Seeking to Empower Humanity with the Perspective to Manifest Evolutionary Change Everywhere


In the last few decades, it has become increasingly clear that humanity is facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions. The problems that stand in the way are not of economical or technological nature. The deepest sources of the global crisis lie inside the human personality and reflect the level of consciousness evolution of our species.



- Dr. Stanislav Grof



Monday, June 27, 2011

Charting the collapse of the American Imperium

Suppose it were assumed true that the United States of America was reaching the end of its effective life as as a functional, coherent and organized political unit. What would the implications be? Globally? And for us as individuals?

If such a statement seems alien to you, I would HIGHLY recommend you spend time re-evaluating your world view. Because at the moment of history in which we are currently co-occupying, such a scenario is straying out of the realms of fiction and into the realms of probability. As the US of A confronts a crippling level of debt, mandated cuts in military spending, increasing restrictions of civil liberties in the name of national security, a withdrawal from the hot zones of conflict across the Middle East under the auspices of "mission accomplished" and an increasing amount of sectarian unrest at home (driven by insurmountable social and fiscal differences) - it becomes necessary to objectively review the implications of a world where America is not only no longer a superpower, but is actually non-existent IN TOTO.

Why? One need only look at the sister nations throughout history that share the model that America has so remarkably capitalized upon - and the two most enduring lessons stem from the Roman Empire and from the USA's erstwhile enemy: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Rome is actually an amazingly pertinent comparison, although the troubles that confront the US today confronted Rome in two parts - first the death of the Roman Republic and its replacement by "benevolent" despotism under a series of emperors, and finally the violent, brutal and ultimately cataclysmic destruction of the Roman Empire (at least the original Western half of it) some four hundred years later.

Stop me if you've heard this before: a young and aggressively expansionistic nation founded originally as a colony by an older and more "civilized" culture creates a myth of its own destiny and through good morals, hard-work, business acumen and military innovation manages to create a large, multi-ethnic power that prides itself on its adherence to justice, the exercise of popular power and its ability to bring the light of progress and civilization to the dark corners of the world. And then after centuries becomes corrupt, lazy, elitist - dominated by special interest groups, crippled by legislative inertia and in-fighting and a massive split between two mutually exclusive social groups whose ideological conflict is unresolvable through democratic processes.

(p.s. I'm talking about Rome here - and certainly NOT the U.S.A... *wink*)

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi - Thus Passes the Glory of the World. In this case, the Roman Republic. Now fast forward. Now we have a tired, over-extended military power facing massive deficits, unemployment, an over-bloated bureaucracy, an overwhelming amount of illegal and semi-legal foreigners who "put hard-working citizens out of work" by working for less, and undermine the cultural norms and language of the nation. Wars rage everywhere, mainly against under-privileged outsiders jealous of the empire's success, who launch assault after assault against the crumbling nation. Loyalties are divided, the people are apathetic and uninvolved as responsible citizens, civil conflict rages, the economy crumbles, inflation spirals out control - and inevitably central power collapses entirely and regional and local authority asserts itself.

Do I speak of Rome at the destruction of the Western Empire during the 5th century, or do I speak of the years to come for the US?

Or, if I have not driven the comparison home enough - let us review the last years of the Soviet Empire. The USSR was for decades a stalwart bulwark of Communist ideology, and the philosophical and political antipode to the US. America feared and hated the threat the USSR posed: its ideology, its national agenda, its brutal economic efficacy ("we shall bury you!" was not an idle threat in 1956), its weaponry and its geopolitical machinations. It was an enemy that, it was assumed, was going to last for generations (as Arthur C. Clarke's "2010" taught us).

And yet how quickly the dragon was dispatched. In 1979, at the start of the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan, the USSR could potentially lay claim to having an upper-hand on the US geo-politically, and perhaps even militarily. A decade year later, as the Soviet Army limped out of Afghanistan, the USSR was economically broken, politically divided, militarily outmaneuvered, increasingly isolated internationally and confronting internal dissent unseen in decades. Three short years later (as of Dec. 31, 1991), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist as an entity.

While historical correlations are no definite precursor to predicting the future, it must be emphasized that when large, complex, pluralistic states such as Rome and the USSR face the sort of challenges that the US faces, the centrifugal social forces constantly at play in such societies have a strong tendency to cause them to fly to pieces in times of intense crisis. Why? Well - consider what holds the US together - is it religion, ethnic identity, clan loyalties or a shared popular myth?

No.

Ultimately, it is a matter of a nebulous sense of "Americanness" derived from very definite expectations of economic and political privilege. We implicitly assume that as Americans we will have a fundamentally better chance economically than people who live elsewhere, and enjoy a higher level of social and political freedoms. An America failing to deliver on those expectations due to a fiscal down-spiral, economic disparity, bureaucratic strangling, political dis-empowerment, lagging innovation, the revocation of civil liberties, and collapsing military hegemony abroad is an America increasingly in danger of its citizenry weighing the pros and cons of on-going participation in the Great Experiment that this nation really is.

