Building the new nation

by Mike Meyer

We are usually overwhelmed with worry. The shit has hit the fan so frequently in the last few years that we have almost become accustomed to the smell. All it takes is one more video image of Donald Trump spewing lies, news media’s fascination with yet another fascist wannabe, or yet another mass shooting in America to bring down the clouds of disgust. And that doesn’t even consider the blatant stupidity of what passes for politicians as we accelerate into the mid 21st century.

But even with all that the amazing thing is how well things are going. Its enough to make you want to get up and dance. Yes, really.

Let’s look at this directly. And, no, I’m not going to point at a bunch of good things totally unrelated to the bad things. That borders on distraction. Let’s look at the good that seems to be coming despite the bad.

It has been obvious for many years that our success in full information technology has built the foundations of a new world. We have command of information and communication in ways that were beyond belief even twenty years ago. Progress is always a double edged blade. You tend to get cut, sometimes badly, learning to handle totally new tools that you can barely comprehend.

And that scares the crap out of a significant segment of the population who were having difficulty handling television and rudimentary science education. Figuring out how to handle that portion of the population is proving to be a huge challenge but it doesn’t slow things down at all. We’ll come back to this a bit later.

Consider what most post-industrial countries’ educated people are worrying about: 1) The replacement of up to 40% of existing jobs by robotic automation, 2) Ethical issues and legal liability of self driving, autonomous vehicles, 3) Achieving sustainable economies to reduce atmospheric carbon and resultant global warming, 4) Genetic editing of animals and humans with CRSPR Cas9 technology, 5) The effects of continuous smart phone interaction on our children, 6) Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (Mixed Reality) in work and education.

All of the things listed are understood to be workable now and are being integrated into human society at an astounding rate. Those same people are also aware that there is no turning back and the mix of these technologies is transforming human society in ways that we are now, only beginning, to understand. And there is a palpable sense of excitement about what this means.

These are all incredibly dangerous tools with micron cutting edges but we are learning how to use them. We are learning how to use them very, very quickly. The move of new technology from “OMG what does that mean?” to “Oh yeah, I just got one” once took several years but now takes several months. Or less.

The more we do this the more comfortable we get. We begin to understand the principals that are new and then begin to understand the implications and how these systems produce new interconnections to things we do everyday.

Please understand that I understand that the tiny list of things that I have given you is only a fraction of what is happening all around us. There is so much more that we are on the verge of learning or doing. The most important thing is the decline of fear among the population that has been so worried for years. Think about that in your own life a minute.

It tends to happen between fits of depression and fright at the stupidity of the people that have managed to take over the US government. But they are stunningly incompetent with their skills limited to manipulation of those folks still intimidated by the 20th century. That is not the majority and it definitely is not the people who are becoming more comfortable with instantaneous diversity in all aspects of our planetary societies.

But back to those very people who aren’t taking this as scary but exciting but, instead, as direct personal attacks on the world that they were barely able to manage. These are the people who are generally frightened of diversity. These are also people who are prone to authoritarianism because they have limited ability to deal with change and tend to paranoia before anything else. They have been taught to hate in order to manage their public influence for those that manipulate them for personal gain.

These people are suckers but have, at best, a level of cunning combined with little or no understanding of ethics or morality and that makes them dangerous. What we are seeing now is the beginning of a transition to anew type of connected society that can mobilize to stop this old style of fascism.

It seems clear to me that we have already achieved take off into a new civilization. The majority of the post industrial population is changing fast and, as a result, is supporting two world views. The excitement of the new and the freely diverse networked virtual communities and the depression of the old that has slid into crude and, it seems, inevitable fear and anger of a failed culture. Our anxiety is having to bounce between these two worlds.

We also clearly see that the denizens of the old, dangerous in their anger and hatred, have little understanding of the actual problems that we face and no knowledge of the fundamentally new ways of dealing with life and its potential. They are also racist and primarily old. Their fear is, as noted above, the removal of things that they can control and basic paranoia at the much more complex structures of society that are based on diverse identity and very new visions of the future.

It is our responsibility to be compassionate and mindful of what these people are seeing but they are refugees in their own land. We should treat them as such. You don’t logically give frightened and violently stressed people control of your government. We do need to find new ways to manage these people to prevent them from damaging themselves and others. That is a new problem.

But how does this play out in America at the end of 2018?

Many people are studying the dangerously disappointing midterm election resluts and trying to understand the complexity that has resultes. The old world was one of winners and losers. That requires a direct definition of what can be won or lost. These very definitions are in dynamic transition now. That makes both the analysis and the options available very difficult to understand.

Because the very nature of our society and the structural rules that define it are changing rapidly the definitions of winning and losing are evolving quickly. This also applies very directly to the structure of our governmental administration that must change significantly. While authoritarian repression is the ultimate way of losing how do we win?

While the US midterm election was disappointing in the traditional sense, the forces of authoritarian and racist ignorance were able to tighten their hold our our government, the conversion of the House of Representatives may be much more important in the changing reality.

It was immediately recognizable that great number of women, minorities, and diversity of sexual identities suddenly made that house of Congress look much more like the growing urban regions or our country and the planet. That, sadly, has little effect on the traditional government power structure. The US system if collapsing rapidly and has been nearly completely dysfunctional for several decades. But this does suggest a route that change is now taking.

We need to see this as the nose of camel under the edge of the old government’s tent. The simplest way to describe this is that the camel is the new society of many identity types. This is the exact opposite of the old systems white, male rule. I expect these people to be noisy as they tackle the disgusting remnants of the past.

Unfortunately those remnants include the failed Democratic Party that is already attempting to pander to the fascists. They must be countered and sabotaged so there are no allowed compromises with the forces of authoritarianism. That will be a long and ugly fight that is important only as a an example of where we need to go.

New goals need to be set and those should be the ultimate elimination of the Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court because those have been corrupted beyond salvage. In the short term it will quickly become obvious that the system is dead and must be replaced.

The most important change now is that we have the beginnings of a new legislature that can evolve from the House of Representatives. The other, old components of the government are no longer needed. Everything will come down to a single legislative body operating as a professional steering committee for the nation of online citizens including all residents.

In a fully networked and connected society democracy can be much more real reducing the need for complex and inefficient pseudo republics. These are the components that have allowed the infiltration and destruction of the nation.

We have the central component that now will begin to represent the diverse societies that make up the new planetary civilization. That is the critical piece from which we need to build the new.