CAPITALISM - KAKISTOCRACY’S IDEAL

This week, I learned a wonderful new word: Kakistocracy.  I’d never heard it before until the other day when I was watching a recent video by Jello Biafra (WWJD #82).  The term is defined as “a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens.”  I can’t think of a more perfect description of the current political state of the western world, particularly the US and UK.  We’ve allowed the worst of us to amass the most power and this year has been bearing the fruit of their incompetence and corruption in a manner so profoundly destructive, we’ve literally been witnessing the collapse of our civilization.  The question is: How did we let this happen?  How is it that the most contemptible, idiotic and useless examples of humanity have managed to maneuver themselves into every significant seat of power conceivable within our society?

I think the easy answer to this complex question is MONEY.  Those who have it get the advantages; those who don’t, get the shaft.  It is, however, a bit more complex than that.  To attempt to understand it, you have to look at the way capitalism has evolved in the west in the past century or so since the dawn of the industrial revolution, particularly within the last 40 years.  I think the crux of it can be found by looking at the difference between the idealized conception of capitalism vs what’s actually come to pass as a (dis)functioning reality.  To understand the “ideal” you have to look at the person who today gets inexplicably lauded by the right and condemned by the left.  To this point, it’s time for a bit of true confessions from me.

When I was a young adult, during the 1980s, a friend of mine gave me a book, The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand.  I fell in love with it.  Firstly, Rand spoke plainly and logically and without recourse to religion or mysticism.  As an atheist and agnostic myself, this was fundamentally appealing to me. She was a rationalist and promoted reason as a methodology and intellect as a value.  What people now label as a “lack of empathy”, I interpreted as mere selectivity.  I just saw that she promoted a philosophy of caring for people who deserved it and not sacrificing yourself for deadbeats.  She didn’t advocate investing time and effort into people who were abusive, unappreciative, disrespectful, ignorant or prejudiced, something which was viewed as the height of irrationality.  I agreed with that stance and I still do, at least in terms of personal relationships.  As an aspiring musician and artist, I related to the struggle of her hero, architect Howard Roark.  He was a symbol of pure creative integrity: uninfluenced, unimpressed and unimpeded by the judgements of others.  It was an attitude I sought to ingrain into my own works and approach to life.  What I gleaned from her writing was an appreciation for innovation, imagination, integrity, commitment, honesty, intellect and a personal passion to be true to one’s creative vision.  I still feel this way.  I don’t think these are negative values. 

As I got deeper into her writings, I began to learn about her conceptions of economics and her championing of capitalism as an “unknown ideal”.  In her mind, it was an economic system which was driven by a desire to acknowledge the best and brightest through rewards commensurate with their achievements and abilities.  It was also about having the right to retain and control the fruits of one’s labors: private property, unassailable by taxation.  And it was about the creation of values: goods and services of quality and distinction.  Her conception of this system was that it would be self-regulating.  That the corrupt, the crass and the criminal would be weeded out by a kind of natural selection whereby they would ultimately fail in their businesses because the public would not support them.  Bad employers would not be able to retain staff nor appeal to enough customers to survive.  In this regard, she felt that nearly every aspect of civilization would benefit from privatization with capitalistic profit motives as a driving factor.  Profit, in her eyes, meant benefiting in some way from one’s efforts and exchanges and never sacrificing “something of value” for “something of lesser value”.  Her ultimate manifestation of these ideals was John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, an inventor and engineer, seemingly inspired by Nicola Tesla, intent on revolutionizing the energy industry in a similar manner to Tesla’s tower delivering free electricity through the air.  On the surface it was all very noble and heroic stuff.

That idealism was founded on a premise which has proven to be rather unsupported in the real world.  It’s the idea that ethics and morality are somehow latent, emergent properties of capitalism.  Though there were provisions for the existence of legal systems to resolve legitimate disputes or disagreements, there was no accounting for our innate disposition towards deception and criminality.  Humanity was given the benefit of the doubt, though we have proven most definitely undeserving of it.  It’s an assumption which has proven far from true and something of a fatal oversight.  As a result, what has manifest instead of a system for championing the exceptional is an economic system with a pathological, narcotic addiction to wealth and an obsession with the ruthlessly expedient when approaching that objective.  Rather than celebrating quality and craft, the system we have only seeks to concentrate riches in as few hands as possible and then grow that wealth exponentially while sacrificing any and all values regarding human quality of life in the process.  Standards of living, environmental sustainability, respect for life: all of them are subject to the chopping block if it should prove expedient to do so for the sake of even a modicum of profit.  Whenever an innovative product is put on the market, the natural inertia of the marketplace moves to look for ways to devalue it: to reduce its cost, to cut expenses on its manufacturing, to trim the investment required for staffing and increase the quotas of productivity expected from those still doing the work of creating it.  Corners are cut, inferior materials are substituted while any and all means are employed to offer less and financially gain more.  This is the exact opposite of the process that was envisioned by Rand’s conception of the system, at least as far as I interpret it from her writings.

When it comes to celebrating intelligence and achievement, in practical application and based on a continuous downward spiral of cost cutting and quality reduction, those attributes are seen as hindrances in our real world manifestation of the “free market”.  Ethics and morality are therefore inconvenient because they identify the shortcomings and contradictions inherent within that process.  The system, as it stands, depends on a sociopathy and psychopathy which divorces itself from any form of empathy as a means to enact the most brutal and harsh conditions conceivable in order to achieve its ends.  The result is a form of anti-intellectualism which seeks to stifle rationality and reason while distracting the populace from critical examination with mind-numbing trinkets of fascination in the hopes that people won’t realize the nature of the system bleeding them dry.  That’s assuming the populace has managed to grumble enough to convince their masters to indulge such diversions.  More commonly, simple naked force is used in less developed societies to compel people to participate in their own abuse.  In the end, we find ourselves being lead by the nose by idiotic and incompetent criminals who are incapable of even the most meager critical insights.

