And it’s just as well. No civilization lasts forever, and our time is clearly up. What are we, really? A genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by a citizenry that has the political sophistication of a five-year old. A nation so cruel that in some states, it is a crime to feed the homeless, and where the police routinely gun down unarmed civilians. A place where torture is now legal, and where the government has the right to arbitrarily rub out anyone it dislikes—including American citizens on American soil. A country almost completely lacking in community and friendship, where no one trusts anyone else, and where daily relationships are of the dog-eat-dog variety. And where the focus of the left is not on the relations of class and power, as it had traditionally been, but on politically correct language, and the legalities of who has the right to use transgender bathrooms. What, indeed, remains of the US today, where “democracy” is but a façade, a hollow shell?

Source: DARK AGES AMERICA — Blog for Morris Berman

Extinction is the End Game

Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Civilizations are living organisms striving to survive and develop through predictable stages of birth, growth, maturation, decline and death. An often overlooked factor in the success or failure of civilizations are cultural memes—the knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors passed down from generation to generation. Cultural memes are a much more significant driver of human evolution than genetic evolution. Entire civilizations have been weeded out when their belief system proved maladaptive to a changing environment. One such cultural meme holding sway over today’s governments, institutions, and society is our economic system of capitalism. The pillars of capitalism represent a belief system so ingrained in today’s culture that they form a sort of cargo cult amongst its adherents.Cargo cults are any of the various Melanesian religious groups which focused on obtaining material wealth(manufactured Western goods that came on cargo ships) through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices. Today the term “cargo cult” is used to describe a wide…

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Reality Isn’t What We Think It Is

Source: Reality Isn’t What We Think It Is | how to save the world

Living in Dangerous Times

I consider television, and most recently the development of social media, to be the most powerful mind-control ‘drugs’ that have yet been developed, with their effectiveness at influencing and controlling docile (and often legally sedated) populations unparalleled in human history.

Source: Living in Dangerous Times – Reality Sandwich

Intra-Elite Competition: A Key Concept for Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Societies

Moderate intra-elite competition need not be harmful to an orderly and efficient functioning of the society; in fact, it’s usually beneficial because it results in better-qualified candidates being selected. Additionally, competition can help weed out incompetent or corrupt office-holders. However, it is important to keep in mind that the social effects of elite competition depend critically on the norms and institutions that regulate it and channel it into such societally productive forms.

Excessive elite competition, on the other hand, results in increasing social and political instability. The supply of power positions in a society is relatively, or even absolutely, inelastic. For example, there are only 435 U.S. Representatives, 100 Senators, and one President. A great expansion in the numbers of elite aspirants means that increasingly large numbers of them are frustrated, and some of those, the more ambitious and ruthless ones, turn into counter-elites. In other words, masses of frustrated elite aspirants become breeding grounds for radical groups and revolutionary movements.

Another consequence of excessive competition among elite aspirants is its effect on the social norms regulating politically acceptable conduct. Norms are effective only as long as the majority follows them, and violators are punished. Maintaining such norms is the job for the elites themselves.

Intense intra-elite competition, however, leads to the rise of rival power networks, which increasingly subvert the rules of political engagement to get ahead of the opposition. Instead of competing on their own merits, or the merits of their political platforms, candidates increasingly rely on “dirty tricks” such as character assassination (and, in historical cases, literal assassination). As a result, excessive competition results in the unraveling of prosocial, cooperative norms (this is a general phenomenon that is not limited to political life).

Source: Peter Turchin Intra-Elite Competition: A Key Concept for Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Societies – Peter Turchin

A Year of Living Dangerously

The managers have vacated their offices, the bankers have all flown the coup; fantasy tours for the hyperelite in Dubai or other dystopian cities of the future without outlet, caged environs, desert islands surrounded by skulls. While we, the nameless, the dejected, the forgotten are left in the midst wondering what will come next… Of course the only thing that can come: a revolt against the very terms of the game. A great refusal. If we stop playing the game will the world suddenly rock to a silent stand still, will the earth shake and fall into oblivion. NO. Like anything else we’ve ever done on this planet, and who is to say it will ever change? And what is change, anyway? Do we have a will to change? And what about the conditions that would make it possible for us to change? And most of all: what kind of change do we want?

Source: Slavoj Zizek – A Year of Living Dangerously | southern nights

Notes on the Speculative Present

Source: Notes on the Speculative Present