Controversial non-political opinions

[JasonBlack]

Just like the other thread, but this one is for non-political opinions.

[JasonBlack]

1) The Beatles are criminally overrated and did more to ruin modern music than any artist in modern history.
2) Rick Astley has a phenomenal voice. I don't get why people view him as a meme.
3) Most people need to be bullied a bit at some point in their lives. A little experience with confrontation is healthy and goes a long way toward building confidence and aiding in the development of healthy boundaries.

[JasonBlack]

1) If you think about it, it's a little arrogant to start out wanting to be a therapist, teacher or HR rep right out of college. At that age....you don't know much about the real world. All you can really do is recite theory to people who probably have much more experience than you do. No, 23 year old, recent-intern Hannah from HR is not better qualified to decide who is/isn't best qualified to do my job. Someone with actual field experience is.
2) It's healthy to have a little bit of bravado. You need a little hutzpah to have the courage to tackle new challenges and get shit done.

[pbrower2a]

(04-08-2022, 03:43 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: 1) If you think about it, it's a little arrogant to start out wanting to be a therapist, teacher or HR rep right out of college. At that age....you don't know much about the real world. All you can really do is recite theory to people who probably have much more experience than you do. No, 23 year old, recent-intern Hannah from HR is not better qualified to decide who is/isn't best qualified to do my job. Someone with actual field experience is.
2) It's healthy to have a little bit of bravado. You need a little hutzpah to have the courage to tackle new challenges and get shit done.

1) As an example, a K-12 teacher, among other things, is preparing most students to do anything other than teaching, including some jobs (domestic service, construction labor, sales-clerking, food service, delivery, cleaning, and factory work) which generally offend the sensibilities of someone with an IQ over about 90. In most communities, school teachers are among the more intelligent people in town, but if they have never done those menial or hard-labor jobs they have no idea of what the real world is like.  The HR rep needs to know something about the work that most people do for that company, and if most people in that company work on an assembly line, then maybe a year of work on the assembly line is a good idea.  One might not be comfortable and one might not relate to the prole culture, but maybe you will know enough to not subject people from that prole culture with Haydn string quartets, allusions to Dostoevsky novels, or chromos of Degas. I'm not saying that therapists need an excursion into drugs or alcohol to fully understand many of the clients.

2) Few people lack self-confidence, but those who do because they are autistic need to build themselves up incrementally. If anything, many people have too much self-confidence, and if that excess in self-confidence suggests that one can succeed at shady behavior, then one must disabuse oneself of such a delusion. The penal system might do so, but this ain't Denmark.  

Addendum: there is no shame in doing productive work that supplies basic needs such as food or fiber, shapes raw materials into something useful, connects people to things that make their lives better, maintains expensive objects. Our system of economic rewards lionizes people who have climbed the ladder of success somehow and then destroyed the ladder or sent it hurtling down upon those  'beneath' them. There is no shame in toil or service. There should be shame in exploitation, whether as a bureaucratic toady whose contributions are nebulous at best but whose pay is astronomical, an alcoholic or addict who cripples himself vocationally, a shady operator, or an outright crook.  

A few times I have suggested that the sanest people in our economic order despite their limited education are the Old Order Amish. Their economic system supplies very basic goods, like food and furniture or some skilled trades. They are strictly capitalist, but they have no bureaucracy supplying huge numbers of jobs suited to over-educated people who don't like getting their hands dirty. Well, that is how America used to be. An eighth grade education used to be adequate for holding a job (although more is necessary now due to the complexity of life). I have suggested that giant corporations have bloated bureaucracies to sop up educated people who can be rewarded well enough (a single-family house, which is now a clear luxury, a late-model vehicle, nice clothes, and access to similar people as marital partners) so that they prefer watching Hitchcock movies to reading the works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao.   

That may not be your chosen life; you may prefer listening to Haydn string quartets, reading Dostoevsky, or visiting art galleries. Most people have no desire for anything like that.   

Finally -- we need more capitalism in the sense of small, competitive businesses with narrow niches, and not less. To be sure, vehicle manufacture, operation of railroads, manufacture of weapons systems, software design, the extraction of petroleum, government (K-12 education excepted), insurance companies, or the creation of watchable movies require large organizations with bloated bureaucracies.   With limited markets by geography or by being big fish in a small pont, small-business owners have a stake in the quality of life of their communities that absentee owners and bureaucratic elites who have no local loyalty (the latter two sorts are loyal to an income stream more than to a community) almost never have.

[JasonBlack]

Quote:Finally -- we need more capitalism in the sense of small, competitive businesses with narrow niches, and not less. To be sure, vehicle manufacture, operation of railroads, manufacture of weapons systems, software design, the extraction of petroleum, government (K-12 education excepted), insurance companies, or the creation of watchable movies require large organizations with bloated bureaucracies. With limited markets by geography or by being big fish in a small pont, small-business owners have a stake in the quality of life of their communities that absentee owners and bureaucratic elites who have no local loyalty (the latter two sorts are loyal to an income stream more than to a community) almost never have.

In other words, you're a liberal who actually loves America and wants people to be rewarded when they build something substantial. We need more of these.

