Tuesday, November 12, 2013

America Is Not the Greatest Country



America Is Not the Greatest Country………..for long
By John P. Middleton
Nov 2013

The title of this piece is a controversial and emotionally loaded concept.  But I hope the reader would stay with me awhile before throwing the tomatoes.

The Facts are that the United States currently ranks 49th in life expectancy, between 12th and 26th in education (depending on discipline or specialty), 31st in gender gap, between 27th and 32nd in mother, women and children issues, 114th in “Happy Planet Index”, 85th in Global Peace index, 13th in quality of Life index, 46th in suicide rates, and 168th in Failed States Index. (All statistics from The Economist Intelligence Unit, CIA World Fact book, and Yale University.) All information is available online. Therefore, it is probably inaccurate, but not unreasonable to declare the United States the “greatest” country in the world despite the foregoing evidence to the contrary.

The argument for “greatness” may be centered on our constitution and military might. But we are clearly deficient in many humanitarian areas.

In a previous paper I mentioned how frustrating the political process had become, for most people, due to the “system”.  In Humanitarian (and even military) concepts, the system is flawed for a number of reasons, among which are;

1.       A failure to correctly identify the difference between “leadership” and “servanthood”.
The people of the United States should be the leaders and the politicians their servants, which is the basic concept behind a representative democracy or a republic. That is the concept which gives our Constitution strength.

2.       Because of our country’s embrace of unrestrained Capitalism the abuses of Capitalism are rampant.
Money permeates politics to the extent that re-election trumps all other considerations, and indeed, consensus.  Reprehensible policies such as gerrymandering, or onerous voter registration, simply further the goals of the re-election process, and have little to do with lawmaking for the general good.

These kinds of abuses could bring the U. S. down more rapidly from its position of speculative and precarious dominance.  There are many other political abuses that could, similarly, result in the fall of the United States.

While I could labor on about “abuses” of the system, there are some who might find justification that the rich should get richer while the poor struggle, or who believe only the strongest should survive, citing Darwinian evolution as justification for imbalance.  So, I will continue with something that will be much more difficult with which to disagree, something that virtually assures the demise of the United States as THE world power, and is more consistent with old Mr. Darwin………Cultural Anthropology.

At the core of Cultural Anthropology is one, no longer so controversial, concept.  This concept may be called The Law of Evolutionary Potential”, as promulgated in chapter 5 of the book, “Evolution and Culture”, Harding, Kaplan, Sahlins and Service, Univ. of Michigan Press, copyright 1960/1973; and elsewhere.

The law generally states, “The more specialized and adapted a form is in any evolutionary stage, the smaller it’s potential for passing to the next stage.” 

Now Anthropology is not an exact science. And there are many opinions as to why political/cultural history is what it appears to be. But we should not disapprove of the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution when applied to states.

Now, because I am not a graduate in cultural anthropology,  I can only deal in general terms. But that should be more than sufficient here.  There are basically two types of evolution, specific and general.
1.       Specific:  “In any given system—a species, a culture or an individual, improves its chances for survival and progresses in the efficiency of its capture of energy by increasing its adaptive specialization.” 

A man is different, and higher on the food chain, than an armadillo. But each has unique specializations suited to its line of descent and is a contemporary creature.  You would not be anywhere near as good at finding, unearthing, and eating a grub worm, than an armadillo without the aid of equipment designed for that purpose.

“We increase our specializations for efficiency at survival.”  This is specific evolution,
which is limited by several factors, among which are, The “Principle of Stabilization” forces.  The armadillo, having the tools to feed itself and breed and protect itself, is unlikely to develop much further, unless another need arises, due to it being “stable” in many areas. Someday it may even figure out that crossing the southern highway at night is dangerous, but it appears to have not developed that far yet. Similarly, humans are losing their “gills” although vestiges may remain.

Two of the several factors to consider here are Dominance and Potentiality.  Much of our world turmoil is a contest between dominance and potential. It is unlikely that the armadillo will rule the world, but mankind and the cockroach have a shot at it…..for a limited time.

2.       General:   “The more specialized and adapted a form is in any evolutionary stage, the smaller its potential for passing to the next stage.”  (The Law of Evolutionary Potential)
Another way to state this is “specific evolutionary progress is inversely related to general evolutionary potential”.

Now what does this stuff mean for the future of the United States?

There are several factors at work, some in general cultural evolution and some in environmental evolution as follows:

“There’s a word for this new era we live in: the Anthropocene. This term, taken up by geologists, pondered by intellectuals and discussed in the pages of publications such as The Economist and the The New York Times, represents the idea that we have entered a new epoch in Earth’s geological history, one characterized by the arrival of the human species as a geological force. The Nobel-Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen coined the term in 2002, and it has steadily gained acceptance as evidence has increasingly mounted that the changes wrought by global warming will affect not just the world’s climate and biological diversity, but its very geology — and not just for a few centuries, but for millenniums. The geophysicist David Archer’s 2009 book, “The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate,” lays out a clear and concise argument for how huge concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and melting ice will radically transform the planet, beyond freak storms and warmer summers, beyond any foreseeable future.

The Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London — the scientists responsible for pinning the “golden spikes” that demarcate geological epochs such as the Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene — have adopted the Anthropocene as a term deserving further consideration, “significant on the scale of Earth history.” Working groups are discussing what level of geological time-scale it might be (an “epoch” like the Holocene, or merely an “age” like the Calabrian), and at what date we might say it began. The beginning of the Great Acceleration, in the middle of the 20th century? The beginning of the Industrial Revolution, around 1800? The advent of agriculture?

