A challenge from Personality Cafe. I'd be glad to see how you'd do it  

My attempt:

History on the Earth begun about 100 000 BC, when humans first achieved the status of basic sophont. Humans originated in Africa, but soon they spread throughout the planet, assimilating related hominid species. For tens of thousands of years, people lived in bands of 50-150 individuals. Life in this era was mostly about satisfying basic survival needs. Art existed in a rudimentary form, the prevalent form of religion was worship of nature spirit and ancestors. There was a lot of violence, though it was disorganised, without states there was no possibility of orderly warfare. This is the lifestyle the human species is biologically adopted to, there are still people who retained the Paleolithic lifestyle in Africa and South America.

Eventually, about 10 000 BC in the Middle East humans learned to purposefully cultivate certain plants and domesticated species of animals like dogs, horses, cows and pigs. Agriculture was born. This guaranteed better supplies of food, although hunger remained a menace for a long time. Still, for the first time a few people could devote most of their time to something else than survival. Division of labour appeared. The result was development of more complex arts, as well as further progress in practical abilities. This progress was however very slow. People still lived in small tribal communities, though perhaps they were slightly better organised than during the hunter-gatherer period.

Only about 3000 BC human beings started to create larger and more integrated communities known as states. First states appeared in Egypt and Iraq, then about 2000 BC the same thing happened in China and India. Since that time, political organisation started dominating Eurasia and northern coasts of Africa, while the rest of the world was stuck on tribal level. This form of organization made life more peaceful, since tribal warfare was no longer possible. It was good for culture. However the early states had an important drawback. They were autocratic. They tyrants and their acolytes guaranteed themselves a relatively high standard of living compared to their subjects. To prevent the subjects from rebelling, the tyrants had to use brutal physical punishments. They also claimed descent from gods, necessitating a more sophisticated theology, although the basis of religion remained nature worship. But religion did not stay this way for ever. About 1500 BC, two monotheistic religions appeared, venerating a single God as the creator of all reality and supreme lawmaker: Echnaton's in Egypt and Abraham's in Israel. Echnaton's system died off within a generation, while Abraham's one remained confined to one small ethnic group, the Jews. An important practical achievement of the era of early states was metallurgy, at first working on bronze, and later iron.

From 500 BC to 0 AD civilized humans' relationship with the universe was revolutionized. In Greece, India and China philosophy was invented, more or less at the same time. Its beginnings were naive but eventually it developed into more reasonable systems of thought. Plato's philosophy in Greece, Gautama Buddha's doctrine in India and Confucius' one in China were among the most influential schools of philosophy, and stayed relevant for many centuries. In Israel, Jesus enriched Abraham's monotheistic religion, teaching that God represents not only creative power and justice but also universal love. For His teachings, Jesus was sentenced to death by crucifixion, but the new faith could not be erased. He started to be regarded as God Incarnate and originated the most successful religion in human history. Greek medicine, science, mathematics, poetry and sculpture of this era also achieved heights unknown to any earlier human civilization. The Greeks, as well as Romans who imitated their civilization, were the first to conceive a democratic political system, though it did not last very long.

In the meanwhile, the most successful political structures: the Chinese Empire in the Far East and the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean have dominated very large areas and achieved levels of prosperity unknown before. The spiritual revolution was complete when Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and declared it state religion, resulting in development of hierarchical Catholic Church. Eventually both empires faced barbarian invasions. The Romans were defeated completely, while the Chinese responded to the invasions by developing an isolationist attitude. It should however be noted that China continued to progress and remained for many centuries the most cultured nation on the planet.

Cultural achievements of Greece and Rome were preserved by the Catholic Church, which has by the time of the invasions assimilated them. Despite this fact, Europe suffered a period of cultural regression known as the Dark Ages, which lasted for several centuries. During the era of eclipse, a militaristic and theologically simplified form of Abraham's monotheism, known as Islam, inspired a nomadic nation known as the Arabs to invade large parts of northern Africa and southwestern Asia. The nomad's way of life was considered the only one approved by God. For a long time, this Islam remained a threat to more developed peoples, although its adherents sometimes adopted a more civilized way of life derived from Christianity and Greek philosophy.

