In the middle of the last millennium western Europeans discovered gunpowder. The Chinese had known about it for centuries and used it for recreational and religious purposes. Unlike their counterparts in the far east, Europeans recognized the weapon potential in gunpowder and wasted little time putting it lethal purposes.
Western Europe was at this time a backwater of Real Civilization, which was still centered around Constantinople and the lands bordering on the eastern Mediterranean sea. The scientific tradition of our western civilization is derived from ancient Greece; its commerce, laws, and militarism from ancient Rome; and its moral, ethical, and religious beliefs from Judaism. These historic civilizations share common geographic ancestry in the eastern Mediterranean.
The nucleus of civilization then was ruled by a mighty Arabian sultanate whose power center alternated between different large and commercially successful cities: Alexandria, Constantinople, Damascus, and so forth. The Europeans combined an open-seas sailing tradition, made necessary by the circumstances of their geography, with the newly discovered military uses of gunpowder, and began to conquer the world. That process continues today.
They did not discover the Americas but soon conquered them — by fire, gun, and disease. They assimilated Russia and made everything west of the Urals European. The middle east fell to a combination of internecine rivalry and, in retrospect, an incomprehensible and ultimately disastrous refusal by the Arab civilization to embrace gunpowder as a weapon. The Europeans conquered north Africa, colonized south Africa, and used equatorial Africa as a source of slaves. They conquered India. They established trading bases and military outposts in the far east and dumped their undesirables in Australia. They would have gone on, in force, to conquer China, Japan, and the remainder of the southeast Asian peninsula — in short, what was left of the world — if the Japanese had not acquired the use of gunpowder weapons.
The conquest of the world continues, albeit by different means now. The Europeans had a vast array of the world's economy within their control. Unfortunately, Karl Marx came up with a scatter brained theory of economics that delayed the ultimate capitalization of the world by about eighty years — a generation. No matter. Communism fell because it cannot possibly work unless:
Points one and three are theoretically possible. It is difficult to imagine the realization of point two without dedicated mental gymnastics.
It now looks like holding out worked for the Europeans. The absurd binary divide between capitalism and communism has all but disappeared. One cigar-chomping, left-behind, 60's radical in Cuba and a paranoid, isolationist kook in North Korea are flea bites on the world's ass. The rise of Islamic radicalism will be crushed by the capitalistic forces of the Islamic world itself. Blowing up tour buses is bad for business.
To summarize: Our ethical and moral outlook is not intrinsically superior to that of far eastern cultures. A scientific tradition grounded in an atomic, deterministic view of reality that excludes the concept of information as a part of the space/time continuum is not better because we build bombs with it and you can't with Zen. Capitalism is not best because it prevails and communism came before its time (Let us not forget that according to Marx, communism is the natural, evolutionary next- stage of capitalism. Even Lenin recognized this error and attempted to correct it.)
Western civilization is dominant because of brute force.
And things are looking pretty hunky-dory. But the machine needs oil.
A degree of human predictability is necessary to make this vast, complex system operate correctly. But humans are notoriously unpredictable — read any newspaper — didn't you get the memo? Slithering into the consciousness of western civilization is the crawling realization that the benefits of modern medicine have not been fully deployed in the area of mental health. People who don't fit in are problematic. If that's your dad at the Ford motor plant, well, there's another guy waiting to take his place. That other guy might be in South Korea or he might be a cost-saving, round-the-clock worked that never complains — a robot. Most manufacturing is performed by automated systems — robots — including labor for which illiterate, under-paid, rat ass poor and starving people in the third world cannot be found.
If you are a knowledge worker you are in a special class. You get paid salary instead of by the hour because it's your thought that counts, not the brawn of your body. This means you get to think at a full-tilt, bat-shit crazy pace sixty to eighty hours a week until a replacement can be located in India who will do the same for less than half the price paid to you. But until then, there's another, more pressing Problem. You have already been revving at full speed for thirty years — something no one would do to their automobile — when suddenly parts of your psyche begin to fly off like bits of thawed ice from the windshield of your out-of-control car.
You might still fit in, but you are now dangerous in a very unpredictable way. If you control the software that handles a trillion dollars worth of assets, you are a danger not only to your employer but to a lot of Very Important People in the world. Unfortunately, not only are you maxed out, but everyone around you is maxed out. Worse, the cogs in India are not yet ready to take over. Something must be done to patch you up until you can be safely discarded.
Hello Pharmaceuticals!
Are you sad? We've got a pill for that. You'll be back to work in no time. Are you in pain? No problem. Take two of these a day. What? You fooled around in the 60's and 70's and now you've got a life-threatening disease? Here, take this medicine. Oops. That medicine has side effects — didn't you read the web site? What about the helpful brochure issued by the manufacturer. See. It says right there: Some side effects may be experienced including hair loss, platelet loss, red blood cell loss, uncontrollable, tear-your-fucking-eyeballs-out rashes, weight loss, and irritability. Or psychosis. Whatever.
If you are a wee bit on the testy side, well, that could be an underlying problem. Did you ever bring home a kitten you weren't allowed to keep? Hm. Fortunately, we have medicine for that. Take this pill once a day. Don't forget to read the brochure this time, you silly goose. Whoops! It says: Not to be prescribed under any circumstances to people suffering from liver disease. Let's see... Bingo!
Sure enough, just like those terrifying teeny-weeny itty-bitty catfish in the Amazon river that are capable of swimming up a part of a man's anatomy too dreadful to contemplate, here comes the judge! You shall take your medicine or else. Brute force has worked for five fucking hundred years. Why abandon it now?
The flight crew will now return to their take-off positions. Passengers, kindly remove your craniums while the No Thinking sign is lit in the cabin. We will be serving brain salad surgery once we reach our cruising altitude of five miles above the surface of the planet. If the plane comes to a sudden halt, hold on to your seat cushion. It works as a flotation device. You can kiss it and your ass goodbye while you plunge to your death.
Pop Quiz!
Bonus Question
Consider the following hypothetical circumstance: You are assured that you have only a short time to live and that time will be filled with misery:
If you've answered, "Maybe..." to any of the questions above, you are not insane.