For those of us with long memories and who think the “good old days” were just as advertised, the long slippery slope we are on should give us cause for alarm. We were in a place that was safe, warm, protected and familiar. That womb-like cave was our world and we hated the thought of having to leave it for the cold, impersonal and threatening place where we were forcibly educated and made to go to work. Look around and see if the world is the one you made for yourself.
A couple of things have got me to thinking that we live in a perilous place. 1. We are continually at war. 2. Our faces are shoved into the reality of global warming and my part of America is sure to be submerged by rising waters. 3. Our current leadership is plunging us into debt to satisfy the people to whom they owe eternal payback for support in gaining the ownership of this country. 4. The dumbing down of America continues at a faster pace because there is lack of leadership in education and the Public School System has given over to a multi-tier monstrosity elevating the children of the class of wealth to higher levels than it has enjoyed in the past. And 5. The culture and taste of a raw country coming into maturity has spawned some of the lowest tastelessness and outright indecency that makes a mockery of the sanctity of family, marriage and hopes for the future.
Our worship of wealth has reached the point where the obscene gulf existing between the few super rich and the many in poverty can no longer be defended and where the threat of revolt (as it actually is enacted in the impoverished countries of the world) is a possibility here. Unbridled wealth and seeking ever more unfettered power, the CEO’s and Millionaire Senators and Representatives, have carved for themselves a place as THE power structure of the most powerful country in the world while at the same time it reduces democracy and fairness to shreds.
While the world was growing out of its shell of monarchy and tasting the freedom of equality and self rule, the capitalist construct of market economies destroyed the political power of the countryside for the dictatorship of the urban centers of rail, road and air hubs of the megalopolis. The individual has gotten lost in this new world. The single voter has become replaced by “flash” groups who spontaneously rise up to perform miracles of “groupyness” by means of the computer keyboard and screens.
We live in perilous times. We have left safety behind for the novel and for the vulgarity of unregulated childhood. Our children are teaching us how to enjoy the moment rather than sober plans for the future. Play replaces work and the sad new world has arrived.