The Wheel of history (standard:Editorials, 1107 words)
Author: Tanada	Added: May 10 2007	Views/Reads: 3443/2180	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
History doesn't repeat itself, human nature does!

When I was a teenager in the early 1980's I learned about the pattern of
the history wheel and went into a deep depression. After a while I 
figured out that the very old saying 

Quote: And it came to pass... 

really is profound wisdom. Nothing made by man lasts forever, and very
little of it lasts even a few centuries, so why should the freedom 
culture be any different? I had hopes, when I was younger, that our 
culture would slip the surely bonds of Earth before we collapsed back 
into the barbarian stage, then in 1982 I learned about Peak Oil. I 
still nursed my hopes even so because the projections were for it to 
happen early in the 21st century and we still had time to accomplish 
much. The last 25 years however, have by and large been squandered in 
narrower and ever more self obsessed developments in our culture, more 
inward looking, more selfish, less goal oriented and future sighted. 

This last two weeks I have been very down, I feel the weight of all the
hopes that have crashed and burned over the years piling on top of me 
and I feel as if the end is nigh, as if the cusp is upon us and the 
decline is about to gather momentum down the slope. 

The members of today's younger generation with whom I work are proud of
their ignorance and dedicated only to seeking greater stimulation. I 
know they are a very small sample to judge a generation on, but they 
are the only sample I have. No matter where your culture is on the 
wheel of history there are always individuals or small groups that are 
in every other stage. Even in its first bloom Liberty does not capture 
all minds, a large minority seek to stay in bondage or never get the 
chance to escape it. Perhaps my small sample has mislead me and the new 
generation of young adults today are not the deeply Apathetic 
generation I think they are. Perhaps I will see hopeful signs in the 
coming days or weeks and my optimism will return, Hope, after all, 
springs eternal. 

As it is at minimum we have a large underclass of non-working poor, some
families of which are several generation deep. 

Next up are the working poor, currently very frustrated due falling
wages from illegal immigrant competition coupled with the constant 
calls from our culture to consume consume consume, without the income 
to support that lifestyle. 

Then you have the truly middle class, two working parent families in
hock up to their eyebrows or beyond living in suburbia and exurbia with 
a McMansion too big and a commute too long. They have become totally 
disconnected from their own children leading to that Apathetic 
generation I was talking about a little bit ago. 

The moderately wealthy professional class is supposedly living the dream
of the American way of life, but much like the middle class for the 
most part they are grossly overextended financially and if the gravy 
train stops they are bankrupted. 

The truly wealthy class may or may not be deeply in debt, most of them
however have financial advisors or accountants keeping everything in 
relative balance and trying to keep them somewhat sensible. The wiser 
members of this class leave the finances to their experts while 
partying on the allowance their experts dole out to them for those 
purposes. The wise ones become the 'old wealth' to the next generation, 
the foolish ones go bankrupt in a few years except where trusts were 
set up to prevent such from happening. If the collapse comes 
unexpectedly or very rapidly their futures will depend on how 
diversified their financial advisors have kept them. A truly 
diversified portfolio will keep you from true bankruptcy, and a few 
good guesses will keep you wealthy when most of your neighbors are 
merely left well off. 

Peak Oil is going to change a lot of things, but every path I see
leading away from the change results in a more authoritarian future for 
so called western civilization. A year or two ago I heard a prominent 
Chinese leader interviewed and in that interview he was asked, Quote: 
What do you think of Western Civilization? 

and he answered Quote: 


Click here to read the rest of this story (43 more lines)