During a brief period in the mid-20th century, this rigid division between “have” and “have not” was mitigated by an era of upward mobility which created an effective middle class population.  Unionization and labor standards enabled people to build personal wealth without having to inherit it.  This became the “American dream”: the ladder up which supposedly anyone could climb. Well maybe you could ascend it if your skin was the right color.  Of course there were some exceptions permitted to disprove and obscure the rule, but the majority still found themselves nailed to their crosses for the duration.  However, as we’ve begun to reach a breaking point in terms of resources and impacts to our environment, those in power, aided by those who did manage to climb the ladder, have pulled that ladder up and have been steadfastly working towards undoing any progress made in the previous century.  There has since been a systematic dismantling of the societal framework which so many worked to create through two world wars and countless social movements.  The system, in the end, continues to perpetuate itself, but how?

The primary means by which this sort of social order can survive for any length of time is by virtue of privilege, by rigging the game so only those on the inside can win while everyone else merely subsists or sinks entirely.  Money is the ticket into this cabal of incompetence.  Those born into wealth and privilege are beneficiaries while those who suffer poverty, often aggravated by their skin color and geographic heritage, are denied and abused.  Though this is an initial driver in sustaining this system, there are two other key factors involved.

The second ties back to Rand’s other major work, Atlas Shrugged, which describes a world where the intelligent and the capable abandon civilization to its follies and fools while choosing to live isolated from it all as the rest of the world collapses.  In a sense this is very much the case with our modern world as so many of the able and intelligent of it have given up any hope of change.  Buddhism refers to the “Trance of Sorrow”, which is one of the first stages upon the road to enlightenment.  It is the point at which the adept realizes the hopelessness of existence, expressed by consciousness of mortality, and is tempted to give up on life.  This is where we have lost most of our intelligentsia as they have withdrawn from the world and do not endeavor to participate in its development.  And this is not an unreasonable tactic.  I have, for much of my adult life, felt like the state of the world is beyond my ability to influence and that the only path forward is to simply let it fail or even give it a nudge closer to the edge whenever that option presented itself.  It’s an assumption that change will only happen when the current system collapses and we finally have an opportunity to begin anew.  There’s still a significant part of me which is convinced this is a viable strategy.

The third factor in sustaining this system is the so-called “democratic” process and its inexorable tendency to reinforce the lowest common denominator.  It’s another form of inertia which tends towards an overall dumbing down and oversimplification within the culture.  When you have an uninformed, ignorant electorate, they’re going to make bad decisions and support incompetent people and irrational propositions.  The system takes great efforts to ensuring that the voting populace, or those who are allowed to vote, is kept distracted, docile and distant from any understanding of the issues or any comprehension of the qualities necessary to govern effectively.  The cult of celebrity is used in this regard to foist candidates onto the ballot based on popularity and personality.  It’s not necessary to master any skills or command any expertise in any area as long as you’re able to perform sufficiently for the amusement of whomever you wish to scratch an “X” next to your name. When the above three key factors are taken together, the manifestation of rule by the incompetent is not only feasible, but inevitable. 

What I find perplexing is how someone like Ayn Rand has been embraced by the conservative, religious right.  Having significant familiarity with her works, her message still remains, in my mind, diametrically opposed to theirs.  She was an atheist, for one.  She was a strict rationalist who abhorred the concepts of faith and mysticism.  Her conception of capitalism is still miles away from the “greed is good” corruption and predatory nature of the sharks prowling the economic waters since the dawn of the Reagan era.  She despised him and everything he represented.  There is cause to consider the possibility that Rand’s principals and values have been deliberately co-opted by the alt-right in order to subvert them and undermine the very tools which could be used to defeat them.  She was far from perfect, but her basic conceptions of rationality and reason remain, I contend, quite sound.  These same principals can be found enshrined in the likes of groups like The Satanic Temple, one of the foremost politically adept anti-fascist organizations currently active in the US, who are diligently working against allowing theocratic tendencies to destroy the separation of church and state in that country.

I’m well aware, at this stage of my life, of where Rand’s philosophy has failed in terms of providing some kind of balance between “selfishness” as a “virtue” and empathy as a necessity for creating an ethical, morally sound civilization.  Strict adherence to purely rational processes must also be balanced by the recognition of emotional responses.  Logic will always have a limit beyond which intuition has to fill in the gaps because omniscience does not exist.  Being concerned with one’s own welfare shouldn’t negate or be mutually exclusive of the ability to care for the well-being of others.  The concept was NOT simply selfishness as an end in itself, but rational self-interest where one didn’t simply act on whims but with reasoned consideration of results and consequences.  This can be seen again in the sloppy interpretations of Aleister Crowley’s “do what thou wilt” axiom, where people misinterpret it as a license for wanton indulgence without responsibility.  Being true to one’s natural tendencies cannot be pursued in a vacuum, unconcerned with the impacts on the world around us.  We should be able to comprehend that when others suffer and are left in positions of poverty and squalor it drags all of us down and, as we’ve witnessed first hand this year, makes us all susceptible to physical threats like pandemics and disease. 