[JasonBlack]

I do not understand people's desire to go out drinking, being loud and stupid at the bar with their friends and putting themselves at risk of getting heavily drunk around total strangers. I didn't understand it at 15, 20 or 25, nor do I now at 30. It's one thing to hang out at your friends house and have 2-3 drinks, but getting totally hammered in public in a crowded room of total strangers? That just sounds like a disaster, not a good time.

[JasonBlack]

Humans are more different than we are alike. Practically speaking (obviously not technically), people with substantially differing temperament and/or intelligence are basically different subspecies.

[pbrower2a]

(04-09-2022, 09:08 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: I do not understand people's desire to go out drinking, being loud and stupid at the bar with their friends and putting themselves at risk of getting heavily drunk around total strangers. I didn't understand it at 15, 20 or 25, nor do I now at 30. It's one thing to hang out at your friends house and have 2-3 drinks, but getting totally hammered in public in a crowded room of total strangers? That just sounds like a disaster, not a good time.

I was involved about twenty-five years ago in a nasty knock-down, drag-out flame war on some other, long-departed, forum in which some creep first denied the Holocaust (which began to look like simply a sick joke but has since become recognized as hate speech) and tried to hammer me for being Jewish while attributing to me most of the hallmarks of Jew-baiting smears that antisemites use. Most of those are easy to debunk. Anyone who rigidly follows the 613 commandments of Judaism (the Torah has a famous Ten for Humanity as a whole) is fully moral. Jews are not particularly greedy and materialistic (they were when they were poor, but nothing induces greed and materialism as does poverty or its memory; at that if I find greed and materialism among blacks or Hispanics, then I excuse that), and they were far out of proportion in their participation of non-blacks in support of African-Americans in the struggle for basic dignity and political rights in "Ku Kluxistan". Judaism is arguably the most tolerant of all religions in that it holds that all good gentiles will get to Heaven -- the Jewish Heaven -- and that much of the reward of Heaven will be that they become Jews. Judaism does not do evangelism, and as I understand the only semblance of effort to win converts is to get gentile spouses of Jews to convert to Judaism. If Christians have used Biblical (Torah) passages to justify slavery, then such misreads the Torah; the "slavery" is more like an indenture in which a poor man seeks to marry a wife who has a share of interest in what is his father-in-law's inheritance. 

I can understand that one. Considering that it would be tempting for him to take property from the father-in-law, sell it, and then go on a pattern of debauchery while abandoning his wife, this indenture proves his dedication to his prospective wife, his work ethic, and a bond to his new family. Because marriage for love (life was much more marginal due to economic realities) did not exist, shared economic effort was as close as one get. Prevention of destitution and hunger among loved ones was as close as one got to love. Contemporary Judaism condemned the chattel slavery of the slave-holding South, as it offered no redemption (aside from "Pie in the Sky When You Die") from bondage.  

I expressed hatred of Nazis, and the Holocaust-denying creep faulted me for my (as he understood it) "never forget and never forgive" religion. Supposedly it is definitively Christian to forgive and forget any wrong, even if it is mowing down or mass-gassing loved ones or working people to exhaustion on starvation rations, which is also lethal. It's best that people forgive seemingly-minor and now-irrelevant misconduct so that people not continue vendettas like those of the Montecchi and the Capoletti (Shakespeare renames those families as Montague and Capulet). it is safe to say that Jesus never met a Nazi, as a Nazi would have gassed Him or mowed Him down.

I left plenty of hints that I am not Jewish. One was to make a reference to Dante's Inferno, suggesting that there would have to be a new tenth circle of Hell to accommodate the most egregious sinners of all time -- then Nazis and Stalinists. (a hint: the Rwanda genocide had not yet happened).  Another is that I never spoke of myself as a Jew or of Jews in the first-person (we/us/our) plural. Another was to suggest that antisemitic slurs caused me to investigate them for their veracity -- and that in such an investigation I found that I saw virtues in Judaism unique to Judaism that caused me to contemplate conversion. Now why would a Jew convert to Judaism? A lapsed Jew returning to Judaism is not a convert. One virtue of Judaism is that it does not do religious persecution... and Jews did not persecute my Huguenot, Quaker, or Mennonite (or any Hussite if I had those) ancestors. But self-proclaimed Christians did. You know those -- they are Christians because they are not something else. That is weak Christianity.    

The bigot showed his resentments, and one Jewish participant in that flame war said of resentful gentiles that they needed to give up the boozing and whoring that ensure personal failure in most aspects of life. If there are two traits that I do not associate with Jews (or successful gentiles) but instead with losers of all kinds, then those are boozing and whoring. People who give up those bad habits will find compulsion to do things that genuinely improve their lives -- like starting a business, learning a lucrative trade, getting educated, or having a wholesome family life -- and those are in no way exclusive. One will be too busy and happy to cast blame upon innocent people instead of upon personal vice. A hint: at most pogroms and Nazi mass-shootings of Jews, plenty of liquor was available. This was also so at the Rwanda genocide and in the massacres of non-Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, both of which had practically no Jews as victims. I doubt that the massacre at Wounded Knee was done with sobriety, for that matter. Liquor has a way of dissolving a conscience, which may explain why the bulk of bank robberies are done by persons drunk or on drugs.  

