have merely gotten more skilled and our tools and weapons have gotten better. A spear kills one while an atomic bomb could kill a million. The motive and psychology behind the spear and the bomb are basically the same and have not changed much since the beginning. In individual against individual one survives and one perishes. When pitting nation against nation one wins and one loses. The psychology is the same just the scale is different due to the level of technology.
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Steven Pinker in “The Blank Slate” had some interesting and profound thoughts on war. Thoughts that no one can deny or ignore. It is possible we are looking for answers that just aren’t there. Pinker wrote:
“Hobbes had translated Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and was struck by his observation that ‘what made war inevitable was the growth of the Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.’ If you have neighbors, they may covet what you have, in which case you have become an obstacle to their desires. Therefore you must be prepared to defend yourself. Defense is an iffy matter even with technologies such as castle walls, the Maginot Line, or anti-ballistic missile defenses, and it is even iffier without them. The only option for self protection may be to wipe out potentially hostile neighbors first in a preemptive strike. . .
“Tragically, you might arrive at this conclusion even if you didn’t have an aggressive bone in your body. All it would take is the realization that others might covet what you have and the strong desire not to be massacred. Even more tragically, your neighbors have every reason to be cranking through the same deduction, and if they are, it makes your fears all the more compelling, which makes a preemptive strike all the more tempting, which makes a preemptive strike by them all the more tempting, and so on.
“This ‘Hobbesian trap,’ as it is now called, is a ubiquitous cause of violent conflict. The political scientist Thomas Schelling offered the analogy of an armed homeowner who surprises an armed burglar. Each might be tempted to shoot first to avoid being shot, even if neither wanted to kill the other. . . .
“But because we are social species, Hobbesian traps more commonly pit groups against groups. There is safety in numbers, so humans, bound by shared genes or reciprocal promises, form coalitions for protection. Unfortunately, the logic of the Hobbesian trap means there’s also danger in numbers, because neighbors may fear they’re becoming outnumbered and form alliances in their turn to contain the growing menace. Since one man’s containment is another man’s encirclement, this can send the spiral of danger upward. . . .”
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As well as lacking the ability to avoid war we also seem to be lacking in the areas of logic and critical thinking in domestic social affairs despite the technological advances we make. We make the same mistakes over and over and over. This is due to emotions often coupled with a lack of adequate intelligence and knowledge conflicting with logic and reason. Civilizations such as those early civilizations in the Middle East, as well as the Romans, the Mayas, the Incas, the Aztecs, those in Angor and China all have parallels to our situation today. Reading the history of those we can see events today as being a duplication of them. We make the same mistakes concerning economics, morality, environmental destruction, corruption, immigration and of course war. Reading the history of civilizations and empires is like the cynical (realistic) statement “if you’ve seen one you’ve seen ‘em all.” Most seem to think that because they rode in chariots and wore togas and we have automobiles and wear jeans or leggings we are somehow different. We aren’t. Many feel the few thousand years of what we view as the road to civilization is too short a time to have made the necessary changes to our nature. While most of our innovations occur in cities so also do most of our problems. Urban residents commit more crimes than rural residents even when adjusting for the differences in populations. Diseases and plagues also tend to begin in crowded conditions. Sometimes it comes from an animal but once it hits a human group it takes off like a rocket. Below are a few excerpts on the school of thought about social problems and cities from “The Human Zoo” by Desmond Morris. (Note: I must add I do not believe in evolution as it has come to be accepted but I do believe in adaptation- very similar but different. I will explain more in a future essay.)
“Under normal conditions, in their natural habitats, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, masturbate, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, become fetishists, suffer from obesity, form homosexual pair-bonds, or commit murder. Among human city-dwellers, needless to say, all these things do occur. Does this, then, reveal a basic difference between the human species and other animals? At first glance it seems to do so. But this is deceptive. Other animals do behave in these ways under certain circumstances, namely when they are confined in the unnatural conditions of captivity. The zoo animal in a cage exhibits all these abnormalities that we know so well from our human companions. Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.