We are all interdependent and when it comes to societal infrastructures, capitalism as it currently operates, divorced from all consideration of its impacts, cannot be used as a method for managing most aspects of that framework.  Corporations, in this environment, become thoughtless monstrosities which only seek to ensure their own fiscal well-being without any consideration for the world in which they exist.  The people who maintain them are not in control.  Like dead-eyed sharks, they mindlessly function only by rote mechanics.  They merely respond to stimulus in terms of seeking out solutions to monetary issues.  The human component is no more than a tangential consideration and only so far as they are necessary to perform essential functions.  When they can be replaced by machinery or computers or cheaper labor pools, they are chucked into the bin without any hesitation.

There is a place for a market of exchange of goods and services and it can be a mutually beneficial system when done fairly and with a sense of caring for your trading partners.  When you don’t view people as prey, you don’t seek to leave them as carcasses after you’ve done business with them.  Marketplaces cannot be left to their own devices in terms of oversight.  Rand’s contention that they would somehow moderate themselves was wholly ignorant of human nature.  You must have some sort of regulations in place to ensure fairness in the system and observance of considerations in terms of things like environmental and societal impacts as well as public safety.  There have to be formal standards and practices which are recognized and accredited to ensure objective adherence and consistent observance.  These things are necessary to ensure things like food isn’t contaminated and appliances don’t burst into flames and burn houses down.  This kind of bureaucracy is essential within a civilized marketplace.

Outside of this, in areas like the legal system, policing, medicine, education and public works (highways, power, water & sewage, etc.), financial profit cannot be used as a motive for operation in any way.  These things form the framework of a civilization and must function as mutually beneficial to all participants in that society.  They should seek to only operate within agreed-upon budgets funded by public input through reasonable taxation of the marketplace.  Healthcare is a perfect example of how this can go very wrong when driven by profit motives.  Curing illness is no longer the goal in western medicine.  Rather, maintaining it is the objective because that’s how you keep people coming back for more of your medications and treatments.  You don’t want them better because then they’re no longer a source of profits.  Even in a semi-socialized system, it becomes a completely counter-intuitive process.

Though the situation is quite dire, I do have a shred of optimism that we might be able to reform ourselves before we hit rock bottom: that place beyond redemption from which we may not be able to find recovery.  The thing about a kakistocracy is that it is, ultimately, run by mostly very ignorant people and that is an advantage for the rest of us.  They understand neither subtlety, craft nor cunning.  Watching that orange buffoon in the White House is proof that the only thing he comprehends is the bludgeon.  “TRUMP SMASH” is his only strategy.  He may be abetted by a few possessing a modicum of guile, but their objectives are still primal and primitive: power and wealth.  Enlightenment is something they are incapable of grasping nor aspiring towards.  They prefer to hunker in their shrouded bunkers, hoarding their bangles and beads, thinking these things represent true value and failing to understand that life is about experience and engagement and how you live it.  That’s not to say there aren’t a handful of particularly malevolent people possessing enough intelligence to put forward some effective strategies.  If it weren’t for these provocateurs, the conservative grip on the political main stage would have no chance of success at all.  The issue here is that they are operating unopposed.  As long as the liberal intelligentsia remain resigned and defeated, or worse yet, co-opted by trying to sustain the current system in a kind of “have their cake and eat it too” neoliberal death-spiral, alt-right/conservative minions will continue to run roughshod over the political landscape.

This year seems like we’ve reached a stage where our civilization has hit the boiling point.  The heat has been rising gradually for the past century as we’ve succumbed to greater and greater influence by the incompetent and the corrupt.  We’re all that hapless frog failing to notice how hot the water has become and we’re all about to be cooked.  Once we are, we can’t be uncooked.  Our time is nearly up and we’re going to see very soon whether we’re on a path to destruction, with only the hope of the survivors rebuilding from the rubble, or if we can wrest control of this bus away from the idiot driving it before we go off the cliff. 

TEN YEARS AFTER - ANOTHER DECADE IN THE CAN

As we come to the close of another decade, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how we use this particular factor of time to define out social evolution.  The decade is often used as a platform for nostalgia and reminiscing.  Depending on your age, you might look back on a particular decade as a "golden age" or base your generational identity on the events and products of that time.  We think of fashion and music and movies within a classification system which relies on this arbitrary 10 year span to create a sense of progression.  Our identities as individuals and groups conform to these cycles and stamp us with signifiers which link us to the times of our youth, adulthood and old age. Overall, the use of this segmentation helps to give us a sense of forward momentum, the feeling like we are traveling along a continuum and heading towards some kind of accomplishment. 

It seems to me that Western civilization began delimiting decades as cultural and generational eras beginning with the 20th century, or perhaps just before it.  I suspect it is closely tied to the industrial revolution and remains linked to technological advancements to this day.  Prior to that, things didn't change much except in terms of centuries where you might get an enlightened period or a dark age or ongoing wars between nations and ethnic groups, but for the most part, the way people lived didn't change too dramatically until machines and electricity came into the picture.  Then you get an exponentially accelerating process of social upheaval as successive new technologies emerge.  Within that, the decade became a convenient marker by which to retrospectively assess and assimilate the primary social shifts which occurred in the past.  

From what I've observed, the means and methods of consuming media have been of particular importance in defining these shifts.  Perhaps the advent of written texts and then the printing press would be the first major propellants of cultural evolution.  Then we have the telephone, radio, recorded media (photography, film, audio and video tapes and discs), Television, computers, the internet and, finally, wireless broadband among the key communication revolutions.  The advent of each of these and the process of them becoming ubiquitous within our civilization has carried with it a unique set of social adaptations which changed the way we relate to one another.  Ideas could be shared with increasing speed, spreading the assimilation of new concepts and changing the way we perceive and comprehend reality.  The very act of recording is, in effect, a sort of "time machine",  allowing us to venture into the past and project ourselves into the future. 