About 1500 AD, another revolution happened. European scholars rediscovered Greek science, leaving to an intellectual movement known as Renaissance. The Catholic Church, who had at this time wielded political power, tried to suppress it, but these persecutions were not brutal enough to stop it. Scientists of the Renaissance defined basic laws of physical reality and humans' place in the Cosmos. Copernicus discovered that Earth revolves around the Sun. Newton described fundamental principles of mechanics. Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean and discovered America. This resulted in a wave of colonization. Soon European states governed almost the whole globe. Europeans spread their cultural and technological achievements, but they also committed many acts of violence and injustice. They caused the native population of America to die off by introducing new diseases to the continent. In Africa, they started kidnapping the natives and forcing them to work as slaves on new plantations in America.

After 1700, a new intellectual movement appeared, known as Liberalism. It called for rational thinking and rejected the authority of tyrants and the Church, which has by this time fragmented into three major branches. These authorities were to be replaced by democracy. In America, British settlers rebelled against the rule of Britain and set up a new nation known as the United States of America, whose laws were based on Liberal principles. This new nation attracted settlers from the whole world. In Europe, the process of democratisation was longer and only after a few generations tyrants were removed completely. During this period, science continued to unravel the mysteries of the Cosmos. Darwin explained the development of life including the origin of humans. Einstein described relativistic phenomena. Progress of astronomy enabled human civilization to realize the immense size of the observable universe.

During the same era, Feminist movement, one of the offshots of Liberalism, demanded treating women as equal to men. Women's position in society indeed improved, though the process was quite slow.

There was also a dark side to Liberalism. It rejected Jesus' ethos of universal love and put in its place the idea of rational but innately selfish individual. This resulted in growth of economic competition between wealthy men, which made technological progress speed up, but left the working masses in miserable conditions. Democratic states tried to mitigate the effects by introducing systems of state charity, but many workers thought they were doing too little.

New political movements started to appear, promising the workers a more equal distribution of material goods by means of total government control of all economic activity. After 1900, these movements succeeded in two countries: in Russia there were the Bolsheviks and in Germany the Nazis. The Bolsheviks tried to undermine the power of Liberal governments and businessmen by inciting workers of the world to violent uprisings. The Nazis, whose ideology was more militaristic and tribalistic, attempted a worldwide military expansion, causing the greatest war in the planet's history. They also murdered millions of Jews, accusing them of being worse exploiters of the German working class. The Nazis were eventually defeated by combined effort of Bolshevik Russia and democratic states led by America, but the war was so brutal that its traumatic effects were visible in human culture for many decades. The generation born after the war was especially prone to selfish hedonism and naive mysticism.

Science however continued to develop, the two greatest achievements of the post-war period were invention of computers, which revolutionized both communication and entertainment, and a manned expedition to the Moon. Development of effective contraceptions made it possible for humans to enjoy real sexual freedom. In the same period European powers abandoned their colonies in Africa and the Middle East, creating a power vacuum soon filled by tyrannies inspired by either native traditions or Bolshevism. Some of these states supported terrorist attacks against America and its European allies. Before 2000, Bolshevik Russia collapsed under the weight of its own economic incompetence, making America the dominant political power in the world, although its position is contested by China. Culturally and economically the planet is heading toward full unity, although the process is disturbed by some tribalistic movements.

There are many, myself among them, who severely question whether the advent of the digital age, where smartphone seem to be even more ubiquitous that even cars and televisions, has played havoc with the socialization of the culture. There is even an ad now on TV which says something like "remember the way we used to socialize, complete with the entire 70s look and a corded landline telephone.

I get a free magazine that comes out once a month and it lists thoughts for each day, and today's happened to read that you find connection by socializing with different groups and organizations. And went on to say that sharing ideas, possibly even teaching what you know to others will feel very satisfying. I know that I have complained many times that it is no longer easy to, for example, strike up a conversation with someone at, say, a restaurant or coffee shop because most seem to be very glued to their phones. I imagine that someday one of these institutions will come up with a "check your phone at the door" policy to encourage conversation, kinda like the way you now check your coats at the door. Or at least a placard encouraging folks to use their phones only in an emergency.

One of the best ways to socialize in this age is through the Meetup.com groups, and I have over time been to a few of them myself. But I haven't been on their lists for several years because I was getting bombarded by emails for every group under the sun, many of which I was in no way qualified for.

So, what do you all think? Do you feel that we might one day see a time when a considerable portion of the population develops a case of "smartphone burnout", along with a desire to return to more face-to-face communication?

