Anthony Judge: 30 Disabling Global Trends (Article)

Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
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Anthony Judge

Convergence of 30 Disabling Global Trends

Mapping the social climate change engendering a perfect storm

Introduction
Checklist of 30 disabling trends
Spiraling trends: cyclones in a climate of change?
Interweaving “cyclones” and “anti-cyclones” in a global system
Emergent polyhedral configuration of alternating systemic functions
Insights from the Conference of the Birds?
Conclusion
References

EXTRACT:

Checklist of 30 disabling trends

  1. Systemic erosion of confidence and trust, most notably with regard to:
    • Politicians, with a vested interest in ensuring their re-election at any cost
    • Science, with a vested interest in justifying costly research
    • Professions, with their vested interest in overselling on the basis of their authoritative advice
    • Business (especially the financial community), with a vested interest in overselling and miss-selling
    • Religion (as highlighted by widespread sexual abuse by clergy)
    • Security services
  2. Rapidly decreasing coherence of statements by authorities(official declarations, “promises” by governments):
    • Encouraging gullibility, credulity and overconfidence by some
    • Encouraging fundamental suspicion and counter-arguments by others (perceiving such statements as “empty”)
    • Extending to any articulation of “meta-statements” about this trend (such as this checklist)
  3. Emergence of evident contradictionsundermining confidence in those involved:
    • Primary role of Permanent Members of the UN Security Council in arms manufacture, marketing and sustaining a demand
    • Indictment of many in positions of authority, suggesting similar behaviour by others (for which evidence is lacking)
    • Limited transparency in institutions acclaiming its merits for others (banking, etc)
  4. Increasingly evident disparities(notably correlated with forms of discrimination) in:
    • Income inequality
    • Housing and quality of life
    • Opportunities for employment (nepotism, etc)
  5. Increasingly uncertain individual social security:
    • Evident reduction in employment opportunities
    • Evident insecurity of employment contracts
    • Vulnerability of employment to delocalization
    • Uncertain social security coverage (pensions, health, care, etc)
    • Progressive replacement of people by robots to reduce costs
  6. Increasingly perceived meaninglessness of life(especially for the underprivileged), with respect to:
    • Employment and career opportunities
    • Entertainment opportunities
    • Alternative lifestyle opportunities
  7. Increasingly constrained efficacity of remedial action:
    • Evidently limited capacity for remedial global decision-making
    • Restriction to narrow technical initiatives (characterized primarily by advantages to military-industrial complex)
    • Reliance on controversial forms of remedial action (quantitative easing, geo-engineering)
    • Obliging tax-payers to compensate for errors in institutional strategies (and complicity of government therein)
  8. Cultivated delusionsregarding possibility of fruitful consensus regarding:
    • Possible emergence of spiritual harmony between the religions (cf. The God Delusion, 2006)
    • Scientific consensus, as indicated by the climate change debate (cf. The Science Delusion, 2012)
    • Possibility of effective political consensus regarding remedial strategies
  9. Inability to delivereffectively according to strategic vision and contractual agreements:
    • Characteristic major cost overruns (with which increased profits are acknowledged to be significantly associated)
    • Subsequent emergence of dangerous design defects (structural faults, etc)
    • Subsequent emergence of problematic side-effects, systematically neglected in project design
    • Dysfunctional game-playing as an increasing characteristic undermining collective undertakings
    • Increasingly evident influence of unchecked organized crime (and official complicity therewith)
  10. Need for ever more extreme forms of distractionand the questionable means of ensuring their availability:
    • Media violence
    • Violent interactive online gaming
    • Sexually extreme content
    • Encouragement of momentary mass enthusiasms as a consequence of media
    • Escapism (games, drugs, alcohol, tourism, etc)
    • Human trafficking, prostitution, etc
  11. Effective “grooming” of the population:
    • Ensuring acceptability of violence (via the daily media diet)
    • Ensuring increasingly commodified “quality of life” (reminiscent of intensive farming systems)
    • Manufacturing consent, notably with regard to products of lower quality and to the framing of “enemies”
  12. Increasing constraints on dissemination of challenging informationevocative of (unwelcome) questions regarding current modalities:
    • “Dumbing-down” by the media (and cultivation of collective attention to trivia)
    • Increasing emphasis on distraction
    • News management (spin)
    • Censorship in support of political, ideological or religious agendas
  13. Increasingly omnipresent “security” systems:
    • Implementation of a pattern of global satellite systems and “mapping” (eg Google Earth and street view)
    • Increasing levels of surveillance and invasive security (far exceeding those deprecated during the Cold War)
    • Worldwide implantation of military bases (replicating a final phase in the Roman Empire)
    • Widespread instigation of “stop and search” procedures (frequently experienced as unjustified)
    • Increasing incarceration of population
  14. Increasing pattern of failure of security systems(purportedly “guaranteed” not to fail):
