Conclusion
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Polity made life more complicated than it should have been. We should have taken care of each other, instilling humanity with the highest virtues we were capable of. We should have preserved this wondrous planet so that endless future generations could have enjoyed its beauty.
Instead, we did nothing of the sort. In less than 3 centuries since the dawn of industrialization, our extinction is nigh. The pettiness that defines politics proves how maladaptive the human mind can be.
Following economic self-interest paved a road with wasted lives and the devastation of Nature. A survey of polity completes the picture of incompetence.
Respect for tradition is a tacit admission of lack of vision. The past shows that mankind failed to create polities that can endure. The fruits of civilization have been bittersweet, with an elite sucking most the sweetness to be had.
An underclass discriminated against has been a historical constant. This remains the status quo today.
Few still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. Most of us understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens. ~ Derrick Jensen
Capitalism wrought inequity. Plutocracy secured the glitter of materialism as poisoned candy. Only by eliminating profit can equity have a chance to take root.
The fallibility of the Collective is profound. It might have been of more modest consequence with political leaders who had their wits about them.
Democracy has proved no bulwark; to the contrary. Whereas the consequences of industrialization demanded exercise of long-term vision, democracy reduced politicians into short-sighted panderers.
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them. ~ Karl Marx
Democracy fostered a dangerous illusion of collective wisdom, which simply does not exist when the effort is not really collective: just an aggregation of individual choices between competitors, as democratic elections always are.
Good governance is dependent on a moral people. Representative governance is only as good as the people in it. The vote can be twisted to whatever we desire. And when we vote simply for our desires, the results are rarely beneficial. ~ American author Kerry Nietz
As practiced in its corrupted form, democracy is the sinking of a society to its lowest common denominator. But then, regardless of regime, the one unassailable fact is that humans have chronically failed at decently governing themselves. Brief exceptions prove the rule.
If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost. ~ Barack Obama
The unmitigated failure of humanity to wisely organize itself on a mass scale has led to a mass extinction event. The generator of this event was economics, but the hand on the rudder was politics.
The rule of men approaches its dismal conclusion. Even with abundant evidence of folly, no correction course has been plotted, let alone attempted. Whatever ad hoc response may be had toward the finale will be pathetic and wholly inadequate: a product of ill-founded optimism cobbled with ignorance – much the same concoction that created the debacles of humanity’s rise and demise.
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Spokes of the Wheel concludes with Book 8: The Hub of Being.
