My thoughts on how the world works

The prototype for this society, our society, was Fascism - which happened in many countries in the Thirties – especially Italy, Germany, and Japan. The German variety, Nazism, has been studied to death – without, as far as I know, any substantial understanding of it. We know almost nothing about the Japanese variety, and don’t even have a name for it. But since the Nazis are know so well known, we can take them as an example of what can happen to an advanced country faced with the stresses of post-modern life.

Americans will immediately object, pointing out that they won WWII, defeating the Germans and Japanese (and as a side-issue, the Italians). Therefore, they say, Americanism triumphed over the forces of evil and all is well with the world.

This overlooks a few things – such as the USSR, which was our ally during the war. But it also overlooks something vastly more important – the developments in America after the war. Which were unbelievable – and which I want to write about now.

These changes can be summarized easily: the Corporation (or, on the international scene, Globalization) has become all-powerful. This is organized as a combine of dictatorial societies (different interlocking companies) who were all hierarchies – with a few at the top in control, and the few getting most of the loot. China, interestingly enough, has the same type of organization – where the Party controls everything. Dictatorships, of one kind or another, now control the world.

Many of these are still dictatorships of the past. But the new dictatorships are well-worth giving some thought to.

Which plenty of people have – and they have universally condemned the organization (in its various forms) as evil – to use a good, old-fashioned, four-letter word.

I agree with them – but I think the situation is more complicated than just plain evil – or man’s inhumanity to man – which, as Jesus said – is with us always. I am a believer in complexity theory – which notes, that as situations become more complex emergent properties appear – something that was not there before – at all. To understand our new world – we have to understand these new properties.

Immediately, people will say “I don’t wanna know!” Without saying this out-loud in so many words. But anyone with the slightest social sensitivity (even me) will hear this message loud and clear – and obey.

But I am different – and I want to think about it – now. And to do that I will have to go back to when everything last changed. To the Enlightenment. Which taught that men should be free. Who could argue with that? But these thinkers (and they were thinkers) overlooked one thing – human nature.

And they overlooked one more thing – the rise of the masses – a product of the Industrial Revolution – which overwhelmed the Enlightenment completely.

I must take some time out now and discuss human nature. Other thinkers have pointed out – correctly – that human nature is dependent on its context. And have even gone so far as to say - erroneously - that individual human natures do not exist. When anyone observing any three-year old can see it plainly enough.

Human nature is the result of two things – our biology and our society. And I want to follow up on that.

Who we were back in the 18th Century depended on who were were at the time. But in the succeeding three hundred years (more or less) we have evolved – and are now something different. Our basic human nature – combined with our social conditioning – has produced something brand new.

I must now tie together the two strands of my discussion. At the macro level – our extremely unequal society. And at the micro level the masses who insist on – and enforce – this arrangement. Logically, this makes no sense – but this does not matter. It is the way it is. Sheldon S. Wolin has written about this in his Democracy, Inc. – Managed Democracy and the Spector of Inverted Totalitarianism.

But now I must talk of the masses. Something no one wants to talk about – because they have become us. Ortega y Gasset first noted these back in the Thirties – but he had no idea where they had come from. As I have said before – they appeared as the workers in the Industrial Economy. They performed the functions required by this economy – they functioned as little more than machines. And eventually they were replaced by machines – computers.

People were still left around – but they had become consumers – easily manipulated by the Media. They no longer exist as humans.

Perhaps I have left you confused. It has been a long discussion, and it really needs a book to cover it.