OVERVIEW — THE WEEKLY FLAIL — JUNE 22, 2024

Much of what we see now seems to be the successful destruction of the world we struggled to achieve over the last three hundred years. We can identify that world as the globalization of the European Enlightenment defined by humanist rationality, empirical scientific thought, individual human rights, and administration justified by consensus through popularly elected representatives.

Ironically, some of the ideals underlying the Modern World have been blocked by authoritarian military systems, rampant materialism, and colonial conquest. The end product (which may literally be our end) has permanently changed our biosphere and produced societies that have become identical to or prone to takeover by the very hierarchical and exploitive ruling elites that we thought we were eliminating.

The result is a planetary environmental disaster and economic failure, with most planetary assets locked in control by a tiny elite. A radically distorted economic system based solely on greed denies most of our population’s well-being.

At the start of the second quarter of the 21st century, the entire civilization struggles to deal with the consequences of these failures. The reaction is anger at the failure to provide what was promised, with a minority ill-consideredly rejecting everything and a desperate desire by the majority to correct…