Wisdom ID Who's Failing? Reality Check Other Ways Insights False Idols Conclusions Background

Dominant Failures, Hidden Successes

Perceived Problems, Attempted Solutions

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European society, also known as Western Civilization, dominates Europe, North and South America, and Australia, and European cultures maintain military, technological and economic dominance over Africa and much of Asia and the Pacific. Even China, the "Asian powerhouse", relies on science, technology, and other cultural paradigms developed in Europe and the U.S. But as noted above, the conventional priorities and behaviors of dominant societies, including those of our peer groups and subcultures, are failing. This is what we'll be investigating in the following pages: both what we say and what we do.
Roles & Priorities We Acknowledge in Public Discourse

In our society, each of us is part of a peer group or subculture sharing particular priorities or values. Most of us play different roles in different activities, and change roles as we age, for example from children to young adults, to parents, and eventually to retirees.

Politically, we may consider ourselves liberals or conservatives. Religion may also define us, as does our career.

Finally, we all share fundamental concerns such as health and happiness.

Behaviors We Demonstrate

For each role we play in society, we adopt behaviors that are accepted by our peer group in our attempt to achieve our priorities, for example: following the news and voting for candidates who share our political priorities, or buying on credit to achieve our lifestyle priorities.

Challenges & Failures We Acknowledge in Public Discourse

However, we are all aware of uncountable challenges, some of them very serious, facing some of us as individuals and all of us as a society. These problems indicate that the conventional priorities and behaviors of our society, including those of our peer groups and subcultures, are failing.

This is what we'll be investigating in the following pages.

Parents

Liberals

Christian Conservatives

Scientists & Environmentalists

Young Professionals

Technologists

All

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Role Priorities Behaviors Challenges

Parents

Individual:

  • Career success

Family:

  • Infant survival
  • Kids' health & success
  • Supportive relationship
  • Comfortable home & secure neighborhood
  • Secure retirement

Parents' career: ambition, competition, commuting, working overtime, 2 incomes, mobility

Kids' education: private or charter school, college

Family lifestyle: consumerism, consumption & credit

Parents' retirement: savings & investments

Parents' careers: stress, rootlessness & estrangement

Kids' care & education: high cost, debt, academic competition & failure, bullying & school violence, health issues

Parents' retirement: isolation & loss of autonomy & dignity in retirement communities & nursing homes

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Role Priorities Behaviors Challenges

Liberals

Society:

  • Democratic government
  • Liberal education
  • Equal & adequate healthcare
  • Economic equality
  • Social justice
  • Tolerance
  • Peace

Liberal education

Voting for reform

Political activism for reform

Legislation, e.g. gun control

Extreme inequality

Wealth-based political power

Poverty & homelessness

Capital punishment

Healthcare inequality

Dysfunctional communities

Political corruption & failures

Racism & intolerance

Conservatism

Superstition

Slavery & oppression

Military-Industrial complex, proliferation & stockpiles of conventional, nuclear, chemical & biological weapons of mass destruction
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Role Priorities Behaviors Challenges

Christian Conservatives

Individual:

  • Personal freedom

Family:

  • Strong church

Society:

  • Free enterprise
  • Traditional values & morality

Conservative education

Voting

Political activism

Church attendance, prayer & faith

Self-defense & survivalism

Big government

Dysfunctional communities

Political corruption & failures

Immigration

Gun control

Liberalism

Secularism

Sin & immorality: Abortion, Gay Marriage, Pedophilia
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Role Priorities Behaviors Challenges

Scientists & Environmentalists

Society:

  • Science & reason
  • Healthy human environments

Nature:

  • Data (never enough)
  • Healthy natural habitats
  • Biological & ecological diversity

Technological innovation

Exploration

Research & hypothesizing

Education

Political activism

Conservation & restoration

Buying and using "sustainable" technologies

Buying organic, buying local, urban farming, etc.

Recycling

Insufficient funding

Climate change

Mass extinctions

Habitat loss

Loss of biological diversity

Political corruption & failures

New technologies with unknown long-term effects

Nuclear waste & stockpiles of conventional, nuclear, chemical & biological weapons of mass destruction
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Role Priorities Behaviors Challenges

Young Professionals

Individual:

  • Maximum income
  • Rewarding career
  • Fashion
  • Fun & adventure

Work hard

Ambition & competition

Consumerism, consumption & credit

Play hard

Debt & student loans

Economic instability: bubbles, recessions, inflation
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Role Priorities Behaviors Challenges

Technologists

Individual:

  • Challenging problems
  • Profit

Society:

  • Power over nature, convenience, mobility, speed, productivity & efficiency
  • Human comfort
  • Human health, safety, infant survival & longevity
  • Domination of other humans

Tech innovation (Mobile apps, Google X, robotics, life extension, space travel, etc.)

Hard work

Competition

Tech education

Talent competition

Market competition

Market volatility & capital availability

Technological competition, failure & obsolescence

Privacy issues

Social & political backlash, regulation
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Role Priorities Behaviors Challenges

All

Individual:

  • Comfort & convenience
  • Happiness
  • Pleasure
  • Personal freedom
  • Wealth & financial security
  • Health
  • Safety
  • Companionship
  • Sex
  • Longevity

Society:

  • Economic growth
  • Political stability & domestic security

Work

Competition

Consumerism, consumption & credit

Video games, sports media & entertainment media

Health insurance

Investment

Smart phones, mobile apps, social media, traditional media, news media

Voting & political activism

Medical research

Technological innovation

Legal system

Coercive enforcement of law & order: police, military

Justice: trials, retribution & punishment, separation & confinement (prisons)

Revolution

Stress disorders, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, depression, deteriorating health & fitness, diabetes, immune disorders, obesity, cancer, heart disease

Resistant bugs, global epidemics

Drug addiction, drug trafficking, war on drugs

High cost of healthcare

Struggling middle class

Cost of living, gas prices, inflation

Economic instability: bubbles, recessions, inflation

Loss of privacy, identity theft, government secrecy & lies

National debt, crumbling infrastructure

Polarizing media

Ongoing pollution & environmental disasters, including nuclear accidents

Climate change & natural disasters (drought, wildfire, flood, earthquake, tsunami)

Depletion of natural resources (fossil fuels, water, etc.)

Terrorism & mass killings

Invasion, civil war, war, failed states
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