“The comparison we must make is not between the city-dweller and the wild animal, but that between the city-dweller and the captive animal. The modern human animal is no longer living in conditions natural for his species. Trapped, not by a zoo collector, but by his own brainy brilliance, he has set himself up in a huge, restless menagerie where he is in constant danger of cracking under the strain.
“Despite the pressures, however, the benefits are great. The zoo world, like a gigantic parent, protects its inmates: food, drink, shelter, hygiene and medical care are provided; the basic problems of survival are reduced to a minimum. There’s time to spare. How this time is used in a non-human zoo varies, of course, from species to species. Some animals quietly relax and doze in the sun; others find prolonged inactivity increasingly difficult to accept. If you are an inmate of a human zoo, you inevitably belong to the second category. Having an essentially exploratory, inventive brain, you’ll not be able to relax for very long. You’ll be driven on and on to more and more elaborate activities. You will investigate, organize and create and, in the end, you will have plunged yourself deeper still into an even more captive zoo world. With each new complexity, you’ll find yourself one step farther away from your natural tribal state, a state in which your ancestors existed for a million years.
“The story of modern man is the story of his struggle to deal with the consequences of this difficult advance. . . . . “
“Previously all human tribes had filled their bellies in one of two ways: the men had hunted for animal foods and the women had gathered plant foods. . . . . During the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, men had become increasingly adapted, both physically and mentally, both structurally and behaviorally, to this hunting way of life. The new step they took, the step to farming and food production, swept them over an unexpected threshold and threw them so rapidly into an unfamiliar form of social existence, that there was no time for them to evolve new, genetically-controlled qualities to go with it.”
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Pinker [The Blank Slate] said this about our minds development from our ancient ancestors to the present situation we are living in: “These ways of knowing and core intuitions are suitable for the lifestyle of small groups of illiterate, stateless people who live off the land, survive by their wits, and depend on what they can carry. Our ancestors left this lifestyle for a settled existence only a few millennia ago, too recently for evolution to have done much, if anything, to our brains. Conspicuous by their absence are faculties suited to the stunning new understanding of the world wrought by science and technology. For many domains of knowledge, the mind could not have evolved dedicated machinery, the brain and genome show no hints of specialization, and people show no spontaneous intuitive understanding either in the crib or afterward. These include modern physics, cosmology, genetics, evolution, neuroscience, embryology, economics and mathematics.
“It’s not just that we have to go to school or read books to learn the subjects. It’s that we have no mental tools to grasp them intuitively.”
I will say I see very young children barely out of the diaper stage playing video games. It is possible our minds are catching up. Hopefully our maturity about civilization is too.
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Our flaws, coupled with our technological innovations, are now creating conditions that are placing our survival as a species in jeopardy. Unfortunately I am beginning to think we might be too flawed to survive without divine intervention, a global epiphany or draconian measures on our part. Being an avid reader and lover of history I am also beginning to question if we are even worthy of survival. Certainly many are but overall as a society we seem to be reluctant to realistically deal with our problems and when we do it is often at the last minute and done emotionally or in haste which creates unforeseen negative consequences and problems, often worse than the original, “down the road.” Consequences that could have been avoided and compensated for with logic and reason. (Terrible to say but with the future our flaws have the potential of creating extinction might not be the worst option.) One human living an average lifespan has the potential to make thousands of mistakes during their lifetime, some minor and some major and unfortunately some with serious long term and far reaching consequences for themselves or others. When you are dealing with a few billion people the number of possible mistakes would be close to, if not, infinite. A mistake by one can set off a chain reaction like the “domino effect”. While that is understandable in the abstract an excellent comparison is described by Steven Pinker in his The Blank Slate: “With a few thousand nouns that can fill the subject slot and a few thousand verbs that can fill the predicate slot, one already has several million ways to open a sentence. The possible combinations quickly multiply out to unimaginably large numbers. Indeed, the repertoire of sentences is theoretically infinite,…..And if the number of sentences is infinite, the number of possible thoughts and intentions is infinite too,……..” Although he was talking about language and thinking the essence of the analogy is there which can be applied to virtually everything. Being old and cynical (realistic) one of my core beliefs is that when given a choice the human race as a whole will almost invariably do the wrong thing. There is little doubt most horrors in human history have come from emotions overriding reason which usually results in the wrong thing. Not all emotions are irrational such as grief at the loss of a loved one but even it can be and often has triggered the emotion of revenge, which while understandable is irrational from a civilized perspective. Any revenge or punishment should come from the state not individuals. Blood feuds are irrational and irrationality is a characteristic of inferiority. In America there has sprung up a crop of prosecutors that refuse to prosecute crimes, even violent ones. This increases violence and promotes a vigilante mentality among the victims. When the law does not protect people they begin to take the law into their own hands. This accelerates the drift to anarchy. Since this is idiotic and it is reasonable to assume these prosecutors IQs are above the idiot category we must assume it is done intentionally to create anarchy. We will get into why in future essays.
