Possible Common Traits of “Golden Age” Periods in Human History
To my mind there are commonalities amongst periods of sustained “growth and benefit” which we can characterize as “Golden Ages” in human history. The list is as follows:
1) Innovation based on human needs and evidence based effects on the collective whole, not just for the individual’s absolute gain. 2) Responsive governance within society to the needs of the general public in favor of the general public, rather than the handful of people who actually hold and make the choices in a given society. 3) The enabling, if not, enforcement of wealth to flow to the general public such that people can still become rich individually, but not outside of the social bounds of the rest of the people who produce wealth. 4) Obedience to lower, bottom-up laws, conditions, and needs with top-down enabling this bottom-up directed growth in a coordinated and mediated manner. 5) A healthy respect for nature and the environments in which we find ourselves. 6) Adaptation of, rather than conservation or preservation of ideals in the face of evidence and practical results. 7) A healthy but not foolish respect for all other societies and peoples living on the planet with us.
From my (sketchy) knowledge of the history of the more positive times in humanity (such as Ancient Egypt, the golden ages of China, al-Andalus and the Islamic Golden Age, the Serenissima of Venice, the American 20th century, etc) these are common social, political, economic, and environmental traits that characterize these high points. Failure to adhere to any combination of these seven generally resulted in the long term decay and collapse of those who failed to abide by these natural laws and principles which enable societies to survive and maybe thrive and flourish. Governing groups need to respect and actually love in a non-grasping manner their people, the environment, and other societies in order to prevent wars, resolve conflicts peacefully, and coordinate domestically and internationally to resolve common internal and external problems through the sharing of knowledge, awareness, and practices, working to produce better societies internally first, and then working in concert with each other on the international level next.
I’m specifically talking about a massive top-down coordination amongst governments on all levels with a focus on bottom-up results, which then should cause adaptation and alterations on the top-down level again in an on-going dialogue between the governed and all levels of government, from the international level down to the smallest local unit that is possible in the given domestic society in order to produce a happier, healthier, more sustainable, and more resilient society that can survive, adapt, and grow with any and all shocks that are likely to happen. I want a society that can proactively persevere anything the universe may throw at it and avoid the pitfalls that it itself can create for itself through its lack of knowledge, wisdom, compassion, understanding or acceptance of facts. These seven, to my knowledge and awareness, are the groundwork traits that a society’s people and governing body must practice within themselves in order to create that happier, healthier, more sustainable, and more resilient society. We cannot afford to continue to do the same things as we’ve done in the past and expect different results, especially as conditions continue to change on their own and by our own actions. We can either live in this happier, healthier, more sustainable, and more resilient society, or we can live in the same way we’ve done in the past and continue to be at severe risk of obliteration by our own hands or some other unknown force in the universe. Relaxation is not an option, I’m afraid to say, nor should we be lackadaisical about our condition as a species or a society. That’s a sure way to get oneself and ones’ people killed and rendered unable to recover in the long and short term. The choice is up to each of you.
This is what I can tell at present based upon my understanding and knowledge of the past and how things work in the present. We can either grow up from a world of ideologies and embrace evidence with a bias towards facts and the truth. Or, we can continue to wallow in our narrow vision of humanity and ourselves, and cease to be a problem in the universe. The choice is up to each of you as to whether you are more apart of the solution or the problem. What are you going to do?
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Common Features of Social Collapse
The important thing to remember about our economy, is that it is a nonlinear system. It does not go up automatically, and what is a positive trend today can be a sharply negative trend in the near future when there are underlying fragilities and weaknesses in the overall social system. The United States actually seems to have very weak governing institutions. Its legislatures and executive bodies are unable to operate without the blessing of a few outside and unaccountable power brokers and funders who are not accountable to the public’s needs and have demonstrated no care or concern for the overall well-being and health of the public and the environment. The judiciary is appointed by these weak institutions, and are therefore, tainted with the unhealthy biases towards personal private profit at the expense of overall social, individual, and environmental health and well-being.
