General Discussion

That being said the issues, for me, revolve around what I and, I am sure, others call theomythology. The civic mythologies of the country raised to the status of theological dogma. Any discussion which is in opposition to the dogma is deemed “anti-American”. Added into this are the concepts of complicated vs complex. Taking apart a car engine or transmission is complicated. My brother-in-law split his tractor in order to repair its transmission. He had never done anything like that before but he watched videos and meticulously catalogued where each part went. It was complicated. It was not complex.

Complexity, for me, involves uncertainty, the condition that Rumsfeld was laughed at when he said it. I laughed at him too. But he stated something that is true. Perhaps it is the step before karma hits when one makes a decision on a course of action. Karma or the law of unintended consequences. The issues we face are complex. They always have been. We have managed to muddle our way through them with some degree of success and not a few failures.

But at the core of the problem solving processes used are some complexities which hinder our problem solving. Of course every generation to a degree thinks that they are unique. It is likely through most of human history this was not the case. The generations were not much different than those who went before. The invention of the printing press followed by the explosion of science/mathematics and then the Industrial Revolution and so on moved technology and accessibility of information forward at speeds undreamed of. Postman, Huxley and Orwell feared what would happen if government was able to control the man-created “God in the Machine”. Their warnings were prescient but misplaced. Government has always been a tool for imposing organization on society. Many times government was and is used for oppression. Other times it is not. Our current situation is not the fault of government because the concept of government itself, being a tool, has no inherent morality or immorality. The only morality imposed upon government is that of men. The morality government is now being injected with is the morality of wealth/power. Heinlein wrote in Citizen of the Galaxy that people will do strange things for money but they will do stranger things yet for power over money.

We know that institutional memory which doesn’t exist as human memory but is rather a belief in the creation of institutions that both establish freedom but also demand responsibility is critical to the success of a society. Imo, the USSR failed because by the time of Brezhnev et al the belief could no longer be supported. It eventually collapsed of its own weight. The same is likely true of the PRC as time progresses.

Here, we are seeing our own slow-moving collapse. All of the agitprop used is designed to provide simplistic solutions to complicated and also complex problems. This is because of one truly complex problem: emotional and psychological growth lags behind technological growth. The more information inundates humans at greater speed the more many will be drawn to the simplistic solutions of the charlatan.

This all allows for wealth/power to increase its hold while itself is more and more unleashed.

We allow what we worship to become that which rules us.

Sorry for rambling.