Dear Friends:
A future (and the good news is that there will be one!) fraught with some very interesting, but frightful possibilities lies before us. If we fail to think about these possibilities, we are abdicating our "say" in our future. Put in more offensive terms, if we fail to act, we will invariably become the victims of someone else's actions.
In a recent post in TAKING COMMAND!, I briefly discussed some of these "unthinkable" possibilities. The article, in ful, follows.
The real issue facing every interactive Global Futurist is what can be done to a) stop some of these things from actually occurring? (i.e., a pre-emptive intervention), or, b) what can be done in the event that these things do come to pass, and we wish to navigate around them successfully.
THE FUTURE DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN - IT IS CREATED OUT OF THE PRESENT.
This premise imposes a greater responsibility upon any Global Futurist than mere prognostication. It imposes a burden of strategic intervention. This begs the question,"Do we predict the future, or do we make it?" My answer is frightful but honest: We do some of each.
Enjoy the article...
Dear Friends:One can and does, paradoxically, think about the "unthinkable". You have to visualize, at minimum, the terrors which you dare not venture to think about, and in so doing, you have given them the keys to the darkest corridors of your imagination. We often term things"unthinkable" simple because they are unconscionable, terrifying or of consquences that we are unprepared to contend with. Everything, de facto, is thinkable.
Let's exercise our ability to anticipate that which we should not dare to anticipate, discuss it (hypothetically, of course), and address it (either standing upright, or from under the bed).
Join me:
1. Giant computer service providers like Google and Yahoo (to name only two) have access to as much information about every individual computer user, credit card user, property owner, bank account holder, taxpayer, scofflaw, outlaw, porno-downloader, consumer and other person who has transacted something as seemingly inconsequential as filling up his or her gas tank or walking into a 7-11 for a Slurpee than the NSA does. And these companies not only have all of our identity information, but they have all of our passcodes. If they chose to, they could literally take over our identities and our entire lives -- we are at their mercy, and we trust them. The government relies upon them, utilizes their systems, and by simple logic, cannot police them -- nor would they be inclined to. We are in a naked society. We are, by a lack of vision and vigilance, targets. As with Samson and Delilah, persons or organizations comprised of persons will always use the power that they are given...it is Human Nature. It is only a matter of time.
2. Your credit rating, long regarded as so precious, so sacred and so crucial to a respectable existence, is a nostalgic farce. Credit card companies are aggressively cutting credit lines without adequate cause or notice, and leaving their cardholders with miniscule credit lines, sudden "overdrafts" and "over limit drafts," and are actually charging them fees, as they deprive them of credit and irreparably blemish the credit reports issued to the three major credit bureaus with unexplained reductions in credit lines, overdrafts and all other manner of default. Your credit rating, if you are like most people in the United states, will be destroyed. But take heart -- the financial institutions are not interested in extending credit to consumers anymore. You credit rating may well become as meaningless and as vestigial as the batting average of a pet shop owner. Remember Mr. Peebles? Magilla Gorilla has been repossessed.
3. The IRS, which is a contractor and not even a righteous government agency, is hell-bent on collecting money from an all-but-destitute society. They are, practically speaking, immune to due process, and charged with the responsiblity of feeding the government so that it may be fruitful and multiply (in size and deficit). They can assess you any tax which they feel "may be due," levy and lien any of your assets without contest, charge you usurious interest and fees on spuriously determined delinquent amounts. In fact, in a soon-to-be cashless society, they will be undoubtedly given the power to directly debit sums, as they judge appropriate, directly from your bank accounts (and the banks are actually an extension of the Executive Branch of government) -- if they are wrong (and they are wrong most of the time), you'll have to retain counsel to fight back...ironically, as your funds have already been depleted, you won't have the money required to retain a lawyer. Talk about irony! Going further, be advised that your cash will all have to be declared and banked before a critical date when paper currency is rendered illegal. This will make things easier for the DEA, the FBI, The Treasury Department, The Secret Service and all of the other agencies that are chartered to investigate, confiscate, eviscerate and incarcerate. We will be afforded the opportunity to commiserate. That will be our only "-ate".
4. Private enterprise will cease to exist as it becomes fused with the government. Any conventional employment will, in effect, be government work. Think of Huricane Katrina on a national level. The only "free enterprise" will be small and entrepreneurial. Genius and spontaneity will become increasingly persecuted, and often forced into hiding by a government and a social establishment in fear of being posed with "dangerous" questions which might lead to "revolutionary" actions.
5. That last sanctuary and sanctum of privacy, your cranial vault, will remain the last repository of original, "unthinkable" thought. The trouble which I foresee, is the most frightening thing that I have ever envisioned -- it may reach a point, within your own mind, when you have become so indoctrinated with "groupthink" and assumption that you are no longer able to determine which thoughts are genuinely your own, and which are deeply implanted through pervasive, invasive external influence.
Have a wonderful day.
Faithfully,
Douglas Castle
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