The challenge the Anthropocene poses is a challenge not just to national security, to food and energy markets, or to our “way of life” — though these challenges are all real, profound, and inescapable. The greatest challenge the Anthropocene poses may be to our sense of what it means to be human. Within 100 years — within three to five generations — we will face average temperatures 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today, rising seas at least three to 10 feet higher, and worldwide shifts in crop belts, growing seasons and population centers. Within a thousand years, unless we stop emitting greenhouse gases wholesale right now, humans will be living in a climate the Earth hasn’t seen since the Pliocene, three million years ago, when oceans were 75 feet higher than they are today. We face the imminent collapse of the agricultural, shipping and energy networks upon which the global economy depends, a large-scale die-off in the biosphere that’s already well on its way, and our own possible extinction. If homo sapiens (or some genetically modified variant) survives  the next millenniums, it will be survival in a world unrecognizably different from the one we have inhabited.” ---“Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene,”  by ROY SCRANTON   http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/learning-how-to-die-in-the-anthropocene/

The foregoing, while horrific in its consequences for the world, and heavily fueled by the recent dominance of North American energy consumption and the emerging energy consumption of the East, is not the only the specific Darwinian cultural change I am discussing here. Although the consequences of an Anthropocene period are culturally world changing, in this paper, I am specifically bound to the shorter term cultural changes of world dominance by specific states.

America, “the greatest country,” cannot sustain that position for much longer.

Evolution applies to both species and technology, but, in this case, and more importantly, cultures. Greece fell, Rome fell, Spain fell, Portugal fell, England fell, France fell, Germany fell and all other powerful nations have fallen from the pinnacle of dominance. Were they morally insufficient?  Some yes, most no. Were they sufficient or “efficient” for the future…..NO! That’s why they fell.

In the next 35 years futurist colleagues see the growth of the middle class as enormous in India and China and falling in the US and Europe.  An anthropologist might make the claim that those countries are filling the middle class vacuum because the U.S. and Europe already have a middle class. Additionally, their lower labor costs allow them to develop manufacturing whereas it is declining in our country as jobs and plants are sent to cheaper labor markets thus growing their middle class. Where the middle class grows, development usually occurs.

At some point in a system the dominance one exhibits tends to become non-progressive.  We already all own TV’s AND CARS thus General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have already identified the next market as India and China and are building their manufacturing plants in those locations. It is likely the advances in TV and Cars will come from India and China as they are still adapting to TVs and Cars, while we already have them. Needless to say, with manufacturing plants located in those target countries employment and economic growth and the growth of the middle class will follow in those places.

A young man recently referred to my desktop computer as a “Grandpa Box”.  I objected. I have studied computers and built this one I am using from the best available and affordable components. It is a very fast and flexible machine, loaded with the best software, cleaned and pruned and checked daily.  What the hell did he mean “Grandpa Box”?  Dr. Jerry Rose, an anthropologist colleague at the University of Arkansas, helped me to understand the young man was right. It IS a grandpa box. Youth today do their work on cellphones to a great extent.  They are portable (my box is not) they have downloadable apps (which are much rarer on my box). They have more instant communication from wherever they are, etc.

As an old fart, I reserve the right to claim that THEIR COMMUNICATION IS not as complete as mine and currently done in the severe limitation of 144 characters.  But that is changing. And how does the futurist see the value of my rambling essays in an era of “Instantaneous Knowledge”?  Is my longer essayist’s opinion any more valid than their 144 character opinion? Clearly I represent the past and the young man the future. It is, for that example, understandable that most cell phone developments are a product of the east since the east lacks a viable land line network.

So it is with states.

What will happen to the United States when our declining middle class and economy can no longer sustain our investment in our military that is four to eight times higher than our next competitor?

As our economic advantages disappear, albeit slowly, our military dominance must also disappear.  Our cultural dominance will take much longer to disappear. We still talk about the cultures and ideas of Egypt, Greece, Rome, England and others who have, in many cases, disappeared from the world stage as dominant players. Ours will be the “Lingua Franca” (with apologies to my British friends), the dominant world language, for some time to come.

Our dominance is likely to be a long slow process downward.  Since we already have one of the highest standards of living in the world, change, and improvement, will more likely come from somewhere else.

There will be some plateaus and blockades.  For instance, as a nation, we are spending an enormous amount of time on development and sustaining fossil fuels like oil, when the future is clearly in solar, wind, battery and lesser environmentally damaging technologies. If we were to shift gears to the latter technologies the United States could be a world leader in those areas for some time to come. Sadly, those developments are, apparently, being ceded to the East through greed on the part of our oil and auto and energy barons.

Physical Evolution is a slow process, Cultural Evolution appears much faster. Our future as a nation is likely destined to be a long slow downward spiral as the forces of evolution overtake us.  Even without those forces, the prospect of world government looms large in the potential history of the planet as it gets smaller and smaller culturally.

This probable spiral can be aided by several diverse factors.  In the beginning of this essay I indicated
“Money permeates politics to the extent that re-election trumps all other considerations, and indeed, consensus.  Reprehensible policies such as gerrymandering, or onerous voter registration, simply further the goals of the re-election process, and have little to do with lawmaking for the general good.” 

Our culture is addicted to greed.  It chokes the engines of development, the interest in fossil, rather than alternative fuels, dominance of the single commuter in the large SUV, and many other examples of how we seem determined, as a powerful and influential nation, to hasten our demise.

While change and progress are still possible, our greed will certainly trump and slow them and ultimately assure our national disappearance from the earth.

John P. Middleton
Nov 2013