Economic circumstances were also a key factor, particularly in the first half of the 20th century with the "roaring twenties" defining an era of abundance and economic boom, while the "dirty thirties" was a decade of financial ruin with the social upheaval which resulted ultimately culminating in a decade marked by a world war and the prospect of literal planetary extermination coming within the grasp of our species for the first time.  But in spite of the looming specter of nuclear annihilation, the 1950s dawned as a decade of prosperity and plenty.  Post war, birth rates soured, income increased and the new technologies were making themselves known as the cultural concepts of modernism & futurism became embedded into the psyche of the mainstream.   Technological advancements could be experienced directly as new machines and appliances entered the homes of large numbers of people in a mostly egalitarian way. 

Popular culture became critical as a social glue in the mid-century decades.  TV brought entertainment into every home and youth culture became an economic factor as manufacturers and  service industries realized that teens and preteens had access to wealth and resources never before available to so many.  The "middle class" came into its own in the West.  Things like rock and roll music could motivate millions of young people to purchase all sorts of products from clothes to cars to cans of Coke.  The sales pitch became an art form and began to develop a sophistication capable of manipulating susceptible minds.  Propaganda was turned towards selling goods instead of pushing ideology.  Capitalism became the ideology and its success was measured in profit margins.  

The 1960s ushered in the "space age" as the move to put people among the stars took hold and drove the science of the day, but other sorts of travel were also in the cards thanks to the advent of psychedelic drugs, a technology which came into prominence at the beginning of the decade as  clandestine experiments by the military and government leaked into the streets.  Thanks to the subversive efforts of certain intellectuals in the universities, these substances became widely available to the youth of the day, with the result being a realization that they had a voice and could take to the streets to demand change, as opposed to being no more than pawns in the capitalistic cat and mouse games of product peddling.  

This was all expertly crushed down in the 1970s when the youth were diverted away from activism as the "me decade" offered up self-indulgent fashion trends like disco and punk to provide a sense of self expression while simultaneously feeding the cash registers of the corporations creating all the clothes and music being consumed.  But this only worked to a certain extent as some valuable lessons were learned in the previous decade and actual social change did manage to start to creep into the cultural fabric.  Race relations, gender politics and sexual orientation all found their feet during this decade and began the process of fighting for rights and recognition which had been denied up to this point.  The world also began to recognize the environmental toll being exacted on the planet as pollution, in its various forms, started to show that it wasn't just nuclear destruction which offered an existential threat to humanity.  Our day to day abuses of our natural resources  could also upset the balance enough to trigger potentially catastrophic consequences.  

The 1980s saw the advent of the "computer world" as the first personal computers began to enter the home, though it wouldn't be until the next decade that these would truly make their mark.  However, culturally, the electronics boom drove society into it's first dalliances with cell phones and satellite TV opened up the possibilities of specialized programming and niche markets.  Above all, the capitalist money machine kicked into high gear as "greed is good" became the mantra of the mainstream.  Wealth and decadence were the hallmarks of this neon day-glo, big hair, broad shouldered decade.  It seemed as though money was all you needed to buy your happiness and your social standing.  

This culture of prosperity and technology carried over into the 1990s as the personal computer truly found its home on the desktops of middle class homes throughout the west.  Digital became the watchword as CDs and DVDs brought crystal clear, pixel perfect reproductions of content to consumers.  The skeleton of the internet established itself during this time and the potential of unlimited connectivity loomed.  Cell phones transformed from awkward bricks into something that more closely resembled the fantasy sci-fi communicators of Star Trek, small and palm sized, easy to pocket, making communication possible virtually anywhere at any time.  

The new millennium dawned amid paranoia about "Y2K" disasters as people began to realized how much they'd become dependent on technology and its computing power.  The prospect of a simple miscalculation sending global infrastructures and economies into chaos drove crisis culture into realms of conspiracies.  The build-out of the World Wide Web broke business models for media distribution and monetization as file sharing and rampant pirating of content meant that the container was no longer king in the world of data distribution.  Ones and zeros could be transmitted effortlessly from any one location to another, so artifacts like CDs and their physical counterparts became irrelevant and lost their value.  

Cable TV exploded in the 2000s and brought with it a host of product, both good and bad.  Sophisticated dramas on HBO were balanced against trashy reality TV on other specialty channels.  Being famous became an end in itself as Warhol's "15 minutes" prediction turned into nightmarish reality.  Economically, the house of cards was collapsing as born out by the 2008 crisis when banks and other financial institutions worked their way into disaster through speculation, unsustainable lending and sheer fraud on a scale never before imagined.  Politically, the uncoupling of reality from expediency set the stage for a kind of delusional governance which would fully bare fruit in the decade to come.  

This brings us to the 2010s as we close out this most recent decade and look forward to the 2020s.  Looking forward is something I say with a bit of hesitancy as we sit now on the precipice of some  disturbing realities.  With hindsight being what it is, looking back on this last decade reveals some rather unsettling chickens coming home to roost.  That sense of perpetual progression seems to be hitting the brakes now as the true cost of our follies begins to be calculated and the sums start hitting into zones of danger which had originally been projected for times much further into the future than our present.  

I think if there's anything that defines the past ten years, it has to be the proliferation of social media  in our culture.  Though the technology to support it first came into being in 2007, the effect of it has truly been felt since the beginning of this decade as platforms like Facebook and Twitter have taken root and created this environment where facts have become optional.  People are now free to create their own reality based on any old bias or prejudice they wish to indulge.  Things are true because people want them to be true.  "Fake" is a meaningless term now because everything is fake.  One media source is just as good as another.  It's only a matter of personal preference.  

