The Judging Countenances

Madame:

It is always laden with high risk of inaccuracy to speculate what predecessors, if they were mortally alive today, would think, feel, and say.  Just as if you were thrust into the future, with all its unpredictable, unimaginable changes, what could you say now for certain about how you might react?  And we would have to be asking, are we talking about elites, commoners, what, because their understanding and perspectives would likely be far different.  And how far back? 70 years? 100?  150?  200?  500? The time frame makes big differences.

Yet despite the caveats, I accept a bit of your speculative bait. :)

On the one hand, the more aware would see parallels to their own times, and recognize how much stays the same about the human condition,   regardless of material, technology, and knowledge changes.

The more discerning would see that we have as a people gotten better in some things, worse in others. That our characters are both better and not as good.

Of course, they would marvel at how much disease has been subdued (and maybe marvel at our hysteria over trifles).  How far women and minorities have come, and yet how much regresses.  How fast travel and fast, broad communication have shrunk regional differences, and yet splintered us uncommunally into self-centered echo chambers.  How real journalism—the valued-by-the-people counterweight in the robber baron era—has become too often corrupted, co-opted, or ignored in this one.  And how much opportunity for beneficial possibility there is—and how much of that is utterly squandered or never reached for.

What I think they would be most struck by is the ability of too many of us to stay near-constantly distracted, diverted, escapist, and disconnected.  The willing embrace of so much un-reality, and with it, the denial of so much reality.  And all the consequences thereof.  The wage-slaves of the robber baron era had few diversions, and most of those dipped into the vice arena, so it’s hard to say if they would be any different given different circumstances—probably not. 

Our predecessors were, however, as a culture more focused on the building (often relentlessly or even ruthlessly, to be sure—ask the natives) of the society and the various aspects of civilizational “wealth” as they tried to form their own futures.  They often dampened down expectations, delayed gratification, and were more willing to sacrifice.  One sees little of that among regular folks today—and almost none among “elites.”  The bad example of those  “elites” has either rubbed off on the regulars, or disillusioned them to the point that they don’t want to be the chumps adhering to the rule-set while the elites get rewarded for unethical or even illegal behavior.

In other news, Obama and China’s leader reached a deal this week on climate change.  Yes, it isn’t awesome at all, but considering the non-progress before, it’s a start.  And yet the plutocrats’ mouthpieces in Congress already oppose it.

As wealth is concentrated into the hands of the few and shifts to places far removed from the middle class, or even America at all, there will be a mirror of what happened in Italy as the economic center of Roman civilization shifted east.

Tronto, in her 1993 work and again 20 years later, coined the term “privileged irresponsibility” to denote that willful insulation of the upper class from concern how the 99% live, and with it any responsibility for the conditions that 99% must live under.

It is unfortunate (but understandable given plutocratic control of the corporate media) that more attention has not been paid to the Princeton study, released in April, that stated the US is effectively not a democracy anymore, but an oligarchy.  How did the study come to its conclusions?  Since the 1980s, when the plutocratic transformation really took off, the policies that have made it through to become law and regulation have almost entirely been those favored by the plutocrats.  And the ones that did not make it through, that were obstructed, were largely those that the wealthy elites (individuals and corporations) did not favor.

What should be a chilling reaction to such a revelation from so noted an institution insteads becomes—if even noticed—shrugged at in this land of the lotus-eaters.

We need another Progressive Era like the one that eventually—with the final help of an awful Depression—upended the robber baron era.  We should just know that this one will be harder, because the plutocrats have learned well from history and have either co-opted or made quite weak most of the usual counter-engines.

If we don’t initiate, and prevail, our predecessors would be quite right to judge us as not being made of their stern stuff.   A bit like the Romans of year 100 would have judged the Romans of year 300!