No More Frontier

This had a bit of success on my myspace blog, but considering that is only available to friends, I thought I might be able to reach more people here. Someday. It's not like it's a blog that will change the world, but it might make a few people stop to think. Then they'll think about other things. And thoughts change the world.

With that logic, blogs do change the world.

I've been becoming more and more dissatisfied with the government, and maybe it's that I reread Atlas Shrugged at the worst time, but I'm very scared for the economical state of the world right now. A few days ago, Arizona officially announced that they are in a recession. No shit, really? 46,000 government employees laid off in the capital seat in January? Nah, I never would have guessed. What that really means when you interpret what's being released to the news (freedom of the press, my ass) it means Arizona is in a depression.

And without further ado...

The ever declining state of the world has brought about a sad realization for me. There's no more frontier. There's nowhere left to run to when you get tired of the government, get tired of the world. The American Pioneers got tired of everything, and went west. They provided for themselves, took care of themselves, with little or no interruption from the world outside their little bubble. A few centuries before that, Europeans left for America. We've used up every corner of the world, and there's nowhere left to go now. We can't get away. We've all become a prisoner of our neighbors.

Here in America, we're just now starting to hear about a 'commodity shortage' that is going to become a global crisis if it's not seriously addressed. The rest of the world has known about it for a while. Half of me is fed up with the so-called freedom of the press in America that informs us of absolutely nothing, while the other half is glad to be ignorant of the ugly going on outside my immediate realm. I could go on and on about the troubles in America, but that's another blog.

Since World War I, global communication has been revolutionizing every culture in every country. A lot of amazing things have happened because of this, but a lot of terrible things have as well. The saddest effect this has had is Western civilization feeling it must thrust its modern ways on third world countries. There has been so much wrong done on our part (our = 'civilized' nations) to contaminate every corner of the world. Corners that weren't ready. By messing with the natural evolution of societies that are so far behind ours, we're crippling them. And in turn, crippling ourselves. We are making these countries dependent on us, making us incapable of caring for ourselves as well as we should.

I heard a story once about tractors delivered to rural Africa. Five years after they were delivered, the more advanced country went back to see the progress, and was surprised to see that most of the tractors had weeds growing on them. The few being used were being pulled by farm animals. In our infinite wisdom, we gave them tractors, but not the knowledge to use them, or the fuel to keep them running. Powerful symbolism, or what?

As a by product of mass communication, countries that would still be centuries behind our own have been forced to jump ahead. The result of which is a population shaped like a pyramid. Each generation is reproducing faster and faster, with more and more offspring. While in 'civilized' countries our population pyramid is upside down. With medical advancements we're living longer. But the result of mass communication on our end is an underlying hatred of ourselves. We see all the ugliness that we have put into the world, instead of all of the beauty that there is; that there could be. People are having fewer children and, generation by generation, we are shrinking. All the while we are watching people starve in the corners of the world or meet untimely ends after a natural disaster. We feel like we must pull the splinter from our crippled country's eye, while not removing the plank from our own.

The population in Africa, the Middle and Far East are soaring. A third of the planet's population live in India and China. All those mouths to feed is draining the entire world of its money.

The higher price of oil and gasoline is raising the cost of basic grain sources, like wheat, corn and rice. The recent push to save our planet has lead to a good deal of the world's corn being turned into fuel. However, this has caused a shortage all over the planet. So the prices go up and the poor starve. But if we stopped using corn as a fuel source, the price of oil would rise. Which, in turn, would raise the price of grains anyway. What a vicious circle.

When I am an old woman, God willing, my grandchildren will ask me what it was like to live through this time period, like my father asked his grandmother about the Great Depression. The next few decades are going to be dismal. The first tier to go will be the very poor in the third world countries. Starvation, disease and a rise in violence will take them out. Maybe even the plague. Nothing screams plague like over population and poor living conditions. Once this completes (because it has already started) it will be like pulling the plug from the bathtub drain. The next to fall will be the middle class of the countries struggling to catch up. About this time, the lowest class of western civilization will start to disappear. Not having enough money for proper nutrition or medical care, Americans and Europeans will lose their working class. Who will the rich rely on once the lower classes are too poor to live? Who will do the grunt work that makes them money? Next will be the upper class of poorer markets as the world market crashes spectacularly. Ayn Rand saw this coming half a century ago.

I think the scariest thing is that it is going to get worse, before it can get better. That's what is so frightening. When you look at the past, when countries and kingdoms and empires have gotten too overcrowded, too poorly governed, there has been an outbreak of disease, or a natural disaster wipes them out. Cities throughout Europe were devastated by the bubonic plague in the dark ages. 350 years ago, London had been experiencing a population boom for decades, and the city had been built with very poor planning. A fire spread throughout most of the city and killed thousands. We're going to be seeing things like the disasters in Myanmar and China more often. It's not just the rest of the world, there are problems reacting here at home, too. Look at how poorly we handled Hurricane Katrina.

I read Atlas Shrugged at the wrong time. While I'm grateful for it's enlightenment, ignorance did hold a kind of bliss. It was kind of nice to think that only my little family unit was having struggles. To know it's on a country wide - world wide, even - scale, is TERRIFYING. What we're experiencing right now is the ugly side of capitalism. It's the result of kids fresh out of college getting into positions of power. Our failing economy is the by product of America's need for instant gratification. Big business is no longer looking at the big picture. Oil companies are thinking of the profit they can make right now on fuel, not realizing that in two or three years, they will have killed their market. I just hope it's not literal.

Isn't the point of history supposed to be learning from our past mistakes? Now, by closing our eyes and plugging our ears, we are making bigger ones. There is a giant display of dominoes set up, and the first have fallen. We are watching the rest fall. The most terrifying part of seeing these dominoes set up, and knowing our past too well, is knowing the only way we can come out of this slump. What brought us up from the Great Depression, kiddies? No, not Big Band music, not Coca Cola or Hershey bars. World War II. The entire world rallied together. That's not going to happen again. There is a very famous Albert Einstein quote that is dear to my heart, and it rings eerily true – "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

I don't know what's going to happen over the next decade or two, I can only guess. I will be a witness to a very interesting historical period. And honestly, I don't want to think about it too much. It's very, very depressing. I just wanted to go on the record, so that when everything turns to shit, I can do the "Told You So" dance. A great deal of my sadness on the subject comes from the fact that there is nowhere left to run to. I can't get away from the rest of the world, from governments and regulations and laws and taxes. I can't have a dozen acres and freedom. I am caged.