Maybe, in human affairs it happens as it does in biological evolution. A massive die-off occurs and results in many open niches and something like the Cambrian Explosion occurs as nature or people fill in the empty spaces. In human affairs, wars and revolutions take the place of nature's cataclysmic comets and meteors. After WWII, there was a redistribution of enormous amounts of wealth and opportunity that diffused through a system rendered porous by all the war's destruction. Education and knowledge of the world and it workings, poured out into the formerly low and middle income populace and they were no longer the sole domain of the rich and privileged. And we, the newly educated and newly freed, became the human equivalents of the denizens radiating from the Cambrian Explosion. But, as in biology, empty niches always fill in again as they are reoccupied by the more competitive among us. The wealth and freedom that were liberated by war for wide distribution have begun to be gathered in again by the ever present acquisitors. But this time there are differences. This time we are not the peasants of the Middle Ages who have never seen past the end of our lord's properties. This time many of us have read widely and know of the human history of greed and domination that lies in endless repetition behind us. This time we can see that which is beginning to enclose us yet again. We see the Neoliberals ascending our political hierarchies funded by the multinational corporations who are weaving quasi-legal nets around national governments with their faux free-trade agreements. We see our news media being controlled to shape what we see and hear. We listen to the constant propaganda of advertisement that encourages us to look the other way as it dazzles us with materialistic trinkets. But knowledge is power and this time we can see the causal links, we can see the closing nets, we can see the propaganda of confusion creeping around us and seeking to marginalize us for the benefit of the acquisitors as they seek to make us again into their servants. Knowledge has awoken us and this time we will resist. gallagher 23Mar15 Christchurch
— Copyright 1965-2015 by Dennis Gallagher —