A Diverging Reality

A huge portion of our nation's current problems have for a beginning the function of divergence. The size and complexity of our society and the degree the public media is emphasizing this complexity is over-running a very significant portion of the populations ability to hold a mental image of the society they live in. It is simply beyond their level of abstract intelligence to grasp even a working framework. Their vision and version of reality is diverging from full, shrinking back to a sustainable level well short of representing the dynamics of the world they live in. In a nation governed by some dictatorial oligarchy this phenomenon of divergence would be of little consequence, but to a nation built on the concepts of democracy such divergence will likely be lethal if allowed to escalate beyond balance.

There are those who have been and continue to enhance this entropy in order to exploit it for political gain. With greed for power as a motive they have either maliciously or most unwisely betrayed every trust placed in them to deliberately limit and prejudice the perspectives available to the diverged individuals since it is a relatively simple matter to direct their choices at the ballot box once control has been established over their perspective and range of perception.

Those who have perpetrated this injustice on the nation they claim to love may well have sounded the death knell of Democracy in the 21st century.   A population of individuals who cannot formulate or maintain a mental ‘map’ of their society is at risk to every social ill imaginable. There is some critical percentage of such individuals in a population beyond which Democracy can not survive, the causal link between vote and response is broken. Trust becomes impossible, there is no rational basis for it. The law degrades to become nothing more than the fangs and claws of the monster who lives in the dark behind the door. Every function which depends on the individual understanding and empowering the relationship between himself and his society is at risk as perceived reality diverges from actual reality, for the individuals who do not and can not view society as a rational creation to be dealt with in a rational manner will revert to dealing with it in the manner of any frightened person struggling to survive: force of arms, and the more the better.

This is not totally a matter of professional liars manipulating ignorant people with illusions, the truly dangerous part of this scenario are the elements of repression and tyrannical thought that do exist within our society to threaten freedom, the elements found in the primitive and feudalistic competitions of the corporate entities who operate most freely in the shadows of ignorance. The converged members of society have trouble admitting such elements exist, it is a frightening thought. The diverged members have no trouble seeing what is moving through the shadows of their ignorance, but have no way to communicate this to the remainder of a population who do not want to know. Both are at risk, and for one cause or the other both are nearly helpless.

Christian Incorporated

Just a small thought to share today, but one that might grow a bit with time.

Consider first that the modern forms of capitalism are almost exclusively a product of Christendom . The political Christ (as differing from the historical Jesus) and the corporation overlap the same times and places and peoples. This may well be more than historical coincidence when you consider the impact of the Bible story about how it is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to get a rich man into heaven.

As a second point, take note that to be incorporated, a corporation, is to be part of a collective endeavor of many individuals grouped to be considered one body in the eyes of the law, the corporation the "entity" subject to the law's judgments, the responsibility for the moral and lawful behavior of that entity spread and diluted down the chain of command within the structure of the organization.

Interestingly, most interestingly, the owners of the corporation, the shareholders, are not held responsible for the actions of the corporation, the entity they essentially own as their slave. The law never looks at them when their slave transgresses any semblance of reasonable moral behavior in an effort to meet the demands of it's owners.

I'm thinking part of the motivation for creating corporations in the first place might well be so the shareholders may believe God Almighty will cut the line of moral responsibility at the CEO as do the courts of mankind, leaving them untarnished by the title of "rich man" (regardless of the degree of ill-gotten wealth they've accrued from the labors of their slave). It is a time honored tradition common to both religion and the corporate world to practice wishful thinking, to believe that believing compels reality to comply with the desires of the majority. Such fools. Do they really think an omniscient God is going to miss them trying to smuggle a camel load of accountability into Heaven hidden beneath something as transparent as that?