The Upward Slope or the Dark Abyss

by Jeff Bloom

This morning while I was sitting in my recliner petting one of my cats and “trying” to drink coffee, parts of a story started bouncing around in my head. Characters’ voices, their emotions, and dark, dark cloud descending upon them. I could feel my heart beating faster and harder as bits and pieces of the story arose and subsided. After about 15 minutes of this situation, I had to leave the house to run an errand. While driving off, I realized I couldn’t write the story. It would have taken me on a deep dive into a world of hate, deception, greed, demolition, abandonment, and wide-spread ignorance and forced stupidity, where women’s rights were the least of their problems, where skin color and ethnic background could be a “cause” of celebrated death. It would have been a world, where people got paid less than our current minimum wage, and then not be able to afford housing. There would be mass homelessness. Healthcare would only be for the wealthiest 1%, no one else could afford it. People who worked hard their whole lives and were now retired would lose their own saved money, in the form of Social Security. For most, Social Security would be their only savings for retirement. And, these societal elders would be on the streets with everyone else. Food would not only be expensive, but since all of the safeguards, and food standards and regulations would have been removed, eating would not only be expensive, it would be dangerous. The jobs people would have would pay them less than before, since all regulations on businesses would be removed. There would be no minimum wage. And, working, especially in factories or other hard labor contexts, would be incredibly dangerous. Again, safety standards or regulations would no longer exist. Work would be a risk to one’s own health and survival. Schools would be some sort of fusion of prisons and cattle yards. Teachers would no longer have to be trained and certified. The focus of “learning” would only be on the minimal development of reading and arithmetic skills. Beyond that it was learning how to be a slave-worker, how to be submissive to all authority. Basically, schools would be holding pens for cattle-kids, while their parents worked. School shootings would increase even to the point of teachers shooting kids and other teachers. And, everyone would groan and send their prayers. Emergency services — fire, police, EMT’s — would be slimmed down. Police would be used mostly for imposing the will of the authoritarian overlords, not for protecting people or preventing or investigating crime. Fire departments and EMT services would be reserved only for the wealthiest people and the biggest of corporations. Everyone would be in servitude to the corporate overlords.

The odd kind of twist is that the day after the “transition” would feel pretty much like every other day. You’d get up, go to work, come home, just like every other day. The initial changes would feel distant and disconnected, if you even hear about them. The Constitution would be dismantled. Political “enemies” – perceived or real – along with other irritants, such as journalists, bloggers, and others will start to be arrested or killed. But, before too long, these distant changes will start to affect everyone. As described above, the changes start to hit home and they will hit hard. Things you used to be able to do will become harder or impossible to do… take a vacation, pay your mortgage, buy a car. But, the power structure will find a way to make smart phones available to everyone. They are the great pacifiers, they are the great zombifiers, and they are essential components of the system that keeps everyone in line. They will be the streamers of propaganda, hate, distrust of everyone but the overlord “saviors.” They will be the pocket brainwashers.

Enough of this! You get the gist.

Writing these two paragraphs was difficult and emotionally taxing. It’s a bleak look at a very possible future.

We certainly don’t have a perfect system. We’ve never had a perfect system. But, we have more or less managed to plod along and develop over time. In fact, I do think our particular system is fundamentally dysfunctional. But, it could be improved, if politicians would just get some sensibility, intelligence, empathy, and just grow up. But, the motivation for power and money is quite toxic. It takes exceptional people to withstand the pressures. However, dysfunctional system could be reworked, if politicians had enough maturity and integrity to do so.

But, I’m not even sure that democracy is the best system, but I can’t think of any other system that would be better. Some friends of mine are advocates of anarchy… not chaos, but a system that is not hierarchical. I suppose I am more of a holarchical advocate, which I conceive of as a flat system of layers, where one layer is not more important or more powerful than any other layer. The layers are just layers in the degree of participation in which people engage. And, it is fluid. People can move in and out of various levels of participation. It’s not fixed or solidified. I’ve seen such holarchic systems in a few school classrooms, where the children and teachers move back forth across layers of participating in running the classroom community. As much as I like this sort of “community system,” I cannot see how it can be scaled up and still maintain both its character—integrity and its functionality. The whole thing starts to collapse as you scale up. But, maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there is a way, if people would just stop playing their stupid, dangerous, self-centered games, and just talk to one another as human beings.

I just don’t see that happening.

In the meantime, we’re stuck with what we’ve got, along with a major oppositional binary to contend with this November or whenever people vote. Life after this election either will be a continuation of some semblance of normalcy with a great deal of hope for some steps toward progress in creating a better society; or it will be a cessation of everything we’ve come to expect to awaken to everyday. It could be ugly, horrifying, and miserable. And, no mater how bad our lives are now, it will be much, much worse after an election for a psychopathic narcissist and his gang of psychopathic narcissists and suck-ups.

© 2024 by Jeffrey W Bloom