Slide.

"Slide."

-Fight Club (The Power Animal)

"You're the man who squats behind the man who works the soft machine."

-Memo From Turner (Jagger/Richard)

So what are the sociopolitical effects of the economic transformation that is unhinging society?  Have we reached another period when the tectonic plates underpinning human events start shifting again?  The Renaissance was followed by the Reformation, as rebirth and expansion and creativity, then religious wars that brought the need for stability, and the Counter-Renaissance designed to restore stability and continuity, according to Toulmin and his followers.  Paging Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and his friends the thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

And if the economic models that were constructed in that day no longer hold true?  If, in fact, economic systems are not inherently stable, but inherently unstable?  Chaos theory imported into economic policy teaches us that there are butterfly wings thousands of miles away that manifest themselves here as a hurricane.  Is human economic behavior any less predictable?  So, it seems, we are finding out for ourselves.

So what are the socioeconomic and sociopolitical effects of that maelstrom?  Shall we address how the economic hurricane sweeping the globe impacts those in its way, their political institutions, their civil liberties, their fundamental rights and obligations?  Methinks that the man behind the curtain would rather you not know. 

Perhaps more importantly, are these economic developments simply the billions and billions of interactions of human beings, albeit in the form of economies, or is there some other purpose, or design?  Is there a hand (or hands) holding the massive miniarette and intentionally aggrandizing not just materiel, capital and wealth, but political power as well?  Or are many hands struggling for hegemony over this sinister mess?

And, if there is a design behind what we are seeing, who is behind it, and what is its purpose?