Revolutions are forced. Evolution happens.

We were taught in school that the American Revolution was a glorious stride in the direction of a better world. What it really did was put a rotating cast of rich white men in place of the British monarchy and its agents as the decision makers for this chunk of North America, without even firmly determined boundaries yet. The men in charge were all beneficiaries of the system of chattel slavery, whether they owned any or not. They continued the policy of displacing and eradicating the existing native population. Women could suggest, as Abigail Adams did, that they be included in this new government of the free, but that had to wait for a later century, and see some women actually killed in the pursuit of it.

"Do what I want or I will kill you," has been a compelling argument throughout our existence. It may be preceded by, "Do what I want or I will beat you up," but it always lies in the background, ready to be used, like a black rifle carried down a city street, or a militarized police force's surplus tank that they just got as a hand-me-down from the real armed forces.

People who deride hippies and other peaceniks in this country assure us that human nature is incorrigibly mean and nasty. One must always be ready to fight for peace. Any peace that you enjoy here is protected by a fortified perimeter keeping the evil forces of worse nations at bay. And within this great land of ours, you need to be able to defend yourself against individual attackers who will inevitably spring up.

This can be a real problem if they are wearing law enforcement uniforms, or you're a woman and he's your boss, or you're black and they're not, or the attackers are using their car as a weapon against you as you ride a bike. And that's just a few of the situations in which the myth of the armed citizen comes up against the realities of the legal system. And if you relax the standards for self defense you also create more cover stories for homicide.

Every so often, someone suggests that humans learn to put aside their animal promptings to force dominance, and instead develop more awareness of the fragility of life and the underlying sadness that we all share, whether we have ever noticed it in ourselves or not. But that sounds really boring, and it also makes you vulnerable to anyone who has not put down the weapons yet. In addition, because it requires that you take less in material wealth, and accept gratefully many amenities that we currently take for granted, it leaves more resources lying around for grabby people to grab. Which they definitely do.

Can humans guide their evolution by learning to do what is better for them, enacted in quiet revolutions of nonviolent change? Or will we be the victims of biological promptings expressed through advanced technology, becoming better and better destroyers until we succeed in destroying ourselves? Consumerism is far more destructive than war, because it uses pleasure instead of pain. There are those who lust for war. Not all of them are sideline profiteers. Some people enjoy the actual killing. There are people crazy enough to hope for a full-on exchange of nuclear missiles. But even if those people never get their way, we can live our peaceful little lives, "not hurting anybody," and burn it all down just as effectively. We've practically accomplished it already.

As the Democratic candidates compete for their party's nomination, polls show the policy positions of  Bernie Sanders seem extremely popular. His detractors on the left are marshaling their considerable resources to prevent him from being nominated. In this information -- and disinformation -- age, it's hard for a political lightweight to know for sure how much of the opposition research is true, but we've also learned that smears don't have to be true at all to do irreparable damage to Democratic candidates. Oddly, the same seems far less true of Republican candidates. But that's another topic entirely. The dirt on Bernie is probably quite verifiable. And, as someone pointed out somewhere on social media today, campaigns that spend all their time on damage control end up losing.

The proposals of the progressive wing of the Democrats trigger the conditioned reflexes of generations of Americans well trained to recoil from "socialism." Even though we've never really lived in a land of unlimited individual liberty, even for white men, the majority of us are conditioned to believe in an economic Utopia just over the horizon, or just behind us in a misty past, in which pure merit will be, or was, rewarded. Merit means hard work and good character. It rejects the controlling and coddling of Big Government in favor of rugged individualism. It is the land of the alpha male, and the underlings who know their place, because the meritocracy has weeded them, and they accept its judgment. It's one of the many things that sound good until you really think about them. But who has time for all that thinking? We have merit to accrue.

In the rest of the Democratic field, the same full-on socially connective and environmentally active positions put forward by Sanders appear in varying levels of dilution, all the way down to practically nothing. So then you have to wonder how much of anyone's formulation will survive actually being elected, and that's only if they manage to win. A couple of days ago, I found a chart that laid them all out nicely, but I didn't bookmark it, and now I can't find it again. Sorry about that. I'm sure you're closing in on a favorite on your own. Go make your mark! There's still a long process to sort it out further.

We reward achievement

A meritocracy is only as good as the people deciding what constitutes merit.

How do you know if you have done well at an assigned task? Usually, someone in a superior position praises you. This may include a financial reward. For a student the reward may take the form of scholarship assistance for further education. For a worker it takes the form of pay, benefits and bonuses. Is your achievement meritorious if it doesn't interest someone with the power to give you something tangible, like money, prestige, power or possessions?

In human history and legend a few outsiders have achieved fame and great levels of influence outside the system of entrenched power and wealth. Jesus Christ, whose brand has since been bought out by profit-driven interests, started out as a critic of the establishment whose popular philosophies centered on rewards other than the conventionally accepted wealth and power. Mahatma Gandhi was not known for living like a televangelist either. Those examples spring quickly to mind because they're so darn easy. And they will suffice to illustrate the point that the idea of spiritual rewards and principles without a price tag appeal to something in the human mind. But they can't really stand up to the time-honored tradition of cross-generational brown-nosing that we call achievement. If you're not worth money to the controllers of money, what are you worth?

Gandhi was a political leader. After the idealistic struggle to free India from the British grasp, the country had to function economically. Jesus never had to deal with the compromises of governing. He was an idea man. If he hadn't had that "eternal life" trick to fall back on, he would have been just another troublemaker crushed by the wheels of power. If you live in this material world you have to deal with the self-proclaimed judges of your merit.

Up to this point in history, to achieve merit you must help people who want money make money or you must help them feel good about themselves. This can mean everyone on the economic spectrum, but the best yields come from pleasing people who can bestow the most reward on you for your efforts. You can also make money by scamming people, as in the financial services industry, but then you have to use your wealth to fund the sort of merits that support your lifestyle. Within the financial sector your merits include lining up the chumps for the greater good of your company and manipulating data in a way that maintains a positive cash flow and does not draw attention from the nearly nonexistent regulators.

You can also make money by entertaining people. The superstars of sports and entertainment make it look like a high achiever could amass a fortune largely by personal effort combined with some level of initial talent. However, even there the players have to attract cash just to get started. One person with a guitar and some snappy lyrics might soar to prominence, but only if they get discovered by the right promoter. Merit tends to favor commercialism. You can do some edgy, challenging work, but only if that's what is selling right now.

In science, earnest nerds toil in obscurity, known only to their geeky peers, until one of their discoveries looks like it could have economic or military value. Other types of achievement might get a little "gee whiz, wouldya look at that" kind of publicity, but the real interest perks up only when the work in question looks lucrative.

Free market capitalists will say, "That's what we've been trying to tell you all this time." But their kind has been in charge of defining merit since before the term "capitalism" was coined. People didn't cross wide oceans on tiny ships just to look at the scenery and say hi to the natives. People looked for stuff they could use, even if they had to slap someone else around to get it. Explorers who made it there and back, and exploitative expeditions that followed them had great merit in the eyes of those who financed them.

The net result of centuries of meritorious achievement has been a sprawling human population overrunning a planet battered and smouldering from our ambitious ministrations. We should do something about that, but there's not enough money in it. You might mention that we threaten our very existence, but when you look at the number of people who drink and drive, text and drive, ride motorcycles and bikes without a helmet, take up smoking, and a host of other things we know are bad ideas you realize that warnings fall on deaf ears, while the jingle of coins carries across miles.