Phony war: Cancel culture. To the extent that it's happening, I think it's being used as an excuse to get rid of dead wood. Your best defense against cancel culture is creating more value than you extract. If your current organization doesn't appreciate that, find one that does (or start one yourself). And if you're not creating more value than you're extracting, don't be surprised if you get "cancelled".
Real war: Election integrity. Not in the sense of voting machines, voter IDs, or stuff like that, but at the level of fixing the holes and unclear elements in our processes. More "fix the Electoral Count Act of 1887" than passing Democrats' bloated "voting" bill.
Phony war: The latest Supreme Court nomination. Expect a lot of Kabuki Theater (for fundraising off the rubes), but Joe Biden's nominee will be confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Real war: Automation. While we're angsting about American jobs being stolen by foreigners, we're COMPLETELY unprepared for the day when those expatriated jobs come back to America, but are given to robots instead of humans in the new industrial corridors. When Labor itself becomes the property of Capital, a lot of humans will be squeezed out into irrelevance.
Phony war: Falling birth rates. Combined with automation, we will find decent ways to cope with living with a stable or even shrinking population (ignoring immigration). We need to figure out how to transition out of a growth-dependent economic system and acknowledge that Planet Earth has an optimal carrying capacity and adapt accordingly, but I'm confident we'll figure it out.
Real war: Establishing an interplanetary frontier. I don't share your Christian metaphysics, so don't have a heavenly fallback for when humans tip the planet into a viscous cycle through climate change or a rogue asteroid decides to "dinosaur" us. Within our reach is the technology and means to start establishing footholds off-world both to generate new opportunities for growth for the human species as well as serving as backups, should something happen to Earth. We're on the cusp of a civilization-wide transformation akin to the colonization of the Americas, and we should be pushing to see it through. A lot of the issues that we have now on Earth can be addressed by giving more folks their own spaces to be themselves far enough away from everyone else (see Turner's frontier thesis[1]). Just as the American frontier freed many from the bondage in which they found themselves, I believe an interplanetary frontier will do the same for humans on the whole. (Beltalowda!)
Feb 5, 2022Liked by Steve Berman, Chris J. Karr, Jay Berman
I am not a well educated, prolific writer. I am a grandma who is very concerned for the country we are leaving to my precious loved ones. I agree with most of what you wrote. I can't even remember this soon what it was you typed that I was not on board with. So for me that would be a phony war. Your right to your opinion and to have it published and read is very important to me. But I draw the line at misinformation and lies that endanger others. That is a battle I am willing to fight. God's got this and I know how the story ends, it's the living in between that has me concerned. I am almost 65 and this is not even close top the "wonder years" I grew up in. We can't get those back and I am not sure we want to. The politicization of everything under the sun from straws to vaccines has me completely lost about how I can make a difference, but I know in my heart I have to do SOMETHING. Thank you for always being a voice calling for reasonable people to behave reasonably.
Phony war: Cancel culture. To the extent that it's happening, I think it's being used as an excuse to get rid of dead wood. Your best defense against cancel culture is creating more value than you extract. If your current organization doesn't appreciate that, find one that does (or start one yourself). And if you're not creating more value than you're extracting, don't be surprised if you get "cancelled".
Real war: Election integrity. Not in the sense of voting machines, voter IDs, or stuff like that, but at the level of fixing the holes and unclear elements in our processes. More "fix the Electoral Count Act of 1887" than passing Democrats' bloated "voting" bill.
Phony war: The latest Supreme Court nomination. Expect a lot of Kabuki Theater (for fundraising off the rubes), but Joe Biden's nominee will be confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Real war: Automation. While we're angsting about American jobs being stolen by foreigners, we're COMPLETELY unprepared for the day when those expatriated jobs come back to America, but are given to robots instead of humans in the new industrial corridors. When Labor itself becomes the property of Capital, a lot of humans will be squeezed out into irrelevance.
Phony war: Falling birth rates. Combined with automation, we will find decent ways to cope with living with a stable or even shrinking population (ignoring immigration). We need to figure out how to transition out of a growth-dependent economic system and acknowledge that Planet Earth has an optimal carrying capacity and adapt accordingly, but I'm confident we'll figure it out.
Real war: Establishing an interplanetary frontier. I don't share your Christian metaphysics, so don't have a heavenly fallback for when humans tip the planet into a viscous cycle through climate change or a rogue asteroid decides to "dinosaur" us. Within our reach is the technology and means to start establishing footholds off-world both to generate new opportunities for growth for the human species as well as serving as backups, should something happen to Earth. We're on the cusp of a civilization-wide transformation akin to the colonization of the Americas, and we should be pushing to see it through. A lot of the issues that we have now on Earth can be addressed by giving more folks their own spaces to be themselves far enough away from everyone else (see Turner's frontier thesis[1]). Just as the American frontier freed many from the bondage in which they found themselves, I believe an interplanetary frontier will do the same for humans on the whole. (Beltalowda!)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_thesis
I am not a well educated, prolific writer. I am a grandma who is very concerned for the country we are leaving to my precious loved ones. I agree with most of what you wrote. I can't even remember this soon what it was you typed that I was not on board with. So for me that would be a phony war. Your right to your opinion and to have it published and read is very important to me. But I draw the line at misinformation and lies that endanger others. That is a battle I am willing to fight. God's got this and I know how the story ends, it's the living in between that has me concerned. I am almost 65 and this is not even close top the "wonder years" I grew up in. We can't get those back and I am not sure we want to. The politicization of everything under the sun from straws to vaccines has me completely lost about how I can make a difference, but I know in my heart I have to do SOMETHING. Thank you for always being a voice calling for reasonable people to behave reasonably.