In all the chaos of conflicting interests of first millions, then billions, of human beings, thousands and thousands of tribes, alliances, interest groups, nations, there always were a few that were stronger than all the others. Once these powerful interests reached critical mass and stability then they started to grow and dominate more and more of the world around them.

The Egyptians, Greek, Romans, Christians, Turks, Hapsburgs, French, German, Russian and, finally the Americans, all rose to power, peaked and then declined.

Looking at history in a different way, we can say that two major human emotions dominated all through the centuries: desire to pursue unrestricted self interest on one hand; desire for justice on the other. The first desire manifested itself as search for wealth and power, the second pursued democracy, co-operation, consensus-building.

Those who wanted freedom to act according to their perceived self interest almost always supported the current empire. Those who wanted justice almost always rebelled, almost always fought the empire.

And so is our world at present, at the dawn of the 21st century.

On the one hand, there is the status quo, the entrenched power and wealth represented by the empire, on the other hand there are the have-nots who find the arrangement unjust. So the fight goes on, like it always has, ever, in human history.

And this precarious balance between the warring factions has kept humanity going, over the centuries. Never quite fair and just, never quite enslaved. Because, my friends, there is no Utopia in the script of the human story. There is an ongoing, never ending fight to protect whatever justice we rebels managed to wrest from those who want it all their way. The balance keeps tilting back and forth between the warring factions and our lives are tied to this mad rollercoaster, going up toward optimism, or plunging down towards despair.

Every now and then however, the plunge seems deeper and steeper than ever before as if it would never stop, and then we get scared. We feel that the automatic checks and balances don’t work any more and things may be out of control. This is when people usually wake up from their comfortable complacency and feel they have to do something about it.

We are living in such a time now, realizing that the gloves are off and naked brutality and greed has taken over.

This is the time when people, who never cared about politics before, take up the placards and swarm out onto the streets in our millions.

This is the time when lies don’t work any more and our illusions of freedom, democracy, free press, justice, peace, cooperation and fairness suddenly evaporate and we see our rulers for what they are: corrupt, greedy, brutal, sneaking and lying bullies who can’t ever have enough.

Unfortunately, there is another element of the puzzle. It is technology. As the thousands of scientists, tens of thousands of engineers and millions of workers and technicians sold their talent into the servitude of the empire – deadlier and deadlier weapons were forged and amassed. First time in history, there is enough power available to destroy the world and end the human story.

Now we start waking up to the terrible danger that this power may have fallen into the hands of those who are not afraid to use it, at any cost, to force their will on the human family.

So, we feel that this crisis is not just one more of the same, of those crises that we have known all our lives. This is different. The world has been nudged out of its groove and is on the move -- somewhere. Now we face terrible dangers.

If we woke up in time, then there are great opportunities to make the world a better place.

The first, which I think is implied in the peice, is self-interested action wherein an individual is not held accountable to anyone. For example, a leader who does not answer to anyone (ie. a dictator).

The second, is self-interested action wherein all barriers have been removed. An example may be a member of a minority group self-interested in finding work and not impeded by any prejudice. This meaning can also be applied to the dictator in our previous example. But I do not think that these two meaning necessarily have to exist simultaneously. That may be what Mohamad was pointing out.

To add one other interesting question: Mont's thesis implies that every empire must fall, from the historical fact that every empire before has fallen. So If the USA is the new empire on the block, what will bring it down? A favorite teacher of mine (Mr.Tuddenham) used to say that the Roman Empire fell due to its own excessive hedonism. No real outside force can bring an empire down like its own self-destruction. Does this seem plausible for the US?

If so, why hasn't it happened yet? Or, has it?
Or are then all kinds of safeties in place to make sure it doesn't happen.

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So If the USA is the new empire on the block, what will bring it down?

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Back in 1993, Ann Finlayson of Naming Rumplestitskin fame noted that - I forget the page number offhand, but I'll dig it up if anyone wants the source to prove I didn't make this up - if the prevailing social and economic trends continued in the USA (ie. the slow but inexorable rise in inequality, the stagnation of the real wage, and so on), that that country would fit every definition of a Third World country by 2030.

