Having said that… I fear that we are heading for yet another “dark age.”
You remember the dark ages? Powerful civilizations crumbled after becoming obsessed with world domination. The wealthy became the greedy and most or all wealth was in the hands of a very few. The rich paid nothing while the poor were taxed until nothing was left. In order to keep control the leaders eliminated arts, culture and education and controlled the political discourse by dividing in order to conquer. Religion became a weapon of the powerful. Any thoughtful person was not only labeled a traitor but a heretic as well.
Of course no nation can survive for long in such a state. Rome is gone. Greece is a resort. England…well…England has rotten food. More recently Nazi Germany used modern technology to take the dark ages to a whole new level.
I don’t know if we will get to the point of creating another dark age and I don’t know if the U.S. will go the route of Rome, Greece or Germany. But in order to protect the interests of a very few very powerful individuals and corporations whose greed has led to a near collapse of the greatest economy in history, our elected leaders have decided to let the poor take the beating again.
It is inconceivable that a country that can afford to provide food, clothing, shelter and education to all of its citizens, and to most of the world for that matter, is going to eliminate access to food, clothing, shelter and education to those who have not been invited into the exclusive fraternity that controls the power and wealth.
Now for the brighter side of this posting…I hope it isn’t too late…after every dark age there is a renaissance.
I hope I can be around for it.
The next renaissance will be interesting. What we call classic…like classic music and classic literature…will survive and be reclaimed. It might seem to disappear. With no more Public Broadcasting, no more funding for orchestras, libraries or museums it will certainly be hard to find. But it will survive. Maybe one benefit of spiraling technology is that literature and music won’t have to be hidden in huge catacombs. Every great book ever written will fit digitally on my Black Berry. Come the renaissance we can print them again.
Music might be a little more challenging. Sure digital recordings can be hidden on thumb drives. Computers can make synthetic music that is flawless. But what if nobody is taught to play an actual instrument? I have listened to and enjoyed recordings of some great operas. But only seeing a live performance can connect an audience to the emotion and the passion of the characters. Hearing a recording of a cello concerto is great. Seeing Yoyo Ma perform one makes a bunch of notes become something extraordinary…something human. Seeing the Iron Butterfly was way better than listening to a recording of In a Gadda Da Vita. (There…back to the 60s at last.)
Speaking of the 60s, some of us thought of the 60s as a renaissance. The Viet Nam war, the political strangle hold of the military-industrial-complex, the paranoid sociopathic government of Richard Nixon were part of a moral dark age. Culture survived because there were still the remnants of philanthropists who built libraries, museums, orchestras and universities with their incredible wealth. OK much of their wealth might be considered ill begotten, but the early industrialists like Carnegie and Rockefeller recognized that their wealth and their future depended on a productive citizenry. That required education and culture. Not only would these people make good workers and good customers but they would be tax payers and would foot the bill for infrastructure that would ultimately benefit them.
I think what we are witnessing is the swing of a pendulum. Not the swing from good times to bad times. Rather it is the swing of the pendulum of how the rich get rich. On the one side the rich get rich by maximizing opportunity by ingenuity, common sense, hard work, ethical behavior and most important, a sense of and concern for the future. But that side limits the total wealth, though there is still enough to go around. On the other side, where we are now, the rich get rich by being utterly unfettered by common sense, ethical behavior or any concern for the future beyond the next stock dividend. That side limits the number of people who get wealthy and, though there is plenty to go around…they don’t share.
The trick is to be around when the pendulum is straight down…in other words, during the renaissance.
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