01-18-2022, 11:57 AM
A solid Awakening can follow a calamitous Crisis Era as happened in Germany, Italy, and Japan with the national shame associated with the leadership that made such a calamity possible. Obviously, if the People repudiate the gangster rulers and enjoy considerable freedom, then their might still emerge the glacial culture following a 4T. It is the cultural staleness of the High that allows political and economic conformity that eventually makes itself obsolete.
More prosperity means that children can take economic survival for granted. Kids have time in which to read, and they eventually start reading books that ask some questions or induce a curious person to ask questions.(Whether the books are dead-tree editions or electronic editions will not concern us). The kids did nothing to make their world what it is and they become natural critics of an anesthetic culture.
Note well that the Awakening is strongest among youth of intellectual privilege, the ones who are not obliged to struggle for economic survival. When life revolves around making a bare living in post-crisis wreckage or if the sole purpose in life is to enrich, pamper, and avoid the enmity of economic elites, there is little room for any cultural awakening. I see pop culture about ten years from now being more whimsical than cerebral; after that it will be unabashedly hedonistic before it shows evidence of expressions of intellectual profundities. That will be around 2040.
This assumes that this Crisis goes somewhat well -- that it does not bring despotism and extreme plutocracy about, which is still possible. Donald Trump reflects the worst of the early wave of the Boom Generation, and he might have followers similarly narcissistic, but even more ruthless and politically canny. To suggest a scary verbal image of the future then
'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever. ' This is one of the most famous quotations from George Orwell's 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. ...
We have plenty of powerful, extreme narcissists in the media, in political life, and in business who see the rest of Humanity only as people to enrich them and sate their egos. Those are monsters, the human expressions of Moloch. They fear only their personal ruin from forces that can topple, ruin, and judge them. Such power as people rightly have comes with valid service, achieving real good or at least safety from foreign threats, domestic despotism, and social calamities (such as economic meltdowns such as the one that started the Great Depression. Donald Trump demonstrates that fascism would please many whose conscience is little more than Schadenfreude.
More prosperity means that children can take economic survival for granted. Kids have time in which to read, and they eventually start reading books that ask some questions or induce a curious person to ask questions.(Whether the books are dead-tree editions or electronic editions will not concern us). The kids did nothing to make their world what it is and they become natural critics of an anesthetic culture.
Note well that the Awakening is strongest among youth of intellectual privilege, the ones who are not obliged to struggle for economic survival. When life revolves around making a bare living in post-crisis wreckage or if the sole purpose in life is to enrich, pamper, and avoid the enmity of economic elites, there is little room for any cultural awakening. I see pop culture about ten years from now being more whimsical than cerebral; after that it will be unabashedly hedonistic before it shows evidence of expressions of intellectual profundities. That will be around 2040.
This assumes that this Crisis goes somewhat well -- that it does not bring despotism and extreme plutocracy about, which is still possible. Donald Trump reflects the worst of the early wave of the Boom Generation, and he might have followers similarly narcissistic, but even more ruthless and politically canny. To suggest a scary verbal image of the future then
'If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever. ' This is one of the most famous quotations from George Orwell's 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. ...
We have plenty of powerful, extreme narcissists in the media, in political life, and in business who see the rest of Humanity only as people to enrich them and sate their egos. Those are monsters, the human expressions of Moloch. They fear only their personal ruin from forces that can topple, ruin, and judge them. Such power as people rightly have comes with valid service, achieving real good or at least safety from foreign threats, domestic despotism, and social calamities (such as economic meltdowns such as the one that started the Great Depression. Donald Trump demonstrates that fascism would please many whose conscience is little more than Schadenfreude.
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.