Constructive/Destructive Social Behavior
This morning I decided I wouldn’t write – for a change. But here I am pounding away on my keyboard - determined to tell the world about the world, whether it wants know about it or not. This is one advantage of The Cloud – it accepts anything and everything without limit.
People may not spend much time there but computers – such as the super-computers owned by NSA – are trawling through it constantly – figuring out what is going on in our collective unconscious – so it can be properly channeled.
If I were starting my working life over, I might be writing the algorithms that do some of this trawling – perhaps concentrating on the poetry that continues to pour out. Or perhaps the lyrics of popular music – which would not be too hard to analyze.
But more fundamental than this is the overall direction our global culture is moving. This has to be in either of two directions – constructive or destructive. When I was working, I could not help but be struck by how destructive it was. And by how no one was noticing this.
Everyone seems determined to not notice what is going on. How on earth we got this way, I can only guess. But the end result is obvious – we have become destructive – especially of ourselves.
This observation is nothing new. Historians have always written about the Rise and Fall of different peoples. And before there were historians, tribal groups no doubt rose and vanished without number. We should not be surprised to find the same thing happening in our time. And it should not be hard to see where on the rise/fall curve we are.
Once we took note of that, we would be in much better shape to do something about it. Self-awareness is always the first step to recovery.
But we are not aware of this. And this is the most important fact of our time. I suspect this is typical of any culture in decline – a lack of awareness. Occasionally, a people (or a person) will wake up and recover. But this is not usual.
The prototype for this process in the West was the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. This was followed (after a thousand years) with the Rise of the Modern World – a very complicated series of events (the Renascence, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution) we have not even tried to understand.
We have no label for where we are now – a serious handicap in itself. It is clear to me (and, indeed, to many others) that we we are in decline. But most (about 80 percent of the population) will not even admit that.
They are out of touch with Reality – living in a world of their own – and determined to stay that way.
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