Amerika

Just a quick note on this because it needs to be said, but is not in the current consciousness: Ted Kaczynski, a great writer, thinks that the root of civilization decay is technology. I disagree and think that it is instead a social phenomenon rooted in jobs.

In nature, we have to struggle against nature to achieve what we need; this extends to the types of living that defined America, namely pioneer homesteads, farms, hunting, and fishing. There is no neurosis or disconnect between cause and effect.

With jobs, man struggles against man, and the problem of hierarchy immediately arises: some workers are better than others, with most somewhere in the middle but about a fifth of them simply useless. The useless become criminals, bums, welfare scroungers, etc.

The problem with jobs from the perspective of the worker is that now The Optics rule the future of the worker; if the boss looks over and sees him slacking, even if he was working hard the rest of the time, this worker gets zapped.

Even worse, talking about problems, especially the most vital ones, can provoke retaliation. This creates resentment and self-pity in the workers. The best get over it because they always have options beyond just cranking through the same.

In response, workers form a culture of opposition to leadership based on the simple idea that hierarchy disadvantages some workers, so removing it removes conflict and restores “peace.” This is the basis of all liberalism and socialism.

You might recognize it as pacifism. Their fear is conflict, not getting the right answer, but in order to get correct answers, one needs some conflict, and at some point, decisions must be made. This is why you need business leaders and owners as well as workers.

If the workers could start their own companies, they would; we know this because many do exactly that over the course of their career. Others want to remain worker bees and put in varying degrees of effort and competence.

Governments make the problem worse by intervening with lots of little rules. These do not address the problem, but make the resentment worse, and as a result, workers become more prone to revolt. At some point they take over government because it needs to suppress their Heckler’s Veto.

In other words, what kills society is when its workers become parasitic, which is why early societies remained nomadic. No one was a worker; each man was responsible for his own clan and any slaves, serfs, or workers he retained.

When permanent civilization, and later technology, arise, these demand more workers to power things like factories and big farms. As these take over, society becomes oriented toward the workers, who by definition are less competent than their leaders, and decay takes over.

Tags: civilization decay, jobbers, jobs, ted kaczynski