TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM
In looking at the issues facing America’s future it is imperative to have clear definitions of terms and clear distinctions of differences.
Definitions
The following definitions are crucial to understanding the greatest threats to American democracy:
- Communityism – a group banded together to accomplish their common good.
- Individualism – the individual using the group to accomplish personal whim without concern for the well-being of community.
- Smart Phone – a devise that is a mobile phone, a web browser, a computer, and a key board that allows maximum communication capacity.
- Corruption – the abuse of power for personal gain.
- Veracity – those events and suppositions that accord with known reality. In science they are called facts. In social living they are called truth.
- Economic Imperialism – that self-centered view of reality which seeks to transform everything it touches into a medium for profit-making – having no other morality.
- Democracy – a form of government devoted to the worth equality of its citizenry, their common good, and their political rule.
Differences
The following distinction between science and meaning-making is necessary to avoid confusion about the nature of truth.
Science is devoted to understanding the natural world. It seeks to maintain itself above the contamination of that truth which has to do with the nature of human meaning-making. Science is about how the universe works. Meaning-making is about why humans act and behave as they do. Science is grounded in the existing realities of the physical world. Meaning-making is grounded in the created realities of the world of ideas. They are radically different in terms of focus and grounding. They are two different realms of truth that impact human existence.
- Neither are static. Both are evolutional in their developing realities. All progress in the material quality of human existence is grounded in science. All progress in the relational quality of human existence is grounded in meaning-making.
- Neither can prove the other but both are affected by the other. Together, they determine the quality of human existence.
Their distinctions must be carefully maintained to avoid confused conclusions.
Corruption
Corruption is endemic to the human drama. Even those we consider our most noble political leaders have stooped to corruption. Thomas Jefferson hired James Calendar to besmirch the character of his campaign opponent John Adams. Some historians believe the most corrupt of America’s presidential political campaigns to be that between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. And history has yet to make a judgment about the politics of Donald Trump. Whether political, corporate, or personal, corruption has been a hallmark of America’s attempt to create a democratic society.
The Ground of Corruption
The impetus for corruption is the elevation of the individual over the community. It is the deliberate exploitation of the community for individual benefit. Every act of corruption destroys the capacity of the community to bless the total group with the common good. The ultimate corruption of any community is some form of despotism where the group’s benefits are subverted to benefit a single person or a small group of persons.
There are two foci of corruption that continue to destroy the capacity of America to benefit from democracy and which are tools for subverting democracy into forms of despotism.
The Technology Revolution Corruption
The public library is the symbolic repository of acquired human knowledge available to those who desire it’s up-grading of perception. It is a diverse body of information that has to do with both science and meaning-making. It is the primary resource institution used in all real public education endeavors.
The technology revolution has become one of democracy’s greatest threats. It is a scientific revolution that has provoked a communication revolution. One device at the heart of this threat is the smartphone. This instrument:
- Has shifted the library from a static building to a hand-held device.
- Has made the library the property of anyone with a smart phone.
- Has transformed the library from a repository of community verified knowledge to unverified realities created by the smart phone user.
The bottom line of this shift from community control to individual control is that the individual can create history without any confirming criteria exerted over it by community verification and add it to this library. The individual has become a validated historian without any supportive credentials. The individual can create history out of whole cloth and such can be accepted simply because it appears on a public media platform. An example is the Q Anon theory posed as reality – that a cabal of Democratic elites across the social order, who are Satan-worshippers and sex trafficking pedophiles, have illegally pushed Trump out of office and that only Trump, himself, can save the nation from this threat and must be reelected.
The smart phone has become the dumb phone for an increasing number of Americans. And any user can become a professor of ignorance dispensing fallacy as truth. Those most prone to accept this fake media as reality are those who find their self-worth affirmed by seeing themselves as having a supreme level of insight. It is the polar opposite of that appeal for those who have an abundance of real knowledge through some actual level of educational exposure – whether such exposure be academic or selective. On either end, the smartphone can provoke the creation of an artificial worth status that is acquired rather than innate.
Democracy is being corrupted by the communication revolution and this corruption will continue to grow until it radically contributes to the death of democracy because democracy can only thrive when it is built on a body of reliable and accepted community truth.
The baseline of democracy is an affirmation of the equal worth of every citizen. America must shift its affirmation of worth from that which is artificially imported to that acquired by birth. Until it does so it will remain susceptible to being undermined and ultimately destroyed by the zeal of manufactured truth and artificial worth and its dissemination through the smartphone and other technology platforms.
The Economic Imperialism Corruption
Science seeks to confirm its findings based on accumulated historical fact. Its evolution is toward self-correction and verification. It seeks to prove what is real rather than what is wished for. It cannot prove the reality of meaning-making but it can correct that reality. For example, it has continued to correct false religious notions about the earth’s creation and its role in the universe and about the destructive effects of human-created pollution.
There has risen in America a view of reality that denies the validity of science whenever it interferes with the profit-making of economic imperialism. This view of reality was that which the founding fathers rebelled against in order to create America but has been constantly restored as America’s reason for being. It makes democracy the servant of capitalism rather than capitalism the servant of democracy.
It is economic imperialism that has invented the 3% as the controlling oligarchical elite of America. It is economic imperialism that has converted the Republican Party into its political advocate. It is economic imperialism that has suppressed the rights of minorities and women in order to preserve them as a cheap labor force for economic profit. It is economic imperialism that has refused the claims of science in respect to global warming because such diminishes the profit-making of polluting enterprises.
In brief, economic imperialism has been and remains one of the greatest enemies of both quality of human relating and the possibility of democracy.
The Solution
The solution is two-fold. First, we must allow democracy to actually work so that the total community of citizens can experience the benefits of maximum freedom created from pursuing the maximum good. Minimally, this means: To make capitalism a servant of democracy. And this requires creating laws that channel the ultimate benefits of capitalism toward the whole of the citizenry rather than just a few of its selective parts.
Second, we must establish an education about the civics of democracy which is controlled by a selective body of qualified citizens which will be utilized by all the states in the union. There must be some uniformity of truth that undergirds the democratic educational process. There can be no common ground of truth and no unity of purpose without such a guiding curriculum. The conflictual turmoil of present America confirms this assertion.
Conclusion
The Chinese expressed a universal wisdom centuries ago: You can only control what you can name. And naming is the same as defining. But naming only tends toward control if something is done about what has been named. Naming and doing become a whole that creates change.
Robert
Robert T. Latham
mythinglink.com
Thank you for your invitations but I do not participate in Facebook
There is a lot to chew on here! Thank you, Robert, for being the provocateur par excellent. Regrettably, many, if not most, have become servant to the technology. Tragically, many, if not most, have become slave to economic imperialism. When it comes to naming and doing, we have much unfinished work to accomplish, if we are to make this world a better place for all people.