End of the World – Part One

At least since I was a small boy people have been predicting the end of the world.  The world of course usually does not end at the scheduled time or place. In more recent times that fact has perhaps discouraged those scheduling the end of days. The most recent group of end of days enthusiasts were fixated on May 21, 2011. Again the world did not obey the prediction. The date has now been revised to October, 21, 2011. Since world ending financial events seem to have a preference for October, we are not arguing with them. The next group of end of days enthusiasts are fixated on December 21, 2012 because that is what they believe the Mayan Calendar says is the last day.  The Mayans could of course be right, in this, but we won’t actually know until December 22, 2012.

Meanwhile we have a world in a really big mess. The big western capitalist economies are living on socialist Chinese labor. The Arabs and their associates have discovered democracy – Unfortunately they have not experienced the Renaissance first, thus you have millions of brainwashed young people out fixing to decide things for themselves. Can you imagine a more fitting end of the world scenario than that? Then we have the Chinese who are busy lending us the money they make selling stuff to us, so we can keep buying the stuff they sell us.  What do they get out of this bankrupt bargain? Knowledge of our technology. And some of the stuff they make.

The political discourse in America is being driven by the extremes of self interest. Looking to the 2012 election, it will likely be the most partisan in history, with one party bent on either owning America or saving it by destroying it. The other party has become so timid they dare not confront the mass hallucination of the one. One night a few months ago a partisan pretend news personality essentially called out the president of the United States on national TV, and those who freaked out when anyone questioned any action of the previous president stood up and cheered.

Recently there is an article in the Los Angeles Times detailing some of the funding of TEA party candidates. It seems the new GOP congress is now owned by the Koch brothers. That should actually not be a surprise, the GOP has always wanted to be owned by someone rich. I suppose you could say they are successful. Remember the supreme court ruling last year allowing corporations the same free speech as voting individuals? Didn’t take the GOP long to capitalise on that did it? It is a good time to wonder how many of the supremes are owned as well.

There is little doubt much of the angst involved in today’s politics involves the president. He has been vilified far beyond anything he has actually done or said. Even though many of the supposed TEA party could not themselves get a “long form birth certificate” if they had too, they have attempted to subvert the next election by demanding all candidates produce such a form. The long form is simply the application form doctors use to originate the real certificate which is incidentially held by a state vital records office in a vault somewhere. In many states all you can get is a certified copy of this state certification – no long form. The long form is only a source document, and as such is not a certificate of anything.

Today, the US stands between the socialist benefactor, China, and masses of the religious zealots of the Arab world who would destroy both of us purely for religious reasons if no other. One should not doubt they believe they have many other reasons, either.  We think we need oil from the Arabs and cash from the Chinese. The Peoples Republic needs that oil too. China is a very old society massively steeped in tradition. The western ideas of communism and capitalism may be relatively new to them, but the concepts of social order, economics, influence, and power are not. The Chinese invented paper money many centuries ago, so we should not be surprised they have a sophisticated understanding of how a currency can be used. The idea they have chosen to use currency stratigically should not be a huge surprise. We probably shouldn’t get all that upset if someday we figure out they also happen to think it is pretty much worthless. Currency is for trading, any other use diminishes it’s value.

In the year 1420 China was ruled by the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty. At that time they were the most powerful and the richest nation on earth. Some believe, and there is some evidence, the Ming emperors dispatched fleets to every continent on earth. The successors to the Ming chose to look inward, because the cost of exploration and looking outward was too high, much like our politicians would have us believe today. The looking inward set the tone for the next 500 years of Chinese history. China was all but destroyed. It was not until the Marxist revolution that China again made it’s presence felt on the world stage. While perhaps Chinese culture has little tolerance for the noisy competition of ideas and opinion we find so wonderful, we in the US can learn much from the Chinese.

One night during a lightening storm, a grand Ming edifice, known as the Temple of Heaven, was set on fire by lightening and burned to the ground. The emotional and financial shock of this event is thought to have started the domino fall which terminated the Ming and their dynasty. The disastrous end came after years of expansion, great voyages, building, and much doing. The accountants became weary. The wealthy farmer wished to stash his savings safely away. The populace and those in power became more conservative.  Somehow in all of this, wealth became worthless. There were no more dreams of sailing to the ends of the earth, trading with every nation under heaven, naming every star in the night sky, or finding the pole star of the southern sky. Hope was gone. Incentive was quickly behind hope. Raison d’etre followed them both. Without raison d’etre all was lost. If it were not for the terracotta armies found in recent decades the idea of the Ming would largely be considered ancient mythology.

Over the years I have on occasion worked with people from China. Once, for whatever reason, I ask one of them how they managed to read the Chinese script. First, I was told there are thousands of characters, and no one knows all of them. You might call it picture writing. My friend happened to have a book, so he started explaining some of it. It wasn’t too long before more of his Chinese friends came over to help explain to the American about reading and writing in their language. The thing that intrigued me most about that conversation was the idea that a script, whether reading or writing was a community effort, and the meaning would be arrived at when the community came to a consensus concerning the symbols used to communicate the authors intent.

If somehow we as a nation we cannot find it within ourselves to become a community again, and work in that communities’ ongoing self interest, no mater how much it costs, we will suffer the same fate as the Ming. We of course have no terracotta armies – everything we know is recorded on paper and magnetic disks which have little chance of being read two decades hence, and absolutely no chance of being read in the year 2525.