Environmentally, the alarm bells have been going off throughout the decade as severe weather anomalies and climate change become more and more difficult to dismiss.  People looking back on this decade, if there are any to do so in the future, may likely pinpoint it as the tipping point for climate collapse and irreversible damage to our ability to sustain life.  There is every chance we have already gone too far in terms of damaging ecological systems for us to effect repairs or stop the rest of the dominoes from falling.  

Politically, we're living through something that would have only been imagined in a Batman movie plot in previous decades.  Now, blatant criminals have stolen control of governments away from the electorate and prop themselves up with deluded masses of ignorant lackeys who follow because they've been bred to see selfishness and cruelty as virtues to be celebrated.  People protected by their social media bubbles of self deceit rally around a buffoon like Trump and cheer as he spits insults and abuse, thinking this is a display of authority when, in fact, it's nothing more than a perversion of power.  There is no level of debasement he is capable of which would dissuade them from their support.

Socially, this decade has seen the complete abandonment of the concept of a "middle class" as a small percentage of the mega-wealthy horde resources beyond any practical need and deny basic sustenance to the rest of the planet by preventing wages from growing with productivity and lobbying to repeal fundamental social gains made by unionization and labor movements in previous decades.  They've convinced themselves that their money will buy them protection from the social collapse they're actively engaged in promoting as they undermine every social institution which used to help advance civilization.  Profit motives have corrupted the courts, healthcare, education, policing, the military and spirituality.  There isn't a single sanctuary remaining where the obsession with profit at any costs hasn't desecrated the concept of empathy, community and caring.  We're all merely swirling around the toilet for the final flush, grasping at any piece of shit we can get our hands on before we get sucked down the drain, once and for all.

Where generations have previously followed the procession of advancement, always with a sense of optimism of working towards a better future, we are now at a precipice where more and more people are convinced there's no turning back and that there's no hope for salvation.  We can't pretend anymore that these are just tough times, struggles we've gone through before and that we'll work our way through.  That delusion has lost its usefulness as a salve to ease the pain of the wounds that keep being inflicted upon us.  We're worn raw from the abuse and know there's no plan to relent or show mercy.  The master is on the whip and any pretense at accommodation has been abandoned as an economic burden, too costly to justify.   This last decade has sucked the wind from our sails, particularly the latter half of it.  When blatant criminals can hold power in what is called "the land of the free", then the world has gone mad, even if that nation has always been something of a fraud in terms of being a proponent of "truth and justice". 

My own personal journey through this decade as been one of disconnection and loss, right from its onset.  Where the 1990s & 2000s saw me find footing in the technology sector, establishing a 16 year long successful career in software development, I started off 2010 by being unceremoniously ejected from that position and have not been able to secure any stable employment since.  As I come up to my 10th anniversary of unemployment, I find myself in a kind of netherworld limbo, the "50 plus dead zone", where I'm too old to be considered for any regular employment (50 being the arbitrary cutoff currently in vogue), but not old enough to retire and collect a pension.  In fact, the same people who won't hire people over 50 are also now pushing for holding off retirement until after 70, though they don't seem to see any issue with that 20 year purgatory they're creating in the process.  Though I subsist in a state of disenfranchisement from the main economic engine, I'm still somehow allowed to exist in this position where I have a roof over my head and food on my table, ostensibly because I must still serve some meager economic purpose.  The frightening thing is that I'm actually one of the lucky ones.  By some anomaly of mathematics, I'm still considered in the upper percentile of affluence on this planet.  Go figure.  

Now, we're on the threshold of the 2020's.  It's a nice looking number, to be sure, but what of the humans which will be defining this coming decade?  Are they going to double down on disaster or turnabout into a rebound?  Personally, my money's on the former as all signs point to a continuation of the madness which has stamped this past decade with its obscenities and inexcusable delusions.  I suspect humanity needs a lesson in humility and survival before the idiots start to consider that you can't defy nature and reality indefinitely.  Eventually the check is gonna come due and we're going to have to pay up for our hubris and wanton disregard for the limitations of our existence.   The big question is going to be whether it's too late to right the wrongs and chance course.  If there are historians to look back on what we did this past decade, let's hope we at least serve as an object lesson in mismanagement rather than an epitaph for the planet. 

IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME

If I could go back in time and give my younger self some advice, I'd tell that young boy some things which would change the way he'd live his life.   You see, from the vantage point I have now, I know that the world he's going to live in is far different from the one he thinks is ahead.  Back there, he was thinking about a world based on romantic notions of progress, potential and possibilities.  But what is really around the corner has nothing at all to do with any of those things.

Firstly, I'd tell him that, above all else, money is the most important thing with which he'll ever need to concern himself.  Acquiring it, keeping it and increasing it is the holy trinity he should be focused on to the exclusion of all else.  Money is power and influence and security and control.  Money is a passport to any lifestyle one chooses to live.  Money can buy whatever you need in any circumstance.  Money paves the way and makes all things possible. 

This, of course, means that the very first thing he needs to put aside is any inclination towards the arts.  My God, what a colossal waste of time and effort is contained in that pursuit!  I would regale him with terrifying tales of years spent pouring physical and emotional fuel into creating piles of useless expression never appreciated by a single soul.  I would horrify him with the hopelessness of trying to communicate with a world completely indifferent to every effort.  I would crush his hopes by painting a pallid picture of tossing great pearls before a world of porcine ignorance and swine incapable of appreciation or comprehension.  No, no, no!  First and foremost, forget all about that.  

