It occurred to me that we as a species are largely running in place, never really moving forward. Chris Hedges, who I will admit is a decent writer and adequate orator albeit pessimistic as fuck, has basically attested to the same idea, that we never move forward.
The reason I bring all of this up is that we have had theorists and ideologues presenting us with theories of government corruption, of lies, and of wars started for the wrong reasons. Heck there are even those who would go so far as to say that every way ever fought by the United States was started for a different reason than the one publicized in the media.
This is likely true, but it is obviously so. The real reason a country would invest many billions of dollars and incur heavy national debt to invade another country, is precisely because there are resources to be pillaged in the target nation and that the activity is going to be profitable to the country and the multinational firms responsible who pressured the right government agents to start this war. Unfortunately, the general populace would find such a thing distasteful, that and they would largely be given the shitty end of the deal in that the profits of war go to the rich, and the costs burden the poor. As such a nation cannot tell its people that it wants to send them to death so that it may profit from said death.
An alternative I suppose would be to promise to the nation a piece of the pie of the pillaging, however this would greatly reduce the productivity of the activity for the elite, I daresay that in order for pillage and murder to be enticing for the elite, they must know that they are going to obtain the lion's share of the profits and not have to waste it on the leisure class.
Regardless I digress. The reason I am certain that we have made zero progress as a species, is that Orwell stated all of this better than I could perhaps, its all been said many times by many great minds over the course of history.
The truth is staring at us all in the face. History is littered with proof that the same story is replaying itself over and over. Technological advancement has only empowered the state to the level of Big Brother originally conceived by Orwell in his masterpiece 1984.
So you see, when I visit a blog, or an opinion piece, or any form of dissent on the internet, I think back to Orwell and realize that things will likely never change, that dissent is largely a useless waste of time, that those in power will do whatever they can to retain it, and those without it must do what they must to survive.
Might as well stop bitching about the unfairness around us and just try to make something of it, whatever that may be.
I know I'm simplifying, I sound like a reductionist, like someone trying to distill something complex into something very basic, however the truth is that no meaningful reform or revolution is anywhere near in sight, and I'm not about to sit around hoping for it to happen.
So here's a toast to our overlords, hope the ecosystem isn't entirely annihilated by the time my unborn children turn 18.
