at Nevada City California 12, 10, 2024

Dec 1st 2024
Dear Suman Bai
Indulge me. You asked such a central question… a question so central to this whole shebang of a 21st C globe of human civilization. “Can everyone, every country live like Americans… have the material prosperity that Americans have?” Indulge me as my thoughts these days have been swirling into the future and this reply is a way of self-grounding. The 2024 election is perhaps a significant turning point in civilized society’s trajectory. It doesn’t appear to bode well.
As is my want and nature, in our Whats app conversation, I answered in histories and lineages of ideas. Five minutes at least of a lecture. I know better, but it was such a good sincere question… how I wanted to give you an education. I am still motivated to provide my understandings. To me, in the large of the whole, how humanity is dealing with this question is crucial… is tantamount at this momentous juncture (the start (a coup) of Maga Trump and the radical Neo-cons rule over the United States).
So far, the world has behaved optimistically, impulsively as “Yes, all can be as Americans!”. The fruit of the “good-life” is dangled as bait before all. And countries borrow and borrow to follow the American model.
As anyone with the willingness to pay full attention, the answer is obviously “No”. American style consumerism seems to just get more outrageous and toxic. (is the all-consuming consumption of social media/Amazon the end-game?) Yes, 25% of the world’s wealthiest participate in the life-style. The rest fall in a spectrum behind. Yes, more humans live above what is considered poverty, live without having to be constantly hungry than ever before (200+ million are food insecure still and the number is again growing rapidly. A million of the poorest die each year from malnutrition). And to be noted, there are more humans here than at any time ever before. Neo liberal capitalism is due some applause (and Mao se tung and his People’s Party communism as well).
If we engage, it’s pretty clear that there is not enough globe for the 8 billion of us to own a car(s), stay fashionable, eat red meat daily, have the comforts/luxuries of a host of electric or petroleum-fueled machines/appliances to do our mundane chores… etc. etc. The goal of the United States as global economic leader has been… and is… is to extract from the nations of the planet… is to extract resources and maintain a positive trade balance so as to create heights of prosperity. With soft imperialism… the imperialism of the dollar… I have to say, the good citizens and leaders of the US have not strayed from the basic behavior of the Arthropod: “ Me first… I’m the strongest here, so what benefits me benefits you. And if you don’t agree, look behind me and see my “defense forces”.
Contrary to the notion of the commons, the common well-being, the current system of free-market, Neo-liberal capitalism celebrates and optimizes individuality and greed. Survival (dominance) of the fittest seems the creed. Take what you can get. Don’t look back, don’t indulge in the namby-pamby of empathy/generosity/mutuality. And it appears that this the current order is running off its tracks… and will not avoid the train-wreck. Two words: “climate change”… or better 11 words: “Human induced climate change due to the use of fossil fuels”. For me the term is a short cut for the greater problem: “A by-product of global industrialized civilization is that it threatens its existence with degradation and pollution”. As we all are well aware of, environmental destruction… resource depletion/scarcity… social injustices (vast) are among Capitalism’s by-products. Sustainability is a concept Neo-liberal marketers can’t seem to grasp. The captains of industry (and their lackeys the political leaders) have finessed the art of denial. At the best, they pay lip-service and green-wash.
Individual prosperity arises from the Market. The Market’s prosperity arises from each individual’s effort to better themselves. The Market offers each and all the opportunity to engage in commerce. When the Market is controlled, manipulated, restricted by such as government the opportunities to prosper are repressed. Communism and it’s lesser sister Socialism do just that to the free market. These ideas form the religion of American Neo liberalism.
After the global catharses of World War II, after the shock of the millions upon millions of the murdered, of the horrendous cruelties, and of the massive global level of fear, hatred, and the bloodletting, civilization once again had put its house in order… the playing field was rearranged with winners and losers. USA had come out on top (bye-bye to authoritarian nationalistic militaristic empire makers (at least for awhile)… bye-bye to feudal subservience to a God-Emperor). The world came to perceive America as a light-on-the-hill… as the triumphant supremacy of one-person-one-vote democratic rule… of justice encoded and of a just equality for all… and most importantly… of a bedrock of fundamental human rights. Nations joined the United Nations in the spirit of cooperation and mutual global law-making… embraced the economic success of America and her Neo Liberal free market might and prosperity.
All was well and good for perhaps half a century. I was born at the start of this run of American-style globalized industrialization, and its life-style enhancement. I have lived “the good-life”. And like me (I’m now in my late 70”s) it too is degenerating… is showing its faults, is losing its momentum. Is coming apart at the seams. It seems with the 2024 election in America, that the dysfunction, the negativity infecting humanity’s disempowered masses (poverty and lack of opportunity) has grown to surface as a full-on disease. (blighted are the expectations of equal opportunity… is access to wealth and the upper class (even middle class) of the American lifestyle. The rich get richer, the poor get more repressed) So here in the USA, the cynical citizenry has decided on a course of radical surgery. The body of democratic inclusiveness, of cultural/social liberalization, universal human rights, of human well-being as guided by the sciences… such ideologies are to be vacated, excised, and the patient rehabilitated. Nationalism, tribal exceptualism, reactionary ideologies and belief-systems, authoritarianism, martial law now seem like solutions. I take them as the next level of coping with our existential threats (after the exhaustion of denials). Again, humanity returns to a winner take all (survival) mentality. Dark! (but hopefully is the last jolt of a speed bump on a shared progressive empathetic approach to the future).
