Only Suckers Play by the Rules--How the West Unwound.

If you don’t know the rules of the game you should not play. 

If you were playing the game and the rules were changed while you were unaware, you are likely to lose, you will become a sucker.

In a way, that is what has happened to most folks in the developed countries. At one point in time the rules for successful livelihood and inter societal satisfaction rested on a few well known and well supported rules of engagement. It was by and large a wholesome game in which most were well invested and franchised. Officiating worked and game results were well come by.

The social contract was easy to understand and comprehend and the majority played the living game with a fair modicum of satisfaction and success. In a few words the environment supported ethical behaviour, reward for effort and provided support for taking a risk. The unethical were penalised, the shiftless scorned and the timid still found a place to be, while the entrepreneurial often excelled.

In essence, doing it right and playing the game most often found satisfaction and correct recompense, the rules for achieving this seldom wavered, there are always exceptions, but by and large an individual could launch… then achieve acceptable altitude within social standing.

The thriving was reliant on an understood platform designed to foster personal self-satisfaction and sufficiency. These core values had meaning and were protected and preserved within both a constitution and a tangible social contract.

But that was then… and this is now!

Like a mirage the acceptable faded to opaque then inexplicably disappeared entirely.

There is much written about why today is different, there are oodles and oodles of social scientists and analytical pundits who generate reams and reams about how folks have gone wrong and how people have upset the equilibrium of socioeconomic balance by their attitude and about how the drive of self-respect and pride has diminished and how striving is a thing of the past.

Those things well might be… but cutting to the chase, it is not about the citizens or their diminished capacities… it is about the unconscionable rule changes performed in secret without their knowledge, a literal tipping of the table designed to impede the honest game players to the advantage of the dishonest elitist players.

In a nutshell the umpire, referee and game officials succumbed to corruption. The impartial have been rewarded for being partial, even while remaining on the payroll of the honest players.

Everything negative or unacceptable you see or experience today… is a direct result of honest players, playing without the benefit of the rules they endorsed, accepted and committed to.

Under today’s circumstances it is not hard to imagine who is destined to win or lose the game, it is also not difficult to see the confusion and disappointment of uninformed players as they become overwhelmed by the lack of officiating on their behalf.

What we do see is enormous reward for the few who have the game officials in their pocket.

Formally, education helped folks to succeed, thriving industries provided opportunity, good governance kept things fair and equitable, justice supported fair legislation, good sense ensured viable community, citizens embraced their lot and prepared future citizens with expectations, based on preexisting social mores, for a while it was an enviable model.

The fire triangle is a simple rule for preventing unwanted combustion, combustion requires all three things to enable it, an ignition source, fuel and oxygen. If any one of these three is removed, combustion is prevented.

A healthy socioeconomic model is not much different, if enough of the required elements are inaccessible, removed or made difficult to use then certainly socioeconomic well-being collapses. Knowing this society provisioned for sustainable game conditions. It is why we instituted governance and civil servants, their only mission and purpose is to keep all the required elements in working order and readily available to those who instituted and funded them.

There is only one question really, “Have public service practitioners fulfilled their obligations? Your answer may reflect which end of the tipped table you occupy.

I will not resort to micro reviewing the complex bigger picture, it takes away from the fundamental and prime issue.

The system is entirely dysfunctional, the rules have been mysteriously changed, agendas have been perverted, game officials are compromised and have no intrinsic value… which leaves constituents with a very big decision to make, tolerate or reject.

Fixing is entirely out of the question, the machinery is vast and all components failed. Even the backyard mechanic would get this one right–replace it.

Currently we are at the “tolerate” stage, it might be this will be our new constant. 

Each region has a personality not unlike a person does, reaction to broken trust can go several ways as daily headlines proclaim. For some, “get ‘er done!” fills the bill… while for others it is a case of suffer and accept.

Trusting Strangers with Your Life!–Victim Betrayed?

If nothing else–we at least know the cause of our demise… I am starting to see more and more like this;

Decline and fall: how American society unravelled

Thirty years ago, the old deal that held US society together started to unwind, with social cohesion sacrificed to greed. Was it an inevitable process – or was it engineered by self-interested elites?

The man asks a cogent question…

Once the social contract is shredded, once the deal is off, only suckers still play by the “original” rules. Have you been played?

But we must remember, nature abhors a vacuum

Stay tuned…