While we're at it, I am enclosing an article on this very subject I found during a random search, focusing primarily on the Meetup groups but I'm sure could be useful in other situations as well.

https://www.succeedsocially.com/meetup

The Millennials who don't fit in with our peers often decide to be NEETs or antisocial. Normie is an insult to us and so is mainstream. Many of us learn from different sources, listen to different music, or even watch different programs than the mainstream society. What was the equivalent in the GI Generation? I'm Millennial but can't relate to the values of my peers at all, think my elders are clueless about how things are , and think society is a joke that should be dropped out of. I know there were technical NEETs because of the Great Depression but I mean people who dropped out of society by choice because they couldn't take how conformist it was becoming? For individualistic Millennials we think there's no point to trying to integrate or make friends with most people because then our every behavior is policed. It's easier to just do whatever you want as the outcast. My theory is everyone is easily offended or weirded out so there's no point in trying to kill yourself for people that will be total flakes on you anyways. Better to just be brash and unapologetic about being yourself. If other people don't like it, they have to deal with it. Did anyone else develop this sort of attitude?

What are your thoughts? 

Will the public ever see it?  The president has been crowing "complete and total exoneration," which we know even from the little Attorney General Barr shared with us is not really true: “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”  34 people and three companies have been indicted or have pled guilty from this investigation, even if Trump himself may not have been implicated.   All of Robert Mueller’s indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation 

Prime vacation season may still be a couple of months off, but some of you may be starting to think about this year's plans. Schools around me are out on spring break this year which may have slowed down food delivery sales this week even though this time usually doesn't affect much else outside of the schools. You may just feel like you need a break, you know there are things you could do but you don't have the energy to do them. Many of us not only can't afford the expense involved in taking a regular vacation of a week or more, we have been more or less brainwashed to believe that time not doing something productive is wasted time. Delivery of food has become popular as it seems as if for whatever reason so many choose not to even take a long enough time out to enjoy a sit down meal in a restaurant or perhaps even at home. Thoughts of "that's okay, tomorrow is another day, for now be kind to yourself and relax", has nearly become sinful in many folks' minds. Some of this may very well fall into the "we have met the enemy and it is us" category. I personally resisted the trend for many years but now when I think of perhaps going out, say, on a regular date, I question whether I can afford not only the monetary expense but the time expense as well. This whole "I don't have time" syndrome is, as I have often pointed out, is quite the opposite of what many pundits expected would happen with the advent of modern technology. Said technology has served to ratchet up expectations as opposed to actually saving people time. I recently had some unexpected disruptions in my own life, and that is why I have been a stranger to this site and a few others.

It was once said that nearly half of all US workers fail to use all of the vacation leave time they are entitled to, in many cases out of fear that they will be considered highly expendable if they do so. European workers, by contrast, have a much stronger culture of vacationing. Even traditionally workaholic Japan has surpassed us in the amount of vacation time taken. The outlook is no doubt made worse by the advent of the gig economy where you're independent contractors and not allotted any real vacation, sick leave, or other benefits. I recently talked with the owner or manager of a restaurant I sometimes pick up at, and he told me that, like it or not, the gig economy is going to be the wave of the future and that there will be fewer and fewer traditional jobs with full pay and benefits. This already began with the trend toward companies using more and more temporary workers out of staffing agencies.

So, are you planning to take any true vacations this year, or are you in the category that just can't afford to? In the spirit of full disclosure I tend to fall into the latter camp, although I may try to squeeze a couple of days away if I am lucky. While we're at it I may also seek out opinions as to whether we ever will become that society of increased leisure we were once all but promised.

In just a little over nine months from now we will close the books on another decade. What will the legacy of the 2010s be? Its highs, its lows, its would've, could've and should'ves? This could be the decade that disproves at least some of the authors' theory. They identified a roughly 80-year saecular cycle, which would have made this decade coincide with the 1930s. Yet the 2010s were a far cry from the near universal misery of the earlier time. At its beginning we may have still felt the effects of the downturn of the closing years of the 00 decade, but nothing even closely resembling a second great depression occurred. Being a Chicago area person, one of the highlights has to be that of the Cubs winning the world series for the first time in over a century. Your thoughts here.

