WHAT WE HAVE WROUGHT
When I was growing up, our schools were replete with narratives of self-made men (among other things, it was a chauvinistic time): captains of industry, titans of finance ... I think you get where the imagery is from. Horatio Alger stories of rags-to-riches, from dishwasher to millionaire, were poured out over us supposedly as inspiration. Those stories were so prevalent that they became part of the American Dream. But it is, just that: a dream. For many today, it is a nightmare. The John-Wayne-rugged-stop-at-nothing individualist, who with his bare hands and sheer force of will reshaped his environment and made something out of nothing was held up as our highest ideal.
But it is important to note that he creates nothing, he only destroys. Left to his own devices, he will rape the environment, pillage resources, subjugate his fellow human beings, if necessary, and he produces things upon things, so many in fact that in the end, we have no idea what to do with them all. He does not make something from nothing, rather he replaces a circumstance of no things to one that is full of things. What becomes important, in the end, are just the things. What was once considered good and noble, the human spirit, for example, is now just a weakness. In the face of things, the things we have made, we account for nothing. Look at any balance sheet from any company, productive or not, and show me where that human spirit can be found. It is not there. The closest we get to it is in the income statement where we see that people are nothing more than costs. They stick out. They are the biggest single cost item any company has. If we only had completely automated production ... If we could only get rid of these troublesome employees ... If ...