January 13, 2020

You Choose - Democratic Socialism or Civilizational Collapse


Long Title
You Choose – Continue Satisfying Your Personal Passions or Begin Serving the Greater Needs of All. The First Will Lead to Tyranny and End in Revolution. The Second is Your and Humankind’s Only Possibly Viable, Sustainable Option

Politico Magazine
December 27, 2019

In each of the paragraphs in the above linked compilation are descriptions of what Americans (citizens of the U.S.) were and what we have become, and the precarious social, economic and political perch from which we and much of the rest of the world are now embarking into the future.

The good news is Humankind’s current problems are now more starkly revealed than ever before. The bad news is the stakes are higher because the decisions Americans and the rest of Humankind make to address these problems are more likely to be catastrophic if we choose to act wrongly, and more difficult to sustain if we decide and act wisely. We, US citizens and the rest of Humankind, are facing yet another crucial decision point in our species’ cultural evolution. At each previous point we chose directions that served our short-sighted and short-term interests.

1
Primal Accommodation
At Humankind’s first species-evolution decision point 200,000 years ago, the demands of the East African environment forced our earliest hominin ancestors to rely on complex language, high tool dependency, in-group egalitarianism, and out-group cooperation and occasional conflict. It worked. This newest mammalian accommodation of both individual and group needs proved adaptable in an evolutionary sense. Homo sapiens survived and produced viable, fertile offspring. In the process, we also began having more highly learning-dependent progeny. The norm was an in-group balance of liberty, equality, and brother/sisterhood. Out-group relations, despite occasional violence, were more often than not, maintained through periodic ecological knowledge and technology exchanges, and most importantly through extended family kinship ties. Politics, economics, and sociality functioned as an accommodative unity, within and between groups.

2
Settled Agricultural Autocracy
Next, as certain of our numbers grew, our store of ecological and technological knowledge advanced, and life-sustaining environmental conditions for hunter-gatherers in Mesopotamia worsened. In response the human inhabitants of that region chose settled agriculture, urbanism, and autocratic governance. This socioeconomic innovation also worked because it was supported by in-group food commodity accounting, laws, and out-group militarism. Populations grew in size and became ever more dispersed. Liberty declined in response to laws and autocratic dictates. Equality declined in that political power was moved from individuals to autocrats and their agents and functionaries. Local fraternal allegiance was retained but ultimate allegiance shifted from one’s personally known fellows to autocrats and their system. The unity of politics (liberty), economics (equality), and sociality (fraternity) ended.

3
Democratic Oligarchy
At the next decision point, the best thinkers among early Western Humankind gave their attention to moral philosophy and efforts at answering the most fundamental and perennial human question: How might people live optimally, both individually and collectively? This attempt at defining and implementing optimal living was different from those of 200,000BP or 10-15000BP. The impetus was less on addressing environmental challenges and more on achieving sustainable peace and prosperity. Liberty, equality and fraternity became the exclusive province of the free and wealthy, in particular, one’s male aristocratic fellows.

First, the Greeks followed by the Romans chose governance forms of exclusive, restrictive democracy. Women, slaves and the poor were excluded from participation. There was a degree of liberty for a self-exalted few but equality and fraternity in their broadest sense were not served. 

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