The laws of progress, Part three

The situation in the world today is similar to the time before almost every major war in history, a superpower desperate to hold on to its power being challenged by a new up and coming force. If America doesn’t play its cards right and keep making short sided decisions it’s not impossible that a coalition of nations will emerge in the near future capable of filling America’s shoes.

These nations strength would not lie firstly in their military capabilities but in that they are fundamentally different in their world view and approach problems in a different manner. China and Russia, for instance, both have strong similarities with the military aristocracies of old times,they are more pragmatic and traditional, highly attractive qualities within the leadership of the third world, so is Iran and it's allies, even though they share similarities with the priest caste their outlook is more centred on warfare than spiritual  matters. Spirituality is more of a tool than the ultimate goal.

The difference in outlook between China and America demand some explaining, America is trying to be the strongest in order to get wealth, China is trying to get wealth in order to be the strongest, this is obvious if you look at the countries policies on most areas, China is building for the future and planning, America is spending and borrowing.

For example in America the government has spent enormous amounts of money that they don’t have on industries that are collapsing, in China the government is buying enormous amounts of steel from Australia that is being stored at the bottom of the ocean and might not be put to use in decades. The Chinese government is borrowing to business as an investment; the U.S. government handed out money to business for consumption and the payments of debts.

The Latin-american competitor is another interesting participant, it is culturally very influenced by the slave caste, in being a supporter of the weak and through its history of oppression it’s a natural enemy to the strongest nation on the planet. 

The nationalistic parties rising in Europe is heavily influenced by the ideas of the warrior caste. The social revolution taking place lacks a serious spiritual dimension and is to antisocialist to be related to the slave caste.

By themselves none of these emerging movements are strong enough to topple U.S. supremacy but together they might be, maybe not in a hands-on military combat but by becoming their regions dominant cultural  force it could alter the power balance of the world. We would have a world of several regional powers instead of one global power.

The current world order might not die in a total war of global proportions but by a lack of vitality, maybe the ingredient that it used to have the most of, America is maybe the first global power to ever have such a widespread acceptance, it’s been a role model throughout the world, always despised by the few but celebrated by the many.

The land of opportunity has always had a certain allure to people, with the help of their ideals of rule of law, democracy, great economic freedom, freedom of the press, diplomacy before war and human rights they have always been able to legitimize their power. But in these recent wars this image has been soiled, by lying, torturing, killing civilians and the lust for vengeance.

There has always been a certain gap between the image of America and the real America but not to this extent. The America in theory and the America in practice have begun to differ, a lot.

By starting an unjust war, an illegal war, even by standards set up by America themselves through the U.N. it gave up it’s ideals for conquest and in doing so America surrendered a weapon more powerful than any nuclear warhead, its vision for the world. It became just a nation among nations; all the goodwill built up over decades was basically thrown away.

In it’s rather short history as a global power America has without a question been that power that has relied most on the usage of what is called soft power such as diplomacy and trade instead of the classical hard power approach, which is mainly focused on the use of military force to acquire power.

America has of course engaged in other ruthless conflicts before this but in the conflicts of the past there was always a clear enemy and a fierce ideological combat to rather strengthen their ideals than to weaken them. In today’s war America has given up it’s ideals in order to fight, in the war against communism and the wars against Fascism the ideals was a contributing factor for fighting in the first place.

Now people are beginning to question the state of things, with the worlds leading nations in economic turmoil the appeal of open markets and democracy is diminishing, even the Americans themselves seem unwilling to protect their own ideals, since the start of the war, the executive branch of the government has gained more control, George Bush won an election with uncertain validity and used his position to create laws which goes against the U.S. constitution, issues of national security has long surpassed the importance of privacy, even in the economic field Americans are raising their voices to enforce more trade barriers and they are relying more and more on Government spending to shake of the Chinese threat.

The Government has despite being governed by two supposedly different parties twice given their approval to the largest bail out of banks and industry in the history of the world, without any demands on the receivers to declare what the money is being spent on. In the land of the free industrial workers hard earned cash was confiscated by the federal government and transferred to bankers, without anyone even raising a voice of resistance until it was too late.

So if the world is starting to oppose American ideals, if the American public has stopped defending them and if the American leadership has stopped applying them in day to day politics, what hope is there for continued ideological dominance?

The only tool left at America’s disposal would be its military might but since that could potentially kill most biological life on the planet, what would be left to govern?

It is clear that America is at a crossroad, and theirs only two possible outcomes, either they keep following down the present road, they take out Iran, Syria, Pakistan and everyone else who dares threaten their position, they unleash the full force of it’s military, take control of the worlds last energy reserves and try to dominate the world through coercion and coercion only until the end of its days.

This in connection with a deepened global depression that would follow would breed global anarchy, with U.S. citizens and companies being potential targets across the world. Eventually the world would rise up and answer with determination and tear down the American world order with their bare hands. Not to mention the threat that would emerge from within.

The alternative is to take the long road, to rebuild their reputation again and reassert their role as leader through consensus, the opportunity to take this road is greatly weakened because of the faults committed in the past, without the wars and the trillions of dollars in bailouts America could have launched a plan to take the world out of the depression through world-wide investment, gaining trust and loyalty throughout the world. Instead it’s being passive.

