Where the U.S. is heading (parts of it are already there). From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:
a tour of “you don’t wanna go there”
people are familiar with the common construct of “the third world.” they are also familiar with the idea of “the first world.” what’s interesting to me is the idea of how one becomes the other and the presumption of the causality and the pathways by which that occurs. it’s worth some exploration.
worryingly, this is a topic on which i think most people’s intuitions and utopian hopes are hopelessly wrong to the point of being outright dangerous.
in an attempt to clarify and circumvent such, i’d like to add a new construct to the list, that of “the second world” and this is important because it is not at all what most people presume.
many people, if you ask them, would sort of puzzle with it and then posit this second realm as some interstitial state betwixt the third and first worlds, a sort of adolescence one grows through. but this, to my mind, is not correct and that is not how it works. the difference between the third world and the first world is not actually wealth or development, it’s systems and cultural practice.
“the third world” is the base state of humanity. it’s not some aberrant outcome, it’s the norm, a thing that must be escaped by building the structures that allow for human flourishing.
