Wisdom For The Future -or- Living In The Past
For several weeks now I have been having the most negative sort of dreams each night. Not exactly nightmares. More like reality dreams showing the many different versions of how America has changed, mostly for the worse.
I’m not one of those “living in the past old geezers” who believe in some mythical era when things were a lot better than they are now. Things were better in the past, etc. Some things are better now than they were 50 years ago, but indeed many things are worse than they were in the past. I think back to old folks who mourned the death of vaudeville or radio shows because of the growth of talking movies and television. Or talked about how things were better back when they were children.
Personal computers, the internet, satellite navigation, digital cameras, and mobile phones are all true improvements. Each of these can be and often is abused, but these are genuine improvements nonetheless. It is like comparing the telegraph with direct dial telephones.
Cars don’t get much better fuel economy than they did in the 1960s. Refrigerators and toilets have improved only slightly in the last 50 years. My big flat screen digital TV is somewhat better than the color TV of the 1960s, and I have lots more channels to choose from. But there still isn’t anything good on TV most of the time.
In the rich countries human nutrition has gotten worse over the last 50 years with the omnipresence of sugar, corn byproducts, fat, salt, and fast food. And there still are large numbers of people dying from starvation each year in Africa. The common cold still has not been cured and malaria is still a terrible scourge in the tropical countries. AIDS and HIV are now a genuine problem, as is the growing number of serious diseases which are resistant to all antibiotics and thus are no longer are treatable.
Smoking tobacco has become socially unacceptable in America, but large numbers of people are dependent upon legal medications prescribed by their physician like tranquilizers, mood elevators, and pain medication. Many normal people are now essentially drug addicts. Binge drinking and chronic alcoholism have not decreased. Diabetes and obesity are both increasing in all advanced societies.
On the political front politicians are even worse when it comes to greed and corruption than they were 50 years ago. Partisanship and corporate involvement and control of the political process has grown exponentially. Well educated, responsible people have begun to suggest that America is no longer governable. What we are watching appears to be the fall of the world’s last superpower, the American empire. American politics has begun to show much of the same sort of unreasoning chaos as one sees in the Italian political system.
In my childhood I remember regularly going to Juarez, Mexico just across the Rio Grande often for routine things like shopping. Buying groceries and gasoline. Now there are many murders each day by hit men from the drug cartels, and Juarez has officially become the most dangerous city in the world. All of this violence is driven by America’s demand for illegal drugs like marijuana, crystal meth, heroin, and cocaine. Corruption in Mexico has grown so pervasive that many are now calling it a failed state. The idea of rule-of-law never quite took hold in Mexico.
In looking back on my own life it is hard to imagine that when I started college no one had a digital calculator, a laptop, an mp3 player, or a cell phone. These things were not yet available. I have known people who remembered the times before all of America was electrified, and I also knew people who grew up with horses and remembered the coming of the automobile.
Because of the great depression of the 1930s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got many reforms enacted and the beginnings of a social safety net started. Protection of the economy from the corrupt robber barons. Protection for the common man and his family through unemployment compensation and universal old age pensions called Social Security. Protection from bank failures through government guarantees. Consumer protection from fraud by unscrupulous business people. After WWII most employers provided effective health insurance and pension plans to their workers. There was an implied social contract between the worker and his boss. They were both honest to each other and treated each other fairly. It was common to happily spend several decades working for the same company.
The social movements of the 1960s fought the military industrial complex and the war in Vietnam ended. The civil rights movement successfully fought against institutionalized racism. Women were no longer treated as mere sex objects, and it was widely assumed that soon women would receive equal pay for equal work.
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President Lyndon Johnson got universal government paid medical care enacted for old folks and called it Medicare. Even though FDR, Truman, and Clinton all tried, universal medical care failed to pass. In 2009 people were dying needlessly, and there were 50 million people in America who were excluded from receiving medical care.
Unfortunately most of the progressive improvements made in the political realm in the 1960s and 1970s gradually have been eroded away by completely deregulating the forces of greed and wealth. Most of the vital reforms and protections for the nation’s economy which were enacted by FDR in the 1930s and 1940s were gradually dismantled starting with President Ronald Reagan and culminating in President George Bush II.
This total deregulation of the greedy and wealthy by the right wing led to the formation of the internet bubble, the commercial and homeowner property bubbles, and their eventual bursting. Consumers were fraudulently sold mortgages which they could not afford; these mortgages were bundled along with credit card debt into Wall Street type investment securities. The rating agencies gave these bundled securities AAA ratings, and they were sold overseas. The American federal government continued to fight multiple wars, but refused to raise taxes in order to pay for the expenses of these wars. Deficit financing with foreign governments owning much of this debt increased.
All of this combined was responsible for causing the falling apart of the economy and the “great recession” which we are currently witnessing in 2009. Most manufacturing jobs had by now left America and gone overseas so as to evade child labor laws, minimum wage laws, workplace safety laws, and environment pollution laws. The middle class in American slowly began to vanish.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the 1700s the burning of fossil fuels to provide the power needed to improve society began increasing. When carbon based fuels like coal, oil, and gasoline are burned the main exhaust gas is carbon dioxide. Since the 1950s this has grown exponentially, and we have now managed to pollute the air of the entire planet. The world’s oceans are in trouble from overfishing, and the run off of chemicals from industry and farms. Almost all well educated scientists now are in consensus that the vast increase in carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is resulting in a gradual warming of the entire planet. The rate of which is increasing. Glaciers all over the planet are melting and sea levels are rising.
It is not good to be negative. Really. I try to be positive, enthusiastic, and constructive. Maybe I am just “living in the past.” A sad, bitter old geezer hung up on his youth.
On the other hand maybe I have seen enough history to enable me to see the trend lines and visualize what is really happening. Looking forward to what the youth of today faces, it is hard for me to paint a very positive picture. Sorry. As hard as I try it just seems like a case of rose colored glasses and massive self delusion. After all my world travel, living abroad, and the many years wasted in the educational system, what suggestions can I make to today’s young people? Do I have any wisdom to impart to them or just complete hopelessness?
Be nice to each other. Try not to hurt other people. Tell the truth. Don’t lie, but realize that honesty is not the same as brutality, as in “Does this dress make my ass look too big?”
And insist that your children begin attending Chinese language classes while they are still young.
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