Blue People

Under Pressure

America and its way of life are under pressure as never before, excepting only the runup to the Civil War of 1861 and the war itself.

We are harassed by extremist Muslims like Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Amahdinejad, who neither fear nor loathe our country, but rather have contempt for it. That's a new experience.

We're under financial and economic pressure from the Chinese, who sell us almost all the manufactured goods we consume and who want nothing in return except for dollars (so far). The Chinese frankly admit that America has nothing to offer that they would want in return for the tidal wave of manufactured goods generated by their country.

Our high-energy way of life is directly threatened by the rising price and scarcity of oil, a crisis which will one day result in either the total destruction of the American economy, or (in the alternate version) a new burst of energy and creativity resulting in a prosperous yet largely oil-free economy.

Our culture is criticized by religious fundmentalists both at home and elsewhere, people who see only sin and license where the rest of us see creativity and freedom.

And most of all America's political leadership of the so-called "Free World" is collapsing under the strain of multiple unmanageable crises, any one of which could expose once and for all the myth of America as the "world's sole superpower". We can't control Iraq, where most of our Army is tied down in a possibly endless sectarian conflict; we can't control Israel, our supposed "ally"; and we can't control Iran, which is playing a winning hand on its way to domination of the Middle East (and some of the cards Iran is holding were put there by the USA).

So clearly things are going to be very different 10, 20, 50 years from now. The landscape that most Americans think of as "normal", namely post-WWII world characterized by American prosperity at home and primacy abroad, is disappearing as we watch. The new "normal" will be less pleasant for Americans in almost every way. America will be unstable, economically strapped, and unable to stand up to assertions of sovereignty on the part of countries like China, Russia, India, Iran, and others. We will, for the most part, have to take our place in line like other countries.

Someone far more learned than I needs to do a book-length treatment of this topic.

God

Clearly disputes over religion have once again become a major factor, especially at the geopolitical level (Muslims vs. "infidels"), but a smaller scales as well (fundamentalist Christians vs. everyone else).

It seems to me that the key mistake made by all of these believers is this: they all believe that God is some kind of actually existing entity, something that exists apart from Nature. Following from this are the many arguments over the qualities and capabilities possessed by this entity, which of course can never be settled, since we don't have access to the object in question.

There are some belief systems that have a better idea, that God is not some wholly external entity, independent of Nature of of our consciousness. All that exists is Nature, and our goal should be to achieve harmony with it. Religion is basically an evolving relationship between Nature on the one hand, and ourselves (our consciousness and our behavior) on the other.

The End

Been busy. At any rate...

There's a scene in "Syriana" in which a teacher at a madrassa is giving a lesson, the gist of which is "the West has failed". The prescribed response for his students is: jihad.

While I can't support the prescription, it's becoming ever more clear that the diagnosis is correct. The West has failed, and this can be seen easily simply by acknowledging the higher and higher levels of violence being inflicted by Western nations, most obviously the USA, on both other humans and on nature itself. It seems now that our only response to any and all problems is "war", either figurative or literal. And yet is is becoming painfully obvious that if our problems are to be solved, it can only be through cooperation, not by "destroying the enemy" (which has been the American response since 1941).

Since Americans, led by George W Bush, seem as far from realizing this as ever, I am forced to conclude that there will be no solution, and that the apocalypse that awaits us will not be averted. And sickest of all is the apparent fact that many Americans will welcome it (and not just the "Rapture" adherents).