10-30-2016, 11:49 PM
(10-30-2016, 11:38 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(10-30-2016, 12:05 PM)FLBones Wrote:(10-29-2016, 04:30 PM)disasterzone Wrote:In past first turnings, they were usually put to socially useful tasks and blended in. If they followed the conventional way of the High, they'd probably find it dull and mind numbing. May use tranquilizers to numb this out, like some housewives did in the 1950s or the Beatniks. For those who openly go againist the norms of the High era, they will find themselves at odds from society, finding it difficult to get along with others and face expulsion dealing with an us vs them mentality.(10-27-2016, 12:31 PM)FLBones Wrote: Well, it's like it says in the 4T book, those outside of the mainstream culture feel stifled by the conformity. They may also be prone to prosecution as was the case with McCartyhism. During the last 1T, the red scare set about a socially conservative climate which the 50s are known for. The 1920s however was a decade where the social climate became more and more liberal.
Would they drink or severely isolate from other people themselves to survive the 1T and numb themselves until it's over? Turn to financial risk taking because the normal system has nothing to offer them and they really have nothing to lose?
I think during a High era, for the late wave artists, and the early wave prophet generations, they just go along with the flow because there's nothing else to do but their inner lives are under turmoil at the same time. As time goes on, the inner struggles become overpowering and they sense this void in society and thus, the 2T begins. I'm sure Awakenings are bring some relief to these people.
The High is prosperous enough to allow some attractive diversions. If people did not numb themselves in the cocktail longes of the High, there was television. Work pays well enough to provide copious cheap entertainment. Above all, 3T behavior is stigmatized for making the Crisis as nasty as it was. Cultural figures from the 2T have made their adaptations or they are forgotten. Such fictional characters as Lina Lamont (Singin' in the Rain) and Nora Desmond (Sunset Boulevard) find themselves irrelevant as cultural trends of the 4T develop; if they have not adapted they become even more irrelevant in the High.
I doubt that many people had much nostalgia for the Roaring Twenties after World War II, except perhaps for the Harlem Renaissance among blacks. Even that was scrupulously repressed outside of big urban centers in the North and West.
Where the dissent arises is among people who want to participate fully in the bounty of a High and are denied -- like Southern blacks -- or among people with empathy for the oppressed. Were the likes of Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, and Martin Luther King rebels... or conformists? I say the latter.
The real cause of the Awakening is that for the first time people enter adulthood with no memory of the strictures of the previous Crisis, people who have the inclination for some cultural recklessness.
But what if someone's takeaway from the 4T was that stability didn't exist so you may as well take risks? Someone who instead of feeling like they were shaping the 4T that the 4T just took them along this arbitrary ride they were forced to be in. Then the 1T tried to force them in a box and take their dreams away. Who felt so deprived at the end of it, they wanted to have a 3T lifestyle?
What I wonder is how people in the 1T would react if someone lived so foolishly to them (like the 1990s or roaring 20s) but succeeded because of the extreme risk taking? In other words, how would the people of the 1T react to a person who lived against their wisdom but won or got what they wanted in the end? Would they be villainized?