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The bulk of human history consists of humanity as a whole, sooner or later, doing the wrong thing often negating many of the good and right things that allowed and promoted advancement. More often than not the wrong or bad have their origin in a right or good thing used for bad. Doing the right thing the wrong way often leads to adverse results. Morris said: “It is a sad truth that a leader who does the wrong things in the right way will, up to a certain point, gain greater allegiance and enjoy more success than one who does the right things in the wrong way.” Emotions again. That often leads to unforeseen consequences something the human race is quite accomplished at bringing about while ignoring the possibility of. (Prove me wrong.) We can only surmise that since the beginning humans have watched birds in flight and imagined flying. The airplane that made an age old dream of human flight possible at the age of 10, not yet even at the age of puberty, flew off to war. If you remember I referenced a couple of authors (Asimov and Spengler) that had the belief that the future could be predicted by scientifically predicting the reactions of masses of people (Asimov) and by examining history and extrapolating the future from the past (Spengler). The human masses have now reached the saturation point of the planets ability to sustain them and in overcrowded conditions people, similar to overloaded mechanical or electrical systems, tend to begin breaking down socially, economically, physically, mentally and psychologically which exacerbates the present problems or creates new ones. Even a superficial look at the history of large metropolitan areas and their present conditions verify that. This has been proven by the observations and studies of sociologists, psychologists, historians, economists, political theorists and theologians. This is a paragraph of a thesis submitted in 2004 by Crystal A. Brooks towards her Doctor of Philosophy degree. Title: “Overcrowding and Violence in Federal Correctional Institutions: An Empirical Analysis”
“1.1.1 Animal Behavior
“Comparative research using animals is likely largely responsible for the overcrowding-aggression link. A classic study by Calhoun (1962) found that rats housed in a high-density environment behave aggressively, despite having adequate food and water. Calhoun allowed the rats to multiply as they naturally would to a level greater than what would occur in their natural habitat. Apparently, the rats voluntarily crowded at the central feeding area while neglecting the other feeding areas. They became hyperactive and aggressive, eventually sexually assaulting, killing, and cannibalizing each other.” Page 4
At the beginning of her thesis under ABSTRACT she used “Archival data of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). . . “
“Data on the populations of non-administrative federal facilities, the rated capacity of each facility, security level, inmate-staff ratio, and inmate age were entered into four logistic regression analyses to determine how well these variables predicted the probability of inmate homicide, homicide and assaults combined, fights and total violence. Although the overall models predicted the odds of violence significantly better than chance, results suggested that overcrowding is not related to violence when security level is controlled” (Hold the essence of this thought as I will be bringing it up in the future.)