Instead, I would suggest real-estate as one profitable pursuit.  Property ownership in the right areas is paramount because when you control property, you control people.  But there's also much to be done in the speculation and investment markets.  In fact, a good con can move masses into unleashing great gobs of capitol into your disposal.  The main point to remember here is that one need not be concerned with legalities or ethics in any way.  The acquisition of wealth is its own end and any means to that end is justifiable.  The only consideration is that, if you're going to play outside the rules, be smart about it and don't get caught crossing the lines.  However, if you do find yourself afoul of the law, be assured that money has its privileges and that "greasing" the right palm can go a long way to avoiding issues.  

As for people and relationships, I would counsel to view them as resources and always consider them expendable.  Other humans are merely there for your convenience and should be used unflinchingly and thoroughly and, once exhausted of their value, discarded with as little consideration as one would give a piece of soiled tissue.  Anyone who would be unwise enough to attempt to thwart your objectives or interfere with your plans should be dispatched as quickly, efficiently and mercilessly as possible.  Again, one should endeavor to avoid legal complications, but be cognizant that there are always means by which individuals can be cleanly "eliminated", particularly when the price is right.  

Romance is a trap and should be avoided at all costs.  Romantic entanglements will only ever compromise your standards and dull your judgement.  Indulge your sexual proclivities as freely and frequently as you like, but maintain authority over anyone whom you would involve in such activities and be prepared to dispose of that relationship the instant you detect any attempt to influence your actions or interests.  All such efforts by others are a distraction.

The future is only that time in which you expect to live and anything beyond that span is of no concern.  Therefore, plan only to secure your own comforts for as long as you can reasonably foresee your survival and no more.  What state you leave the world when you die is irrelevant because you won't be around to experience it, so don't worry about it.  It's unlikely that you'll leave any heirs behind anyway, so you don't need to make provisions for them or any other descendants.  

These are the core values I would impart to my younger self in the hopes that he would avoid the wasted life I have lived.  These are the true values of the world he will have to live in.  These are the codes driving the most successful people he will encounter in his life.  Look around and find a single example of "success" in this world which does not rest atop these very principles.  Look no further than the current leader of the free world to find the most perfect expression of these truths in action.    Don't tell me that there's another way of living, a "righteous" way where people don't trample all over each other to secure their success.  I don't see that world anywhere and I don't see any evidence it will ever manifest.  

No, this is what I would tell that boy before he set off on his journey.  This is the roadmap I would place in his hands and this is the future for which I would make sure he was prepared. 

THEY BUILT THIS CITY FOR SOMEONE ELSE

I've lived in Vancouver, BC, since October of 1982.  I came here by way of Powell River after leaving my home town of Thunder Bay, ON, in August of 1982.  I remember coming into the downtown on a gray, rainy day, but for me, the city shone like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.  I was 19 years old, I'd just left home and this place seemed like it might have some possibilities for a young man just starting out on his own.  It's been my home ever since then and it has generally felt like home for most of that time, but the last few years have made it feel more like a place being built for someone else and not me.

I've noticed it primarily in the boom of construction which has erupted in the West End and across the city in the last few years.   So many towering luxury high rise apartment buildings are leaping up into the sky, it staggers the mind to think of all that real-estate propagating so quickly.  But I don't know who is going to live in all of these places.  I don't have any relationship with the people who are building these structures nor the people who will live in them.  I only know that I won't be one of them.  I'll never set foot in any of these places and I'll never know anybody who lives in them.  Somehow, I got left out of this new city.  It's not being built for me and it has no interest in me or my welfare, regardless of what I might have to offer. 

You might ask what makes me think this way and, to be honest, I'm not sure how I know this, but I am as sure of it as I am that the world is round (though even that has become debatable again, somehow).  What is certain is that I've been disconnected from the economy which is driving this construction and growth and there does not appear to be any means of interacting with it in such a way which would make it possible for me to even conceive of living a lifestyle which would include inhabiting one of these steel and glass stacks.  Whatever it takes to earn the kind of money that one needs to rent or own one of these homes is completely beyond the scope of my abilities.

I'm not at all certain of how I got to this position.  In fact, I was gainfully and relatively affluently employed for many years, but even then I was somehow not able to work myself into a position where accessing this level was possible.  Even when I was pulling a high five digits for my annual gross income, I was only ever able to indulge little beyond splashing out for a bit of takeout food and a few tech toys here and there.  I never owned a home or a vehicle and never had a family to support.  Yet I didn't even have enough to get my damn teeth fixed, something which now poses a serious health risk to me and also, aesthetically, means I can't present myself in public with any confidence, given that a gap-toothed, dingy yellow smile is nothing less than a stamp of impoverishment.  16 years working "professionally" still left me with no foothold by which I could maintain even a modest lifestyle.  

While I may not be in possession of formal accreditation in any field, I worked professionally in technology, including documentation, testing, design and implementation, long enough to merit those qualifications based on experience alone.   I am in possession of ample natural talents and acquired skills to enable me to perform exceptionally in many different fields and applications.  Yet, none of that bares any weight anymore and, going into application or interview processes, I can sense, intuitively, that I am automatically excluded from consideration the moment I present myself.  There is some factor involved which shuts the door to all avenues of potential for me.  The days when friends and family networked together to help each other secure employment seem to have vanished.  Even with social media, it seems that the process of using personal relationships to remain connected to society have broken down and ceased to function.

In some regard, I suspect my age, being over 50, has played a significant role in this.  My ongoing health issues may factor in as well, though they are neither obvious nor chronic enough to be apparent without actual knowledge of my medical history.  Whatever the case is, I'm certainly the "potato" that's fallen off the truck and there doesn't seem to be any way to get back on.  The city that is re-inventing itself before my eyes most definitely has no role for me to play in it.  This place is now a playground for the wealthy and nothing being built here is manifesting with any intent to create communities or social infrastructure. 