I chose to play a game with that bigot, letting him believe that I was part of some Jewish conspiracy for world domination -- you know, straight out of the Protocols of the (Learned) Elders (of Zion)*, the one that claims that infant Jews and senile  Jews on their deathbeds alike are part of the conspiracy -- because I am some vile, disgusting, evil Jew. I got him to expose what he thought he was protecting, and he exposed that as 

"Germans and German-Americans".

I told him at that point that I was a German-American (OK, subsequent study of my genealogy exposes that
I am only about half German and Swiss, with almost all of the rest English, Welsh, or Scots-Irish... with no known Jewish ancestors back to at least 1800), and that German-Americans often experience antisemitic bigotry. We do not like it. Some of us recognize that our morals are much the same as those of most Jews, and that we recognize the Ashkenazim as cultural brethren. Obviously, there's one thing that we don't want to be confused with. Instead of denying Jewish origin (I have already lost that argument) I prefer defending Jews as mostly good people. Sure, Jews have their rogues, but Jews are swift to warn gentiles about those because those rogues can do much harm to gentiles while sullying the reputation that Jews want and need. 

NAZIS!

I told him that I had met plenty of Jews, and that at one time I sheepishly confessed to German ancestry. Yes, it is entirely likely that some eighth-cousin was a brutal guard in a camp who "selected" Jews for gassing or was in an SS unit that exterminated Jews. That Jew could recognize that I had no personal fault.  Of course I made clear that I hated Nazis. To be a good person one must hate Nazis. 

I told him that if I had the unlikely choice of being a Nazi or a Jew, I would convert to Judaism, as the latter requires no compromises of my moral values and few moral compromises. It's bad enough to be a target of illegitimate hatred, so why would I choose being the target of legitimate hatred?

If Dante is at all right about the damned... then I certainly don't want to go where the Nazis are. Even the first circle of Hell that Dante for the most meritorious (harmless or meritorious) circle would at the least have Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, James Mason,  Lauren Bacall. and Anne Frank... quite a few American politicians (including Carl Levin, whom I have met), and a large number of figures from Classical Greece, the golden age of the Islamic world,    and probably such figures as Confucius and the Buddha.        
   
*It is never both "Learned" and "of Zion", as if that matters much.

[JasonBlack]

In general, people in their early 20s are more insufferable than teenagers. In particular, people in the moderately high IQ range (say, 115 to 125) who are smart enough to begin theory, but lacking either
a) the education or experience to comment on what works in the real world
or
b) the more advanced intelligence required to make the more meaningful nuances that allow people to understand the complexities of reality rather than over-simplifying that reality into convenient narratives and black and white games of hero/villain.


I have observed this characteristic across people in that age range for a long time, as well as looked at several historical examples, and it doesn't seem to correlate well with generational theory (ie, people in that age range tend to be annoying to deal with whether they're from an idealist, reactive, civic or adaptive cohort).

[pbrower2a]

(04-30-2022, 11:51 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: In general, people in their early 20s are more insufferable than teenagers. In particular, people in the moderately high IQ range (say, 115 to 125) who are smart enough to begin theory, but lacking either
a) the education or experience to comment on what works in the real world
or
b) the more advanced intelligence required to make the more meaningful nuances that allow people to understand the complexities of reality rather than over-simplifying that reality into convenient narratives and black and white games of hero/villain.


I have observed this characteristic across people in that age range for a long time, as well as looked at several historical examples, and it doesn't seem to correlate well with generational theory (ie, people in that age range tend to be annoying to deal with whether they're from an idealist, reactive, civic or adaptive cohort).

Smart, young people are the bulls in the china shop. The people that you want in a china shop are the ill-paid people who see the prices of the china and  recognize that they are in deep trouble if some pricey trinket breaks. 

It's the dumb people in their early twenties who do the worst. Among them are the outright criminals whose athleticism makes them menaces. They are the robbers and rapists. They are the ones who see the payout on a loved one's insurance policy and think someone holding that policy worth more alive than dead. Criminals on the whole are dolts low in intellect and emotional maturity. They are dumb enough to believe that they can lie their ways out of a problem.

I can't say how general it is, but most people in their twenties need to spend some time doing domestic service, warehouse work, farm or industrial labor, or sales-clerking with the fear that such will be their permanent lot if they muck up in any way. They mist know that their employer sees a piece of fine glassware more precious than their employee.  Or they must work 60 hours or so a week doing miserable white-collar jobs such as cold-calling or customer retention. I've been a substitute teacher, and I can tell you that I learned more lessons applicable to teaching from sales-clerking and even factory work than from any academic study (aside from some philosophy and psychology). As for teaching -- many teachers have no idea of what the real world -- the ugly world in which people are expendable tools and material objects are precious, and in which one must remember at all times that the customer's payment is the source of one's meager paycheck -- demands of people. Knowing this can break one. Who said that capitalism is nice to workers? You can hate that all that you want, but the people who really rule believe that what Karl Marx said was wrong about capitalism is wonderful because they enjoy great power, indulgence, and gain. Such people believe that their tennis elbow is more horrific than someone else's pancreatic cancer.