America is a nation claiming the right to control global politics, but at the same time it’s refusing to take global responsibility, their solution for this crisis has been furthered protectionism and isolation.

By raising taxes on imports, bailing out the national auto and finance industries and by leading the world into a new currency war America has shown that it will not accept responsibility in a time when the world lacks leadership, this challenge may have been just what America needed to preserve their role as the worlds leading nation.

 It was their chance to  spread a message to the world, when it’s in crisis America is there to solve it, instead it was weakened by it's own bad choices to such a degree that it lacked the means to provide any significant aid to the global community, even if it would have wanted too.

These failed policies are putting the world at risk of another major conflict, where the ambitious,the oppressed and the vengeful would unite against their common enemy. It wouldn't necessarily take military form but the possibility of that happening should never be ruled out.

The priest caste on the other hand, is not presently in power within any current nation of today.It represents values long lost in all states of our time, any organised religion and largely in the general populace, its focus lies not on the needs of the weak, the strong or the crafty but on the needs of the organism as a whole.

It sees the value in every caste as a member of a unit larger than the individual, it doesn’t crave for temporary material wealth, universal equality or loose itself in dreams of a glories history. It connects the values of past, present and future. Few people of today’s world have the spiritual depth of our ancestors and are therefore unable to adhere to these values.

The only possible representation of this caste lies in the biological life of mother earth herself. It is nothing a ruler can govern or reform it is created but whatever created us and everything living we see. The bourgeois  is unable to accept these biological limitations, in turning the earth into its private factory they have succeeded in making sure that everything has a price and nothing has value but in so doing they have also made their own future as rulers increasingly uncertain in the long run. 

Today they are facing a growing opposition from three different directions, their world order is resting on a number of contradictions, On the one hand they have to increase economic activity to protect their place in the hierarchy of mankind in order to stop the prospects of the two main opposing castes, on the other hand a larger economic activity means a greater usage of the earths resources which endangers our whole ecosystem and ultimately the bourgeois caste itself, along with all the other castes.

Another grave contradiction is America’s promotion of freedom in theory, and oppression in practice. This hypocrisy is harmful to American supremacy because it is driving the other castes in each others arms. From the perspective of the warrior caste, the slave castes vision for society, however different it might be from the spirit of the warrior still risk being more appealing than the bourgeois vision and vice versa.

A historic parallel can be drawn to the Second world war where the British American bourgeois civilisation faced a threat of both the warrior caste manifested in the fascist cause and the slave caste manifested in the socialist cause, in order to keep power it was forced to share power, in countries as Germany and Italy the power was shared amongst the warrior caste and the bourgeois, amongst the allied forces the power was shared with the slave caste, The U.S.S.R. This was the underlying conflicts that caused the Second World War.

 In today’s world there is still hard to say which castes will unite and which castes will fight who. In countries which have been forced to recently face the failures of the bourgeois way of life such as Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal both ideologies are gaining ground at the expense of the current one. It is yet unclear as to what direction the countries of the world will take, there’s a good chance that it might differ from region to region, people to people.

One indicator of which side might prevail can be seen in the solutions chosen to solve the economic crisis, most states have focused on supporting it’s economic elite and letting the people take the fall through radical austerity measures, market liberalisation and privatization of collective property, a solution only sustainable through an alliance with the warrior caste where it gets to play the role of muscle to fend up a certain public uprising.
 
However the picture is still unclear, what events might occur during this historic crossroads is unknown to us all, one can only try to predict the future and when the time for action comes act accordingly to ones moral.

The moral code of any individual, however differentiated it might be is still universal in one aspect, every moral code attempts to give answers to what’s good for mankind, historically it has always failed in achieving more then temporary improvement but its strivings has essentially been well-meaning. What ideas will bless us in the future or bring about our doom is beyond our knowing, the processes at work are too large for a human brain to even comprehend.

All ideologies or perspectives, which is a more suitable description, has played the role as both saint and devil in our history, the ethical judgement of an idea is more attributed to our different material and spiritual circumstances during certain time periods than a sudden arbitrary change of preferences.

The only viable conclusion to draw from these facts is that a multitude of ideologies and perspectives is always in our interests, in diversity lies the only guarantee that no single caste can rise above the rest and enforce it’s views on the whole. It limits the possibilities of the consolidation of power, and ultimately the damage caused when that power is being misused.

It’s simply a matter of not putting all your eggs in one basket, if one road cannot be followed, an exit route must exist. Compromise and damage control must always be an option because a narrow-minded set of ideas can never protect us sufficiently to all the threats that the world throws at us because it leaves no room for mistakes or setbacks.

It doesn’t accept different perspectives, creativity or alternative truths. Therefore the only rational course of action for mankind is the wilful acceptance of multitudes and the refusal of centralised ideological rule.

This philosophy can be summarized in one simple formula, the eternal laws of progress; honour to the past, opposition to the present and sacrifice for the future!

*(for further insight in these affairs I suggest reading the works of Bob Woodward or Craig Ungers book The fall of the house of Bush)