Why the World is Going Insane, from umair haque

[Knarf]

I became a member of "Medium". There is this guy whom I follow because I think he gets it. Here is his latest "rant".

It strikes me these days, as it probably strikes you, that the world has gone a little crazy, has lost its bearings. It struck me recently, along those lines, that "insane" is, funnily, a near perfect acronym for the links in the causal chain, the vicious cycle, that country after country is falling prey to. That we as a world are falling prey to. The one leading us into a dark age of extremists, authoritarians, kleptocrats, and throngs cheering it all along.

So. Here we go.

IN stands for inequality. It's the prime mover of today's problems. Inequality within countries has skyrocketed — and that's in every country around the globe, more or less, even well-managed ones, like Canada and Sweden. As inequality jumps, social distance grows. Rich and poor share little in common — not schools, roads, hospitals, and so on — and so a society begins to corrode from within — it loses trust. Politics grow polarized. The civic sphere corrodes. Decent jobs turn into minimum wage gigs, and becoming a CEO turns into a lottery ticket for a fortune that will last generations. Any sense of higher, enduring values decays, degenerates, and everything becomes about money, money, money. As we will see, what is lost when inequality grows is dignity, stability, opportunity, gentleness — a sense, in the end, that a society is a worthy, healthy, vibrant place.

S: Stagnation and stratification. Over time, as societies become more unequal places, economies — and the lives within them — begin to stagnate. That is because the lion's share of gain are going to the already very rich — as in America, for example, where over the last two decades, almost all gains have accrued to the top .01%. As stagnation sets in, a healthy nation's social structure begins to fracture, buckle, collapse. A "middle class," to which anyone can ascend , belong, and stay a part of — key to a vibrant democracy, a sense of optimism, a society that coheres and hangs together, a country that is not a hostile and cruel and indifferent place — becomes a new poor. The old poor become the wretched. And rich become the dynastic. For anyone but the richest, lives of dignity, meaning, purpose, belonging become unaffordable luxuries.

A: Austerity and authoritarianism. What usually happens next is this: the average person, having become the newly impoverished one, falls prey to a myth of folk economics: "because I am going bankrupt, we must be going bankrupt!" And so up spout MSNBC pundits and crackpot economists, who warn a nation of impending financial ruin, when precisely the opposite is true: a nation can't go bankrupt, only people can, and for precisely that reason, stagnant economies are the ones that demand investment most — and can't have it, because money is piled up at the top, usually in colossal amounts, which is what caused slowdowns to begin with — remember? Money is abundant in stagnant economies — it is only stoppered up in all the wrong places.

But usually the folk myth wins — demanding belt-tightening, because they are growing poorer, people say: "less government spending!" — and do not understand that just means: "I don't want my neighbours to invest in me!" And so there go public healthcare, media, finance, infrastructure — there go safety nets, retirements, decent jobs. But as they go, that newly impoverished person grows poorer still — because all those could have raised their income, savings, standard of living. All those things could have restored the lost belonging, meaning, purpose, sense of worthiness that people have lost, and hunger desperately for. But they have denied themselves.

So the average person is baffled. Nothing works! He or she loses what little trust they had in the system, themselves, the future, their society. Despair and rage grow hot and heavy in their hearts. What can they do? Now they are easy meat for authoritarians. And usually, the average person seeks safety in the arms of the first one who comes along, shouting and screaming.

N and E stand for nationalism and extremism. What does the authoritarian do to fix this mess — a society whose social structure has collapsed from the middle, an economy that needs investment but can't get it, and people who have been told exactly the wrong things to do about it all?

Well, the first thing authoritarians usually do is enact aggressive nationalisms."This land! It is ours!" they bellow. Substitute "land" for healthcare, finance, jobs, or trade, and the story remains the same. So authoritarianism is a way to ration dwindling prosperity — if you are of pure blood, from the right tribe, and so on, you can have a piece of the shrinking pie. But the problem remains that the pie is shrinking in the first place — and so where once there is a soft nationalism, usually, a decade or two later, there is a hard, vengeful, cruel one, in which yesterday's fortunate are today's unwanted. That is the story of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany both.

So nationalism soon enough becomes extremism, because rationing a shrinking pie leads nowhere but to a Lord of the Flies plight. And that is where this cycle ends — with nations teetering on the brink of hostility, war, violence. Usually, they descend headlong, enthusiastically, into it.

