Societal Perspective

 I thought I would write up some thoughts I've been having lately about society. *eye roll* another one of those posts...

Sorry if this sounds edgy:

I think American society is on a brink right now, we just haven't realized it yet. And honestly, it needs to happen. 

But hopefully it will happen in the best way possible and not the worst, because there are a lot of avenues to a bad outcome and only a few to a good one.

Sounds cryptic? 

America has become a land of capitalism solely. Our democracy (democratic republic if you will) is neither a democracy nor a republic. The wealthy control so much in government and they compete with one another for more power. The only saving grace for commercial take-over is the complexity of the system. Yes, the checks and balances work some of the time, but they are more of a check dam before the actual dam, and right now the waters of greedy capitalism are inundating politik. 

It really does stem from capitalism. I appreciate capitalism, but I think the scale has tipped too far in favor of the capitalist. People perceive money as life. At all levels. All races, all classes, all categories of people see money as the definition of life. This is not the truth, but rather it is a construct that has been implanted into our minds. It is an idea that has tainted our happiness. People perceive money to be the measure of a person's life. Wealth is all that people can talk about. But capitalism is more than money, it's about "capitalizing" which appears to be an extension of imperialism. It is the control over the production capabilities and domination. 

People seem to think that capitalism is solely about money, but in fact, when capitalists have capitalized in their field they always expand--expansion is in fact an aspect of capitalism, though they call it "diversifying". 

So lets define capitalism: Capitalism is the investment of resources in order to get a return on those resources. Currency is the exchange unit, though it isn't a universal unit because it varies regionally and across time. Energy is a more universal unit of exchange between mediums, but capitalists haven't quite figured out how to capitalize on it in a stable way or I'm sure they would use that instead.

The people, or inheritors of those people, who made daring investments a long time ago have gained the returns on those investments which has provided them with a sufficient pool of this exchange medium (currency). With currency they are able to expend those resources on whatever they want, though as they continue to be capitalists, they invest more in order to gain more, and when they have tapped as much as they can from one source they diversify to another source or another industry. And they don't stop and they assign heirs to do the job after they are gone. 

Some capitalists are corporations--or rather an organization or group of people who are all capitalists and who share in the wealth gains of the corporation, but don't share any responsibility for their capitalist decisions. If something goes great, they get praise and financial benefits and greater decision making latitude. If it goes wrong, they don't lose out financially, they don't have to personally pay any fines and worst case scenario they get fired from their position as CEO or COO or CTO or whatever executive position they held. After getting fired, they get poached onto some other board, or if they were a good capitalist they were diversified and are already sitting on other boards which tehy retain their position in. 

The American government was once founded on a different kind of ideals. There were certain human principles incorporated into the minutia of the government, but over time, capitalists realized they could even capitalize on government. They've infiltrated the election process and now it is the richest candidates who win elections. Those who invest the most money into the greatest returns and actualize those returns are the winners of government power. 

*phew*. 

This is hard for me to speak about because I understand what is occurring in a non-language. I will need to keep both a dictionary and an encyclopedia handy if I'm to even communicate this. 

Tangent: I used to believe that you could only think about and understand what you could communicate, but I think that is only true to an extent. I think our brains are fantastic and that they have a way of understanding things that they've maybe only once seen or heard and can form connections that our conscious minds didn't realize were even connected. Call it intuition, call it the subconscious, but it's really just the connection making ability of the brain.

Back to my opening statements:

I think American society is on a brink. Financially, the markets don't seem right: if businesses are supposedly struggling to hire people, yet unemployment is low, yet businesses are still operating as normal and those businesses that are up and running are making profits, right? Then is there really a problem? And yet, people are supposedly not working? Who is paying the bills? Who is earning money to pay bills? Are people offloading their savings? I Thought they didn't have savings? See. None of that makes sense. Socially, people are still distraught. Covid is still impacting our lives and the threat is still out there. People are still refusing to get vaccinated. Things have calmed down, but I don't think they are really calm. Inflation is setting in. And it almost seems like we are sitting in the eye of the storm beliving that everything will end up alright when it's only just begun. It seems something's got to give?