    • Hacking of private information held for electronic transactions (passwords, banking details, etc)
    • Official and unofficial use of cyber warfare tools
  15. Increasing sense of personal insecurity:
    • Physical insecurity (personal and family)
    • Property insecurity
    • Financial insecurity (savings, etc)
  16. Much-challenged relation to “life“, evoked as an unquestionable justification for problematic initiatives:
    • Inability to resolve the debate on: Right to life (abortion) vs. Right to choose
    • Ensuring life support at all costs (notably to the family and for the benefit of health care services)
    • Right to die for those wishing to (euthanasia)
    • State-authorised assassination and capital punishment
    • Heavy economic dependence on weapons development, manufacture and ensuring a need for supplies
    • Dependence on death to activate legislative remedial action (reminiscent of past needs for human sacrifice)
  17. Much-challenged relation to principles and values:
    • Devaluation of acclaimed values and principles
    • Systematic exploitation of principles as fig-leaves to justify questionable initiatives
    • Exploitation of opportunities offered by neglecting principles, or setting them aside conditionally
    • Use of “moral easing” as a systemic equivalent to the dubious process of “quantitative easing”
  18. Erosion of judicial process:
    • Political pressures on judiciary (including appointments to judiciary)
    • Fabrication and tampering with evidence
    • Impunity of agents of state or people of influence
    • Exploitation of extra-judicial environments and processes (rendition, etc)
    • Evident interference with due process and incidence of miscarriage of justice
  19. Systematic manipulation of representative decision-making, disguised as democratic processes:
    • Electoral fraud
    • Influence peddling (“cash for questions”, bribery, etc),
    • Promotion of the apparent necessity for citizens of a democracy to bear arms
  20. Indications of questionably classified initiatives lacking effective democratic oversight:
    • Population surveillance
    • Research: genetic engineering, geo-engineering, biological warfare, etc
    • Cyber warfare
    • Targetted assassination
  21. Preoccupation with short-term outcomes, whether problems or benefits (and consequent neglect of long-term implications)
    • Profit (immediate “bottom line”)
    • Solutions to (immediate) problems (“fire-fighting” strategies)
    • Satisfaction
  22. Spurious justifications(invoking health, security, jobs, advancement of knowledge, etc) with respect to:
    • Increasing indications that the rule of law is systematically by-passed
    • Investment in costly, prestige projects of questionable significance in a time of crisis
    • Investment in risky research, notably involving animals and potential threats to the environment
    • Impunity of agents of the state
  23. Emergent pattern of “ranting and raving“:
    • Widespread “ranting” against problematic situations and those responsible
    • Widespread “raving” about isolated achievements of little more than symbolic significance
  24. Increasingly ineffectual argumentation:
    • Decreasing significance of rational arguments
    • Increasing emphasis on the “positive” and avoidance (or denial) of the problematic
    • Decreasing credibility of any systemic or meta-perspective
    • Automatic condemnation and demonisation of “other” perspectives (“You're either with us, or against us“; There Is No Alternative, TINA)
  25. Unquestionable dependence on aggravating processes:
    • Exploitation of non-renewable resources (most notably oil)
    • Automobile manufacture (upheld as vital to the economy and jobs)
    • Destructive exploitation of natural resources (forest areas, marine ecosystems)
    • Unrecycled waste disposal (marine disposal, nuclear waste, etc)
    • Population increase (as vital to ensuring a pattern of increased consumption necessary for the economy)
  26. Asystemic analysisof resource overshoot and remedial possibilities (most notably in relation to population increase):
    • Over-emphasis on optimistic forecasts and deprecation of counter-indications
    • Avoidance of consideration of problematic possibilities and surprises
    • Downstream thinking (concern with current “shortages”, rather than with engendering “longages”)
    • Avoidance of consideration of systems management with ever-increasing complexity
  27. Evident emergency unpreparednessand vulnerability to “surprise':
    • Shortage of resources (food, water, shelter, etc.)
    • Construction on vulnerable terrain (flood plains, earthquake zones, coasts exposed to freak weather, etc)
    • Natural disasters (earthquakes, Earth-crossing asteroids, etc)
    • Epidemics
    • Dependence on systems of untested robustness
  28. Inability to reframethe evolving situation and unchallenged resistance to considering that possibility
    • global vs local — reframed
    • growth
    • wealth / worth / meaning
    • property (territorial, intellectual, spiritual)
  29. Ineffectual gatherings of those acclaimed as effective, influential, well-resourced, intelligent, wise, or spiritual
  30. Ever-increasing impatience at the evolution of the situation (with the evident probability of social unrest)

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Phi Beta Iota:  At root this is about a complete loss of legitimacy across the eight tribes or communities of information and intelligence – academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-government/non-profit.  They have all, isolated exceptions not-withstanding, so clearly and persistently betrayed the public trust as to be beneath contempt among those able to reflect on our current circumstances.

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