In the last week I've written posts called Flatland Douchebags and It's Official, The United States Has Turned To Shit. I assume you agree with this view or are sympathetic to it. Otherwise, you wouldn't be reading here.

So there's not a lot more to do along those lines and there's no need to repeat myself.

Let's get a little more abstract.

The Flatland model, by definition, says that humans are run by unconscious motivations. In so far as those motivations are hidden from them, broadly speaking, humans don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it. As I said in the first essay, humans are whistling in the dark.

That model makes broad albeit vague predictions about the future. Populations will grow, the human footprint will expand, there will be more environmental destruction, hierarchies are inescapable, etc. That's the dark side, but there is a darker side, at least on shorter time scales.

If humans are whistling in the dark, Flatland also says that sociopolitical arrangements are inherently unstable. That is not to say that these arrangements might simply collapse at any moment. Instead, it means that there is always the possibility, however remote it might seem in "normal" times, that seemingly harmonious arrangements will transmogrify into something in accord with the baser aspects of human nature.

The United States today and for the last 40 years is a case in point.