Now that's probably a bit of a shocker but we're not talking about some wild-eyed writer in the Socialist Worker or whatever newspaper the IS people like to flog at rallies. This is a researched book written from a somewhat feminist perspective (Finlayson notes, for example, that women often bear the brunt of government cutbacks due to economic insecurity and the rise of single motherhood).

So the question of how this fits in with Mont's statement that all empires must decline is this:

Given the resurgence in military spending and the fact that the fortuitous expansion of the late 1990s staved off the rise in inequality (it stalled out in the late 1990s and stayed steady) and allowed for a relief of some of the social tensions that had been building since Reagan's time, how likely is it that the USA can stave off this trend and remain at least superficially - it is currently more than superficially - a country embedded in wealth, security and prosperity?

Even now, with its economy in recession the USA is still quite a decent place to be by most nonindustrial nations' standards.

So, will the USA resume its decline to Third World status by 2030 or will it implode abruptly, or...?

[ 11 April 2003: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

The fear-mongering of US citizens helped by the media mean that though money comes for military spending from tax payers in the lowest income brackets they're too scared of supposed terrorist threats and scary foreign regimes to protest. That money meanwhile gives jobs to thousands and helps the US economy out. Nevermind that it blows up and cripples young children around the world. And destroys entire countries. So the system seems to work because it sustains itslef, at least economically.

Secondly, military might allows the US to corner resources - either of raw materials (ex. oil, wood) or human resources in the form of cheap labour. So that means that the US will always have an increased supply of resources for its people, at a very cheap price. Of course the country will never be third world standards. They're too busy keeping the rest of the world at that level. (Though US culture IS lower than the 3rd world...)

So the Regime is way to powerful to crack from the outside. Will a revolution come from within?

The answer is in Orwell in his "1984". As long as the masses (proletariat) have things to keep them occupied, such as WWF and booze, they will be too occupied to kick up a fuss. Seems, true doesn't it?

The only way to stop it is have a modern-day French revolution by the disenfranchised masses. (Is that what 9/11 was?) But if the people have their "bread & circuses", will such a revolution really come about?

Does anyone see any other allusions in "1984" coming to life here?

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The answer is in Orwell in his "1984". As long as the masses (proletariat) have things to keep them occupied, such as WWF and booze, they will be too occupied to kick up a fuss. Seems, true doesn't it?

The only way to stop it is have a modern-day French revolution by the disenfranchised masses. (Is that what 9/11 was?) But if the people have their "bread & circuses", will such a revolution really come about?

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If the masses have their WWF, and their booze, and their soma, or whatever, then that's an indication that they're likely leading a comfortable life. It's not that they're too occupied to kick up a fuss, but there's not much for them to kick up a fuss over, unless you think the working masses are willing to put everything they have on the line to satisfy some vague ideological revolutionary notion.

I think it was SHH on this board who summed it up best. To paraphrase: the revolution will come when people's lives actually start to suck, and not because they've bought into the vision of their lives sucking sold by the radical left.

I'll try to dig up the quote, he said it far better than I can.

The anger described in some posts above is probably anger by the learned left that government isn't taking their directions any more.

The poor will be happy with SOMA and will only be stirred to revolt when they're hungry or they perceive a threat.

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In the last couple replies there were some good points made. But the ironic thing is that ALL that military spending actually works in favour of the US economy. It won't bring them down. Government military spending is basically a way to subsidize the military economy, which only goes to help the general economy.

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If the masses have their WWF, and their booze, and their soma, or whatever, then that's an indication that they're likely leading a comfortable life. It's not that they're too occupied to kick up a fuss, but there's not much for them to kick up a fuss over.

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This sounds just like 1984. Try this thought experiment: You shackle a man to a wall in a dungeon, then drug him to think he is in paradise.

jeff house: So long as he's getting enough drugs he doesn't have anything to complain about. It's the person providing the drugs who may complain.

