Let's Do Better - 'Mericans, Philosophy, philosophy and philo sophia. Lindauer/Varnado 2016

We measure years by conflicts, generations by wars, eras by conquests, empires by dominance and ages by evolutionary supremacy.   We have one universe to conquer.

Ants also have cities and queens and expand without horizon, but when they vie for the same resource they have no civil means of resolving the dispute, they can only either kill or be killed.

Humans though not much further evolved, have evolved one excellent survival technique which is conflict avoidance.   We, normally, despise war and death and destruction and prefer to make peace rather than war, unlike our insecta friends.   "Normally" I mean only in the American/British sense of the modern non-poor western person.   Having piled most of our capacity for conflict avoidance into the nearly forgotten slogan "Mutually Assured Destruction", we are not required to occupy ourselves day-to-day, hour-to-hour with the primary driving force for evolution in higher animals - Competition.

At the same time, we must confess that we have paid a great price for this luxury.  The morally vacuous position that what our armies do in order to guarantee our quality of life is justified by the fact that -we personally- do not do them.  We pay people to do our dirty work, call it "taxes" and put someone else in charge of what's done with it.

Occasionally there is this respite in cultures that are otherwise strewn with violence.  Consider what might be thought if I'd suggested humans were less violent circa 1812 or 1862.   No, what we've done is such an amazing feat of social engineering that it is near unimaginable that a civilization could have as its final goal the ability to get beer and pizza on friday nights.

But we are as the prophet suggested, poor though we think ourselves wealthy.   Even the wealthiest among us are confined within the bounds of what they can defend.  The rest of us within our countries or rooms or jobs or relationships or dreams, our desires and fears.  The traps within which we capture ourselves are the release of the power of governance - of deciding what to do for ourselves.   That is, the trap of luxury is the lack of freedom required to organize a civilization so that only a small percentage of us must professionally entertain ourselves with violence.

This lack of freedom is palpable, but still invisible.  It is sometimes filed under the rubric "The Social Contract", a contract to which few people could be convicted of having willfully consented.  You may not have a fence too high, or drive your car too slow, or have bare legs above your knees, and worst of all you sometimes have to do -whatever those bozos in congress- decide we have to do.

I am not a fan of this system, but I have hope.   I hope we can do better.

Holy smokes 'Mericans, what a great idea.  Let's Do Better.

Really - LET'S DO BETTER.

Why Not?

Unfortunately, that's a reasonable question.  There is a good reasonable answer too, as you may or may not know.  In the olden days we used to call it Institutionalized Evil.  It was the reason that Moses got the order to go free his people, the reason the americans had to join world war ii and the reason that the North and the South warred.   Institutionalized evil is different from other evil.  Other evil is "willy-nilly" - like a random killer.  Institutionalized Evil is studied, packaged, traded, shipped, and squeezed.  Brokered by Lucifer himself in a suit and tie.  "Why let a pawn eat a king's meal", he says to himself.

'Merica's institutionalized evil comes in the lowest saddest form - forced ignorance on an unsuspecting population brought on by generations of purposeful neglect of eduction as a fundamental condition of a true democracy in the hands of an all-too-aware intelligentsia and ruling class.  It's not bad, better than many alternatives no doubt.

But Can We Do Better?

Of course in many ways we really are doing better.  Every day a new report comes out showing how much better everything is.  But can anything we do stave off the inevitable collapse of human civilization due to neglect, conflict and the fallout?

Yes.

What?

Star Trek.

WTF are you shitting me, robbie, seriously did you just say that?

Yes, yes I did.

Ladies in gentlemen in all seriousness we need to be up on mars like last week.  We need replicators and holo-decks and energizers and warp-drive like a month ago.

Lindauer/Varnado 2016