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There must be something wrong with American society, or so many people would not be trying so hard to fix it. And it must be something seriously wrong, or it would have been fixed by now.
As serious as it may be, however, many Americans
still seem confident their society will be fixed someday -- when
someone, somewhere, makes a sincere and serious attempt to fix it.
And the same confidence can also be found among people in other
English-
So we wondered, as good citizens of democratic
societies are expected to do from time to time, what might happen
if we were to join a really sincere and really serious group of those
broadly-
We would probably begin by trying to understand just what, exactly, is wrong. And, because materialistic Americans tend to view their society as being something like a big machine, our investigation would probably begin like ones that are conducted in America when something goes wrong with other kinds of big, complex machines, such as the investigations that usually follow civil aviation disasters.
The easiest and most popular explanation for an aviation or social disaster, besides sabotage, is a verdict of pilot error. It is an easy explanation because all humans are known to make mistakes. It is also a popular explanation because Americans often try to blame the politicians who act as the "pilots" of their society for everything that goes wrong. It does seem suspicious, for example, that when pilot error causes a democratic society to crash, the people in the cockpit are always the ones who are least likely to be injured.
That's why few Americans would want to be passengers in any aircraft whose pilot had been selected democratically. But no other major society in the world today has any non-democratic method that consistently selects leaders who seem much less incompetent than America's political pilots, or any more accountable for their own failings.
And, anyway, there must be something seriously wrong with any aircraft or society in which mistakes made by a careless pilot can have such disastrous consequences; an inherent fault for which pilots alone cannot be blamed.
After pilot error, the next most common explanations for aviation disasters are such things as bad weather or mechanical failure. Those explanations are less popular because only people with some special knowledge can fully understand such explanations, or the remedies they imply.
And those explanations cannot account for all of America's social problems either. The American nation has survived much worse political weather over the course of its history than it is experiencing today. And American society is far better built and far more expertly maintained today than it ever was in the past.
In fact, there is so much expert social management by political professionals and professional politicians that American society has clearly become much less democratic. Even in this new, more sophisticated, post-democratic era, however, many chronic social problems remain unsolved.
So we would have to go on to consider another important reason for aviation or social disasters -- that is, a fundamental flaw in the design of a particular aircraft or society, which makes it inherently prone to instability or crashes.
This kind of explanation is much more difficult to find, and harder to prove, because it requires reexamination of all of the basic assumptions used in the design of an aircraft or society. And it is likely to be controversial and unpopular because American society, like all other societies, takes a very dim view of people who question its members' most fundamental beliefs and assumptions.
But let us say we are really sincere and really serious people and we are determined to proceed with our investigation, even if it means challenging some of America's most cherished social delusions.
Obviously, that kind of investigation could never take place within America itself. The political constraints imposed on all such social investigations would probably make it just as futile as many less-serious investigations in the past. And most of the same constraints would still be felt even if the investigation were conducted in some other democratic country.
So perhaps the only practical location for such an investigation would be aboard a cruise ship, with unusually accommodating owners, sailing somewhere in international waters.
Even then, because we would still be constrained by the very narrowness of the American social and personal assumptions we probably brought with us, we would also need the help of knowledgeable people from other societies who do not accept many American assumptions, and who could provide the social information, alternatives and perspective most Americans lack. Before anyone can criticize the design of a particular aircraft or society, or propose improvements, he must first learn, from experts, how any good aircraft or society is designed.
Unfortunately, organizing such a gathering of investigators, foreign consultants and other interested people in such an exotic location would be very expensive and inconvenient. Fortunately, however, it is quite possible to imagine what might happen on such a voyage.
And a record of imaginary proceedings on an imaginary voyage would probably be just about as illuminating as the real thing because, in fact, just about everything ever written or spoken about societies and politics throughout human history has been some kind of fiction or fantasy.
Our transcription of discussions on Monday, the first day of that voyage of social exploration, is called Dyssociation. The transcription of Tuesday's discussions is called Odiology and Wednesday's is called Novoasis.