...With A New Understanding Of Just How Deeply In Trouble We Are All In Now.

And to do that we must understand a very important new fact:

We are all Submariners now, whether we want to be or not.

So what do I mean by being "Submariners?"

When you think about it all you are are really talking about is the basic fact of living, and working, in a pressurized, hazardous environment. All the while being incredibly dependent on a vast array of very tightly integrated systems, to keep the living, operational functionality of the whole, going. Whatever that living, supposedly functional, operation may be.

In the future, most of humanity will be forced to live in exactly that kind of environment; the only difference will be on which side of the the pressure barrier the pressure you are concerned with resides (not forgetting for a moment that "pressure" can also come from our own, supposedly social, environments). That and the fact that, out in space, whether on a habitat station, a moon, or a new planet, the other physical hazards multiply considerably.

More basic to our problems now, however, is the lack of appreciation for just how much our own planet is becoming equally hazardous to us; mostly, of course, because of our own frailties are the true root of all evil; and that because it is only our ability to rise above those frailties that gives us those rare opportunities to do things in greater correspondence to what we try to aspire to.

Now we face the harsh realities of choices made, within a system that might have made sense once, back when things were a great deal more simple, but it was created by rational men who mistakenly thought that people would always act rationally; at least if presented with an operating system, that I am sure they felt quite strongly, was based on rational thought.

Well... as it turns out, sometimes we can be rational, and a lot of other times we are not (you only need think of our problem with "How Much Is Enough," to have an example of this). We are not especially when one feature, of the "rational system," not only allows for, but actively encourages, self advancement through doing things faster, and more effectively, before some one else does; so much so, in fact, that "doing whatever it takes" to achieve your ends becomes a watch phrase; in all aspects of getting, and then selling, what you have to offer, over what the "competition" has to offer.

That being said, we now have, after decades of too many "entrepreneurs" not even thinking about long term affects, let alone being able to price such concerns into a sales worthy product, even if you had the broader perspective of holistic systems thinking, a truly hazardous living environment as a result. And whether those hazards are radiation oriented, or chemical spill oriented, or bad gases escaping (or not) oriented, or ever more chronic, catastrophic weather conditions; or even new found biological hazards, that either came into being naturally, or came into being from our own, greed fueled, exploitation of biology; even under all of that it hardly matters at all.

What does matter is that we realize that, for any kind of working life to go on, the organizational methodology utilized must become more like life lived as people colonizing a planet for the first time. And for that, certainly, you need all sorts of new ways of doing mundane things outside of protective living barriers; just like astronauts, or deep diving aquanauts; which means not only rethinking what work is in the first place, but what all sorts of "normal" apparel might look like, that would still look good, be practical in both comfort, and ease of use, as well as easily mass produced. All in a system that moves us away from thinking in terms of abstract "costs," and puts it instead into how we organize effort. In how we equitably arrange for the material needs of everybody's required "inputs," and needed "outputs."

Which is no more than to say systems integration on both a human needs, and a practical requirements, in a new kind of dynamic balancing act. One where we working people would all participate directly, in not only the owning of, but also the governance, of a newly formed Federation; a Federation of more independent City Sates.

The bottom line to be clear on here is this. No matter how impossibly difficult you might think negotiating all of this out might be, I can assure you, without any hesitation at all, that the alternative we have racing towards us will be incomparably worse.

The Corporate Right Is Giving Us Two Choices: Go Back to Work, or Starve