Cultural Survival Skills

America’s Decline: A Partial Explanation

The following is a brief summary of my research into America’s sociocultural decline. My attempt to understand this complex phenomenon has been on-going for over 30 years and it continues to this day.

What follows is a revision of a blog that I published in 2014. It is a small sample of my findings and the concepts that I use to make a “blizzard” of seemingly unrelated sociocultural events comprehensible.

I hope you will take time to understand my perspective on what is happening to America. It is happening to everyone and all our loved ones.

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I cannot conduct my particular cultural analysis without the use of a value system. As you will note, my analysis normally cleaves to that of Judeo/Christian precepts. This value and belief system is arguably the most beneficial the world has ever experienced.

The first thing to understand is: CDP/TP x 100 = % SE

Cultural Draining Population Divided by The Total Population x 100 = % Social Entropy!

I define my theoretical concept of social entropy as: The proportion of a population that is not available to do work to sustain a socioculture, and  functions as a drain upon it.

Increasing population proportions of social entropy, beyond some difficult to estimate percentage, will destroy any culture and it is now debilitating America.

I label those who work very hard for delayed rewards, behave responsibly and avoid the many human foibles (immediately rewarding indiscriminate sex, drugs, alcohol, aggression, destructive behavior; or other self-destructive and irresponsible behaviors), that do immediate or delayed damage to individuals and our socioculture as the culture sustaining population. I call them “cultural sustainers” for short. The culture draining population is composed of  the hard-core “cultural drainers”, who are doing he harmful behaviors identified above, who are on the dole and have found ways to gain welfare grants from the government for doing very little or nothing. Among the cultural drainers are active criminals and those who are imprisoned.

It is important to note that children, teens, the elderly and the infirmed, as well as those on entitlements that they have earned, (i.e., social security and medicare, etc.), by paying for them all of their working lives, are a necessary part of this analysis because they justifiably require our support. Technically, they are rightfully a part of the culture draining population. Children and teens are an essential investment any culture’s future. To fail to support this costly investment is not only ethically wrong, it is cultural suicide. Without children and youth, there is no future. I do not want to put them in the cultural draining population, but for important and greatly beneficial reasons, they must temporarily reside there until they reach maturity and join the culture sustaining population.

It is important for a culture to love and appreciate their elderly. The retired elderly still frequently contribute to sustaining their culture. They may do volunteer work in many places, they may serve as aunts, uncles, and grandparents who help to acculturate children and youth.  They may continue to vote and make financial investments and may be politically active. This segment of society is typically unable to contribute as much time, energy and talent to sustaining their culture as they once did, but they can continue to provide important contributions.

When the aged become infirmed and incapacitated they become an esteemed and honored member of a special culture draining population and society is ethically obligated to care for them as humanly as possible until the end of their natural lives.

Please note that unethical cultures will find it very easy to rationalize forms of euthanasia ” in order to humanly assist the death” of what has become a costly population. The unspoken immoral motive for this action is very likely to be the politics of raw cost-savings.

As financial and material rewards allocated to the cultural drainers increase, the numbers of of these people can be predicted to increase as a proportion of the general population. This is so because they are more likely to be under-educated and therefore reside the lower socioeconomic class. Historically individuals with these demographics are more likely to reproduce at higher rates than the higher educated, more wealthy, working, tax-paying culture sustaining-class. This outcome is dramatically increased when the government allocates more material rewards to the culture draining-class for having children that they often cannot afford to care-for decently.

If you now understand the gist of this analysis, it is just this simple:

When the culture sustaining population’s money is given to the culture draining population for not working and having more babies, they will predictably have more babies than the cultural sustaining population does. The culture sustainers are just too busy getting educated, working, inventing, volunteering, making money, investing, paying taxes, raising their few children and behaving responsibly, to ever match the culture drainer’s reproductive rates and increasing financial needs.

Now the plot thickens:

The basic psychological principle of Modeling and Imitation, and many others such principles, insure that a majority of children raised by the culture draining, wealth-consuming, do-little or nothing parents, will identify with their parents. When this happens the are very likely to imitate their ways: How they think, perceive, show their emotions and how they behave.

Within the span only several generations (20 yrs. per generation), this complex and spreading relative rate of growth cycle of bad and useless behaviors (that I call “behavioral contagion”) can shift the socio/political demographics and power structure to the rapidly growing culture draining population. Unfortunately, this under-educated and under-achieving group will believe almost anything they are told by their political curators who promise them more free rewards contingent upon their continuing dependency and political patronage.

Put colloquially, how can any responsible political party compete with an opposing  “Santa Clause” political party?

The cultural draining population is generally under-educated in reading, writing, math, science, history and economics, etc., and they have been taught by their families and their government to remain dependent upon freely given rewards. Unfortunately, they are sub-culturally blinded to the long-term very aversive outcomes of their actions for themselves and for the socioculture at-large.  

Why would any psychologically informed person expect otherwise?

The political outcome for a voting Representative Republic such as America, or any other form of democracy, will be that increasing numbers of culture drainers will vote increasing numbers of their intelligent, but devious (even sociopathic), political curators into office. As a result, these political curators are in a position to take more from the culture sustaining wealth-makers to give to the drainers who, as a result, will certainly vote to keep them in power.

This culture draining/progressive-socialist-communist dance of sociocultural death is ongoing in America and elsewhere. To make matters worse, more responsible opposing political parties are induced to adopt more and more of their culture-draining political opponent’s behaviors in order to ever hope to compete with them.

Over-time the productivity of the culture-sustaining population will be overwhelmed due to their continuing political, social and financial losses.

Additionally, it is the progressive/socialist tendency of states to grow massive and inefficient bureaucracies and to impose regulations upon all aspects of the societies, as they strive for increased control. These inefficiencies further reduce the personal liberties accorded culture sustaining individuals and unavoidably reduce the quality of their lives. Also, the bloating progressive/socialist governments normally blindly impose even more of its controls and regulations upon businesses, further damaging its own economy. All of this stresses the entire population and stokes more bad behavioral contagion and the spread of psychopathology and other maladaptive behaviors within the general population.

The financial and social costs of escalating bad behavioral contagion catalyzes this  self-feeding population/governmental vicious cycle and accelerates the rate of sociocultural decline.

How can you not see this happening in America as you read this blog?

Of course there must be a mathematical end to this form of social, political and economic self-destructive, self-feeding cultural behavior pattern. When the money runs out, there will be hell-to-pay in the form of economic collapse and social upheaval. At that point in a culture’s decline, the government “is justified” in imposing even harsher controls on the population’s behaviors, as well as the various agencies and institutions and the stage is set for a shift to a more totalitarian government.

The following is only the most recent example of what I am trying to illustrate.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article103336577.html

Historically, great cultures have shown indications of decline after around 200-250 years of life. Once the chain of events described here are well-under-way, experts note that no culture has been able to recover.

Reversing these trends will be the greatest challenge America has ever faced.

Wake-up America!

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.,  2/15/14; Revised 9/23/16