A common thread of societal failure are these institutional weaknesses in the political field. Losing legitimacy, lacking authority and agency, and genuinely not caring or knowing about the health and well-being of the society as a whole are all signs of severe weakness that the American system has been displaying for a number of decades at this point. A sufficiently powerful government that is able to assert itself over the powerful few, working on behalf of the general public is preferable to any kind of government. Powerful governments that don’t work effectively or at all on behalf of the public are obviously not good for the government or the society. Weak governments, regardless of whom they are working for aren’t good either, because they leave a vacuum for the private elite to set up shop and take over society and make the powerful sub-government that is unaccountable to and disinterested in anyone but its small self that actually rules. When the government doesn’t have sufficient power, it just gets taken up by those who can afford it. That’s what Americans don’t seem to get, and why they’re being played the saps by the CEOs and shareholders in the guise of Libertarianism and conservatism.
Therefore, we need a new system of government entirely which is transparent, able to be held accountable often and effectively by all citizens for all citizens by peaceful methods, and independent of the powerful private concerns that are already present. It’s only an idiot group of people who would rig a democratic system in their relative favor at the expense of other people. That’s precisely what we have in the United States and how we are more likely to fail in the long term (which becomes the short term all too soon). Enjoy your fun.
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The Evolution of Science, Society, and Policy Engineering
A big problem with data is that it takes time, energy, and resources to accumulate and acquire. This is easier to do in the “hard” sciences where things are done in laboratory conditions over relatively short periods of time. In the social sciences, data collection can take years or decades and has to be done in the fuzzy conditions of the real world or in a simplified world that may or may not be accurate in a computer program.
The first step to making our government operate more effectively and efficiently is to make a conscientious and sustained effort to ethically and effectively collect data. The next step is to synthesize and analyze the data to tell a story about how things work in our human societies. The third step, and I think, the most difficult step, is to actually use the data to achieve better results in our human societies and across human societies. To do this, we must sacrifice our old notions of how things are and how things ought to work in an endless stream of refinement and bias smashing until we recognize the universe, ourselves, and our places in it for what they really are.
We were at this same place once before, way back in the Renaissance when Western civilization rediscovered, refined, enhanced, and built upon the awareness and knowledge of medicine. We can infer causal relations amongst aspects of the social system, just as we learned about the human body. However complex and interconnected societies and parts of society may be, it is incorrect to say that it is impossible to figure the age old problems of societies, economies, and environments, even if we may not presently have the statistical techniques or software to do so at the present time. We can either invest in this new research now and implement what we can ethically implement at this time to help ourselves, or we can wallow in the willful ignorance of the past, consuming planet and society in the pursuit of wealth and relative power that is not real and is not being used well anyway.
Policy making is a science; politicking is an art. The former serves as the root for the latter, even though the former is effectively impotent without the latter. Politicking without grounding in the science of policy engineering and compassionate care will always only backfire on those who are exercising their technical abilities to politick. Policy engineering, however, needs to be wrapped in the garments of effective and appealing politicking in order to be preserved, implemented, and expanded.
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Some Thoughts on Trade
The principles of free trade must also be balanced with the insurance of well-being within the given society. Jobs will be lost as a result of trade and since the free market will not likely provide opportunities for retraining, it would behoove the government to ensure effective training programs to help people transition to new jobs that are more valuable in the context of the given global market economy. This must also be done while ensuring that wages are not left to stagnate for the sake of businesses’ profits or executive compensation, which will ultimately cheapen the any bargain from the perspective of human society and prevent meaningful growth, health, and improved well-being from manifesting in the given society. With these two caveats in mind, free trade, indeed, does ensure a certain degree of improved quality of life by making goods cheaper to the general public. However, without jobs, there will be no room for people to afford the cheaper goods and without the insurance of fair wages, all of the benefits will go to the top executives and shareholders at the expense of the general public that the deals were intended to help. There is also the issue of national defense which has to be considered when making calculations in trade deals, as a loss of meaningful manufacturing capacity can make a country by default less sovereign and able to protect itself from those who have manufacturing capacity. The societies in question will have to balance these points when making trade deals that truly benefit everyone in their given societies. Otherwise, it’s just a transference of wealth from the many to the few with no room for advancement and improvement for the many, along with a potentially weakened strategic position in the context of an overall global system.
