Humanity 4.0

Been thinking a bit about the winds of change that are racing through the social media speedway. I have to say, for the most part the perspectives seem misguided to me. Well-intentioned maybe. But from where I’ve seen the world in my crazy travels we need to think out of the ol’ box way more than that.

A lot of people are seeing this pandemic as both a sign and an opportunity. A sign that we need to stop-and-think differently. An opportunity to change the broken systems that were and still are plaguing us. So far so good. 

But then inevitably the recurring theme I read and hear is that capitalism is evil, and that we are slaves to it. And therein lies the trap: that’s where those perspectives are setting themselves up for failure. 

Capitalism as the predominant “ism” did not come about just last century. To be clear it was not born even two hundred years ago. It goes back at least to the Phoenician merchants of millenniums ago, never mind a couple of centuries. 

What we DID do sometime in the last couple of centuries was give capital-driven systems their very own “ism”. We spanked it from birth and watched it usher in Humanity 3.0. 

It was very well intentioned at the time, given that we were trying very hard to wean ourselves away from totalitarian monarchies and despotic empires. No self-respecting future historian is going to ding capitalism for that. So far so good.

Enter abuse and greed, stage right. Yes, we couldn’t help ourselves, and the fucked-up human tendency to want to “have it all” comes every-damn-time at the expense of too many. A mere handful at first, but soon enough it spirals down to hundreds, thousands, and invariably millions of fellow humans. And THAT’S were the system begins to act like a runaway freight train.

Some societies shut the doors to capitalism early on. China and Russia among the most obvious. Didn’t work out very well for Russia, China is probably not too far from its own implosive fireworks. Others embraced capitalism, but after two horrific back-to-back wars they fell to their knees and suffered through a shock-based change. That was Europe. America on the other hand, not so much. 

Just about the biggest suffering that the US has ever endured on its own soil was not 9/11. Or Pearl Harbor. Or the great Depression. Or even this pandemic - knock on wood. No, it was the Civil war. 

It’s not just the raw number of deaths mind you: 620,000 is as close as it gets to genocide. The US population at the time was around 31 million. So about 2% of the population died in that war. Two percent of today’s US population would make it 6.6 million. Chew on that for a bit.

So the fact that the US has not embraced a socialist democracy most definitely comes from a lack of extreme suffering, like the one Europe felt since the fall of their monarchies. Over one hundred million deaths from two world wars alone. ONE HUNDRED MILLION. And we’re worried about a quaint virus? Bitch please. It is Covid-19 that fears humans, not the other way around. Animals fear humans. Life itself fears us.

It hasn’t been paradise for European socialist democracy, no doubt. Most US conservatives make a very good living poking holes through the Swiss cheese of European socialist democracies. The lesser intelligent among these conservative pundits point to the likes of Venezuela, but hey. Those Americans are their own worst enemy, so there’s not much we can do to save them. 

Which brings us back to those who are heralding a new post-capitalist era. A brave new social order. That’s great, except for one minor detail: they don’t have a plan. Go back and re-read where they spend most of their energy in their premise. It’s a brutal critique of capitalism, in all its worstness. You can’t build anything out of sheer criticism. Well, not anything of value or sustainable. 

That’s not how isms work, so fail they will - unless they change their tune. From the get-go capitalism was way too busy looking to capitalize on productivity. It was too busy to be whining about the dark side of humanity. It had a plan. A vision. A mission. Strategies, and deliverables. To quote from one of my favorite Don Henley lyrics, “and Jesus people bought them...” (yes, I know. They were ugly boxes.)

You want this Covid-19 experience to change the world? Focus on a positive force for humanity. Leave capitalism alone, it’s just an “ism” we created to get us to the next level two centuries ago. Humanity 4.0 awaits. But we’re not going to find it in the holes of capitalist Swiss cheese. There’s nothing there to begin with, that’s why it’s called a hole. Either fix it or create something better, but we’re beating a dead horse by pointing out how toxic it has become. Yes, in many ways it has become toxic. And yet it’s still the only ism we have. Personally I neither hate it nor am I in love with it. It’s just a system, a tool. To me it’s like a car: it got us from point A to point B. We’re at point B. Kicking the old car is not going to launch us on our next journey. 

Guys like Bernie Sanders were proposing we join our European brothers and sisters on that next journey. Love him or hate him he was proposing something positive. He had a plan. You don’t think it will work? Find something better. Or get in the old beat up car and keep driving it until the wheels fall off. That’s it, no other options. Kicking it is a dumb option, please stop doing that. It is just as dumb as poking through the holes of European socialist capitalism. It’s Swiss cheese, stop poking through something that’s not there. Take a sad song, and make it better. Otherwise let it be. Words of wisdom indeed. 

Hello Humanity 4.0... my god, it’s full of stars...

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