Musings on Steve Meyers' Latest Report

Thanks to Jesse again for bringing this to my attention. It makes for interesting listening. I recommend all ten minutes of Steve Meyers’ jaded diatribe.

Two quick things: First it’s not really Global Perspectives, as the company hosting the analysis calls itself, but American. Without exception—and this is no surprise—nation states look to protect themselves. The institutions with which an idea like the Nation State is made manifest and functions, can of course do no other thing than protect their own operating, stay alive and perpetuate that which they are. But what they are is already broken beyond repair. Not in the sense of a broken arm or sick stomach, such things require a fix, or at worst an amputation. No, the nation state and it various constituent parts, plus the corporate structure, plus ‘free’ market economics, plus money etc., are systemically joined and broken. The paradigm which gave birth to the nation state—of control over nature—is out of creative juice, can no longer power civilization forward as it once so spectacularly did. The noises of desperation and despair emerging now from many quarters will remain desperate and despairing. No solution within the paradigm can be of any use. Too much has changed. And this is no sudden, unpredictable ailment, fallen upon us out of clear blue skies because of Wall Street, or Larry Summers, or Robert Rubin, or any other single factor. We are going through the closing phases of a process which has its origins in deepest antiquity. What we are going through is inevitable, is hard-coded into the scarcity-based thinking that got us here. Its opposite, abundance, is the way forward.

Second, I long for the day when mainstream commentators realize the above, despite what that will mean. The status quo is defunct, a zombie, a sac of poison leaking into society and bringing it to its knees. We are all infected, all sick, all more or less blind to the depth and breadth of the sick state we are in. There is no escaping this, no corner of earth, no ‘precious’ metal or other commodity in which our money can find refuge. The status quo, in its entirety, has to go before meaningful change can begin. Swapping out Larry Summers for Bill Black, for example, would have only a short term benefit. We must relearn value itself, redefine growth, initiate a deep revolution in education, labour-for-wage, politics, law, money, and even science. Western Civilization is rotten from top to bottom. We must let it down as gently as we can, rescue the good and the beautiful (a very painful process for sure) then start building the new.