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Steps to Take After the NSA Shootings, 3/30/2015
The American governments at all levels and in all places are going to have to come to terms with a few things. The first set of things are their own anti-social, repressive, oppressive, and anti-democratic tactics and methods and policies that they have enacted towards the general public. The American people cannot and will not voluntarily be marched into a neo-feudal serfdom without some form of resistance springing forth. Worse still, the people who will be behind such a resistance will also be the least qualified, least able, and least willing to establish a functional and effective new order from the ashes of the old. The second set are the anti-social, anti-progress, moronic, baboon-like group of radical right wing personalities and people whose anti-social, anti-progress, and anti-democratic tactics are what have brought us to the point where one is dead at NSA headquarters. These are the fat cat millionaires and radical right wingers who are sitting in our Congressional delegations, posing as bankers and businesspeople, making a mockery of the American spirit and the nature of Americans throughout all levels of society. We can either be cleansed of these people by ignoring them, voting against them, and by defending ourselves with lethal force if necessary. Or we can continue to sit around and do nothing while they dismantle our entire society and environment in the name of profit, control, and some abstract notion of liberty that they’ve never questioned or seriously examined.
I’ve always suggested that we turn our attention towards ridding our human societies of these conservative elements and the more pragmatic economic elite who fund them. The shooting at the NSA should be taken as a wake-up call for all Americans to unite against the growing right wing despotism that is threatening to erode our nation’s core integrity and to disband the dysfunctional and ineffective establishment “left” in favor of a new progressive state in America that relies on science, evidence, and the well-being of all people, not just the rich, as the benchmarks for good policy and good policy-making. Financial wealth for wealth’s sake should not be the end all of a society’s goal, nor should we condone or accept those who can’t get that through their heads.
A government and its members are never self-sustaining entities. A government and their members rely on the legitimacy, acceptance, and authority that is granted to them. These are things which can be revoked with disastrous consequences to follow for all people, including for the governments’ members, when and if they are revoked. Governments can fail; their existence is not guaranteed. Best to continue working with the general public in a dialogue for the sake of improving the quality of life for people rather than act as if there are no consequences for your actions. The sooner our governments in the United States and throughout human society get this through their heads, the sooner we’ll all be better off. We need to eliminate the right wing by allowing them to eliminate themselves, and the world will be that much closer to being reasonably settled, even though it will never truly be settled in the long term or short term. This will never be a utopian world; some problems will continue, old ones fade away, and new ones will rise. What we can change is how we live, interact with, and respond to the changes and common reality, first, by acknowledging that there is a common reality where all opinions, hypotheses, and perceptions are not equal and should not be given an equal light if they prove to be unfounded and without evidence to support them. The second thing we need to do is learn about this universe as thouroughly, deliberately, and accurately, specifically with regards to ourselves and to our own place within it relative to all other things on the individual and collective level. The third thing is to apply the lessons in our daily lives, policies, laws, programs, and actions, such that we can live healthier, happier, and more sustainable lives as individuals within the context of our environment and our societies. We can follow these three steps and all the subsequent steps and implications, or we can all collapse as a civilization and ruin ourselves and the world around us in the name of senseless greed and baseless ideology. These are the options. What side will you be on?
Think about it.
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A Simple Critique of Neoclassical Economic Theory: Micro and Macro Edition
The economy is much more complicated than the businesses that occupy it. While it is important to understand how businesses and businesspeople respond to external factors in the economy, based on internal preferences and desires, it is also important to bear in mind the relative value of financial profit relative to environmental, social, and economic concerns. Since businesses and businesspeople are too preoccupied with monetary gain and profits, it behooves the society, businesses, and businesspeople alike to turn over final authority over the economy, at the very least, to the society under the trust of the government in order to preserve the businesses and business interests non-monetary concerns. The beauty of an effective and efficient democratic system, free from the constraints of businesses, businesspeople, and general social elites, is that the government is more likely to be corrected by the society and the people living in the society than if it were left to the oligarchic manipulation by the economic and social elites. Working people benefit from being protected from businesses and businesspeople attempting to take advantage of them and their labor. Businesses and businesspeople benefit from maintaining a relative environmental and social homeostasis in which they can best operate to make money within the constraints of society, the environment, and technological know-how. Without this combination of factors, it is impossible to maintain a society in which people can live or make money over and above the financial costs that are required to maintain such a system.
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Hammurabi’s Code of Law
“When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak, so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind.” – Prologue, Code of Hammurabi.
