Hitting Rock Bottom--Taking a Glimpse into the Future

Hey there, ATS'ers. Let's chat.

Take a good hard look at the world around you. Witness the wars, the violence, the unrest, the chaos. See the unfair laws, the unjust courts, the blatant criminality of our so-called "leaders," the inequitable economic system (twice as bad as slave-owning societies like ancient Rome!!).

Look straight into the eyes of the tyranny that once had been lurking in the shadows. See it gradually growing stronger, slowly daring to creep out into the light.

In America alone we have a government that believes it has the right to indefinately detain citizens accused or convicted of no crime. We have a Congress that ruled itself immune to insider trading laws. We have a Supreme Court whose impartiality has quite possibly been compromised. We have a president who waived the ban on arming regimes that use child soldiers and unconstitutionally murdered at least four americans.

We have financial systems that looted taxpayer money and refuse to disclose where it went. We have trillions missing from the Pentagon, a fact that never got investigated because the computers containing the monetary records got targeted on 9/11... an event that's almost indisputably a false flag that our own government either committed or allowed to happen.

We have a government running the drug trade, and federal agencies heavily involved in child sex trafficking.

And this is only scratching the surface, to say nothing of horrors like Fukushima in Japan and human slavery in China and starvation throughout the third world and a million other things that we can no longer ignore.

The interconnectivity of the Interwebz has given us this unbridled perspective upon our society, this raw vantage on our collective failings--and things are not looking good. Nor do they seem on the cusp of improving anytime in the future.

The evil has become shockingly apparent. The demons behind the curtain can no longer hide. The holes in the dam of society are leaking, and the whole structure is about to burst.

And the responsibility for all these atrocities lies with mankind as a whole. This is the world that we together have built. This is the world we've chosen to create (yes, CHOSEN!), because deciding to wallow in apathy-fueled inaction instead of fixing these problems is still a choice. We--together--decided to create this monstrosity.

Now, we need to decide what to do about it.

The trajectory of a human life is a lot of the trajectory of any object moving through space--it continues along its current path until diverted by some sufficiently powerful force.

The trajectory of a society is an aggregate of numerous lives, and thus has even more momentum (and requires an even greater stimulus to throw it off course). To steer the helm of society in a new direction, we need a mass of informed individuals who are ready for change and willing to act to bring it about.

And if that opposing force never comes, our society--our species--will continue even further down this untenable path. If that happens, it's game over. Quite clearly I can see the endpoint of this course our society is hurtling upon, and it ends with a loud splat against the cosmic wall of oblivion. Unless something comes along to divert us off this suicidal path, this course is going to end in our complete destruction, or a catastrophe so bad that those who survive might prefer to be dead.

So my questions to you are these: Can we save ourselves before we cross that tipping point, or is it too late?

Are we as a society a drug addict that has to hit rock bottom before finally picking ourselves up and deciding to make a change?

Or do you think one day soon we'll catch a glimpse in the mirror, decide we no longer like what we see, and begin to turn things around before things get REALLY bad? Because as bad as things are, they can get much, much worse; and from the general malaise and indifference of the majority of society, we might need to go there before enough people wake up to grab hold the helm and turn this ship around.

And if that's the case, how much farther do you think the pendulum needs to swing towards insanity before we get enough momentum to move it back in the other direction? How much will it take before we as a species change?

Can we even turn things around? Or will our greed, our hubris, our animal instincts lead us to the end of our branch on the evolutionary chain?

Looking forward to a robust discussion. But even if you've got nothing to add to the convo, I hope at least I gave you a few moments of pause to think. Because these problems aren't going away until we solve them. We can't sweep this under the rug, not any longer.

And if we don't solve them in time--well, we won't be the first species on earth to go extinct... but we might be the first ones that managed to cast that fate upon ourselves.

A rousing and beautifully written speech, sir! I liked this a lot:

Quite clearly I can see the endpoint of this course our society is hurtling upon, and it ends with a loud splat against the cosmic wall of oblivion.

I mean, I liked it all, but I can virtually hear that splat. Great OP.

reply to post by therealguyfawkes

Are we as a society a drug addict that has to hit rock bottom before finally picking ourselves up and deciding to make a change?

Or do you think one day soon we'll catch a glimpse in the mirror, decide we no longer like what we see, and begin to turn things around before things get REALLY bad? Because as bad as things are, they can get much, much worse; and from the general malaise and indifference of the majority of society, we might need to go there before enough people wake up to grab hold the helm and turn this ship around.

I think that... even as bad as things have gotten, we're still in something of a comfort zone and far more inclined to want to believe that things won't get as bad as some say. And for that end, I can't say that I blame them... nobody wants to cast off their own personal hopes for tomorrow in favor of reeling in their worst fears.

