02-26-2019, 04:35 PM
(02-26-2019, 07:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(02-24-2019, 06:57 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well done article.
A nomad generation was supposed to accept in mid-life the increasing progressive, more collective or community-oriented slant of society during a 4T, and use their productive and innovative skill to be effective managers of the response to the crisis, while visionary prophets provide direction and guidance, and civics the man/woman power and dedication. That depends on some blue boomers fulfilling their roles as gray champion leaders. The younger generations will power this societal shift toward collegiality and community, but some leadership will still be Boomer, and Xers are still best fitted to be effective crisis managers. But even if Gen X doesn't produce a president (except another cusper like Obama), Xers will increasingly predominate in power, while millennials predominate in voting numbers and rising stars. As you imply, in the next 10 years it will be those Xers who can adapt to the less neo-liberal individualist regime who will gain power, especially in blue states and probably the nation.
A Nomad/Reactive generation accepts the more equitable, progressive, and communitarian ethos that emerges at some point in the 4T because the every-man-for-himself concept fails all but the most ferocious predators within Humanity. A Nomad generation that can do little to protect itself can at the least create the material and institutional of a safer and more satisfying world for its younger loved ones. The Nomad/Reactive generation is unable to create the ethos, but it can pick and choose as Prophet/Idealist factions, especially the exploiters who see themselves as benefactors to those that they cheat out of any chance at happiness, discredit themselves. The Prophet/Idealist has seen it all if he has so chosen, but the Nomad/Reactive has felt it all. Note also that in desperate attempts to get personal recoveries from economic calamities typical of a 4T, Nomads are the ones to do small-scale enterprise on a shoe-string that can be models for doing much the same on a bigger scale when the capital is available. One fails alone as a Nomad/Reactive, and one finds others imitating what one does on a bigger scale for more profit if one succeeds as a Nomad/Reactive.
Right
Quote:Quote:I would think though that Boomers who looked upon a career as a calling, and as a fulfilling vocation rather than just a job, were not workaholics in the sense of being impelled to work too much. The stronger survival instinct of the Xer would seem to imply workaholism because of the need to survive. Boomer parents were often lauded by the older cohort millennials as caring and good teachers. Silents were the neglectful ones.
Whoever loves his job has solved most of the problems in his life, whether he is an intellectual or a laborer. The problem with Boomers was that too many wanted to be cerebral leaders at the neglect of the material basis of prosperity. Maybe our Silent guidance counselors told too many of us "whatever you do, don't do factory work", and too many of us heeded that advice. We ended up competing for jobs that weren't available, and we neglected the gritty world of making the material basis of prosperity. We still need glass, steel, petroleum, and concrete for prosperity, and we left manufacturing exclusively to the dummies. Many of us ended up seeking jobs that did not exist while needful work went undone or was done badly. Just look at the 1970s as a sort of hard time for the automotive industry, when American-made cars were awful and imports started taking over the market.
The fault lay mostly with the GI-generation executives. They got stuck in their ways and assumed no innovation was needed. There were still plenty of skilled boomers around to do the factory work, and then the Xers came along and there were more. The fact is factory work was on the way out anyway, and boomers were pioneers of the new way and created it. Now industry is more productive than it was before. But the social elements have not recovered.
Quote:Quote:Those who understand the direction of society and technology will help shift society away from work to survive. Didn't I just post a Ted talk about this? Ah, here it is. Maybe a European Gen Xer is well-enough immune to the survivalist mentality so prevalent among Americans (especially Gen X, but certainly not exclusively to them). Or maybe he's a millennial.
There will always be opportunity for work. Manufacturing became a bigger share of the economy as food surpluses emerged and fewer people were needed for farm labor. Intellectual property is now a bigger share of the economy now that few of us are in gross need of material comforts.
I don't think so. Less work is needed, even intellectual work. Robots are taking over almost anything. How many robot tenders do we need? No, technology saves labor, and eventually it will destroy it utterly. Opportunity has dried up in the Rust Belt, and elsewhere. The neo-liberal adoration of work and blame on those who get government income is doomed. Most people will not get jobs in the future, unless pay is raised and hours are reduced. The owners of the machines are not entitled to all their benefits.
Free trade also hollowed out jobs in the USA. In the long term, as other poorer countries mature economically, free trade won't be a problem. But from the 1970s until sometime a few decades from now, it has helped to destroy the USA economy. Again, free trade was a neo-liberal doctrine imposed on us. These libertarian-economics ideas were put into power by those who were threatened by the reforms and movements of The Awakening.
They found their man. As Henry Giroux says, when Reagan and Thatcher got married, they had many children (e.g. Gingrich, Ryan, GW Bush, Trump), and they put our society in the grip of neo-liberal trickle-down economics and welfare bashing. Classic Xer is a disciple. It's time to throw it overboard.
http://generational-theory.com/forum/thr...l#pid41386
Quote:Quote:"I believe in a future where the value of your work is not determined by the size of your paycheck, but by the amount of happiness you spread, and the amount of meaning you give. I believe in a future where the point of education is not to prepare you for another useless job, but for a life well lived. I believe in a future where an existence without poverty is not a privilege, but a right we all deserve."
The economic paradigm that we now know will fail because the command-and-control system behind it will become unworkable. Need and fear will no longer drive people to do what is simply necessary for the indulgence of economic elites. Indeed, the depravity of the most prominent member of America's economic elite, Donald Trump, exemplifies the last-ditch efforts of that elite to grab what it can while it can. Even if the rapacious crony capitalist does not face the 21st-century equivalent of the Madame Guillotine, that beast can also become irrelevant and know it. The command-and-control system mandates drudgery for the masses...but what if the drudgery becomes unnecessary?
Most of us still have a desire to create and experience. Curiosity will be among the strongest tools of the marketer. Enterprise will still thrive -- but it will not have inequality of result as an objective.
Curiosity drove my discoveries in the awakening. It drives many people to create and discover. Factory labor is a relic of the industrial age, which is over. Work will be re-defined as Rutger Bergman says.
http://generational-theory.com/forum/thr...l#pid41374