Bassoe
Well-known member
What we can probably all agree on is that the modern status quo has failed at the most basic level of perpetuating itself.
- Technological infrastructure is terminally dependent upon finite resources which are being rapidly expended, once we run out of oil and rare earth ores, civilization collapses and can't rebuild.
- Loyalty to the status quo in the form of labor and obeying the law isn't rewarded with access to careers that can sustain a family, home, etc.
- The lower classes literally can't afford to raise families at population-sustaining rates.
And by "we all" I mean all. Not even the corporatists on top of the current status quo think things are sustainable, that's why they're going from the carrot of offering a decent quality of life to the stick of automated orwellian surveillance and You Will Own Nothing™ company town feudalism.The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun said:Places that succumb to the Bedouins are quickly ruined. The reason for this is that the Bedouins are a savage nation, fully accustomed to savagery and the things that cause it. Savagery has become their character and nature. They enjoy it, because it means freedom from authority and no subservience to leadership. Such a natural disposition is the negation and antithesis of civilization.
Now, labor is the real basis of profit. When labor is not appreciated and is done for nothing, the hope for profit vanishes, and no productive work is done. The sedentary population disperses, and civilization decays.
Gypsy by Carter Scholz said:Roger’s voice in the dark: I thought it was the leaders, the nations, the corporations, the elites, who were out of touch, who didn’t understand the gravity of our situation. I believed in the sincerity of their stupid denials - of global warming, of resource depletion, of nuclear proliferation, of population pressure. I thought them stupid. But if you judge them by their actions instead of their rhetoric, you can see they understood it perfectly and accepted the gravity of it very early. They simply gave it up as unfixable. Concluded that law and democracy and civilization were hindrances to their continued power. Moved quite purposefully and at speed toward this dire world they foresaw, a world in which, to have the amenities even of a middle-class life - things like clean water, food, shelter, energy, transportation, medical care - you would need the wealth of a prince. You would need legal and military force to keep desperate others from seizing it. Seeing that, they moved to amass such wealth for themselves as quickly and ruthlessly as possible, with the full understanding that it hastened the day they feared.