Personally, I don't see anything getting any better anytime soon. The current direction of things seems to fulfill the worst scenarios of a lot of conspiracy theories. In fact, as our own government here in the US becomes active in taking to the web to disrupt dialogue on subjects just such as this, the reality of it is more troubling than the subjects under fire.

Are we as a society a drug addict that has to hit rock bottom before finally picking ourselves up and deciding to make a change?

That makes so much sense to me, family experiences of course. What I have learned is you are never unaddicted, so if society is screwed, they will never be unscrewed, they will only be able to not partake in the madness or make their own way somehow without the madness and hope they can continue without it.

reply to post by therealguyfawkes


True, true, true, we also have jury nullification.
All hope is not lost.

reply to post by therealguyfawkes


Make of this (link below) what you will, but I see a huge change coming. The rest of the world is tired of the US criminal cabal and has decided to change the rules. Oh, it doesn't look good for the US of Fascist America. The USDollar is being isolated and the criminal cabal's counterfeiting machine shut down. But things are happening. Hopeful things.

Jim Willie's Stunning Claim: The Game is Over! King Dollar is Dead!
The global resistance movement is accelerating with tremendous speed. Back in 2009, the Jackass stated that the first nations to depart the USDollar system would emerge as the leaders of the Next Chapter for the New Paradigm. The warning was that nations would find themselves in an urgent situation whereby maintaining the current USD/USTB system would bring about a death of their currency, bonds, banks, and economies. Conforming and adhering to the King Dollar allegiance would be a death sentence. In the last few months, since the retreat from the Taper Talk by the USFed, since the full outward adoption of QE to Infinity and ZIRP Forever, the world has come to conclude that the Reign of the King Dollar is over. They are noticing the collapse of the current system, due to continued hyper monetary inflation and full dependence on phony money, complete with amplified dispensation to the banker elite.

Alternatives to the USDollar are well along in design, approaching implementation for commerce, wherein the Gold Trade Standard will be installed. The impact waves will be powerful, sweeping aside the fiat paper currencies and their flimsy sovereign bond reinforcement, an implied foundation of debt. Never can a monetary system rest upon a debt foundation without a near complete destruction of capitalist systems. The hyper monetary inflation that has emerged as consensus central bank policy has resulted in global capital destruction, due to rising cost structure, a direct consequence of chronic monetary inflation of the exported variety. Monetary inflation kills capital. Exported monetary inflation kills foreign capital. The Jackass has challenged the clueless cast of economist hacks to rebuttal, but not a word has come. The QE to Infinity policy, with its rancid wreckage from ruinous bond monetization, is the epitome of capital destruction. The Keynesian School has presided over a ravaged field. The Von Mises School of sound money, of asset backed monetary systems, or Gold reinforced trade systems, will take over from the mad professors, the criminal bankers, and the narco dripped militarist hands.

The machinery of our civilization has overpowered natural feedback mechanisms and created its own feedback loops which pretty much demand that this system run full bore until it burns out. Most people have become integrated into larger entities- corporations, national economies, public assistance programs, etc and have no niche to fill outside of those larger entities.

My commerce is not with my neighbors- none of them produce gasoline, electricity, or even food, nor do any of them have that much money- I do my business with Walmart, US Bank, Verizon, Edison, and British Petroleum, and I can do it because I spend part of the year as a servant to wealthy seasonal residents. I hate the hell out of it, but its not as if I can just turn back to my neighbors- if Walmart goes out of business my neighbors will have to jack me for what I've got because they can't buy it- so we can't just start depending on eachother instead of on those who have no interest in our well being- we're already screwed.

So where normally the depletion of a local environment causes direct pressure on the local population to back off because they cannot be sustained anymore, now it simply increases their dependence on non-local resources, and thus their motivation to sell out their local environment even more. It doesn't matter if we are talking about polluting the water or increasing the violent crime rate or whatever- we gotta do what we've gotta do right now and hope tomorrow doesn't come out the way it seems to be heading.

This stuff HAS to happen though. This seems to be how life defies the law of entropy for as long as possible- it takes the path of least resistance into tighter and tighter spirals until everything has gone down the drain, and there will be that much more residue settled around the drain for the next wave to pick up and carry for a while.

We are not the point of existence. We are a step along the way, no different than the microbes that lived and died and left behind nothing but a breathable atmosphere for things unlike themselves, no different from the Romans whose only lasting importance now is the culture they left behind for us to reshape to our own tastes.

Something that we leave behind will become a legacy in the continuing process of life- but its not for us to hold on to forever for ourselves. I suppose that sounds very grim to some, but I've actually found some hope in the fact that whatever eats me will eventually be eaten in its own turn. It's fair in a way- no tyrant will have the last laugh, no wrong will stand forever, and there will be some positive and unexpected benefit to our seemingly futile lives, though we'll never know it and nobody will ever know it was us.