What we have is purely driven by economics.  It's about money and nothing more.  These places are investments, not homes.  They're tools for laundering illicit cash flows.  It's just a means to an end - busy work for the sake of "growth", but without any conscious goal where the lives and well-being of people are in mind.  When I walk around certain areas in the West End, particularly along Coal Harbor, there's a faint sense of emptiness as so many of these properties sit vacant, purchased by people who aren't there and may only show up once in a while, if at all.  These properties are no more than line items in a portfolio of assets.  No dramas will play out within their walls.  No events of lives lived will haunt their interiors.  Only the movements of soulless automatons calculating interest rates will disturb the dust as it settles in these lifeless abodes.  

This flurry of activity flies in the face of the looming ecological and climate crises which lurk at the threshold of the "day after tomorrow".  It's so close to landing on our heads, but the busy bees keep working, oblivious to the futility of their efforts.  I think of the "ghost" cities of China, built for no one.  They were driven by the myopic obsessions of hyper-capitalistic investments with no human condition perceived within their planning.  Money disconnected from benefits other than increase.  

I've lived in my building since 1986, nearly 33 years.  I've somehow managed to maintain my existence here by the skin of my teeth and through sheer force of will.  I dangle on a precipice, only needing the occurrence of a property sale to trigger the "renoviction" process which has consumed so many low income residents in the past few years.  I'm in a prime location for something like that to happen.  I've seen building after building torn down across this city only to be replaced by greater, grander structures with price tags exponentially higher than what was there before.  None of this is meant for so-called "regular" people.  Only those of extreme affluence are welcome here and I don't know them at all.  I don't know who who they are, I don't know what they want, I don't know where they think they're going with all of this.   

It's like aliens have landed and taken over.  They have no interest in our existence.  We are a mere inconvenience to them.  We will be eliminated in time.  So I hang on to what little I have left until I can do no more.

A FAREWELL TO KINGS

As a fan of Game of Thrones, I've been noticing all the theorists positing their predictions on who will end up taking the "iron throne" as the series wraps up its final season.  As I consider these, it occurs to me that nothing would be more tedious and boring than if this whole show was about no more than who ends up in that seat.  Personally, I don't care if it's a Lannister or a Stark or a Targaryen.  If this has all been about no more than a play for power, then it's just another tired fairy-tale driven by the same old cliches as the rest of them.  But I think ol' R.R. Martin deserves more credit than that and I'm hoping he delivers a surprise twist in the end that no one is really expecting.  

What I'm hoping for is that he shows that the throne itself needs to be put into question and the idea of its power, and those who wield it, needs to be challenged.   I'm hoping that, by the end of this series, NO ONE is on the throne.  I'm hoping that the entire power structure it represents is destroyed.  The reason I'm looking for that kind of resolution is because fiction is meant to offer humanity an opportunity to address its foibles and there is no folly which is more urgently in need of addressing than the concept of hierarchical power structures.  

This concept, that we have one "leader" who then dispenses authority to (usually) his minions below,  has been at the root of human social structures since the beginning of civilization.  One might argue that, since it has lasted so long, perhaps it is because it is a reasonable, logical structure to use for organizing humanity and we should not be too eager to usurp it.  But I think, if humanity is going to have any hope at all of surviving for the "long haul", you know, like more than another century, we're gonna need some RADICAL new approaches to social order because what we're doing now is really NOT working.  

At the moment, the United States is offering a prime example of how bad this concept can get when you put the wrong person at the top.  Its entire governing structure has been co-opted and corrupted by an organized gang of criminals intent on using that system for their own personal gain with ZERO consideration for the welfare of those being governed nor the wider global system with which it interacts.  These people couldn't be more blatant about their nefarious intent if they were Batman villains running around with clown makeup and top hats.  It is this system of hierarchy which has allowed this kind of corruption to exist because it places leadership on a level above reproach and beyond being responsible for its actions.  The failure of the FBI's recent obstruction investigation to level any legal response against these con artists is only the most superficial symptom of the sickness which pervades every level of so-called "checks and balances" which were supposed to prevent this kind of abuse of power.  

Western democracies may not be run on the principle of the "divine right of kings", but what we see evidenced is no less a process of rule by elite where privilege and paternity are the primary deciding factors in determining who makes the decisions and where the power flows.  Even in Canada, we have a political dynasty with Trudeau while in the US, families like the Bush and Kennedy clans continue to hold influence.  Ultimately, however, it is the mighty dollar that is the primary factor in determining who gets to make the rules and who has to "pay the piper".  Capitalism is fundamentally a "top down" system whereby authority is based on financial resources and nothing more.  It merely measures accumulations of wealth and uses that as a basis upon which to align its hierarchy.  "Old" money may tend to have more sway as we see certain long standing families entrench themselves into the system, but "new" money can always find a foothold when it gets big enough.  

It's also not just a problem of having the wrong people at the top.  No amount of shuffling the deck will counteract the corrupting influence which unfettered authority imparts.  The old saw about "power corrupting" is well earned and copiously demonstrated by examples going back through the centuries.  There is no such thing, in practice, as a "benevolent" dictatorship and democracy doesn't really help in terms of putting better people at the helm.  The power structure is the same as a dictatorship or a monarchy.  It's always a "top down", pyramidal organization.  The only thing democracy did was replace succession via birthright or military might with a popularity contest whereby the lowest common denominator ends up in the seat, often dumbed down to the point of idiocy as we've seen with that powdered pinhead, Trump.  

