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Worldwide economic collapse is no accident
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by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
August 11, 2007
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There are numerous articles, at least on left-leaning internet sites, that
chronicle the progressive meltdown of the worlds economic system. To
my taste they all miss the big point.
What we are seeing is not an
accident as these sources imply, not an unintended consequence of the
operation of global capital and financial markets, but rather a
deliberate strategy for the concentration of wealth.
This process is
the inevitable end point for social systems that enshrine
opportunism. This has repeated itself over and over again
throughout history. The Roman experi- |
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ence can be considered the ideal
poster child for this phenomena.
The key understanding that is
missing, to my view, in the current discussion is that disorder
benefits opportunists (it is becoming fashionable to label these
people sociopaths which has its advantages but I will use the term
opportunist here).
In the dominator psychology, bad equals good. Any
system of unrestrained competition will lead inexorably, in a kind of
obscene parody of natural selection, to progressive concentrations of
power in the hands of those with the least care for social justice.
The political philosophy driving a particular society is irrelevant,
so long as personal aggrandizement is allowed -- witness what happened
to the Soviet Union.
Once sufficient control is in the hands of a few successful
opportunists, general disorder and destruction is guaranteed. These socially pathological people, very much on the model of a
disease pathogen, are facilitated in their quest for even greater
power and wealth by deliberate moves to wreck the societies they
control.
Think of the example of the "Wreckers," a phenomenon that
has been repeated in many places throughout history, where people
take advantage of storm conditions to deliberately lure vessels onto
the rocks so that they can be attacked and looted. The world's
economy is now controlled by wreckers and, in light of this
understanding, the current world financial meltdown is really nothing
more than a manufactured opportunity to loot the wreckage and achieve
even greater degrees of concentration of wealth, ownership of land
and resources, and the power that comes with this sort of control, at
the externalized expense of general destruction.
In the historical perspective, this process has classically ended with
invasion and conquest of the weakened society on the model of the
"barbarian" invasions of Rome. This time, however, there is no
viable external source of force to invade and dismember this socially
diseased society. So the globalization of trade and finance has
succeeded in making this a whole world catastrophe.
Collapse in this
iteration of the insanity of coercive force and authoritarian rule
will therefore be general, and lead us into a world wide "dark age"
which, from my perspective, presents an opportunity for the surviving
members of the human family to finally learn the necessary lesson
that those who exploit the weaknesses of others are merely ensuring
their own eventual destruction.
The Age of Aquarius, if it arrives,
will grow out of the compost heap left by the age of the oppressors,
that is unless we overshoot and end up making the earth into a
version of the climactic hell of Venus and manage to extinguish all
live on earth. I am rooting for the compost version of our future.
How about you?
Interesting books relevant to this point of view are Jane Jacobs'
small book Dark Age Ahead, Derrick Jensen's two volume Endgame
and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared
Diamond. Diamond's book was written as a moral allegorical tale
along the lines that I am taking here. The book itself is
understated and does not directly assert that all is coming to an
end, but in his public appearances he readily espouses a Chicken
Little view. I suspect that his publishers, eager to have another
best seller like Guns, Germs and Steel, reigned in his Cassandra
like tendencies in favor of increased sales.
I have a paradoxical prescription for you. Endeavor to cultivate an attitude
that embraces the destructive social process that you see around you,
and in the world in general, because, like the darkest night that
proceeds the dawn, this destruction represents the dying flailings of
a dominant system that we can not be liberated from without its
collapse. In the meantime it might be a good idea to start a garden,
emphasizing readily-stored root vegetables as well as being as active
as possible in any local efforts at establishing a localized,
sustainable economy.
© by the author.
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Think of the example of the "Wreckers," a phenomenon that has been repeated in many places throughout history, where people take advantage of storm conditions to deliberately lure vessels onto the rocks so that they can be attacked and looted.
The world's economy is now controlled by wreckers and, in light of this understanding, the current world financial meltdown is really nothing more than a manufactured opportunity to loot the wreckage and achieve even greater degrees of concentration of wealth, ownership of land and resources, and the power that comes with this sort of control, at the externalized expense of general destruction.
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Dr. Herb Ruhs & grandson
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