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While that thesis is about prisons the principle accurately applies to humans in overcrowded conditions especially those that are urban dwellers. It meshes quite well with Morris and his “The Human Zoo” quoted prior. Presently humanity, especially Western civilization, is deteriorating and is proving the failure of what we have come to know as social democracy. The United States which is considered the epitome of democracy will be the last democracy as long as visual and audio records exist. (Actually the United States is a republic not a democracy but the very visible voting by citizens have made the erroneous use of the word democracy common. And, we are moving away from a republic form of government. The declining level of knowledge and intellect by the average voter is hastening its demise.) The voting as we have come to practice it vividly shows the inability of humanity to be rationally self-governing on a large scale. That without stringent controls and oversight it deteriorates into anarchy. H.L. Mencken actually may have summed up humanity and civilization well when in his “Notes On Democracy” he said: “For all I know, democracy may be a self-limiting disease, as civilization itself seems to be. There are obvious paradoxes in its philosophy, and some of them have a suicidal smack.” The reason it will be the last democracy is because the world will look at America and see a nation that went from a wilderness to a global super power economically, scientifically and militarily, putting a man on the moon, harnessing the atom, with an excess of everything and then finally to an impoverished third world, starving, illiterate, nation lacking adequate basic necessities for survival by catering to every emotionally motivated, impossible whim of the populace thus proving the old saying “the masses are asses” correct. Once the US falls human rights on a global scale will begin a backward movement. All the progress made in gay rights, women’s rights, and racial civil rights will begin deteriorating. The left is bringing about what they claim to oppose and what they fear. The world will analyze the West’s decline and see the forces and actions that caused the deterioration of law and order and the decline in intelligence and prevent the same from happening to their nations. They do not have to cater to an emotional mob mentality and pander to irrational demands. The US and the rest of the West will show the fallacy of unfettered mass immigration without assimilation, cultural diversity rather than qualification, equity over merit, inclusion and lacking basic national standards and serve as a warning of allowing emotions (greed is an emotion also), ignorance, identity politics and stupidity to determine policy. The present Biden administration has not picked one, not one qualified person for any position. They may be educationally qualified but their ideology and personal agendas negate any education. Teddy Roosevelt said it perfectly: “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” It is the purpose of this site to hopefully get enough people to realize that we are faced with only two choices. One is not good but the other is fatal. I will lay them out in the future.
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Added note (Aug 2021). We are witnessing what happens in a collapse. Afghanistan has just fallen to a primitive terrorist group: the Taliban. As this is being written women are being raped and killed. Children are being killed. Christians are being sought out and will be killed. Gays will be tortured and killed. People are fleeing and the nation is in chaos. This tragedy has come about by the greed of corporate power and the stupidity and gullibility of the average American that had the ability to prevent this but chose instead to advocate “pussy hats”, two plus two equaling five, ideological education, the theory of relativity being racist, being on time is white supremacy, and theft and ignorance being acceptable, listening to celebrities and a long list of other atrocious absurdities.
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The accuracy of much of Morris’s observations and conclusions about cities have been verified by past events, are being verified by present events and will be verified by future events. Reread the above quotes from his book to refresh his assessment. The cities have many advantages but also many disadvantages. They are more vulnerable to disruption. While rural areas are dispersed they also have more self-sufficiency. One very important attribute is they grow food in quantity. There is often wood for heating and cooking. There are also many, granted not as many as the urban areas, factories and shops that could produce many basic necessary items. During war time major cities usually contain factories producing war materials and they often have military bases nearby which an enemy wants to destroy so they would be targets making them vulnerable to attack. Cities also represent large numbers of people that are stressed out and far more easily disrupted and manipulated because of that stress. The rate of suicide is greater in urban areas than rural areas. (It is also greater in men than women but with the growing pressures of equality their suicide rate is increasing). In any disruption the chaos of large numbers of people always create havoc and danger. They also are dependent on city water whereas the vast majority of rural areas are serviced with wells. You can do without food longer than without water. Rural residents are also more independent minded than city residents. In a collapse of any type rural residents would have the advantage because everyone knows everyone. (Ironically the disadvantage of small towns is everyone knows everyone.) Often in cities many are only vaguely aware of who their closest neighbors are. I lived in an apartment building in a large city for two years and never knew my neighbors except a few and even then only by sight. There are also another severe drawbacks to living in the city which I will touch on later.
