02-02-2020, 10:08 PM
(04-18-2018, 05:52 PM)Another Xer Wrote: Hi all,
I am new to this site, though I first read the original Generations book when it was new and have discussed it and re-read it ever since. It has really shaped my view of the world since early adulthood.
It's a pretty interesting time to be alive in America right now. We can see the 4T really speeding along now. On the bright side, this turning does not seem to necessarily have to come with war and major bloodshed (maybe it will but that seems very avoidable at this point). What we are seeing is the rapid destruction of the institutions that have been the hallmarks of the cycle.
We are also learning the hard way why those institutions are vital.
Quote:In government, we have a President elected by a minority of the voting public with the express goal of destroying the establishment (i.e. institutions and norms). The Executive is at war with itself, with the President attacking the FBI and CIA, while hollowing out the State Department and Justice Department - leaving positions unfilled and making direct attacks on leadership. Congress is an ocean of partisanship with all the old norms of bipartisanship fraying at the edges. Gerrymandering has effectively ended democracy in some states and the filibuster is being picked apart at the edges and its demise is probably just a matter of time. Even the Supreme Court is affected. A popularly elected President was denied his Constitutional duty to select a justice and the selection was made by a President who lost the popular vote and with the support of Senators representing 45% of the US population. What is the integrity of such institutions?
They will have to be revived, strengthened, or even recreated, in the latter case better than ever -- and less suited to gaming.
Quote:Outside the world of government technology is destroying the norms most of us have grown up with. Retail shopping has changed, financial investing has changed, job availability has changed, and while we have cool gadgets in our pockets, technology has even messed up music. The world is changing rapidly and we will all adapt or die. Many Gen Xers are choosing death (no surprise the opioid crisis is killing off middle aged white men). The jobs of tomorrow will not look like the jobs of yesterday and economic anxiety is crippling communities across the nation. All while the country is as rich as it has ever been - just in the hands of the few.
We went from the influence of New Deal patterns to the neoliberal faith that nothing mattered except the creation of wealth for the Right People. If we created enough wealth we could buy our way out of any mess. Elites used poverty and the manipulation of shortages as tools of command and control over people who have no say in economic reality. The same elites bought the allegiance of stooge politicians who believed just what their benefactors such as the Koch and Mercer families: that no human suffering can ever be in excess in the name of elite indulgence. Cruelty by political, economic, administrative, military, and (law) enforcement elites do not go away without the eviction of those in power; such cruelty offers its own rewards. People who develop the habit of oppression can no more easily shake it than addicts can shake heroin.
Quote:An interesting time to visit a site like this.
Technology changes things. It can make old ways of doing things obsolete, and those who fail to adjust in business see reliable profits shrink and then transmute into losses that eventually lead to bankruptcy. The old-fashioned retailing used to depend upon impulse shoppers, the people whose decisions were least rational. (Gee, nice cover art on that album... I think I will buy that). To be sure, the economic scare of the late Double-Zero Decade may have stilled some of the impulse shopping and caused the demise of much brick-and-mortar retailing. This said, people do not have to do impulse shopping to get something on line. They still shop -- but it does not matter that the customer lives in Effingham, Illinois and the item is in St. Louis -- or Seattle.
On-line shopping oddly looks in many respects like the old practice of mail-order that supposedly went out of vogue. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
In a way, so functions a cycle. Cycles have a way of creating more stability than do other forms of movement, including exponential, hyperbolic, parabolic, zigzag, random, and even straight line motion. Simple harmonic motion such as that of a pendulum tends to die out. Cycles allow revival instead of dangerous and destructive run-away situations.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.