I don't know about you guys, but I am fortunate right now to have a little money to invest, and I am waiting to see how a hard Brexit will affect the economy. I don't want to "buy high and sell low" ya know! The deadline is now set for the end of March. What do you think?

Tristan of Australia says Brexit can't and shouldn't be reversed, and yet may crash the economy. I think it could at least unsettle things for a while. Britain is going to have to work out its trade relationships, which could suffer. Multi-national businesses may move, and those who had chosen London because it's a center of world finance and commerce may move too.

This could affect the US election too. Trump and all the other nationalists are partly responsible for the Brexit vote, by stirring up fear of refugees and national pride. Older British people long for the glory of the British Empire, just like Trump talks "make America great again," like Mussolini did in Italy in the thirties.

Yesterday there was a huge demonstration in favor of a revote, and polls show that remain would pass. 5 million people signed a petition for this. The notion that a revote is undemocratic is as silly as claiming that an election should not be held for prime minister after a no confidence vote. OF COURSE a revote is democratic; it's a vote! 

The issue is polarizing the UK people, no doubt. It is the greatest crisis there since WWII, according to journalists and reporters; it's a 4T brought on by the Arab Spring and the reaction to refugees, a problem I fortold. But I'm not sure whether the right thing will be done and a revote authorized or not. Time is running very short! And the 4T has a decade to run. Troubles may be just starting for the British and the UK, which could split up over this just like the USA might split up into red and blue.

Is it ever an option?

I know it seems nonsensical, but for those born near the cusp, isn't choice a factor? I have been playing with the notion that generations overlap rather than having neat boundaries, so for people from these "grey areas" there must be some other factors apart from birth date.
Mark Zuckerberg and Amy Winehouse have been both born in 1984, but I see Zuckerberg as a millennial, while Amy as an Xer. From an older generation, we could point to Jimmy Carter who is more Silent-like despite being born in a supposed G.I. year.

First things first: the Cuban economy is a wreck, and the political system is a monstrosity. Second, Cuba is not a good place in which to be a physician, at least from the standpoint of compensation (related to the state of the economy -- wrecked).

But longevity is about as high as in the USA, which suggests that something is right in a country in which about $813 per person is spent on medical care as opposed to $9403. I am guessing that a back pain that simulated a coronary cost Medicaid at least $4000, and maybe another grand in physical therapy. I should have gotten the physical therapy first and saved some medical costs. Maybe some good primary care might have saved some huge cost to the system. If you live in Michigan, you are paying for a bad system. But so it is in all states.

Quote:On public-access TV in 1985, Bernie Sanders defended an element of Fidel Castro’s regime: It was rarely mentioned that Castro provided health care to his country. Sanders grumbled that the same could not be said of then-President Reagan.
The comment came back to haunt Sanders in the wake of Castro’s death. On Sunday on ABC’s This Week, host Martha Raddatz played the old clip and then asked Sanders if he was aware that “this was a brutal dictatorship despite the romanticized version that some Americans have of Cuba.” She reminded Sanders that Castro rationed food and punished dissidents, then hit him with the big question: “So have you changed your view of Castro since 1985?”

Sanders said he didn’t exactly remember the context for his comment (being 31 years ago) but that Cubans “do have a decent health-care system.”

Many consider it more than decent. After a visit to Havana in 2014, the director-general of the World Health Organization Margaret Chan called for other countries to follow Cuba’s example in health care. Years before, the World Health Organization’s ranking of countries with “the fairest mechanism for health-system finance” put Cuba first among Latin American and Caribbean countries (and far ahead of the United States).

Quote:In Cuba, health care is protected under the constitution as a fundamental human right. As a poor country, Cuba can’t afford to equivocate and waste money upholding that. This pressure seems to have created efficiency. Instead of pouring money into advanced medical technology, the system is forced to keep people healthy.

It’s largely done, as the BBC has reported, through an innovative approach to primary care. Family doctors work in clinics and care for everyone in the surrounding neighborhood. At least once a year, the doctor knocks on your front door (or elsewhere, if you prefer) for a check-up. More than the standard American ritual of listening to your heart and lungs and asking if you’ve noticed any blood coming out of you abnormally, these check-ups involve extensive questions about jobs and social lives and environment—information that’s aided by being right there in a person’s home.