[beechnut79]

(05-01-2022, 11:15 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(04-30-2022, 11:51 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: In general, people in their early 20s are more insufferable than teenagers. In particular, people in the moderately high IQ range (say, 115 to 125) who are smart enough to begin theory, but lacking either
a) the education or experience to comment on what works in the real world
or
b) the more advanced intelligence required to make the more meaningful nuances that allow people to understand the complexities of reality rather than over-simplifying that reality into convenient narratives and black and white games of hero/villain.


I have observed this characteristic across people in that age range for a long time, as well as looked at several historical examples, and it doesn't seem to correlate well with generational theory (ie, people in that age range tend to be annoying to deal with whether they're from an idealist, reactive, civic or adaptive cohort).

Smart, young people are the bulls in the china shop. The people that you want in a china shop are the ill-paid people who see the prices of the china and  recognize that they are in deep trouble if some pricey trinket breaks. 

It's the dumb people in their early twenties who do the worst. Among them are the outright criminals whose athleticism makes them menaces. They are the robbers and rapists. They are the ones who see the payout on a loved one's insurance policy and think someone holding that policy worth more alive than dead. Criminals on the whole are dolts low in intellect and emotional maturity. They are dumb enough to believe that they can lie their ways out of a problem.

I can't say how general it is, but most people in their twenties need to spend some time doing domestic service, warehouse work, farm or industrial labor, or sales-clerking with the fear that such will be their permanent lot if they muck up in any way. They mist know that their employer sees a piece of fine glassware more precious than their employee.  Or they must work 60 hours or so a week doing miserable white-collar jobs such as cold-calling or customer retention. I've been a substitute teacher, and I can tell you that I learned more lessons applicable to teaching from sales-clerking and even factory work than from any academic study (aside from some philosophy and psychology). As for teaching -- many teachers have no idea of what the real world -- the ugly world in which people are expendable tools and material objects are precious, and in which one must remember at all times that the customer's payment is the source of one's meager paycheck -- demands of people. Knowing this can break one. Who said that capitalism is nice to workers? You can hate that all that you want, but the people who really rule believe that what Karl Marx said was wrong about capitalism is wonderful because they enjoy great power, indulgence, and gain. Such people believe that their tennis elbow is more horrific than someone else's pancreatic cancer.

Paragraph by paragraph response:

P1:  All I really say here is having seen the sign in many stores saying "If you break it; you bought it." Needless to say I have always been very careful not to run roughshod in such a place to cause a breakage. Don't wish to forcefully buy anything I don't intend to. Breakage can also happen in transit on the way home or other location of deposit.

P2:  As regards the insurance policy, can't help but wonder if you meant to say worth more dead than alive. I don't have a life insurance policy for mainly those reasons. Saw too many murder mysteries where the subject was killed strictly over an anticipated insurance payout. And, where criminal tendencies are concerned, violent crime tends to peak between the ages of 16 to 25. Serial killers such as Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, however, were quite a bit older.

P3:  This one brings to mind the plight of the paycheck to paycheck crowd. Many are made up of folks who formerly had good jobs but were forced to take jobs paying much less than their former ones did. Many are in extreme debt, with their only means of escape a stroke of luck such as a lottery win. An unexpected expense such as a major car repair can totally wiped them out. In one article I read they were describe as Generation LIMBO due to being more or less stuck in place. I wrote in all caps because I was able to come up with the perfect acronym based on the information provided. LIMBO=Lower Income Mostly Beyond Overhaul.

[pbrower2a]

(05-01-2022, 02:30 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(05-01-2022, 11:15 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(04-30-2022, 11:51 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: In general, people in their early 20s are more insufferable than teenagers. In particular, people in the moderately high IQ range (say, 115 to 125) who are smart enough to begin theory, but lacking either
a) the education or experience to comment on what works in the real world
or
b) the more advanced intelligence required to make the more meaningful nuances that allow people to understand the complexities of reality rather than over-simplifying that reality into convenient narratives and black and white games of hero/villain.


I have observed this characteristic across people in that age range for a long time, as well as looked at several historical examples, and it doesn't seem to correlate well with generational theory (ie, people in that age range tend to be annoying to deal with whether they're from an idealist, reactive, civic or adaptive cohort).

Smart, young people are the bulls in the china shop. The people that you want in a china shop are the ill-paid people who see the prices of the china and  recognize that they are in deep trouble if some pricey trinket breaks. 

It's the dumb people in their early twenties who do the worst. Among them are the outright criminals whose athleticism makes them menaces. They are the robbers and rapists. They are the ones who see the payout on a loved one's insurance policy and think someone holding that policy worth more alive than dead dead than alive. Criminals on the whole are dolts low in intellect and emotional maturity. They are dumb enough to believe that they can lie their ways out of a problem.

