05-31-2021, 01:51 AM
(01-11-2021, 06:21 PM)mamabug Wrote: I think it depends on what you mean by 'lives like the 3T.'
In general, during a 1T, our society's ability to empathize with those outside of one of our personal 'tribes' gradually increases and, as that occurs, so does our willingness to include them in the existing social compact whereas in a 3T, the inverse of that happens. If you think of 'living in a 3T' as being someone who can empathize with those who aren't like you and thinks they should have the same rights and opportunities as you do, then in a 1T you might be on the forefront of the counter culture.
If you are speaking of the proudly-decadent behavior of a 3T, that might be possible among people then deemed pariahs who have no cause for the social conformity so commonplace in the 1T. Among such people the accoutrements of the 3T are available cheaply as cast-offs. Among those who break the rules of taste, some might turn it into parodistic shtick (example: the pianist Liberace). Such a GI pianist as Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin, Sviatoslav Richter, or Emil Gilels just would do nothing of the sort. Entertainers who can get away with anything might go along this route, but all I can think of is such people as "drag queens".
Most of what people reject in a 4T is recent innovations of a 3T that did not turn out well -- that people could get away with before the Crisis but not during it. The more equitable economics of a 1T encourage a consumer society that itself is highly conformist. Much of 3T behavior will he associated with the causes of the Crisis or with pathetic attempts at hedonism that doesn't seem to work so well in a 1T.
Most people will have a stake in the new economic and social order because it is better than the pre-Crisis world. Solid pay for solid work, small business starting to reward their owners, and plenty of jobs in bureaucratic organizations offering conventional work. The consumer goodies of the 1T will be more attractive in a 1T than 30-year-old (3T) ephemera.
Most significantly, the bad business practices that precede a 1T, especially the speculative boom, will be impossible to replicate.
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.