One Ring To Rule Them All

The Withering Away of the State.

Marx’s famous prophecy is coming true but not in the way he imagined. Through the use of radio broadcasts the coming of the Age of Electronic Communication initially boosted the nationalistic propaganda of the new nations based on industrial mass production of goods and weapons. However in the mid-Twentieth Century political propaganda turned more and more into advertising “spin” to encourage consumption. National entrepreneurial capitalism became multinational managerial capitalism or Globalisation. The psyche of human beings who act like machines is essentially that of anxiety-ridden neurotics whereas the psyche encouraged and rewarded in the new consumer societies is that of fashion-following hysterical narcissists. Such individuals get their shallow values from their peer groups and have no interest in the past or realistic understanding of it and have deep feeling of meaninglessness. If they have any hope at all it is a naively Utopian view of the future.

The Withering away of the Earth.

The final stage in this sorry tale is either the collapse of the Global economy or the collapse of the Earth’s ecosystem. We can only hope that it will be the former. There is no indication that any political leaders would risk losing power by taking steps to reduce the present ever-expanding debt bubble which makes the South Sea Bubble look tiny by comparison. Short-sighted voters want better old age pensions, better housing, more education, more jobs, and more cheap goods in the shops. Academics in the universities may have a better awareness of the true situation but daren’t rock the boat since if they are made redundant they have no practical skills to support themselves. The same applies to the vast rapidly growing armies of bureaucratic information processors or “coupon clippers”.