Much like the citizens of Rome and the Soviet Union who confronted the same hard realities as their states withered from an incompetent and ineffectual leadership that no longer understood the intangibility of "Roman-ness", or "Soviet-ness" that motivated the citizenry to maintain and protect the state: likewise, the citizens of this country must also confront what "American-ness" actually means to them in their lives, and consider the consequences of maintaining that identity, or choosing to redefine themselves. Ultimately, that choice is driven by a sense of expectation of the capacity of the individual and the group to create a better situation for themselves. If it is in our benefit to maintain "America" or is it better to seek a new path?

And if America and its leadership does not awaken to that blunt truth and strive to create new possibilities for individual and social improvement, they can only realistically expect the same fate that befell the echelons of power that held sway in our two test studies.

Transform, or be swept away by the tides of history.

5 comments:

  1. It seems to me that the modern "Americanness" you describe is fundamentally based on the concept of rugged individualism, which first manifested in the 19th century to describe the pioneering spirit of those who went West to seek their reward from America's westward expansion. In the 20th and 21st century America the rugged individual of the frontier has morphed into the entrepreneur, the globalist, the international banker. (In fact, I just did some cursory research on Google scholar and found an article from 2002 entitled, "Is Rugged Individualism the Whole Story? Public and Private Accounts of a Firm's Founding")

    This ideal has created a vast empire and modern economy,however, when those two pillars of America are threatened with destruction from within and without, the nation finds itself on a very weak cultural foundation: a foundation built predominately on the individual, not a collective national identity.

    A second point is that the United States seems to believe that it exists outside of history ,or perhaps believes with a greater degree of hubris that it has the power to bend the "tides of history" to its will. This seems to be a perfect time to invoke the old nautical expression "time and tide wait for no man", or in this case, no nation.

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  2. Good Post Andrew. Keep it up. Tim, you are a legend.

    I am writing this from the heart of Europe, a place which I would not say has Hubris, but certainly must radically change its structure and expectations if it wishes to stay relevant to shaping the future of humanity and the dominant social institutions.

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  3. VERY WELL STATED, SOME OF US HAVE SEEN THIS COMING DURING THE CLINTON YEARS AS THE "WAVE" OF WEALTH BEGAN TO EXPLODE. RATIONAL PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD THAT THE "FICTIONAL" GROWTH OF WEALTH, SPURNED BY REAL ESTATE & TECHNOLOGY SPECULATION, WOULD EVENTUALLY COME BACK & BITE US ON THE ASS. IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT THOSE WHO GET WEALTHY, DONATE TO THEIR OWN POLITICAL CAUSES AND PROTECT THEIR SELF INTEREST ARE LOOKED UPON AS INTELLIGENT LEADERS WHO ARE LISTENED TO. WHAT THEY ARE IS OPPORTUNISTIC CARPET BAGGERS WHO KNOW HOW TO MAKE MONEY. THEY ARE NOT NECESSARILY POLITICALLY INTELLIGENT. MADOFF IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE AS WAS EMRON. THE PROBLEM IS THAT WE HAVE NO LEADERS WHO HAVE THE TESTICULAR FORTITUDE TO TELL US THE TRUTH AND ADVISE US THAT WE ARE IN FOR SOME TOUGH TIMES AND NEED TO MAKE SERIOUS SACRIFICES FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS.
    HOWEVER, WE ARE BECOMING FRACTURED AS A SOCIETY AND NOW HAVE THE "WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME" MENTALITY. AMERICA IS LOSING IT'S COHESIVENESS. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND INHERENT PREJUDICES ARE A CANCER THAT IS SPREADING RAPIDLY AND IT IS NO LONGER "WHITE" RACISM. IT IS MINORITY VS. MINORITY. WE ARE BECOMING A POLITICALLY CORRECT NATION THAT CAN'T [A] LAUGH AT OURSELVES ANY MORE [B[ ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR OWN MISTAKES [C] MIND OUR OWN BUSINESS. I REALLY DON'T THINK ANYTHING WILL CHANGE UNTIL A MAJOR "EVENT" OCCURS THAT REALLY SHAKES US UP. PERHAPS DEFAULTING ON OUR DEBT TO CHINA MAY BE THE SHOT ACROSS THE BOW THAT IS NEEDED.

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  4. Thank you everyone for the commentary. I also get the sense that there's a growing urge to "wait and see" on the part of the average American. "Wait and see" how everyone and the system responds to the big and inevitable crisis that's going to hit us. It doesn't even matter from what sector, something will happen and it will be a national challenge - on that there appears great agreement - the question everyone wants answered, I feel, is how the other guy is going to put his chips down. No one wants to show their cards about their level of commitment to the status quo until other people are forced to ante up first.

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  5. @Tim - I also agree very much with your second point, that there's an assumption that a higher power or special status will protect America from historical forces of decay. Such also was the hallmark of the British Empire, the Prussian Empire, Manchurian China, Imperial Japan, etc. etc. When nations begin to believe in the myth of their own invincibility, they lose the capacity to understand where myth meets hard reality, and risk wrecking themselves, Titanic-like, on the icebergs strewn about the tradeways of history.

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