I can't say how general it is, but most people in their twenties need to spend some time doing domestic service, warehouse work, farm or industrial labor, or sales-clerking with the fear that such will be their permanent lot if they muck up in any way. They mist know that their employer sees a piece of fine glassware more precious than their employee.  Or they must work 60 hours or so a week doing miserable white-collar jobs such as cold-calling or customer retention. I've been a substitute teacher, and I can tell you that I learned more lessons applicable to teaching from sales-clerking and even factory work than from any academic study (aside from some philosophy and psychology). As for teaching -- many teachers have no idea of what the real world -- the ugly world in which people are expendable tools and material objects are precious, and in which one must remember at all times that the customer's payment is the source of one's meager paycheck -- demands of people. Knowing this can break one. Who said that capitalism is nice to workers? You can hate that all that you want, but the people who really rule believe that what Karl Marx said was wrong about capitalism is wonderful because they enjoy great power, indulgence, and gain. Such people believe that their tennis elbow is more horrific than someone else's pancreatic cancer.

Paragraph by paragraph response:

P1:  All I really say here is having seen the sign in many stores saying "If you break it; you bought it." Needless to say I have always been very careful not to run roughshod in such a place to cause a breakage. Don't wish to forcefully buy anything I don't intend to. Breakage can also happen in transit on the way home or other location of deposit.

The optimum employee recognizes his worthlessness as a person in the grand scheme of things (think of cannon fodder in warfare) in contrast to some hill or forest. I know enough to watch myself around fragile and expensive stuff, including glassware, including the cheap glassware that contains expensive wine or liquor. Humanistic values would be nice in America, and although I recognize that certain glassware, alcoholic beverages, and china are extremely valuable, they are not worth knocking over. 

"Bull in the china shop" is a metaphor for the sort of person whose potential for disruption is far higher than his ability to create value or make things work better. Maybe we simply need to treat the proles far better than we used to. America used to have more social mobility for people with good work ethics, imagination, and latent competence once they had paid their dues. We had lots of college-degreed people who didn't want to get their hands dirty, get muscle aches from work, or bow and scrape to customers who have far more income than they do.     

Quote:P2:  As regards the insurance policy, can't help but wonder if you meant to say worth more dead than alive. I don't have a life insurance policy for mainly those reasons. Saw too many murder mysteries where the subject was killed strictly over an anticipated insurance payout. And, where criminal tendencies are concerned, violent crime tends to peak between the ages of 16 to 25. Serial killers such as Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, however, were quite a bit older.

I made the correction without hiding the error. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill", meaning that one must not kill deliberately or through reckless application of deadly force, is as absolute as it gets. In societies that move away from the death penalty, the last crimes to be subject to capital punishment are homicidal offenses; secondarily such offenses are those that threaten national sovereignty (treason, espionage, treachery) or perhaps bring lethal drugs. I'm going to make it clear: I consider the death penalty so barbarous and capricious that it mocks American justice. Sure, there are monstrously-evil people. This said, I wonder whether Charles Manson knew that he was the butt of many jokes and that people would take delight in his death from natural causes. 

I doubt that even the fear of Hell scares people adequately. I remember hearing a Greek Orthodox priest say that he had only one fear -- of Hell. All other horrors are temporary because we are temporary. I wonder how often a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp warned a brutal guard or administrator that he would burn in Hell for some obscene act of cruelty. Such might have hastened one's demise, but as hopeless as things could be. I can only imagine what pigs (which really are smart critters) think as they go to the slaughter of those monstrous creatures that can do something so horrible as... you know. In my case, may God not be a literal pig!     

Quote:P3:  This one brings to mind the plight of the paycheck to paycheck crowd. Many are made up of folks who formerly had good jobs but were forced to take jobs paying much less than their former ones did. Many are in extreme debt, with their only means of escape a stroke of luck such as a lottery win. An unexpected expense such as a major car repair can totally wiped them out. In one article I read they were describe as Generation LIMBO due to being more or less stuck in place. I wrote in all caps because I was able to come up with the perfect acronym based on the information provided. LIMBO=Lower Income Mostly Beyond Overhaul.

Cruel leaders of politics, commerce, and religion know well that fear works as a motivator. It also degrades people so that they eventually become wrecks. Perhaps all that the powerful people can do is to escalate the dread. Belong to the wrong religion, and in Roman times you could be cast into an arena with bears, lions, or tigers. In the Third Reich, sadistic guards could have dogs attack a helpless prisoner. Did Humanity really progress from Roman times except in technology? 

America did better when unions were stronger, and when people making union wages were able to afford paying manufacturer's suggested list price (the high price) for what they got from a small-business owner who better knew his wares than does some clerk working for minimum wage and can never  afford the wares that he sells. Something is valuable because I recognize its value and not because of a high price tag. 

I make one basic note about the relationship between debt and political orientation. Creditors are almost always on the Right side of the political spectrum because they have the talons of debt in the souls of their employees whether sharecroppers or industrial laborers. People heavily in debt for sustenance when sustenance is offered at nest grudgingly and capriciously are on the Left. They want a more vibrant economy that gives them more choices, and they want inflation to trivialize their debt. This seems to apply across culture and time. 

The Master Class of 'our' economic order wants people to live in fear of job loss, sicknesses, and severe and sudden costs. They oppose a welfare state because such turns people away from loan-sharks who can turn huge profits. Maybe this is simply a phase of our history that we will grow out of. Maybe we would be better off buying less stuff and buying less entertainment and appreciating what we do have. Less kitsch, and more culture. 

