Parodite wrote: ↑Fri Dec 29, 2023 10:33 am
Future Shock is a crisis in and of itself. Hard to keep up. I'm not sure religion suffers much though. The metaphysical is tolerant of past, present and future and especially grows well on existential threats and stress overload. In some form or other.
Accelerated change adds broken dreams with a future harder to predict. Disillusionment and no assumption is free of charge. Shouldn't democracy, human rights, small government and
the free market have solved most of our problems by now?
Seems to me next on the chopping block will be the globalizing free market. Communism has expired as a viable answer but centralized institutions, managerial and financial monopolies are growing everywhere. The libertarian instinct that government easily grows into a cancerous monster is a good one but has forgotten to pay attention to non-gvt monopolies that also emerge and become equally hideous and corrupting.
I remember Mr.P. expressing the opinion that it is always and only gvt interference that corrupts. If the free market is really left alone... no other corrupting monopolies will emerge. All will be fine. To me this sounds as naive as believing Communism will eventually work and that it failed only "because it was never really tried".
Economic freedom as a religious belief is coming to an end. People not only want to control their own territorial borders and have a democratic say on immigration policies, they will also start to question if businesses should have a default right to do business with anyone they want for the best price.
Examples are China, Meddle East and Russia. The globalized free market has made us dependent for our energy supplies on Mobster Russia and on some Meddle East Donkey States, for pharmaceuticals and tech parts on China. This makes our Western societies very vulnerable, as it turns out.
The business class elites always had a free pass doing whatever they want: that might be over soon.
Extra fuel is the moral-ethical question: should voters have a say on the limits of free market enterprise? I would vote in favor of completely disengaging from China, Russia, Iran and all Meddle East oil to make the Western Anglosphere completely self-sufficient. There is no universal law of nature that compels us to do business with every not-trustworthy crook and murderous a-hole just because the price is better. Unfortunately, the free-market fundamentalists and globalist whores with their religious beliefs are everywhere.
An exceptional set of brains is not a guarantee to stay free from these free market delusions, as David Spengli Goldman proves with his continuous ball licking of China and Huawei in particular. The option of simply refusing to do business with a-holes does not cross his mind. Let alone that it should be a point of discussion in a Western democracy and something to vote for or against.
Just saying...in Future Shock no person, no belief, no paradigm is safe anymore.
Yes, we looking at a "Future Shock".
Looking at history , "civilizations" have built their own world with their own norm, and normal, with all social, ethical, commercial etc laws and customs .. for their society, population, those civilizations had become the norm and the normal.
That we saw in Roman or Helenic times .. slave based free labour, rights only for "citizens" and not slaves etc etc .. in contrast to Persian Sassanid empire where economy was based on paid labour and "universal human right".
Later, Brits, Spaniard (and French) "discovering" Americas, exploiting Gold and wiping out the indigini was felt as "Normal" by civilization, Catholic church promoting (and leading) all this .. again, all this was felt "norm" by population, civilization of that episode.
In principle the concept did not changed With progress in history, one can see the Colonial Episode, Brits becoming biggest slave traders, America built on Slave labour ..
Imagine JFK was talking freedom and liberty when at the same time America had 2 kind of water fountains, for whites and for blacks.
After WW2 , Western world built a new "civilization", those bad NAZI went back to Mars, faked the WW2 history, excuse being fighting communism, but in realty to keep the "Untermensch" where they belong, leading to present situation where Russians (claiming be Jews) occupying Palestinian Homes but the Palestinians are the terrorists. This was the "normal" last 100+ yrs
We now "exiting" this civilization of last 300 yrs .. entering new world .. a new Civilization
Now things changing .. 1978 our beloved Pomegranates started to not accept what the West called (their own) "World Order" .. "Orders", with western definition of human and all other rights, put in place by West to control the "Untermesch".
We now entering a "New Civilization" .. new Rules, new Ethics, new economic and social and human (-rights) rules ..
In that sense .. YES .. we looking at
"Future Shock".
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