The Third World

The real division in this world is not based on skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or even nationality.  These divisions exist, they are real — but they are secondary consequences of a much deeper, much more intractable division that has existed for centuries and millennia.

This division is the division between rich and poor — between the haves, and the haves-not.

Between those with credit, and those with debt.

Between those who are the masters, and those who are the servants.

Between those with power, and those who are impotent.

As the currency is watered down, as people are left unemployed, as those already with money and power are sustained with the entire weight of the global economy, this eternal division is exposed with a naked glory unrivaled since the last great depression.

What is exposed, exactly?

What is exposed is the fact that the secondary divisions mentioned earlier — those alleged divisions based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality — are intentionally designed to distract and divide the mass of people who are in debt, who are servants of the system, who are impotent.

You see, the people must be kept divided so that they will never sit down with someone with whom they have a great deal in common — perhaps everything in common — but for the fact that one is white and the other is black, one is a Christian and the other a Muslim, one is a man and the other a woman, one sexually relates with women and the other with men, or that one is American and the other a Mexican.

What is exposed is the very wide gulf that exists between a small elite and the rest of the world.  Perhaps a group as small as 100,000 people worldwide (or even smaller) out of a global population of close to 7 billion reaps the benefits of global wealth:  the million dollar bonuses, the large tracts of land, the private jets, the expensive yachts, and so on.  Please, this is not a conspiracy theory, these people are not in any sort of fraternity.  They do not have any collective sense of who they are.  Each of them, however, is a winning recipient of the structure of the global order.

What is exposed is the failure of government to rule for the benefit of all.  Instead, governments all over the world appear to be making choices that will benefit this tiny group of people, to prop them up on the backs of billions of global tax-payers.  Increasingly, we will see a dying global economy throw more on the street, deprive the famished of food and the sick of affordable treatment.

Maybe twenty years ago, people used to speak of the great differences between the “First World” and the “Third World.”  The First World consisted of the United States and Europe.  The “Second World” were the communist countries.  The Third World were the countries that were endemically poor — countries in Africa, in Asia, in South America.

Now, and on account of globalization, wealth has spread around the world.  Even a poor country like India now sports billionaires.

But poverty, too, has spread with wealth.  Wealth was not created; it was simply transferred.

Indeed, the future we witness is a future where there is no division at all between the First and the Third Worlds.  Instead, the future we witness is a future where the entire world is the Third World.

This is a world where capital and corporations reach effortlessly across national boundaries, but where labor is confined to the stagnant and increasingly dehumanizing conditions wherever it is located.  It is a world where the global elite, from all countries, will share in the bounty of the entire world, while their servants toil and are taxed endlessly and without purpose. It is a world where government is unresponsive to the concerns of the common good and corrupted by the influence of monied interests.

This world will not be confined to Africa, to South America, or to Asia.  The Third World is this world.  It is our world.  And if we refuse to acknowledge this — and refuse to do something about this — then we give our tacit consent to the breakdown of all that is humane and decent in our society in exchange for some consumerist drivel, for some pharmaceutical-induced quiescence, for the false peace-of-mind that comes with being quiet and avoiding the trouble of speaking out.

Today, the illusions that inhere in our society are breaking down.  We believe, falsely, that anyone can become rich with perseverance, when the reality is that wealth is created and sustained with government intervention.  We believe, falsely, that the Democratic Party is different than the Republican Party, when the reality is that they are merely two heads of a larger corporate party, which favor the interests of different sets of elites against the common good.  We believe, falsely, that America is materially wealthy, when the reality is that decades of transferred wealth have left only wealth on paper.  America is decrepit; it is dying; and few are those who call attention to this truth or who genuinely seek to rejuvenate a once great nation.

The journey of our economies and our political institutions is at a cross roads, and no one can predict what comes next.  But this much is certain:  save your money; ignore the stock market; and turn off the corporate news because you know all that you need to know.  Trust your intuition, and prepare for the ride ahead.  Make time for your friends and family, for they are the only true wealth, in times of depression or in times of plenty.

The houses we build in our lifetime are built on a foundation of sand, such that a strong wind can knock them over through no fault of our own.  But we start to become responsible when we recognize the problems, but do nothing to change our behavior. And here is the biggest problem of them all:  our refusal to acknowledge that our societies and civilizations tolerate and even celebrate the rich at the expense of the poor, the haves at the expense of the have-nots.  So, stop hating the black man or the gay man or the Mexican or whoever it is that the corporate media wants you to hate.  It is time to recognize that, regardless of the superficialities that divide us, we are all slaves in Pharaoh’s field; and we will be kept there unless we decide we are better than that.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Alternative Living, Government Accountability, Imperial Decline, Social Alienation, Structure and System and tagged with poverty, rich versus poor, the economy, the third world. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.