Planning for the Future Pt. 1

As America heads down its current path of consolidation of money, resources, power, freedom and rights to the rich, I thought I would share my plans for this “bright and shining” example of democracy.  In the future that I see, as “mandated” by the Republicans, I foresee a lot of hardship, not shared sacrifice, not shared prosperity, but shared hardship:  A hardship that will be long-lasting and progressively worsening over time.  While I do see plenty of examples of optimistic individuals, I do not share their beliefs and think them to be of a certain naivety or illogical mindset.  Regardless of my rationale for such truisms, the following is a detailed account of what a GOP-lead future entails, at least for me.

At 46 years of age, I have suffered from the ravages of time, and have allowed myself to succumb to a sedentary lifestyle.  With an ever-growing workload and an excessive amount of daily stress and responsibility, my health has fallen by the wayside, but this I will change in the coming months.  I feel that, as resources run out, the simple luxuries that Americans have enjoyed for t he past 60 years will become privileges that only a few will be able to afford:  Oil is getting harder to find and even harder to extract, because it is not the infinite commodity that the politicians have had us believe for the past century.  If you doubt these words, ask yourself this one question:  Why would any company or companies choose to drill in the Gulf of Mexico or the ocean  . . . if oil were so abundant?  Without oil, things like gas for cars becomes scarcer and $4.00 a gallon gas seems reasonable.  With gas prices rising, the cost of goods, including food increases and there is no need to expand on what this means for us all.  Without oil, the energy to power things like air-conditioning, heating and many other things that make life easier is diminished.  And, in the United States, we have grown accustomed to regulating our immediate climate, which has left us less tolerant to heat and more susceptible to the cold.  In essence we have grown soft, which would be fine if a perpetual motion machine existed.  As for my personal desire to get into shape, it goes beyond vanity and is borne of my desire to being able to not only to survive without modern conveniences, but to live productively.  To this end, I have purchased my first survival guide.

With the shortage of the food supplies, buying groceries off the shelf will seem like dream to so many who have grown up taking such things for granted.  Not too many of us out there know how to trap, skin, clean and prepare those things we need to survive.  Few know what it takes to grow fruits and vegetables and fewer still know how to procure water that is both fresh and suitable for consumption.  A survival guide not only prepares one for the demands of the future we are heading towards, but it provides the skills required to live through accidents that can occur on a daily basis (car and airplane crashes, etc.).  In a good survival guide, one will find all of the information needed to administer rudimentary first aid, gather food and water, plan for both short term and long term self-reliance and how and where to look for assistance.  So, stockpile your seeds for planting, have a plan to rough it for a while, as migration might be necessary at some point and think about helping out those in need, when possible.  In line with my survival needs, I am taking medical classes and trying to learn as much as I can on my own about medicine, in hopes of becoming a doctor. . . Yes a doctor, because I believe that whether my fears for our future become reality or not, as a doctor, I can at least look out for my “own” as health care continues to become more expensive and more out of reach for so many.

As for monetary needs, as I stated earlier, I believe that our money, the U.S. dollar is losing its value daily.  By way of example (albeit a simply one), let’s look at the game of Monopoly, in which every player tries to get all of the money, property and whatever else they can horde:  In this game, each player weighs the pros and cons of their actions, which come in the form of investments.  Everybody starts out with the same amount of money and the same relative outlook, but as the game progresses, things change.  As players move around the square board, gathering up whatever properties they can, the fortunes for the majority of players dwindles, while those for the few increase until such time that only one player is left standing.  Now, when the game starts, there is plenty of money to go around and everyone is happy and alive, but as it progresses and the funds are funneled to the inevitable winner, faces grow long, frustration mounts and eventually the games ends with the majority of players left unsatisfied, unhappy and broke.  In essence, if you haven’t gotten the jest of this example, when only one player holds all of the money, the money becomes useless and the game ends.  In light of this, I feel that saving money for the future is a double edged sword:  My paltry savings cannot sustain my family or myself, especially since money (paper, linen or whatever it’s printed on these days) is only worth what the agency or entity backing it deems it to be worth.  Supplies such as seed, a first aid kit, a Bug out Bag and other necessary items will always be worth their weight in gold.  As for CREDIT, why are there so many companies that have sprouted up to help people maintain their credit in good standing?  In short, the answer is, because they get paid to do so by companies that want to keep your cash flowing their way.  In a country, or world for that matter, where homelessness is on the rise as well as starvation, famine, and inadequate drinking water supplies, the last thing on so many people’s minds should be their credit:  It was credit that got them and the rest of us into this situation, but it will not be credit that will get us out of it.  Besides the harmful affects of credit, what exactly is it good for in a time, when banks aren’t lending to those with the highest credit scores and all that it can do is keep you in debt or put you in greater debt.

