Name: Culture in Decline | Episode #5 "Baby Go Boom!" by Peter Joseph
Uploaded: 2017-08-09T12:56:03.000Z
Duration: 32 min 4 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

At 2:50 pm, more than half the runners were through.

they've broken up an Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist attack

that was aimed to disrupt a major North American transportation route.

For the first time, the mysterious and secretive nation

has threatened a preemptive nuclear strike against the US.

In Europe, Spain is also feeling the economic pinch.

One in four are now currently unemployed in that country,

and the EU expects that number to climb even higher.

China and neighboring countries are mobilizing resources

Hospitals in a race against time to contain nightmare super bacteria

before it spreads from the hospital out into the world.

there seems to be a lot to be concerned about.

Nuclear war, terrorism, mass shootings, city bombings,

corporate fraud, bird flu, bank failures, unemployment,

and depending on your temperament and conditioning,

perhaps you've already armed yourself to the teeth

and are watching this show from an underground bunker somewhere

waiting for the end of civilization itself.

Whatever the concern, the idea of protection or security from such woes

Prisons, police, insurance, warranties, protection agencies,

military and domestic armament, airport groping, government surveillance, etc.

reveal a culture of fear, if you will, on many levels,

of such security risks are certainly fascinating.

For example, before the 1980s, the thought of someone

going into their workplace and wiping out a couple of people

Today we repeatedly see these acts of seemingly random violence,

not only in businesses but in schools, churches, movie theaters,

malls, sporting events and other common institutions.

As unfortunate as this dark reality of our human capacity is,

as the archaic methods we as a civilization have concocted

For instance, in the wake of growing US gun violence,

the National Rifle Association will tell you that the problem

is a lack of armed security at every turn,

and if only we'd just arm everybody like the Wild West,

problems of social violence would subside.

While at the other extreme, folks will tell you that the problem is rather

due to an ease of access: it's too simple to get weaponry,

and the removal of this easy access is now the correct path.

However, do either of these address the real issue,

the source of the behavioral problem at hand?

Where is the national discussion about, say, motivation

and the sociological condition itself to which these acts erupt?

I point this out because in a technological age

where people can now print automatic weapons in secret,

with home 3D printers paving the way for an eventual nanotech revolution

that will enable the public to create powerful weapons at home,

perhaps we need to rethink our sense of causality here.

For unless you intend to outlaw scientific progress itself,

regulation isn't going to amount to a damn thing in the long run.

Likewise, come to think of it, maybe we also need to step back

and reframe what a viable threat to our safety really is

bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon in the United States

killing 3 people, gaining global attention

bombs exploded killing 20 times as many people,

yet no one in the mainstream media seemed to care much about that.

You see, if you pay attention, you might notice

that the true quantifiable magnitude of a threat

really doesn't mean much in the establishment perception.

It's the idea, the context, the political spectacle that matters.

This might explain why America has spent almost five trillion dollars

on so-called terrorism, when US citizens today

(and statistically always) have been more likely to die of a peanut allergy

or in the bathtub than in a terrorist attack.

As the following episode will argue, the security/fear industry

stretching from the ever-exploitative news media to the military-industrial complex,

to the criminal justice system, not only exploits sociological distortion

birthed out of the very fabric of our deprivation, scarcity-driven social order,

it now appears to be accelerating in a vicious cycle.

I don't know about you, but given all of this

I'm beginning to suspect that maybe, just maybe

the very foundation of our socioeconomic system is in play here,

no longer existing as a functional mode for human progress on this planet,

but rather as a conduit for a culture in decline.

Prison: from the dark dungeons of the Middle Ages

to our modern industrial mass incarceration correctional facilities,

the prison system is a signature edifice of society today.

now has the highest inmate population in the world,

The US has locked up more people than any other country on the planet,

boastfully housing 25% of the entire world's prison population,

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Culture in Decline | Episode #5 "Baby Go Boom!" by Peter Joseph

relevant

massive

context

deprivation