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We are in the worst crises Western civilization has faced since its beginning. Actually the worst crises in human history because the population and our technology has taken us up a dead end canyon with severe problems on a planetary scale. In the past there were areas to flee to but now there are no areas safe from the disaster the planet is facing. In past disasters recovery was possible due to these “safe” areas, often remote, from the biggest danger humans face; the ever present danger from our fellow humans. Today we not only have them to worry about we have planetary degradation and are, most of us anyway, dependent on a level of technology for survival we cannot provide for ourselves. You can never realize the accuracy of that statement until the power goes out for an extended period or food and gasoline supplies are interrupted. (Added: There are power outages in Texas due to unusual weather conditions bringing record snow, ice and record low temperatures. Millions were without power for days in below freezing temperatures.) The West, especially the United States, has become a polarized society with two incompatible positions. In prior American history the right was usually more prone to violence, tended to be less critical of censorship, often racially motivated, irrational and given to being directed by emotions rather than reason. The left was usually the more level-headed, pro free speech, educated, non-racist, rational and non-violent. In something as startling as a north/south magnetic pole shift the two political sides have shifted psychologies, philosophies and tactics. There is an old saying that seems to apply: “you become what you hate.”
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Humanity in the West is caught between those two polarized, incompatible views. As I stated before, more than once, I am an independent and detest both parties equally. At this point however the left is the biggest danger now. For that reason I will be picking on the left more but to the right I say don’t get too comfortable as I will deal with you further on. The system is going to collapse whichever party is in power as both have unrealistic or unsustainable positions and things have been building a long, long time. The reason the left is presently the greater danger is because they are promoting programs that have not worked anywhere they have been tried, will not work and cost large sums of money. Their growing strength is coming from the fastest growing and least qualified to make complicated decisions. Those whose decisions are made by emotions rather than reason. I support some of their domestic social positions but differ on details and implementation. The way they are proposing their programs is done to purposely collapse the West. Most are merely being used but those behind the scenes are keenly aware of what they are doing. They are attempting to bring about a crises by what is known as the Cloward-Piven Strategy and Strategic Engineered Migration. Kelly M. Greenhill in Strategic Engineered Migration as a Weapon of War described it as:
“Strategic engineered migration refers to those in-or out-migrations as those deliberately induced or manipulated by state or non-state actors, in ways to augment, reduce, or change the composition of the population residing within a particular territory, for political or military ends.“:
The Communists are winning by their Quisling agents in power in America: the liberals and leftists. The open borders policy is designed to bankrupt the nation and change its’ composition and nature.
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The Cloward-Piven Strategy was concocted by two college professor, intellectual (a gross misnomer) “eggheads.” Wikipedia, which can be quite informative if fact checked, has the following (It has ample citations referencing sources) under the heading Cloward-Piven Strategy: These two educated idiots, lke many on both sides only look at things from the national perspective. They in their self righteous attitude fail to look at the potential consequences fro a global perspective.
“The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a socialist system of “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty” “
“Cloward and Piven were both professors at the Columbia University School of Social Work. The strategy was outlined in a May 1966 article in the liberal magazine The Nation titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty” “
“Michael Reisch and Janice Andrews wrote that Cloward and Piven “proposed to create a crisis in the current welfare system – by exploiting the gap between welfare law and practice – that would ultimately bring about its collapse and replace it with a system of guaranteed annual income. They hoped to accomplish this end by informing the poor of their rights to welfare assistance, encouraging them to apply for benefits and, in effect, overloading an already overburdened bureaucracy.” “
The authors pinned their hopes on creating disruption within the Democratic Party:
“Conservative Republicans are always ready to declaim the evils of public welfare, and they would probably be the first to raise a hue and cry. But deeper and politically more telling conflicts would take place within the Democratic coalition…Whites – both working class ethnic groups and many in the middle class – would be aroused against the ghetto poor, while liberal groups, which until recently have been comforted by the notion that the poor are few… would probably support the movement. Group conflict, spelling political crisis for the local party apparatus, would thus become acute as welfare rolls mounted and the strains on local budgets became more severe.”