This is culture:



It may sound much the same because of the same ensemble (two violins, a viola, and a cello) but even if most are similar in form, Haydn has enough musical imagination to make it all attractive and pithy. One of the tests of one's quality of life is that one can listen to great music with generic titles and get great enjoyment because the music is that good.  

... I have my prediction of the next High. It will be visually austere because clutter will be out of style in a time of prosperity, or because much stuff will have to be deferred to recreate the means of prosperity after much is destroyed in an apocalyptic war.

[Eric the Green]

Some younger people more often commit crimes or other violent actions than people over 30, no doubt. They have the vitality and lack of perspective needed. Certainly sometimes people in their 20s or late teens can be narrow-minded fanatics. To an extent, I was, and many boomers were. Some people might say I (and other boomers) still am, though. These days, indeed, the only sensible thing is to be partisan. The Republican Party today is dominated by crazy conspiracy theories and an anti-democratic, xenophobic cult of personality on the one hand, and by an equally crazy but considered a more normal but real conspiracy called neoliberalism (lower taxes, less regulation, anti-welfare, prosperity trickles down from job creaters, etc.). Usually the two go together, especially because most of the adherents of the latter, older conspiracy are bowing to the cult power of the former, conspiracy theory peddler, who embodies both kinds of destructive foolishness.

And it's important to point out who supports this dangerous Republican nonsense. It is mostly older people, not those in their twenties. Most of the 20-somethings oppose it, but are nevertheless victims of it; because the neoliberals have successfully destroyed the sense of civic responsibility and trust among the young people with the destruction of democracy they have so-far carried out, along with their destruction of education, which the conspiracy-theory xenophobes are seeking to destroy even more now with book banning and other laws supporting bigotry in schools and in medicine.

Those on the center-left and many on the left, on the other hand, though they support progressive policies, do not peddle division and seek instead to find support among every demographic, as President Obama does. There are crazies on the left, though, who only support the most thoroughly and perfectly leftist candidates, and think they don't win only because of rigging. This and other conspiracy theories also exist or are supported by some people on the left, and by some from throughout the political spectrum as well; just not as thoroughly, nor are they able to put their theorists in power as the right-wing is able to do. But is it mainly young people on the left who support these crazy theories and fanatics on the left? I'm not so sure.

[pbrower2a]

(05-01-2022, 11:04 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Some younger people more often commit crimes or other violent actions than people over 30, no doubt. They have the vitality and lack of perspective needed. Certainly sometimes people in their 20s or late teens can be narrow-minded fanatics. To an extent, I was, and many boomers were. Some people might say I (and other boomers) still am, though. These days, indeed, the only sensible thing is to be partisan. The Republican Party today is dominated by crazy conspiracy theories and an anti-democratic, xenophobic cult of personality on the one hand, and by an equally crazy but considered a more normal but real conspiracy called neoliberalism (lower taxes, less regulation, anti-welfare, prosperity trickles down from job creaters, etc.). Usually the two go together, especially because most of the adherents of the latter, older conspiracy are bowing to the cult power of the former, conspiracy theory peddler, who embodies both kinds of destructive foolishness.

The Millennial Generation has lived all of its formative years in the neoliberal phase of the  Skowronek cycle. It has heard the promises and seen little of it achieved. It has been condemned to make sacrifices in the furtherance of neoliberal ideology but achieved nothing. Millennial kids heard promises of super-prosperity that would redeem the severe inequality, economic uncertainty, and harsh management that go with neoliberalism. If neoliberalism has achieved any greater prosperity it has all gone to economic elites -- and then some. I can't see how life for a young adult is any more promising now than it was in 1975. Oh, so we have wonderful technologies such as cell phones (overrated), personal computers, and two hundred channels on cable TV (overrated -- you can watch at most two channels at a time as my Dad used to do when watching one TV with a Detroit Tigers game on the bedroom TV and a Chicago Cubs game on the living room TV through the opened bedroom door, or vice-versa) -- much that used to be free now has a huge price-tag attached if you are more than 40 miles away from the transmitter tower.  And then come the property rents -- oh, do they hit hard! Urban landlords are kings in the American economy.  

That neoliberalism has failed shows in many of its figures going toward crazy ideas that would have been too reactionary for the political mainstream in the 1970's. Neoliberalism would scrap democracy on behalf of economic elites responsible to none but themselves. It now stands for crony capitalism and hyper-reactionary social values that more suggest Iran than America.    

Quote:And it's important to point out who supports this dangerous Republican nonsense. It is mostly older people, not those in their twenties. Most of the 20-somethings oppose it, but are nevertheless victims of it; because the neoliberals have successfully destroyed the sense of civic responsibility and trust among the young people with the destruction of democracy they have so-far carried out, along with their destruction of education, which the conspiracy-theory xenophobes are seeking to destroy even more now with book banning and other laws supporting bigotry in schools and in medicine.

We would be better off reading books than grazing on Facebook and Twitter -- let alone the dreadful Parler. Some ideas really are precious because they enrich our souls and give us insight into the questions that Humanity needs answered every generation. Wise people still read Plato.  Except for some highly-refined science, drama, music, architecture, and visual images little really is new under the Sun. Human  nature changes so little that the Iliad and the Odyssey are still readable.  

