I was thinking about posting my concerns regarding the future for human beings on this planet when I happened upon a comment made by Rodney William Whitaker, in a rare interview, back in 1998, that sums things up far better than I could.
““It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called 'American' only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. Its symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experiences. In the later stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun.” Shibumi-Trevanian
If by ‘fun’ he means reaching a point that a plurality has become a majority in the general population driven by a desire for immediate gratification, without a moral compass, with impunity, I agree. Since his first Presidency, Trump and his MAGA sycophants have managed to significantly increase their support in the general population. And this in spite of his blatantly transparent, pathologically lying, sociopathic criminality. A moral corruption so pervasive that it is near inexplicable that anyone would find him suitable for anything other than a prison cell. However Whitaker saw this coming in the late 1990s with Golding way ahead of him warning us back in 1954! A warning about a fetal flaw in human beings in general world wide.
Human beings have, at one and the same time, managed to combine an F- in recognizing the benefits of peaceful co-existence, with an A+ in creating the ultimate weapon for destroying each other; Drones. A transition making ships, planes, artillery, soldiers and yes, even nuclear weapons, obsolete. Anyone can get one. Mafias and drug cartels now use them. And countries on a world wide scale are in a mad race to develop and produce their own and transitioning a significant percentage of their military forces to either operate them or to protect the operators when in action.
It is astonishing how quickly countries are developing deadlier and deadlier drones that cost less and less to create. Combined with the worldwide number of those being trained to kill with them and the extraordinary degree of stupidity/irresponsibility of the economic power elite countries across time in the use of such means, the future for humanity is seriously iffy.