Now. Let us discuss what my little INSANE framework (lol) really means.

You are right if you already suspect it was the story of the 1930s. But there is more to it than that. It was also the story of Rome's fall. It was the story of Athens' descent into tyranny. It is how the Maya and Inca fell, too. The only differences in these are the initial triggers of inequality and stagnation — was it some kind of foolish human choice, hubris, as in Rome? Was it natural calamity, as for the Maya and Inca? Or was it famine and drought, as in Athens? This is a universal pattern of how human organizations — the biggest ones, societies — fall apart.

Ours? It'll be the calamities brought on by climate change — better called Extinction. So the question for societies, and people, today is this: which ones will be able to see the pattern before it is too late? After all, seeing a pattern gives one power not to repeat it, to understand it, to try, at least, to prevent it.

Let's think about that for a moment. Media and intelligentsia across the world are denying each and every link of the pattern above. According to them, authoritarianism, nationalism, and extremism, are just the results of...bad people. Ah — already you see how easily the pattern above provokes hostility? How it reduces us to ignorance?

Of course, the ANE in INSANE cannot just be the result of bad people, because they are problems suddenly sweeping the globe. A few bad apples cannot be causing the ANE to rise and prosper, from Britain to Italy to Sweden to Hungary to India. But too many thinkers refuse outright to think about the world even in basic ways like doing global comparisons anymore.

Now. That tells us something vital. We might not make it out of the cycle at the rate we're going. If you can't see it, you can't stop it, remember? And people are not shown this cycle much at all — by design. Maybe the media wants to sell clicks, maybe too many politicians haven't studied history — who knows? The motives aren't the point. The point is just pragmatic.

If you can't see this pattern, where is a society likely to end up? Well, at the end of the pattern. Ruled by the most insane among it. The most extreme, the most hostile, the most cruel, the most ignorant.

Remember Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany? That is the way we're heading now, as a planet. Maybe we won't end up all the way down that road of darkness — but that's not saying much, is it? And so a big question for the world is this: who won't let themselves end up that way this decade?

https://eand.co/why-the-world-is-going-insane-865517207d9c

[K-Dog]

I was a member of Medium last year.  If Medium had done better at pushing articles I was interested in at me I might still be a member.  But after a year I was reading only a handful of authors.

My favorite is Jessica Wildfire.  Apparently Medium is being unkind with little people with a doom orientation and Jessica is moving on.  Umair Haque will not have to worry.  Umair is not little people like us. 

Going to Medium, I was delighted to learn Jessica has her own website.  Like us she now runs her own show.

OK Doomer

Check out "The Billionaires Are Going Bunkers" on her website.  It is a good read.

Where is the world going?  If you have been following what I have been up to, then you know I have been learning Marxism.  But that is not all.  Father Karl only has some of the puzzle pieces of life, not all of them.  Marxism is logical, too logical.  It does not consider conspicuous consumption and greed in the right way.

But if it was all figured out for me, what fun would that be. 

It seems the world wants authoritarianism.  We must have the wrong sugar in our diet or something.  Is it appropriate to demonize the authoritarians or the desire for them?



I am not the first to notice that Trump is a fanboy.  But note the fine citizens of Omelas in the background.  All ready to sacrifice themselves for tyranny.

If you can't see this pattern, where is a society likely to end up? Well, at the end of the pattern. Ruled by the most insane among it. The most extreme, the most hostile, the most cruel, the most ignorant.

- Umair

[Tonyprep]

A lot of people are trying to figure out what has gone wrong with humans (whilst others insist that nothing has gone wrong and the world is the best it's ever been). However, there is nothing to figure out. Humans are a species and what has gone "wrong" is that we're simply acting like a species but our ability to extract resources has amplified the "bad." All species will access whatever resources they can until they physically can't. Then they crash. Eventually, some kind of climax state is reached where all the species in an ecosystem live in a kind of harmony until the next perturbation.

The species hypothesis explains everything and always will. There's nothing we can do about it.

[K-Dog]

All species will access whatever resources they can until they physically can't. Then they crash.

The last mammoths died on Wrangel Island five thousand years ago as they ran out of resources.  None of them understood what was going on.  Some of us do.

And that makes things fucked up.