[ 21 April 2003: Message edited by: satana ]

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So long as he's getting enough drugs he doesn't have anything to complain about.

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If the masses have their WWF, and their booze, and their soma, or whatever, then that's an indication that they're likely leading a comfortable life.

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sheep has stumbled onto the solution for social unrest and poverty. The masses do not need education, housing, food, or anything whatsoever that can't be numbed with regular doses of booze and WWF.

I'm sure sheep thinks they are all stupid, too.

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This sounds just like 1984. Try this thought experiment: You shackle a man to a wall in a dungeon, then drug him to think he is in paradise.

Can it really be said he has nothing to complain about?

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Reminds me of the cave allegory.

But really, the question for me isn't whether or not he has anything to complain about, but whether or not he WILL complain. Likely not. And there are likely lots of people who would love to do the same thing - why else are we so fascinated by the idea of virtual reality or those "hologram suites" on Star Trek?

In fact, aren't there world religions based on the idea that what we are experiencing in our lives is a great illusion and therefore we really have nothing to complain about in our lives?

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the revolution will come when people's lives actually start to suck, and not because they've bought into the vision of their lives sucking sold by the radical left.

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My previous reference to the cave/chained allegory
was meant to suggest there is a reality which does not depend upon sense impressions, or people's immediate gratification.

In other words, in the quote above, the suggestion is made that lives might "actually" start to suck, but that now, they don't. To that,
I wanted to counterpose the idea that lives might "actually" suck, even though people may not be fully aware of that.

[ 22 April 2003: Message edited by: satana ]

But to me, that isn't the completely relevant question. For me, the question I want to ask is, is it right that our "bliss" comes at the expense of the real misery of many people all over the world - people who have to live lives of misery in order to provide us with our "drug" of blissful consumerism?

See, I'm not saying that as long as we're happy watching WWF and shopping till we drop then everything's hunky dory. Shopping till we drop and watching WWF and drinking beer in blissful ignorance are not in themselves bad things. To me they become bad because they are bought at the price of much human suffering on the part of the rest of the world who makes it possible for people to live those blissful lives. If everyone in the world could just sit around sucking back a beer and watching WWF, or shopping till they drop, or whatever activity gives them their happiness quotient, with no environmental or human consequences, then there would be nothing wrong with it at all.

So long as it is all you know, you are content because, so far as you know, there is nothing beyond the fish bowl. But once you discover there is more, you want out. Like that other movie with Jim Carey.

Doesn't even the beer swilling, wrestling fan sometimes wish there was more to life?

But as for whether WWF and beer-swilling is my particular "thang" - no, it's not, I hate beer and while I used to "bond" with my Dad over wrestling as a teeny-bopper, it's lost its charm. However, I was thinking the WWF thing was just a stand-in for any type of consumerist activity that we are in the habit of glutting ourselves with. (Whoops, dangling participle! ) I have my own consumer weaknesses, as do most people in our society. The thing that kills the satisfaction for me (although not fully) when I do them is my consciousness that someone else had to be miserable in order to provide me with this such-and-such that I didn't really need for a cheap price.

That's why I think the "radical left" is justified in waking the blissfully ignorant from their slumbers. People should know what the cost of their happiness is.

[ 22 April 2003: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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satana: There has always been naked brutality and greed on a massive scale throughout human history, so, in that sense, I don't think we are seeing anything new. What makes our time different is that we are experiencing it first hand.

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[ 23 April 2003: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

Invariably, my "blindness" is going to be defined in their terms, and the whole exchange is going to be rigged so that any protest or hesitation on my part will be taken as "proof" of my blindness.

What's more, while the act will most often be portrayed as originating in altruism ("We just want to help you!"), on closer examination there is always an agenda, and the "kind help" becomes "manipulative recruiting".

If you want to "help" me by waking me out of some slumber that magically afflicts me but spares you, then you'd better not begin with any one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind crap.

[ 23 April 2003: Message edited by: Mr. Magoo ]