Why we're screwed (to put it kindly)

If you watched the news tonight, then you've probably heard about the fanatical musings of those wrapped up in the debate about healthcare reform. It seems few people actually seem to understand what is going on, and even fewer understand how to fix it. It doesn't matter though, those pills just keep getting more expensive.

If you've been asleep for the last ten months, you missed the tax-payer funded bailouts of the reckless elite. Many average Americans lost their homes and their dreams because they got sick, but for some reason, the bankers couldn't find it in their souls to sacrifice that million dollar bonus to protect the economic infrastructure of America.

And you must be in a consumption-induced zombie state if you didn't think about how inflation would effect your wages and the price of your food. Don't bother to worry about when our government goes bankrupt either. A good consumer zombie won't even notice.

But that's not all...

All these economic woes may have made you forget that our public schools are leaking young minds like a bullet ridden canoe. Their aren't enough teachers to educate all those kids, which itself wouldn't be a bad thing, except that our society is witnessing the destruction of the family unit, as seen in the increase in divorced and single parent households.

Hey, it's hard to raise a family when both parents have to work 40+ hours a week just to pay the bills. It's a good thing we have well funded public schools... oops.

And don't even bother with "higher" education, not if you aren't prepared for a mortgage of academic real estate that won't really accrue equity over time.

If you have children, tell them that flipping hamburgers is a good career, because otherwise, they might end up smoking and selling weed to cope with the bull $hit of society, and then America will put him or her in jail where they belong.

Oh, and don't forget about the War on Terror (another devastating noun) and our occupation of two foreign nations.

You see, it's not that I'm a pessimist. I don't want to be. I want the best for this country, but sadly, society is what we make it to be, and we get what we deserve.

Societies that can't raise children, provide food, shelter, security, clean water, and sanitation usually end up collapsing. Societies are bound by certain laws of physics too.

History doesn't have to repeat. We can change things. We can address all the problems described above, and the only thing this will cost is the metabolic energy generated when neurons fire. This is because to solve all these problems, we need new knowledge. In this respect, that which limits us lies only in ourselves.