These are the principles for which I stand. Like Hammurabi, I submit myself to the conditions and workings of the universe (read, God) as discovered by scientific investigation and analysis, not by revelation and opinion. I am just a human. I am not likely to do much in this world for the sake of others, nor will I likely be successful at communicating these concepts to the leading classes of the world and to the working underclasses whom the upper classes have such scorn and disregard for. I will always, however, be throwing myself in calculated and adaptive manners at the wall isolating humanity’s conscientiousness, for the sake of humanity. We should never rely on written laws for constitutions for our guidance, but only on the discovered truths of the universe in which we live and must make our living. There are an infinite number of possibilities for actions we can take, limited by practicality and feasibility. These remaining practical and feasible options are then limited by what is actually healthful for us, which is then limited by what is optimally healthful for us. The trick now is to experiment with methods of organization and political games, such that we can fine tune our society’s politics, such that the needs of the general public becomes the central focus of our political leaders, not the perceived needs and interests of a particular population or group of populations. This is how you’re best able to maintain a system; this is how you’re best able to preserve your office, your institutions, your legacies, and, perhaps, even leave a positive memory amongst the people once you inevitably depart from this lifetime. If you don’t truly want to be happy, healthy, successful, and able to be in office or have a lasting, sustainable, and perpetual institutional basis for society, how then can you expect to survive in office or ensure your own health and well-being, let alone, the health and well-being of others? If you truly want to be happy, healthy, successful, and able to be in office and have a lasting, sustainable, and perpetual institutional basis for society, then why would you take actions which actually leads to the destruction and degradation of your office and institutions for any reason whatsoever?
I therefore testify to the world that there is a common reality which has natural features to it with unwritten, yet at least partially discoverable rules of cause and effect to them which we can partially manipulate for our overall improvement or our overall detriment as a collective and individual species. The trick to staying in office is to follow, learn about, and abide by these natural laws, and then apply them for the general well-being of the public through adaptive, dynamic changes in policy, programs, at the absolute expense of the particular interests for the sake of the absolute and relative interests of the general whole. There is no need to rely on the lawyers or merely eloquent arguers of opinion who don’t, and likely won’t, accept the natural laws and conditions of society. The trick to dialogue and debate is to discover truth, in its most subtle, complicated, and simple terms. That is how you preserve a society. That is how you preserve institutions of society, formal and informal. That is how you, as a policy-maker and decision-maker keep your seat and make it easier on yourself to justify your positions and get re-elected in the short term, which then condenses into the long term. I for one have no more use or interest for the incorrect and unfounded opinions of others. I think that, given a comprehension of the bad, while allowed to have tastes of the good, will help guide society as a whole to the same general conclusion in the long term, which then collapses into the short term all too soon.
I will stand for these principles and these facts from now, until the time that I physically die in this form, and throughout all time and space, for my own absolute improvement, or my own absolute detriment in this lifetime and beyond. I stake my life, liberty, and happiness on this being actually the truth. Let all challengers come to knock it down. I will continue to stand by it honorably until it is actually and conclusively knocked down by someone more adept at perceiving the world as a whole than I am. I will then, at that point, humbly alter my opinion to bring it in alignment with the new understanding of common reality and cease to support it. That is how science works and I am only human.
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Strike Me Down, and I Shall Become More Powerful Than (Conservatives) Can Possibly Imagine
What progressives and liberals need to recognize, is that they need to go down with their honor and dignity in tact. The United States is, and always has been, an essentially progressive nation, where inclusion, equal opportunity, and human rights, the essentials of liberalism, are put on pedestals while monarchy, aristocracy, exclusion, and the corporate pretender wannabes, the essence of conservatism, are shunned and vilified in popular culture and sentiment. We want leaders who are accountable, responsive, and genuinely concerned with the well-being of ourselves as leaders. Why would we vote for anyone who doesn’t fulfill these things for us on a practical level?
