Do you ever feel like Doomsday is coming? It's hard not to think it is this day in age. When everything is so crazy and the world seems to be in an uproar. Individual country’s economies are crashing and it's seems as if there is no hope for humanity. But the question is has humanity always been facing the Doomsday scenario?
The Revolving Door
It seems like society is failing all around us but this may not be the case. Maybe it's possible that the world appears to be going to hell in a handbasket all the time. For instance, there has been a lot of shootings happening between police and innocent bystanders. Yet this has always been the case with these types of monopolistic forces, and you can trace these crimes way back as far as history can recount.
Right now in Venezuela, there are bread lines and their economic situation is horrible. But in the past during the “Great Depression” bread lines and defunct markets existed then too. So did the ignorance, the statism, the racism, the class wars and so on and so forth. All of these things existed in the past and seemed just as crazy as today. Get it?
I hate to sound like your parents but they were right. In a lot of ways it was just as hard for them as it was for you to envision a brighter tomorrow with the world’s chaos surrounding them. Except over time we could say things have evolved. And this is why thinking about the situation in a different light may be more appealing. By being fairly optimistic that things will be ok might surprise you.
“A new day will dawn for those who stand long, and the forests will echo with laughter...If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now, it's just a spring clean for the May queen, yes, there are two paths you can go by but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on”— Stairway to Heaven
Code
The creation of the Internet and open source code has changed our lives. We can see this with concepts like social media, BitTorrent, Bitcoin and concepts that are changing the world in a whole new way. Through technology we are able to transmit wealth and knowledge in a matter of seconds to anyone in the world. This evolution is continuing and will be changing history for the better.
Open source and true peer-to-peer applications have always prospered society in the past and as we approach the future. The decentralized world is bringing forth a new era of societal communication whereas the innovations are evolving away from the craziness of the revolving door stated above. Because of this the nation states could be dead in a matter of years. Representative governance is slowly withering away and peer-to-peer tools are taking us to the next level of consensus.
Software is written in code. Just as life is written in these same types of languages. Most of us act nice to someone and don't steal their stuff because we live by principle and code. Over the past decade and a half we've created a symbiotic relationship with technology that is bringing about extreme change. And this paradigm shift is quite an incredible sight to observe.
Coded concepts like the worldwide web has enabled us to deliver information about corrupt activities the ruling class takes part in. The creation of Bitcoin has enlightened us on how to create our own wealth without being tethered to the sovereign fiat money the status quo prints on a whim. With these innovations in time the nation states will suffer defeat and just as chattel slavery has come close to ending, tax slavery and debt farming is also on the way out the door. All of this is due to code.
“Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions. Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures. And just as a seemingly minor invention like barbed wire made possible the fencing-off of vast ranches and farms, thus altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the frontier West, so too will the seemingly minor discovery out of an arcane branch of mathematics come to be the wire clippers which dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property. Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!”— Timothy May, Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto
Welcome to the Thunderdome
There are still people bent on believing the state of society is headed towards a world much like Mad Max would live in. A globe filled with chaos and modified battle vehicles roaming the earth. Lots of people embrace this vision when they think about an anarchic society founded without the small fraction of sociopathic rulers. They continue to think it will all go to shit if we don't have bureaucrats.
“The system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it." — Morpheus
However in contrast to this type of thinking, I believe because of our optimistic gravitation towards a voluntary society through the use of innovative technology we will are laying the framework for a better tomorrow. It's not going to be easy for society to embrace this mentality because there are a lot of weak minds broken by the thought that they need some sort of governance. Like children they are dependent on the nation state's ruling class and the handouts they give. But when the bureaucrat’s system fails they will have a rude awakening with reality slapping them in the face. Yet instead of falling back on the system that has failed them they will rely on the framework built by the visionary leaders of a voluntary tomorrow.
Mad Max land will continue to be just a movie from the past and society in my opinion will not fall into this behavioral pattern of chaos. Because the initial architecture is being built by those who believe there can be a better tomorrow the Doomsday scenarios can be kept on the shelf and in the imaginations of movie directors. The yin and yang of the world will most likely always continue and the revolving door of global chaos may seem imminent in the future just as it is today. But people who are putting forth progressive efforts to overcome these failing systems are not giving up so easy and they will provide a white light in the darkness of the world. I believe Doomsday will not come to pass and code will show us the way and the only people headed for the Thunderdome are the psychopathic groups of so-called rulers. They will be the ones who face apocalyptic demise.
References: Led Zeppelin Albums Played Backwards, Timothy May's Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto, and Mad Max and the Thunderdome