Sleepwalking into the future

Part one - an introduction

Oct 09, 2024

As I was finishing my post Live not by lies, talking mostly about the disturbing work of

, I just couldn’t stop being puzzled and fascinated.
So I got her book. I wanted to understand what exactly her concept of democracy is.

The book is full of interesting historical tidbits, but seeing them next to points I know to be blatant lies, it is difficult to trust any of them. In my post I said:

“Browsing through the book made me realize that she does not understand the first thing about democracy. She is a possessed ideologue, fully consumed by the most superficial aspects of politicking.”

Browsing through a lot more of the book, all I saw was self-content and self-congratulatory righteousness.
That woman loves herself more than I can say. She has no doubts, no scruples, just a relentless, partisan drive. There is no clear definition in her book of anything, and I still don’t know what her concept of democracy is.
Not beyond the primitive fuzziness of saying that democracy is everything that she likes, while non-democracy is everything that she does not. Opposing any policy of the democrats, liberals and socialists are by definition undemocratic.
In her view, supermajority support from the ‘demos’ for Orbán in Hungary and Putin in Russia clearly means that they are not democratic (demos-ruled) countries.
I am quite certain, because she said so, that she will consider a Trump victory in November a victory of undemocratic forces. No matter how many people will vote for it.
Which would be all acceptable, if she had a proper definition of what that assessment can be based upon. If the will of the majority (the demos) is not democracy, then WHAT IS???

Her book is about putting that square peg into a round hole. What I see, is the Leninist idea of the vanguard elite, the arrogance of the likes of her telling the uncouth masses what is good for them.

Yet, Heather Cox Richardson, with all of her confusion and mendacious, partisan dishonesty is still not the problem. She is the symptom, and she is not alone. There are ‘experts’ in a range of fields seeing problems in isolation and stuck within the perspective of the existing paradigms.

At this inflection point of history, our societies, cultures, countries with their political systems and economies, civilizations and institutions are going through historically unprecedented changes.
As we are going through these changes, it would be rather important to consider their significance and formulate some plans to deal with their impact them.

We see the coming changes without considering and without any real plans to deal with them. We are trying to frame the new paradigm with the tools of the old.

The unipolar (single hegemonic) world order is falling apart
Western liberal democracies are bankrupt financially, morally and politically.
Technological changes will fundamentally disrupt economic and social institutions.

All of these impending changes have far-reaching consequences. Our default position, our plan ‘A’, if you will, is that we already have the tools to deal with them. In case we fail, we have no plan ‘B’.

Whatever the subject is, we keep going on with partisan bickering in a building that is about to collapse on us.

The war in Ukraine is irrelevant compared to the geopolitical realignment that it gave birth to.
That realignment will have consequences.
Our political differences are irrelevant compared to the impending bankruptcy of our social institutions and international organizations.
The failure of institutions will have consequences.
Economic performance, trade, recessions, immigration are all irrelevant compared to the changes that the technological revolutions we are going through will bring to us.
The technological revolution will have consequences.

Some people, like the Alexanders of the Duran and Pepe Escobar can see the significance of the geopolitical realignment.

Some people, like Elon Musk can clearly see the disruptive influence of the technologies he is working on.

Many people can see by now the impending financial market correction, but I don’t know anybody who would address the societal cost of the challenges of the welfare states or the dangers of the fiat currencies.

Finding and actually understanding the relevant issues should be the subject of public discourse.
My next three posts will ask some relevant questions to start that dialogue.

We cannot afford just sleepwalking into the future.

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