Four Deadly Spins:
The Worst of the Worst
In a sea change, new swirls of resistance arise and dissipate ceaselessly. Most are relatively harmless. Some pose more serious threats to the disoriented. Still others are powerful enough to generate widespread cultural turbulence, entrapping those who stray within reach. Of these more virulent surges, there are four that are particularly troubling.
These four are the worst of the eddies. Each is a powerfully dangerous way to harness cultural confusion and identity crisis. The first two are ideologies, or inflexible patterns of belief. The latter two are oligarchies, or concentrations of power in the hands of the destructive few.
They are:
1. Fundamentalism (“My truth makes your beliefs
irrelevant and even diabolical.”)
2. Fascism (ultranationalist populism that seeks
to return to an imagined past)
3. Globalizing Greed (the unbridled self-entitlement of
the “buccaneers”; manipulators of the “free market”;
eco-abusers; the worst of the Wall Streeters)
4. Unbridled Hegemony (the arrogant tyranny of the
would-be dominators, from the neo-imperialists to
the regional tyrants to the manipulators of terrorists)
Just remember, eddies are not part of the new wave. They are patterns of resistance to the decline of older values and the rise of newer ones. Yes, they’re dangerous—sometimes extremely so. But they are also temporary. That knowledge provides a reassuring context and allows you to weather the 21st century sea change with strength and grace.