For the past 50 years, we’ve been at battle with ourselves. Following the post-World War II boom leading into the 1960s, America was experiencing its first enlightenment before it put on the brakes to examine what had happened. Out of the civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, environmental, and hippy movements, there came a trigger that apparently alienated those who were riding the wealth catapult and had the ruling class recoil at the social changes that came with these structural changes to society. So, a type of war was silently declared against the rising intellect of the masses.

A large part of society would start being nudged toward mediocrity starting in the early 1970s, and there was little clue as to just how many were on their way to being on the losing end of financial advancement. At the same time, those who were benefiting from the emergent global economy continued to benefit right up through today. With the upper class and their wealth came creeping avarice and maybe fear that the populace would learn of the imbalance. Promoting fear among the masses instead of spreading a vision of the future worked: people cowered, afraid they might lose the little they had. Sadly, the growing majority is now nearly powerless to change this equation as they cannot fathom the complexity of tools that have been used against them.  All that’s left for the powerful is to lift these masses onto the shoulders of nationalism, rewarding them through patriotism for their loyalty to jargon and jingoism, and finally pushing the lemmings off the cliff of civil war.

Let’s rewind the clock about 700 years to the 14th century when a class of royalty relied on and exploited the uneducated masses in Europe while fighting endless wars at the expense of the survivors of endless plagues. Then, in the early 15th century, the Renaissance kicked into high gear, and then moveable type and the printing press forever changed the distribution of knowledge. Those advancements would need to simmer for another 300 years before the Enlightenment would take hold. Now, after 250 years of progress, we find ourselves replete with all of the tools, capital, and ability to take a quantum leap forward in intellectual and planetary stewardship, but we are flailing about like infants.

Leadership is not fulfilling its role, as greed and fear are rife throughout society. On one hand, you have those afraid of losing their privilege and having to face change, while on the other side, a vast majority do not know how to deal with change either, so we are doing nothing. I suppose this requires me to point out that America hasn’t failed to introduce great change upon the entirety of humanity, but a lot of what has been introduced has been delivered by a relatively small percentage of our population and, in many ways, has bypassed the majority of our population who should be reaping the rewards of progress.