The progressives in their present form need to pull back, reorganize, go underground if necessary, and cede to the conservatives and Libertarians all the power and influence that they want. The leadership should be prepared to get out of the country and find safe haven overseas while maintaining lines of communication inside. We need to prepare for war, make friends overseas, and prepare for combat if necessary against the conservative and Libertarian forces. Let the people eat the dog shit provided by the wannabe corporate aristocrats, and they’ll more than likely grow weary of it. They’ll long for a return to what their government was meant to be about. This is the United States of America, not the play pen of some inbred pseudo-nobles. I think that, if given enough rope, and provided that the progressives avoid being condemned as a group by the public, the conservatives will hang themselves or be forced to evolve on the terms and lines of the progressives. Conservatism in government is little more than an abusive, unfeeling, and uncaring relationship with the public. Only the public can make the ultimate cut with the conservatives. The progressives, for their part, must get themselves ready to out campaign the conservatives on the grassroots level, and possibly fight a popular guerrilla war against the bankers, the corporate executives, and the establishment union leaders and entrenched interests. It is time that our leadership should recognize their true interests relative to the public.
I call this the Obi Wan Maneuver. “Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
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How Capitalism Leads to a Sovietesque System in America
In some respects, the United States is more like the Soviet Union because of the influence of Capitalism and Capitalists than anything else. We have a shadow group of wealthy people and interests calling the shots behind the scenes to both political parties who sit in our government. The Soviets had one political party calling the shots to their government behind the scenes via the Politbureau. Both groups of people and their ultimate philosophies and practices lead their societies to the same results and likely to the same conclusions. Our Capitalist elites extract wealth and relative power from us, the Soviet elites did the same to their people. Both of our governmental systems and staff neglected to listen to the signs of their social and environmental ecosystems. The Soviet Union collapsed politically and fell apart into traditional ethnic territories. The United States is also likely to fall apart if nothing significant substantially changes, albeit, it’ll likely be into ideological and cultural camps.
By my reckoning, the solution to at least the American problem is a commitment to democratic principles and a social logic for our economy. Workers should be paid according to their profitability and, when there aren’t enough jobs available in the private market, the government should buy up the extra labor and put people to work with living wages and provide job training and education while they otherwise mark time in between jobs and demand cycles. Living conditions could be improved where people live with surpluses produced by productivity, based on demonstrable needs and evidence based practices. We could probably eliminate Medicare and Medicaid in favor of a universal healthcare and reduce medical costs as well through negotiation with the healthcare providers. We could maybe even go as far as to nationalize health research (which has already effectively happened), giving profit for health problems that are solved rather than leaving health to the private markets for them to ignore public health in favor of profits. Same could be said for national defense. Why should anyone be allowed to derive profit from war (which is an anathema to a healthy economy) or to have a substantial portion of our workforce tied up in pointless weapons manufacturing?
All the while, our governments can start to coordinate amongst themselves for the production and delivery of services. Experiments with organizational practices to improve inter and intra governmental communication, as well as attention towards creating fora for dialogue with the public on local and party levels could also take place, such that our government officials can know what the public actually needs and wants. The delivery, implementation, and interface of these functions can also be experimented with on the local and party levels in order to create a lasting link between governed and governing that can only be broken at both parties’ expense.
In the end, the United States is exhibiting the same anti-democratic, anti-social, and anti-environmental symptoms under Capitalism that the Soviet system exhibited under their definition of Communism. Our government officials and political parties don’t seem to truly care to put in an effort to create a two-way dialogue with the public and amongst their own levels and layers. They also don’t seem to care to have in place the necessary tools, mechanisms, and practices to preserve their own legitimacy and authority or to increase their personal and institutional longevity. Our legislators, administrators, chief executives, corporate shadow government officials and interests don’t seem to be thinking or feeling beyond the next election or the next quarterly report on profits. It is myopic, stupid, idiotic, cruel, callous, and predictably destructive for themselves to continue on this present course of action without appropriate, significant, and substantial changes to the way they think, feel, and work with the larger world that is also them. Meanwhile, you the citizen will pay either for your complacence in doing nothing appropriate to make momentum against these people happen or your ignorance in your tacit or outright support for them and their practices. We live together or we die together. Quite frankly, I think there are a lot of people out there, young and old, rich and poor, who are actually opting for death, as far as the impacts of their choices are in common reality. The United States will rot from the inside out, due to chronic mismanagement by law and policy makers and practitioners. We, as the whole American society will pay the price for our choices to be either apart of the solution in common reality or to be apart of the problem tacitly or overtly in common reality. It all of our choices whether we succeed or fail. I for one though am not seeing many positive signs amongst the citizenry or the elected and appointed officials who can actually do something for us though. A perfectly preventable and predictable end for those who actually probably deserve it. Oh well.
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Itcomesundone 