There have always been problems in our society, and nobody disagrees with that. Over time, these problems have remained relatively the same for a good 80-90 years. Of course, we've done great things over that period of time as well. I don't think that as a species we'll ever stop doing amazing things unless we are destroyed by nature or ourselves. What makes me (and others like me) stand apart from the decades old stereotype of dissenter is the time period we specifically live in. Consider how complicated everything is right now. Society involves far more complexities now than it ever has before, and a lot of that is because of things that have happened within my lifetime. Cellphone use. Internet. Social Networking. Camera's in nearly everybody's hands. Public music sharing. Outsourcing. Importing. Exporting. International relations. All of these things are the way they are now because of developments that have occurred within the last twenty years. It's significantly complicated things by massively increasing the level of communication and community we have. Suddenly, things all over the world have effects that can travel any distance in nearly an instant. Of course humanity as a whole has been moving in that direction since we first started creating empires back in ancient history. Now we're here though, and there is a critical flaw in how our society is using it. The flaw stems from the base of most of this nation's problems over the last century.
As a nation, we have taken great strides to ensure that we are and remain a physically and economically powerful entity. We have made changes to the initial design of the system and made efforts specifically in order to keep it that way. We've built and empowered world corporations to make them into infallible resources that the whole world can depend on. Despite that, we really haven't taken any serious efforts to just make the nation a better place to live. The only ways that we have are commercial, which in turn attributes to our economic strengths. This is a serious problem, and it is incredibly short-sighted.
The thing that is going to destroy us isn't a weak economy. As I've said before, the thing that can destroy humanity is nature or ourselves. Those aren't mutually exclusive- in fact, we wouldn't be here if it weren't for nature- we're a part of it. Yet we sacrifice nature and ourselves for our socioeconomic power. We make ourselves and others suffer for that power with little regard for how we effect nature in the process. In order to do that, we have an increasingly rigid law system in place to ensure that everyone behaves as a productive member of society. Instead of focusing on making our country a nicer place to live, we specifically focus on making our society conform to a more efficient and powerful economic machine. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have trade or currency- that's a naturally forming process throughout nature. But what we're doing wrong is trying to force society to flawlessly perform a system that goes beyond the actual capabilities of humanity- that's why we've had a lot of the same problems for so long. We continue to try to force humanity to conform to this machine, and not only does it not work perfectly by any means, but society is getting more complicated.
In this advent of technology and communication we are experiencing, we are witnessing our innovations be used to keep people in line with our system, and it still doesn't work. All it does is make more people unhappy, in jail, in ruins, or on the streets- because they couldn't conform to our societal system. I think in the end it should be obvious that that only serves to hurt us. If we continue focusing on forcing people to conform to that system, the measures will only get more and more extreme (as they have been for nearly a century). However, if we focused on improving our society in a less constricting and more tolerant manner, a lot of our problems would probably get worked out. Not only that, but as the only country that behaved in that manner, we would easily really and truly become the greatest and probably most economically powerful nation of all time.
Until then, our current form of self-preservation is only going to serve to harm us both immediately and over time. That's why I want people to pay attention. The things that we do now will decide the fate of society for decades at least. Now is a crucial time to be standing up for what is right and what is truly freedom. It's a whole new part of history we're starting, and it will be the actions of the people that decides how it starts.
-Phoenix Godwin
Here's some extra stuff you can read in order to better understand the very real problems we are facing today, despite the fact that most people don't even seem to realize it:
The Human Future: A Problem in Design.
Here is a fantastic transcribed speech by Daniel Quinn, author of such books as "Ishmael", and "The Story of B". It explains very clearly some of the inherent problems with the nature of current human society.
Five Steps to Totalitarian Rule
This is an article by journalist Josh Levin that explains the steps necessary for us to achieve a totalitarian society. It's not hard to see that we're beginning to ease in that direction.