“Howard Phillips, chairman of The Conservative Caucus, was quoted in 1982 as saying that the strategy could be effective because “Great Society programs had created a vast army of full-time liberal activists whose salaries are paid from the taxes of conservative working people.” “
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Notice they pinned their hopes on the Democrat Party. The leading Democrats are working purposely to collapse the system. Most supporters and activists are merely what have been given the unflattering but accurate name of “useful idiots” but the brain trust behind the scenes know exactly what they are doing and have a personal agenda that is not what the aspirations of the bulk of the believer’s agendas are. (The term “useful idiot” was coined by Lenin.) These behind the scenes actors goal is to set up a nation of basically ignorant, dependent, impoverished people with themselves as the ruling class and the UN, or a similar group, as the governing body. (I have to admit that when I see the movies, music, dress, eating habits, morals and vices of a large percentage of humanity I can see their reasoning.) Many of the protests by leftists had protestors holding signs reading “Become Ungovernable”. The protests are getting more and more numerous and more and more violent. (This was written in 2019 before the 2020 riots.) They are using identity politics to separate various groups from the overall national unit and unite them under their leadership and control. Their philosophy is divide and conquer. They have no intention of unifying them permanently as they will be easier to control as individual groups. (Refer back to my quoting H.L.Mencken on the keeping society pitted against itself Essay 2 Paragraph 17.) Groups will always be pitted one against the other and the globalists are orchestrating it to the max. They use words like racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia etc., to appeal to the ignorant, the immature, the lazy, the emotional, the easily misled and the outright stupid. They keep touting diversity but they actually are trying to create a state of constantly squabbling subgroups that they can control. They are claiming a new vision, a “Green New Deal” and a global community. Hillary Clinton used that basic concept of a global community using as the key word village in the 90s when her husband was president. H.G. Wells spoke of this tactic of mobilizing young people for a revolution and then trying to fulfill the purpose of the revolution in his 1940 book “The New World Order:” [He said the leader(s)] “. . . will be hampered by the fact that in organizing his young people he has had to turn their minds and capacities from creative work to systematic violence and militant activities. It is easy to make an unemployed young man into a Fascist or gangster, but it is hard to turn him back to any decent social task.” Much to the chagrin of these indoctrinated millennials they will find it will be easier and cheaper for the new regime to dispose of them than spending time and money to retrain them into useful citizens, besides they feel, accurately so, there are too many people on the planet as it is. If you look at mug shots of most of those arrested anyone can tell that most of them can be literally and accurately described as sociopathic misfits that would end up being rounded up in the night and eliminated once the New World Order or global one world government is established. That is reality. Maybe every cloud does have a silver lining.
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To become ungovernable and collapse the system will have disastrous consequences both within and outside the borders. At one time the Cloward-Piven Strategy may have worked but not now with the present global conditions. Eggheads have tunnel vision and are loathe to consider any peripheral issues or circumstances that complicate their visions and fantasies. They fail to consider the external complications to their pipe dreams. When the strategy was concocted the nation’s economic position was entirely different. The United States was the major manufacturing center of the world. It was self-sufficient in resources, both human and natural, and the global political situation was completely different at that time. European manufacturing capacity had been almost completely destroyed during the war while America’s was intact. With American aid Europe was reestablishing itself and China, Japan and other areas had not begun their ascendancy. (Actually Japan had established a firm foundation and was in the beginning stage. Also with American assistance). Also today we are facing an adversary that does not place the value on human life Western society does. It is both a religious war and a blood feud in which there is no reasoning with the enemy. During the 50s, 60s and 70s our adversary was the Soviet Union that basically had social values similar to our own. Also our position economically is declining as well as our intellectual potential. Education as previously mentioned is failing and we are turning out a generation of virtual illiterates in one capacity or another. We are turning out young that do not have the ability to maintain our technological society much less than advancing it. Nor do they have the discipline to maintain a cohesive society. Read “The Decline of Intelligence in America” by Seymour Itzkoff and “The Unheavenly City Revisited” by Edward C. Banfield. Both have excerpts in the “Books Worth Reading” section of this site. Collapse will bring on violence. Morris said in “The Human Zoo:”
“Attempts to iron out the whole world into one great expanse of uniform monotony are doomed to failure. This applies to all levels, from break-away nations to tear-away gangs. When the sense of social identity is threatened, it fights back. The fact it has to fight for its existence means, at the least, social upheaval and, at the worst, bloodshed.”
