Random Political Discourse

Streek says:

“Life under social entropy elevates being optimistic to the status of a public virtue and civic responsibility. In fact, one can say that even more than capitalism in its heyday, the entropic society of disintegrated, de-structured and under-governed post-capitalism depends on its ability to hitch itself onto the natural desire of people not to feel desperate, while defining pessimism as a socially harmful personal deficiency.”

I vaguely agree but would position it slightly differently.

The madness of desirable happiness is the preferred tool of marketing that drives consumption which is fuelled by debt, which in turn relies on predictability in economic growth that is underpinned by political stability and ever-increasing productivity which stands upon the shoulders of technology and, most importantly, the unsustainable consumption of resources.

The more parts in any construction, the more risks of systemic failure. And our daily food and water, amongst much other fluff, relies on one awfully complex machine.

Just a suggestion here; the problem that we are facing isn’t whether our economic and political systems are up to the task of maintaining the status quo. No, the issue is whether they will be able to adapt to the changes ahead without either substantial bloodshed and/or a reversion to genuine and widespread unhappiness.

To some degree, politics matter. I suspect that we’re best placed to get the Trumps out of our system now when we can afford to. In a decade or so, hopefully we’ll be properly educated as to the uselessness of false prophets and turn to leaders of genuine merit.

Frankly, I don’t care or even pretend to be able to predict whether that post-consumption future is driven by class, race, national, corporate, regional or transnational interests.

The future is as predictable as the past is explicable. That is, not very, unless one is deluded or inherently conservative.

And it’s the conservatives that we need to watch out for. They want to constrain the future with visions of the past. I don’t think that we can afford the the luxury of such unnecessary constraints.