Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [126]
In the decades since, these liberations, reactions, experimentations and innovations were absorbed/co-opted by a still vibrant Status Quo. The basic model of American Neoliberal capitalism/hard-and-soft-power global Empire continued unhindered to an unexpected total victory in the Cold War as the Soviet Empire imploded--largely because its repressive regime had fatally suppressed the broad spectrum of cultural freedoms and explorations which resulted in vast technological innovations.
Now we find ourselves in a similar era in which official State policy is based on a carefully constructed web of lies, deceptions, statistical legerdemain and transparent propaganda. Those caught up in the artifice of "partisan politics" each blame the other party for this dependence on lies and deception, but the truth is the entire system is now totally dependent on lies, prevarications, deceptions and shameless propaganda.
As a result, belief in the system is once again fading.
Where the 1960s and early 70s were an era of widespread prosperity--an era which ended in 1973 with the oil embargo and the stagnation of wages and productivity--now we are starting an era of widespread impoverishment.
Nonetheless, the mechanism of liberation from the failed policies of a corrupt, over-reaching State/Plutocracy and the constraints of a "phony" Status Quo dependent on lies, fraud and deception may will be very similar.
In a way, the great promise of the explorations, experiments and innovations of the 1960s and 70s was never fully realized, for the resurgence of a simulacrum "prosperity" built on exponential growth of credit and debt which began in 1981 short-circuited any fundamental transformation of the status quo. The true prosperity of the postwar era which ended in 1973 was replaced by a simulacrum prosperity of rising income disparity and reliance on ever-expanding credit and debt. Now that false "prosperity" has imploded, we are entering a transformation of unprecedented depth and consequence.
Seen in this light, we are finally facing the unfinished business of the postwar era: the construction of a sustainable prosperity measured by completely different metrics: those of full spectrum prosperity.
Let the experimentation, exploration, innovation and liberation from failed models begin.
Key concepts in this chapter:
The paradox of energy cost/supply
Full spectrum prosperity
Chapter Eighteen: The Structure of Happiness
Now that the credit/debt-based simulacrum of prosperity has imploded, so too has the consumption-fantasy simulacrum of happiness.
Just as a capitalism founded on production and risk/return has been undermined by a crony-capitalism simulacrum and governance has been replaced by self-aggrandizement, looting and pandering, so too has an experience-based understanding of happiness been reduced to a threadbare simulacrum of shopping, buying, consuming and owning.
If happiness requires a full-employment, credit-dependent, high-cost, fossil-fuel dependent, consumption-based economy that is no longer sustainable, then clearly there will be a corresponding increase in unhappiness as the U.S. economy devolves.
Rather than throw trillions of dollars away in a futile attempt to rekindle a bubble/credit/crony capitalism which has run its course, perhaps it would be wiser (as well as much cheaper) to unburden ourselves of this equally doomed definition of happiness in favor of a sustainable, healthier understanding of well-being: what I term full spectrum prosperity.
Full spectrum prosperity is simply the recognition that "real wealth" cannot be measured by the size of one's home or range of possessions but