Then the doctors put patients into risk categories and determine how often they need to be seen in the future. Unlike the often fragmented U.S. system where people bounce around between specialists and hospitals, Cuba fosters a holistic approach centered around on a relationship with a primary-care physician. Taxpayer investment in education about smoking, eating, and exercising comes directly from these family doctors—who people trust, and who can tailor recommendations.

Quote:The system requires around twice as many primary-care doctors per capita as we have in the U.S., made possible because the country also invested in medical education, creating in 1998 what U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called “the world’s most advanced medical school.” Cuba has become known for training not just domestic doctors, but those from around the world—and sending its doctors to help other, wealthier countries when needed. During the recent Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, more than 100 Cuban doctors and nurses were at the front lines.

Castro justified sending so much support with a brutally holistic understanding of disease as a global phenomenon. He wrote at the time: “By completing this task with maximum planning and efficiency, our people and sister peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America will be protected, preventing expansion of the epidemic, which has unfortunately already been introduced, and could spread, in the United States, which maintains many personal ties and interactions with the rest of the world.”
That spirit also underlies Cuba’s vaccination program, implemented in 1962, which has left the country with some of the world’s lowest rates of vaccine-preventable infectious disease.

The much wealthier U.S. also has vaccines and primary-care check-ups, of course. The key difference is that in Cuba, these things are mandatory. They’re seen as akin to doing routine maintenance on a car to keep the warranty valid. If the system is going to take care of people in dire situations, people must also let the system take care of them before those dire situations occur.

Quote:This is the opposite of the U.S., where people demand the former but forego the latter. There are costly barriers to primary care and preventive medicine, but showing up at an emergency room is easy.

While Cuba’s situation is far from ideal, it serves as an elegant counterpoint to the three-trillion-dollar U.S. health-care system—which is controlled by corporations (privatized insurance, pharmaceutical, medical-device, and hospital systems) that drive people to pay exorbitant costs (either directly or through taxes). Cuba offers a dire reminder that efficient health care can be provided at much less cost to the people—when the focus is on primary care and prevention.

Looking through the old thread on the archive today, I wondered if I could finally resurrect that thread, and if I and others could be more well-behaved in discussing it than we were then.

As for Justin Bieber, there are a relatively few songs and musical pieces that no matter how often or how long I listen to them, still move me and I still enjoy them to an amazing transcendent degree. That still applies to my favorite Bieber song, called "Pray." It' still linked in my signature line. Recognized or not, and some do recognize it, it is a timeless classic rising far above its time. I still love it, and like to share it, regardless of what the results of sharing it might be.





And I like a lot of his songs. Lately though, Bieber has been less productive, and I didn't like his recent album "Purpose" as consistently as his earlier albums, though it did contain my second-most favorite Bieber song, "What Do You Mean" 
https://youtu.be/DK_0jXPuIr0 And he says he's working on a new album, which I might reveal later in this thread.

But arguments won't convince anyone to like music. It depends on how it strikes you. Many older folks don't like teenage or twenty-aged pop stars, just as I tend not to like most of them, especially in the disco and bubblegum styles-- but some of them I do. And I generally don't find the heavy metal, rap, core punk and grunge styles any more listenable than some others find Bieber or the constellation of current and recent young pop stars associated with him or similar to him.

One of the arguments on the old thread, with Wayne Hurlbert '56, went especially badly, though we were fine on other threads. He made the statement that he would never like Bieber's music no matter what, that he liked it even less the more he heard him, and liked it even less the more I argued with him about it. I said that he and others were "wrong," which isn't the best method of discussion or persuasion, and not likely to lead in the right direction.

But forget Bieber, I wanted to say to him. Really. It's true. Usually when I hear a musical piece, the way it initially strikes me will stay with me, although I may get to know it better or get tired of it. Sometimes though, I hear things in a song or a musical work later on that I didn't hear before, and I change my mind about it. So, doesn't that happen to other people? Can you or myself really say about a piece of music, "I will never like it," as if you could never change your mind about it, or hear something else in it? Even if it's within a genre you don't like?

It's easy to say about music, there's no accounting for taste. But music is a phenomena, and we all hear the same pieces that are available to us. It is a more interesting question than that; it's harder to explain than that, why some people like a piece and others don't.

Do you like Justin Bieber? Perhaps more or less than before? Other pop stars? Or is it a hopeless and empty genre, always?

Fourth Turning Forum archive:
http://generationaldynamics.com/tftarchive/