As money is funneled to the wealthiest Americans through ill-gotten gains on Wall Street, homes have lost 50 to 70%, but still carry pre-housing market collapse loan premiums, the dollar is becoming more useless by the day.  In a time when Big oil companies are still granted subsidies that they claimed they no longer needed 5 – 6 years ago, but poor individuals will have their heating assistance cut, America is a failing experiment in democracy.  When programs to promote education, provide the elderly with dignity in their golden years, ease the suffering of the poor are being eliminated to offset tax cuts for the rich, the prospects of this country, as perceived by its founding fathers, wane.  As rights of the individual are relegated to privileges for those who can afford to lobby for them, our way of life is threatened.  This is not a racial problem, because poverty and those things that accompany it do not discriminate.  This is not a religious matter, because Article VI of the Constitution of the United States clearly reads “but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”:  Politicians have simply made it about religion and they’re not really to blame, because we choose those who represent us.

This problem, the one that we all face regardless of wealth, race, religion or culture is a dilemma of common sense:  Our country, our world (by which I mean other countries) cannot survive with the strain we place on the resources that sustain us.  While the rich will outlive the poor, they too will eventually succumb to the lack of resources and the lack of man-power to provide such resources in a useful form.  Other than accumulating wealth, what can the rich do in a world without working individuals?  Their mansions will become gilded cages as they find the streets to unsafe and unappealing to venture out of their compounds.

America has always lead the world by example, but as of late, the examples have been to rig the 2012 elections in favor of the Republican party through voting legislation; de-fund education while privatizing prisons; diminish workers ability to bargain for fair wages, reasonable working hours and health care benefits; to provide tax cuts to the rich by taking money from the poor, elderly and school kids in hopes that they (the rich) will allow this money to trickle down to the working class:  Brilliant plan, by the way . . . If the plan is to make rich people richer.  The problem with this example is that there are plenty of similar examples throughout history that we should be examining to avoid our own downfall:  Even Rome collapsed under its own weight of expansion.

As pessimistic as this may all sound, I do believe that there is a way to avoid our own pending extinction, but we have to realize a few things first:  One, throughout history, there have been advancements made to make life easier (the ancients had robots http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbW_xKRBt_M, computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism and they built the pyramids).  Though this may sound crazy, look it up.  They did this thousands of years ago and all of their techniques were lost to humanity until recently (except for how the Egyptians built the pyramids . . . no one knows) due to wars and other natural disasters.  While we might only be able to mitigate the outcomes of natural disasters, we can avoid wars altogether.  Imagine if the inventor who designed that ancient computer had been able to share his knowledge with others and that knowledge was passed down through the centuries:  There would be no desktops, laptop or iPads, we would be well past those stages after the head start we would have gained from thousands of years computer development as opposed to the 60 or 70 years we currently have under our belts.  Imagine if we had gone with the electric car http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle, which was over-shadowed by Henry Ford’s ability to mass produce a car that utilized a combustion engine.  Imagine if we had followed California’s lead in the 1990s and demanded more zero-emission vehicles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39K36Rw7LYc.  One has to wonder why when, scientists were making the claim for climate change and even politicians were saying we needed to eliminate our dependence on oil, the laws demanding such vehicles were rescinded.  Could there have been entities, corporations, individuals out there who were putting profits ahead of practicality or necessity?  Were the thought processes that killed the electric car similar to those that lead to the housing market collapse and our current economic crisis?  Could rational, knowledgeable and logical individuals have foreseen the problems we’re currently facing?  Did rational, knowledgeable and logical individuals warn of the effects of impending manmade and natural disasters humanity now faces?  Although a definite answer is beyond the scope of this article, the answer to all of these questions is most likely, yes.  In light of this revelation, perhaps mankind better become more aware of its surroundings and those things that are draining the humanity from humans.

Despite my pessimism, I do believe that there is a way to avoid the cliff we are barreling towards, but said avoidance requires individuals to take note of what we are being told by our leaders and realize that there are motivating factors behind all that is said.  The next step would be to look at those factors and determine which are aligned with the advancement of mankind (at least which are more aligned with mankind’s advancement) and which are profit motivated.  For a starting point, go to http://im2opinionated.blogspot.com/ and look for next weeks posting.

t weeks posting.