19
He also said he believes we are possibly headed for civil war. The Democrats have been stuck on the obsession of “hate Trump.” Mr. Spock in the original series of Star Trek while talking to Dr. McCoy said: “There are many aspects of human irrationality I do not yet comprehend. Obsession, for one. The persistent single-minded fixation on one idea.” So blindly obsessed are they that they have lost sight of everything else. Fixated on Russian collusion, promoting impossible programs and the throwing out trigger words such as racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Xenophobia, etc., and then impeachment is what their platform consists of. The comparing of liberals and Democrats to Pavlov’s dogs slobbering over nonexistent meat is quite accurate. If any group is pushing for civil war it is them and it is even possible the Russians or Chinese are behind the push. I do not believe most Democrats are consciously doing the bidding of foreign powers but Igor Panarin, a Russian professor, said in the 90s the US would collapse from “moral degradation,” “loose fiscal policy” and “mass immigration” and be divided into several sections each occupied by foreign powers. The three causes he mentioned are the three things the Democrats have based their entire philosophy on promoting. Both he and Putin are former KGB agents so mind control and manipulation are two areas they would be skilled in. While his prediction was for 2010 we are not out of the woods. It is possible and more than that it is logical.
20
The impossible utopian promises made by the Democrats and the purposely undermining of the safety, security and stability of society will rebound on the heads of the visible leaders and, of course, the followers that are expendable. The actual brains behind it are isolated and well protected. The French Revolution is a good example of what happens to leaders that can’t produce what was promised and in our case it will not only be not being able to produce it will also be the collapse of a society that is highly technical and highly dependent on structure and stability. When it collapses food, energy and medicine will cease to flow and the results will be hunger, power outages, no transportation, no medicine, and lots of violence, chaos and death resulting from those conditions much like Venezuela is presently experiencing. Venezuela is, I might add, considered a good example of Democratic Socialism. Ask Bernie Sanders. The leaders were elected. (Also socialist Bolivia has just exploded in violence.) Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders praised it some years ago. (Also ask him about his glowing assessment of the Soviet Union before it collapsed. He honeymooned there.) In Venezuela the military is on the side of the government but hopefully in the US the military will realize their precarious position both nationally and globally, made precarious by a collapse and the neglect by the left, and will realize the Democrats and liberals are responsible. (Unfortunately the military seems to have been compromised. Recent events give credibility to that assessment, I will discuss it further on.) I believe possibly one reason the Democrats are so obsessed with Trump is because they were hoping the system would suffer a major setback, if not an outright collapse, under them which would allow them to declare martial law with them being in power and due to the circumstances they could remain in power by cancelling elections and by declaring martial law. The Venezuelan military did not have to consider global responsibilities as their influence was not global. Also we have a long list of enemies whereas they do not.
The following was written before it became obvious the military has been compromised.
Hopefully our military will also take into account they would have the backing of about 50% of the population. Also hopefully they realize the 50% they can count on are the actual ones that do something productive that is of importance for a functioning society. They are not the parasites, the pussy hat brigades, the antifas, the rabble rousers, the lazy, the gender and ethnic studies ignoramuses, the false intellectuals, the snowflakes, the protestors and revolutionaries and drug users but the professionals, the farmers and the working class that would be necessary to regain safety, security and stability to reestablish a functioning society. The right is also more stable and family oriented. The poor creatures that are the political shills for the socialists, communists, and globalists might think of the words of Steven Pinker in “The Blank Slate”:
“The visions contrast most sharply in the political revolutions they spawned. The first revolution with a Utopian Vision was the French revolution – recall Wordworth’s description of the times, with ‘human nature seeming born-again.’ The revolution overthrew the ancient regime and sought to begin from scratch with the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity and a belief that salvation would come from vesting authority in a morally superior breed of leaders. The revolution, of course, sent one leader after another to the guillotine as each failed to measure up to usurpers who felt they had a stronger claim to wisdom and virtue. No political structure survived the turnover of personnel, leaving a vacuum that would be filled by Napoleon. The Russian Revolution was also animated by the Utopian Vision, it also burned through a succession of leaders before settling in for the personality cult of Stalin. The Chinese revolution, too, put its faith in the benevolence and wisdom of a man who displayed, if anything, a particularly strong dose of human foibles like dominance, lust, and self-deception. The perennial limitations of human nature prove the futility of political revolutions based only on the moral aspirations of the revolutionaries. . . “