10-11-2021, 01:22 PM
(10-10-2021, 04:06 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Title of this thread says it all. Over the past half century the pace of life seems to have constantly speeded up to the point that many institutions have been sacrificed to the Gods of Money. Things such as bowling leagues, church potluck suppers, and many long time hobbies. Do you see any hope of us reversing course and being able to carve out space for us to slow down and take a breath, just like a cat bathing in the sun, being able to luxuriate in how you feel in your body/mind. A return to days when, for example, restaurant diners would often linger over their meals with coffee and/or cocktails. It wasn't really supposed to be this way. COVID may have forced the issue for a time, but don't really see lasting results here.
Bowling leagues and church potluck suppers are exactly the sorts of things that revive when people are more settled. I expect more equity in the economic order so that people no longer need to work sixty hours or more a week just to pay bills including the rent and student-loan payments. To the extent that people are poor despite their toil indicates the dominance of money in life.
People were moving around much to escape places that have no economic opportunity for places that have it -- but with exorbitant housing costs attached. Such reflects extreme inequality from which economic elites profiteer. This is a consequence of a neoliberal ideology that recognizes the desires of the economic elites as the sole social objective. America has taken that ideology to its logical conclusion.
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.