FUTURE SHOCK: THE FOURTH WAVE

 FUTURE SHOCK: THE FOURTH WAVE.

As a child, I was encouraged to read. It started with comic books. Mostly, it was superheroes and Archie comics.

My parents were avid newspaper readers. I enjoyed reading the sports page. Soon my favorite thing was looking at the statistics of players and teams and learning not only what the numbers were about, but learning how they arrived at those numbers. Soon "PCT .500" went from being something incoherent and meaningless to meaning that a team had won half of their games.

At about 13, I graduated from comics to novels and then non-fiction. That's when I came across a book called "FUTURE SHOCK". Being a young teen busy with the business of being a young teen, I added the narrative to my knowledge base and sequestered it to a corner if my mind.

Recent events in our society have caused the memories of that book to resurface. So I read some articles on that book and found out that the book is part of a series of books on change and how people deal with change.

The first changes that people had to cope with were "the fist wave" - the change from a nomadic existence to civilization based on agriculture and animal husbandry.

The second wave is the change from an agrarian and craftsman society to an industrial society. 

The third wave was the post-industrial era and the growth of the services sector and the expansion of the Information Age.

Each successive wave brought about its own promises, successes, failures, unrest, and population migrations.

I think we're in a fourth wave. A wave birthed by the Information Age where the traditionally second class citizens can now network. Individuals no longer feel isolated in their interests or views. Social media allows people to seek each other out and join forces to initiate change. 

By "second class citizens" I mean women, racial and cultural minorities and the ever maligned LGBTQ communities.

These communities are now rising up and demanding equality.

Despite living in the "land of the free and the home of the brave", America was never really aboit freedom. The only "free" people were the wealthy land owners. Their idea of freedom was limiting the number of people who could vote and ownership of human beings. 

Americans are a conformist lot. Any change is seen as a threat. It's as though change has to be gradual and unannounced in order for it to be accepted. Any such change has to be for the benefit white men only - even if the majority of white men do not benefit from that change.

The decline of Christianity can be seen as a benefit to society, but Conservatism sees it as a threat. Not because conservatives are faithful true believers, but because religion is seen as a control mechanism to keep the masses in line. 

In an increasingly educated world, you would think that education and critical thinking skills would be a benefit to American society. Hardly. Conservatives fear an educated populace because the more educated a person is, the less likely a person will be conservative. Higher education is such a threat to conservatism that education is labeled as "indoctrination".

In short, any real change that can benefit the masses is met with lies, hysteria, and even violence. We can see that in today's headlines. Police reform, campaign finance reform, ending of gerrymandering, women's rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, LGBTQ equality, global warming, reactions to pandemics, etc. All these basic and necessary changes are met with ridicule on right wing media outlets and often with threats of violence from working class conservatives. 

We don't have to worry about evil aliens coming from space to destroy our civilization. We seem quite capable of doing it on our own.