What is the world coming to!?

[Silent3]

Do you react to every news story about every bad thing that happens, be it a mass shooting, a terrible sex crime, a financial swindle, a case of blatant government corruption, etc., as if each and every story isn't just an individual event, but that it MUST be indicative and symptomatic of some terrible underlying sickness in the whole of our country, or in all of the world?

For every terrible incident, is there an overwhelming feeling that something MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT to make sure it NEVER, EVER happens again?

I certainly don't expect everyone to blithely accept people doing bad things. That kind of apathy does us no good. But short of instituting a police state more intrusive than any ever before devised, or a mechanism for complete human mind control -- "solutions" far more frightening than any problems they'd hope to solve -- there are always going to be some people somewhere doing something bad. Crime and corruption could be cut to 1% of what it is now, but if you searched our world of 7 billion people you could still find more than enough spectacular horror to keep the news ratings high.

Because the news media loves to play up such stories, the world could improve massively yet, just like you can be sure there will always be some amount of terrible crime, there will always be people asking "What is the world coming to!?", certain that the world must be in an inexorable downward spiral.

[Orrex]

1. Well, I'll tell you what the world's coming to.

It's coming to be a system in which the "ownership" class maintains absolute control and power over the serf class, doing anything necessary--legal or otherwise--to consolidate and increase and expand that power.

And it's been "coming to" this throughout all of recorded history, and probably a lot longer.

[Silent3]

9. There have got to have been a few turnings of the tide...

...along the way, because if the trend as always been upward since the days of the Pharaohs a few dozens rich people all living in palaces the size of several cities would be ruling over a world of serfs penned up like chickens in a factory farm.

There is, always has, and probably always will be a lot of power inequity in this world. I think it's a bit extreme to view that as a trend that can only go one way. In fact, it seems the inequities can only go so far until you trigger a collapse of some sort -- which will often be a very messy, painful, and only temporary correction.

I'm not so cynical, however, as to totally rule out the possibility of softening those corrections and improving things a lot without quite so much pain.

[Orrex]

10. I don't mean to seem purely cynical about it, but...

I can't think of many instances in which the trend was interrupted for more than a vanishingly brief period.

The good times don't indicate that we serfs have gained an ascendancy--or even increased our share of society; the good times merely indicate that the owners have momentarily been prevented from pressing their boots on our throats.

[Silent3]

13. The condition, or the trend?

There is a long standing condition of inequitable wealth and power distribution, but a trend means that is has been getting better or worse, and in this case, you mean worse.

There's certainly a near-term negative trend in increasing inequity, starting from the time of Reagan onward, but are we really worse off now than the "robber baron" days of the late 19th century? Worse off than peasants in feudal England or feudal Japan?

Even if the scale of the inequity grows larger, there's more total wealth to go around, so materially, at least in developed nations, even many of our poor are materially much better off in many ways than the middle class of two centuries ago. Our US health care system may suck compared what would could be, but a poor person in the US with access to an ER has a better chance after a heart attack or other major illness than a king from two centuries ago with legion of court physicians.

[Orrex]

14. I'm not convinced that the real disparity between rich and poor has diminished

In addition, it's not enough to say "things aren't quite as shitty for the poor as they once were," because there's absolutely no reason that things should have to be shitty at all.

A better measure IMO is an assessment of caste mobility, and in the modern US there really isn't any, practically speaking. Sure, you'll get the occasional lottery winner and the lucky so-and-so who rises to $200K per year or so, but these are the extreme outliers. The huge majority remained locked in the caste into which they were born, then as now.

[Silent3]

16. I'm still agreeing that things could be much better

But I don't get where your trend line comes from, since you seem to saying that things are getting worse and worse and worse over the whole course of humanity.

Surely social mobility is better in other countries now than in the US (which is no longer so much the great "land of opportunity" as own self-mythology would have it), but still, are you really certain that if you drew a trend line plotting social mobility vs. time for every civilization since the Babylonians and the Mayan until now, you'd get a steady downward slope?

And if you're willing to agree than there have been other times which are worse than the present, at what point in history in which culture would you place the peak of equality and social mobility, from which everything else has been downhill?

[Orrex]

17. I just re-read my posts in this thread...

and I don't see where I asserted that there's been a consistent downward trend. Instead, I've asserted that despite extraordinarily brief periods in which the wealthy don't exert absolute power over society, and despite the rare outlying caste-climbers, the wealthy have always worked very hard to ensure that they remain wealthy while others do not.

