If you examine closely the image that accompanies the New York Times article below you will see many elements of unsustainability. If you read the words that accompany it you will be forced to acknowledge that we are in deep trouble. It is not terminal but it is not served by articles like these. I could summon a majority by uniting all who are scared of the degree to which American society is wedded to debt. Individual debt is what our president might call a disaster. The national debt is unimaginable, a bit like death.
That's just the start
Consider that beyond debt, which is practically proof of our unsustainability, there is the economy represented by the Times article, in which most all Americans play a part.
It is ravaged by drug use and in addition to the addictive ones I refer to the abdication of face-to-face help that once had a toe-hold but is now replaced by pharma-therapy.
Treating mental problems with drugs is about as personal as suggesting a conversation with a lamppost in the dark. We should have millions of people working at this. Now we have a shrinking group with the wisdom to be helpful Face To Face.
Polarization and segregation
To debt and drug-use add the politically charged reality of economic polarization which makes positing a future for the disadvantaged almost an invitation to servitude. Every penny must go to a future which is not that certain.
Add to this the reality that underlies our economy for the most part.
It is called segregation. It is easily accomplished. Think of gerrymandering to the fourth or fifth power and you have almost the intuitive shape of our separate enclaves, the places we have to go back to. More and more people would like to be able to choose diversity.
The Trump effect
We have a president who won a national campaign by saying that black people are different than white folk.
All he had to do is point to the fellow in the White House which he did with impunity. The result was that people who thought the Civil War was over got a new lease on life.
Now we face the world on the verge of acting out conflicts which have been reignited by a man who was happier before he won the election but now gets off on trying to achieve greatness with a pen that rolls back the ecological and health agenda of the man he said was born in Kenya,
How to Buy a New Home When You Don’t Have a Lot of Cash https://t.co/NdwnAyUcQR
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) May 21, 2017
The lonesome building above is the American dream sitting on a pile of dirt, the apotheosis of our city planning.
Beyond sprawl
Cybercommunitiesis a name for a chance to breathe when confronted with the dismal picture I have been drawing. Cybercommunities are an attempt to think beyond debt, sprawl, drugs and segregation. It is a way for people to actually choose a future without believing they must go through the hoops that the one percent and Mr. Trump are trying every day to perpetuate. They will continue to be the subject of articles and a reason for celebrating the integral over today's emphasis on division and binary solutions.