Quote:Those on the center-left and many on the left, on the other hand, though they support progressive policies, do not peddle division and seek instead to find support among every demographic, as President Obama does. There are crazies on the left, though, who only support the most thoroughly and perfectly leftist candidates, and think they don't win only because of rigging. This and other conspiracy theories also exist or are supported by some people on the left, and by some from throughout the political spectrum as well; just not as thoroughly, nor are they able to put their theorists in power as the right-wing is able to do. But is it mainly young people on the left who support these crazy theories and fanatics on the left? I'm not so sure.

Extremist militancy has rarely achieved anything in power except the sorts of horror that their ideological opposites have achieved. If an ideology causes starvation, builds concentration camps, performs mass executions, rigs elections, or suppresses benign thought, then we have the "fool-me-once, shame on you, fool-me-twice, shame on me" meme in operation should we accept the murderous folly. 

Part of the problem is that many of us believe that because we can't understand how anyone else could support (Barack Obama/Donald Trump -- pick one) that we can't imagine either winning. Well they did even if nearly half the electorate thought them horrible. OK, Trump really is horrible by practically any standard outside his cult, and conservatism that adopts Obama's virtues while being more sympathetic to unfettered markets and the profit motive will likely arise after the neoliberal ideology crashes and burns. 

The antithesis of Marxism-Leninism isn't the endorsement of a cruel plutocracy. The economic sadist who endorses a New Serfdom on behalf of owners and executives does exactly what a Marxist-Leninist says that capitalists do, and differs from Marxism-Leninism only in endorsing what the commies recognize as pure horror. The antithesis of Marxism-Leninism is a capitalist system with humanistic values and opportunities for people not capitalists. Not everyone can be a capitalist, and if capitalism is to succeed it must work for people not in the economic elite.  

If we cannot scrap capitalism (even workers' cooperatives must follow such capitalist rules as those of honest accounting and the payment of bills) then we must have capitalism with a human face.

[pbrower2a]

I can say this: the dumb young people with some moral compass are the sorts that one wants working cheaply due to their modest talents and their fear of an economic system that reminds them at all times that they are expendable. Such people know that they have little value to an employer because they can leave. The only costs that they have associated with their employment aside from pittances as wages is the cost of training to do minimally-skilled tasks. The more minimal the skill necessary to do the tasks, the better for the employer. Training is a real cost. Ideally the employer has others lined up in the event of a need to replace the person who must see the wares more precious than himself.

Yes, low-paying work is often dehumanizing. It practically ensures that one will be very close to the low end of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maybe not as desperate as someone in a life-and-death situation... but having no economic certainty except to expect more of the same so long as one holds a job that barely keeps one fed and allows one to share a studio apartment with five or more people. Management is often awful, with an owner who sees anyone not a family member as livestock or a boss who himself is little better off but still believes that with dedicated, diligent work with few demands now he has a chance to get ahead in the organization.

The practical solution for just about anyone is to specialize. In general the more specialized and rare one's skills, the better one does in life. Paradoxically those who specialize last can do so most completely, which explains such people as physicians, attorneys, architects, accountants, engineers, research scientists, mathematicians, and college professors -- maybe some really, really good salespeople -- who are toward the high end of IQ. But getting to specialize late requires expensive education.

One day I got into a heated argument with a Trump cultist in which I told him that Trump made me wish that I were a German instead of a German-American even if I had spent the first thirty years of my life in the DDR. At the least, tax-supported education is available to anyone who has the talent to support it. (One rap on that is that the German educational system tracks kids early so that kids who aren't so promising at age ten get led into manufacturing... this said, there aren't that many late-bloomers. People who get delayed recognition? Sure! That's commonplace in creative activities). Medical costs are low for a German patient perhaps in part because German physicians don't make huge incomes; they also do not have huge student loans to pay off, and the system promotes family practice as prevention. Well -- prevention does more to extend lifespans than does heroic medicine. The tax system favors small business owners and small-scale farmers, which is reasonable when one considers that the tycoons and financiers bankrolled you-know-who. Religiosity is low, and although people can be devout, there's little room for fire-breathing fundamentalists and pushers of the Gospel of Greed. An educational system that pushes classical literature and great music (more than half the music in my classical collection spoke some German dialect) as an essential part of education makes one less amenable to pseudo-intellectual garbage. If I never hear another person tell me that if I believe in evolution I will burn in Hell I will be happy with that.

(Let's face it: faith is a vastly-overrated commodity. Something with strong experimental evidence and solid logic behind it needs little faith to support it. So it is with something that a great German, Albert Einstein, discovered. It takes little faith to recognize that a good society can thrive only if people generally do good and refrain from such evils as murder, assault, rape, child molestation, theft, abandonment of the vulnerable, boozing and whoring, and economic exploitation. As for the work ethic, it does not arise in a vacuum, and it can disappear quickly when the rewards that underpin it vanish. Know well: it is trashy ideas, like young-earth creationism, "scientific racism" and UFO cults, that require far more faith than does genuine science). OK, so if we had the German educational system about half the colleges would be closed as inadequate and parents would know by the time their kids are ten or so they might be trained to do auto body repair or institutional cooking. So!