[Silent3]

18. You didn't use the word "trend", but you did say...

It's coming to be a system in which the "ownership" class maintains absolute control and power over the serf class, doing anything necessary--legal or otherwise--to consolidate and increase and expand that power.

And it's been "coming to" this throughout all of recorded history, and probably a lot longer.

If absolute control is the end point, and the world is "coming to" that point over the entire course of recorded human history (or longer), that to me sounds an awful like declaring an inexorable downward trend in freedom over the course of human history (or longer).

I see a lot of bright spots over the course of history along with all of the bad. I don't ever foresee any utopias coming along, but neither do I see utter dystopian serfdom for the masses as inevitable or even likely.

[Orrex]

19. Ah.

Well, I used "coming to" in order to echo the question from the OP, in such a way as to suggest that society hasn't been "coming to" this point; it's been here all along. However, I see that my usage was imprecise and confusing in this regard.

However, I maintain that the "bright spots" are fleeting, few, and far between. The serfs' dark patches are far more numerous and far-reaching, and the wealthy--as a caste--will always do whatever they can to stretch out the bright spots for themselves while equally stretching the dark times for the serfs.

[Silent3]

20. I'm curious both about how bad you think things are right now...

...by comparison to what ideal, and if that ideal is something you think is a reasonably attainable or just a utopian fantasy.

As far as I'm concerned, for all of the problems in the world, for a bunch of talking apes who've barely emerged from caves and mud huts, living in a world full of technology made by the brightest among us but used by everyone without much understanding of it, having to function in a society and environment for which our innate evolved social behavior has had little time to adapt, and probably even in our ancestral small hunter-gatherer bands getting by with social behavior that was functional but likely not always gentle and kind, especially with outsiders... well, I think we're doing amazingly well.

While we don't need insane disparities of wealth in order to have incentives to work and to strive for innovation, I'm fine with there being fairly rich people in the world, especially if at the same time we at least provide a fairly decent standard of living for everyone willing to work, everyone who can't for good reasons work, and even a survivable if not lavish standard of living for the most unmotivated among us.

I don't expect everyone to ever have equal political power because too many people are too apathetic to care. Not that the end results will always be good, but it's hard to see how people who strive for power won't get more power from those who don't strive for it.

None of this is to say that I think the world is anywhere close to perfect and doesn't stand a lot of room for improvement, including reasonably attainable, not insanely idealistic, improvement. Portraying the current or nearly-upon-us overall state of affairs in 1984-ish terms of the boots of power crushing the throats of a world full of serfs, however, sounds way over the top to me.

[Xenotime]

12. Agreed. The time of the rich ruling over the poor needs to come to an end.

[seabeyond]

2. excellent point. a little of this. a little of that. i think when we relegate

it all to individual and seeing the whole we miss opportunities and a reality. then again, once the whole is seen may be important to micro-view the issue.

we cannot stop every individual situation that happens. you are right. and to think one can, will undoubtedly create a very stressful life. i think though, when we see a trend, many individuals following one after another the only responsible thing to do is reflect, discuss, and bring some insight into the situation

in awareness we can certainly accomplish quite a bit

the individual does feed off the whole

[LARED]

3. The solution is to turn off the TV.

People tend to be attracted to the baser side of life, so in order to sell advertisement we get stories about the baser things of the day.

So the only thing to be done is turn them off. Life seems to improve drastically as a result.

[Silent3]

4. The biases of TV being another issue aside, I wouldn't recommend "tuning out".

It's a good thing to be aware that a lot of bad things are happening. The problem with TV is that it makes you far more aware of the latest missing pretty blonde girl than it helps in giving a truer, broader picture of the many missing and exploited children all over the world -- a problem that really does need solutions.

It's more a matter of putting into perspective what you hear than avoiding hearing it in the first place.

[LARED]

5. I agree, but turning off the idiot box is not the same as tuning out. nt

[Silent3]

6. TV can have value, however, if you pick the right programs...

...balance it with other information sources, and apply a little perspective. I think it's a bit extreme to completely dismiss an entire medium as if it can't possibly do anyone any good.

[LARED]

8. I was being a bit hyperbolic, I would agree, just turn off the idiots

That of course greatly limits your options

[deutsey]

7. I love what Bill Hicks called TV

"Lucifer's Dreambox"

[LARED]

11. +1 nt

[treestar]

15. Good post.. There are positive stories in the media

Or some of those reality shows. They just don't get as much play.

Sometimes people do amazingly wonderful things.

But I agree and don't like the new laws that get passed every time some awful thing happens. The awful thing was already against the law.