As I mentioned, there is a balance point. Appropriate development... electric power for all… for all but just enough generation to sustain the collective well-being. Healthcare and educational systems… appropriate local/regional industry and commerce are the basis for our peaceful civilization. For all but the last 125 years of Sapien mankind’s hundreds of thousands of years, folks have sourced the Earth for their livelihood… gathering, hunting, herding, farming, fishing. Mythical in the US and Northern Europe are memories… fondly… of the family farm. Me thinks the future will drive many back to such livelihoods…. that industrial mechanical chemical agriculture might just be an early casualty of climate change’s reordering of the Biosphere. I have watched jet travel become ubiquitous. We all love it... the planet as our theme park. Obviously, it trips the scales to unbalanced. (how will we all feel when the billionaires jaunt around the planet in their jets and we the rest of us are condemned without opportunity to a life of a radius of some hundreds of miles?)
The Pokhara region of Nepal as I knew it in 2010 to 2019 seemed close to that point of balance: (almost) enough electricity and infrastructure to promote well being with a majority of the population based on family farms and creating food. Sure, healthcare/hospitals, the educational system needed improvement (big) and the government’s whole hearted support of its citizens needed drastic upgrading. And as I surmise from afar… my hunch… is that the majority of the globe’s people live within this zone of modest economic functionality. To hold one’s country’s infrastructure/development against such as the US seems defeating and counterproductive. Global investment-capitalists like to compare countries, touting the need to create western style infrastructures so as to join in the free-for-all, the prosperity party. Enough is enough… and an acceptance of a modestly developed humanity… of a leveling of the playing field as it is… may come to pass. Me hopes one of the outcomes of climate change will be the downscaling of our expectations. The end of the pursuit of endless growth (Capitalism’s motto and existential need) can not come soon enough… and how lovely would it be
instead to come to an acceptance of a natural harmony and to an engendering of a consciousness of reverence and gratitude. In this balance… apparent is that with the current scale of development used appropriately… in this balance, no human need be food insufficient; no human will have to succumb to a preventable disease. Every human will read and write, know science and justice. The universality of human rights and the equality of all shall again be the norm. Those in the know say that the food, the material stuff is available… it’s a matter of sharing and distribution. It is a matter of prioritizing the common good. Top-of-the food-chain Investment Capitalists stand in the way (and in the way of the pragmatic action to respond to climate change). And they control governments, control the bombs and guns. No pain; no gain. Dreamer that I am, I like to think such a balance will arrive within a century… as a reaction to environmental collapse (population reduction… ?drastic?) and thus the necessity of a rebooting of the human way.
Too, I am one who finds humans are over-populated. Optimum population (the regenerative balance of resources and infrastructure within ecosystems) some scholars think happened about 3,000 years ago. Some others (me) believe it was far earlier. Since, competition for territory and resources has dominated. War, famine, vulnerability, contagions, plague, patriarchy, slavery, toxic-sexism, genocide have been the norm for these thousands of years. Though, I am one who also believes that with a visceral awakening… an awakening to the spirit/beauty of the larger Cosmos… some billions (like 2) should be able to sustain with the altered biosphere. But so far, the track record is dismal, is abject and is giving little indication that such an awakening will happen. But again, with no pain, no gain. (Elon Musk is betting against… Earth is toast… on to Mars (for the elite))
The actuality of mankind’s situation is still not fully grasped by most, me thinks. The UN is trying its mightiest to bring humanity to recognize the perspective and to form itself into a single endeavor. The current current (sorry… but it works) however seems to be carrying our boat the other way… the flow of nationalism, exceptualism, bigotry, superstitious faith-religion, reactionary fundamentalism is strong. Even with everyone pulling… pulling towards a brighter horizon… even if all join to radically properly propel civilization, it may not suffice to keep civilization as it is now. Radical altering of the composition of the atmosphere is big stuff… monumental in its effects. The further we travel into this future, the more the unraveling becomes intertwined, exponential, and overwhelming. The current changes are more rapid and detrimental than those our dear scientists have earlier predicted. Relying to this point on our fearless leaders (delusional and deluding leaders (such as Trump)), we are on course with our green-house-gas emissions to have the ocean’s and the biosphere’s ecosystems collapse within a generation (2.5-3deg by 2050). Big die offs will happen… are the future… is nature keeping on… is the correction. Yes, the natural systems are in rapid correction… and mankind is responding with what seems a paralyzing fear. The fear of change (massive and necessary). Our cynical denialists remain in control (you know who… Investment Capitalists… how they work this fear, how they facilitate complacency, misinformation, disinformation… (for example: the mass media avoids, omits the indisputable scientific facts and scenerios). How clueless can humanity be?
So, can everyone live like Americans? … have what America has? NO. America has created 25% of the current green-house-gases and remains in contention as the second top polluter. If all the globe’s 8 billion lived like the 360 million Americans (and 20 million live in poverty), it is predicted that in 10 years, the Earth’s biosphere will be depleted, and the planet will shortly thereafter become uninhabitable. And as the “good-life” slips away, America is getting militaristic, is getting meaner. Is creating enemies to blame. This does not bode well.
The work, the effort towards survival for the coming generations of such as you, Suman, of the less developed global citizens is to stabilize what you have and make it more resilient. There is no going “back” to what was (if ever) the American “good life”. There is no way to undo what America and the
“developed” have progressed to. The way forward is in cooperative regional endeavors and is in appropriate change in one’s local community. But what do I know?