If we're going to move away from this sort of power structure, the obvious question is, what's the alternative?  Here we are in dire need of an epiphany or a true paradigm shift.  I'm too entrenched in the old system to be able to fully conceive of a new one.  I've been raised in it and conditioned by it my entire life so that I can barely help but differ to it or manage to scrape enough conscience together to question it in these fading years of my senior life.  I've seen glimpses of an alternative in recent years in the decentralized organizational murmurings of the "Occupy" movement from earlier in this new millennium.  It flashed into view for a brief moment, like a spot fire in the forest, popping up here and there across the globe, but it seems to have been quickly stamped out by the "powers that be" since then.  I've seen very little progress or evidence of it lately.  But I do believe that something in some similar form is lurking on the horizon if we can manage to survive this century without turning our home into an uninhabitable wasteland.  

I think the ingredients are fundamentally basic.  Firstly, no single person should be put in a position of ultimate authority.  Though it has become a common cliche to think of committees as "places where ideas go to die", some form of communal decision making process is required.  Above all, it must be structured in a way that eliminates the special interests of privileged minorities from dictating outcomes and defining values and benefits.  Considerations need to be given in terms of individual exceptions and variants, but not at the expense of the greater welfare.  Secondly, the people within government should be appointed to these positions on the basis of merit and experience.  No appointment should be irrevocable and the process should be transparent, subject to auditing and amendable as greater understanding of any given role is gained.  Qualifications should be based in practical experience.  For example, oversight of medical institutions should be done by people who have worked in the field, either directly as practitioners or within the administrative branch.  This farce of incompetent buffoons currently holding government offices who have no knowledge of their particular area of specialization would be wiped out under a proper peer reviewing appointment system.  

The concept of democratic input into processes and systems also needs to be framed within the confines of a system whereby basic rights and freedoms are guaranteed and NOT subject to curtailment or elimination based on populist fads or frivolities.  A lot of this sort of thing has been attempted, to some extent, within existing western constitutions and charters, but much of it remains exposed and vulnerable to politicking by special interests and ideological extremists who seek to impose their beliefs within the system.  The fact that something as fundamental to human health as abortion continues to teeter on the brink of criminalization after decades of debate and practical example is a glaring failure within government to secure the rights of a major segment of the population, the half of it which happens to be of the female gender.  That such a massive portion of the population must exist with such uncertainty and fear is inexcusable for any civilized society.  That this hasn't caused the populace to erupt in riots in the streets is no less than a miracle.  

Of course, this is merely a scratch upon the surface of an issue too massive to be grappled with in such a minor bit of contemplation.  Changing out that cornerstone of human civilization is a task which, I suspect, shall only come about when it becomes a necessity.  Its consequences will be too painful for those who have sheltered their existence inside those old walls.  Those who have, until now, found safety within that dying paradigm will not surrender it without a struggle.  Indeed, it may take the utter collapse of what we call "civilization" to enable a clear field for the construction of a new edifice of social order.  Only when we have suffered that catastrophe shall the inevitability of change be thrust upon us.

OCCUPATIONAL HAZZARD

 

In principal, I neither hate nor oppose the idea of a business.  I think that it is a completely natural, rational thing, from a human perspective, to organize an entity who's purpose is to create, develop and/or deliver useful and desirable goods and/or services.  I think that it is fair and reasonable to expect some benefit from providing those things.  When done correctly, a business can benefit a community in a myriad of ways as it both provides a livelihood for those who operate it and helps the community through the secondary benefits of creating employees capable of trading with other businesses.  I think it makes sense to create corporations in order to manage and secure investments in businesses and to enable them to function as coherent entities within a "free" market system (defined as an environment which does not use force or coercion to govern the exchange of those goods and services).  I don't have any problem with this concept and I don't think many other reasonable people have a problem with it either. 

However, these entities have to exist within a society (a collection of individuals) and an environment (the natural world we inhabit on this planet).  When they begin to function in a manner which is hostile to their surroundings and the people who inhabit them, then we have a problem.  When a company or a business becomes a destroyer of the environment, causing long term or irreparable damage, it is no longer a benefit to the society which has to live with that damage.  When a company is abusive to its employees, it is not benefiting the community.  When it blatantly engages in fraud and other criminal activities, it should be shut down and prevented from engaging in any further activities of that nature.

This is why we have laws, why we have courts and why we have police.  These exist to protect the population from being harmed or forced into actions which are harmful to others.  We have these laws so that individuals are protected from theft and murder and violence and, lest we forget, negligence.  Yet this is not what is happening in our "business" world today.

Major corporations are not servants of the population, but their masters.  They have been granted rights beyond individual humans.  They are not accountable for their actions.  They are not held culpable when they destroy the environment or cause harm or death to the population.  They buy the politicians, the police and the courts.  They engage in blatantly fraudulent actions, manipulating financial institutions and treating the investments and savings of legitimate working people like gambling chips to be played with until everyone goes bust. 

This is the state of business today.  Rip people off whenever possible.  Abuse workers as much as you can.  Refrain from contributing to the community in which you exist.  Rape the environment.  As long as the money keeps rolling and you have control over the use of force in your society, then it's "anything goes". 

This is what people are protesting as they assemble in city after city to "occupy" the streets and make their voices heard.  They are not, as the people in power would have you believe, "anti business".  They are anti crime and anti abuse and anti death and devastation.  They are concerned for a future which has been sabotaged by a tiny cabal of sociopathic, psychopathic power brokers who have their own agenda for this world and it does not (and never will) have any concern for you or your wellbeing. 

I am not anti business.  I am against crime and cruelty and abuse.  That is what everyone who is engaged in these protests is against.  This is the core of this movement.  We are tired of being ripped off, lied to and left for dead.  We will not stay silent.  We will not go away.