It is not a disgrace to produce the food, fiber, or energy that keep people fed, clothed, or mobile and warm. It is not a disgrace to maintain things so that they not wear out or rust out before their time. It is not a disgrace to mine steel or iron ore or to fashion the product of stuff into girders and locomotives. It is not a disgrace to do hair, human or canine. It is a disgrace to make money off disgraceful activities that cheat and exploit people.

The disgrace is that people get paid badly because they do the real work. No legerdemain of tax cuts will solve that. Crony capitalism will only cheat workers on behalf of well-connected exploiters. (Heck, that is how Russia operates). The profit motive is not enough. Heck, the Mafia is highly profitable.

[beechnut79]

Don't know whether this falls totally under non-political, but now that gambling is nearly everywhere and marijuana closing in on its heels, isn't it time we move toward legalization of sex work as well. The abortion controversy concerns women maintaining control over their bodies, but the sex work issue should at least be under the same umbrella. But, would it be any more affordable to the masses should it be legalized?

Shouldn't the PTB have learned by now that prohibition of this activity hasn't really worked any more than it did with liquor a century ago?

[Eric the Green]

(04-06-2022, 12:45 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: 1) The Beatles are criminally overrated and did more to ruin modern music than any artist in modern history.
2) Rick Astley has a phenomenal voice. I don't get why people view him as a meme.
3) Most people need to be bullied a bit at some point in their lives. A little experience with confrontation is healthy and goes a long way toward building confidence and aiding in the development of healthy boundaries.

Quote:I do not understand people's desire to go out drinking, being loud and stupid at the bar with their friends and putting themselves at risk of getting heavily drunk around total strangers. I didn't understand it at 15, 20 or 25, nor do I now at 30. It's one thing to hang out at your friends house and have 2-3 drinks, but getting totally hammered in public in a crowded room of total strangers? That just sounds like a disaster, not a good time.

I wonder how I missed these outrageous controversial opinions I disagree with you about

The Beatles are the mainstay of the greatest era of pop music. They did more to elevate it than any group in history. They inspired literally thousands of other bands in the only true renaissance this country may ever have had, in circa 1966. Tomorrow Never Knows is the most innovative work in the history of popular music. "The Beatles Tomorrow never knows, the devastatingly transcendental closing track on one the most celebrated albums ever…Revolver. As innovative and provocative as it is beautiful, this song is perhaps the most crucial single track The Beatles created in order to push the boundaries of what music could be."





Psychedelics was the opening to creative imagination that our culture needed. Americans were and are not well-educated in culture and spirituality to have made the best use of these, but nevertheless it was a tremendous catalyst to help us transcend materialist, commercial culture and open a new spiritual awareness and sensitivity in our blatant and shallow culture.

I was immediately astounded by the track when it came out on August 6, 1966, and my appreciation of it deepened in the next few years. It has a strong quality of opening space and scenic experience in your mind and heart, and embodies and fully represents and connects me to the wonderful culture that unfolded in the years following its release. Nothing is more valuable than that. It is a catalyst of awakening, the very essence of and power beneath the entire second-turning era of our saeculum. The entire album Revolver was loaded with innovative, well-constructed and inspiring songs, including the amazingly-classic, arrestingly-romantic and outstanding composition Here, There and Everywhere.

Rick Astley! That famous meme song is fine, but I like that it became a meme. It was fun. Ah, to be rickrolled!
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
Stephen Colbert's rickroll brought me here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmWm5gB7ico

Being bullied and being shamed by popular kids early in the 7th grade is the worst experience of my life. It did not make me stronger; it made me shy. I condemn bullying of any kind. People must be educated at an early age about people who are different, including education about gays which that neanderthal creep in Florida is using to make him a potential successor to drumpface idiot. NO, people need love and appreciation.

Drinking and hanging out with many known and unknown people while using substances that loosen our inhibitions is the best kind of experience we can hope for, notwithstanding the dangers of those substances. That's the love in! That's the presence of God! It can be that.









All of these things are a million times better than guns! And with my own organic male gun, I don't need to be an ammosexual.

[Eric the Green]

https://youtu.be/uH1TW08DiF0?t=800

[Eric the Green]

Rishikesh is where The Beatles went to learn meditation from the Maharishi. David Parsons of New Zealand took up what John Lennon said he really wanted to do on Tomorrow Never Knows but didn't do, recording monks singing and chanting, according to the Hollybobs video mentioned above about 10 facts about Tomorrow Never Knows. Parsons' music is influenced by The Beatles, and he became one of the greatest artists and "sound painters" in the new age/ambient realm. On this, perhaps his greatest track, Parsons traveled to the town where the Beatles met the Maharishi, and captured the whole atmosphere and depth of the traditional and the modern spirit of the place and its spirituality. The same kind of Indian drone sound used on the Beatles' great 1966 track is heard as the basis for this track "Rishikesh" from his 1989 album Himalaya-- the mountain John wanted to ascend to make his song.