A blogger in TRE recommended the Four Horsemen as a good
documentary to watch. The producer Ross Ashcroft gave an analysis on the rise
of civilisation and the falls of empires. It is the last stage in the decline
of empires, the Age of Decadence, particularly in the USA
that is most relevant to what is happening here. Why not when we are just a
small replica of the American system, borrowing and copying everything American
to the T? And if America
is failing, the symptoms appearing there will also be here in a graduated
scale.
The rise of an empire coincidentally dealt with a familiar
subject called pioneers. It all began with the pioneers digging the road and
paving the way for a brighter future for those that came after them. It then
went through the ages of conquest, commerce, affluence, intellectual pursuit
and, just before it came to an end, the age of decadence described as bread and
circus.
The prominent features of the onset of decadence are as
follows:
- An undisciplined over size military that is over extending itself. This is self explanatory in what we are doing today and how cocky we have become.
- Conspicuous display of wealth. We have seen many Ferraris and Lamborghinis and French mansions around us like the Antons and the Michaels.
- Disparity in wealth or a big income gap. No need to elaborate when the wealth of the nation concentrates in the hands of a few families and the high incomes of top people in number of times over the low level workers are there for all to see. The people benefiting from it will tell the daft workers it is the hard truth, can’t be helped.
- A bloated govt or over size govt. No need to explain on this, big in numbers and big in salary.
- An obsession with sex. Funny that we have so many court cases about sex recently.
- Debasement of currency. We used to be able to buy a semi D for $40k but now it needs $3m to $4m to get one. We could get a 5 rm HDB flat for less than $30k but we need $500k or more to get one today. The value of our money has gone bananas.
There are many other features of a decadent state like
apathy, amoralism, no one cares a damn. Think
Hong Lim Park
when several very important issues were raised but hardly anyone bothered to
attend. And housing prices kept spiralling and people said it is good. Ashcroft
described it as the squandering of a generation of its inheritance. I wonder
what he meant and how relevant it is in the City of Sin.
One interesting comment by Ashcroft that I feel very strange and astonishing,
is the glorifications of chefs in the society. Are we also glorifying our chefs
too?
The Americans got rid of the Glass Steagall Act to allow the
banks to do as they liked, creating money and gambling in a way that put the
casinos to shame. And this is facilitated by the call for deregulations and
they did, leading to the financial disaster of 2008 and the massive bailout of
the banks that were too big to fall to the tune of U$8.5 trillion. This was
several times the amount used to reconstruct Europe
after WW2.
The decadence continues unabated after the bailout and the
banking and finance bandits dug in even deeper and waiting for the big bang to
come. The banks continue to gamble and cheat their clients while the stock
exchange was designed for the computer traders to cheat the innocent and
hapless investors. Crimes of such nature that are blatantly flouted like in a
state of lawlessness by the bankers and the crooks in the financial system
without anyone thinking that they were wrong, crimes sanctioned by the states
and with the regulators assisting the criminals to become more efficient and
bold in the plundering. They don’t even know that these acts were criminal,
they did not want to know.
Ashcroft said, ‘When plunder becomes a way of life for a
group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the
course of time a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that
glorifies it’.
How far or how deep are we in this state of decadence? All
the features of a state of decadence described by Ashcroft are apparent and
here with us.
What is next after the state of decadence?
Here is the link to the Four Horsemen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU&feature=youtu.be. A good 90 minute documentary.
Kopi Level - Green