How conservative are Homelanders really?

[Eric the Green]

(02-14-2022, 09:33 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(04-22-2020, 03:24 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-22-2020, 08:21 AM)Isoko Wrote: Rebellion is not a common  thing entirely throughout turnings and I would argue that the 1960s was a rather unique event that won't be repeated for a long time to come.

It needs to be constant!

perpetual subversion!

I'm assuming you're being a bit tongue-and-cheek, but...no, we don't. Americans have turned into an insufferably rude, impulsive and entitled culture across generations because we've been taught for so long to be "passionate", "let our voices be heard", "fight the system", etc. Everyone is so concerned with dreams, ideology and spectacles of emotion that advocacy has become a vacuous attention game, and the players have no idea how to get things done.

I realize the irony of having just dissed the hell out of millennials only to turn around and say something classically Civic gen, but yeah...we don't need any more of that. We need coolers to prevail if we want to fix things. We need more focus on pragmatism, competence and emotional self-regulation. Americans are so obsessed with "rebellion", "starting a movement", raging against this and that, but this is exactly the kind of mindset that leads a country in crisis down the path of a neurotic mob swept up in momentary frenzy.

Frankly, we need to make it acceptable to just...be a normal ass person who wants to get married and have kids. The obsession people have with being seen as special, virtuous, a "trailblazer" has moved from novel and entertaining a few decades ago to a mainstay of rampant cultural narcissism (in my experience, inward turning, "spiritual" and "high consciousness" people are way more narcissistic on balance than most "materialistic" people who just want to have some nice stuff and be left alone).

Regarding your final paragraph, to me it's acceptable to be what one is called to be. If that's to be normal ass married with kids, that is their calling. If it is to be a special trailblazer, that is their calling. I have chosen the latter, and in any case the opportunity to be the former did not arise for me. It is better not to be narcissistic, but that doesn't mean that being spiritual or high consciousness is narcissistic. It may be your experience that spiritual people are narcissistic, but I would suggest our "normal" society is so focused on individual materialistic success and sensational temporary fame that it is a high bar to cross here to take a genuine spiritual path. Our society does not support it well, or even have any idea what it is.

Your previous paragraphs I don't really disagree with. Although my post said constant subversion, I also endorse "pragmatism, competence and emotional self-regulation", and I think a lot of what's called "rebellion" in the USA today is not that at all, but sheer neurosis. This is mostly the right-wing calling itself rebellion, but really supporting the status quo in a fanatical way; but neurotic frenzy exists on the Left as well.

Have we really "been taught for so long to be "passionate", "let our voices be heard", "fight the system" "?? I'm not so sure at all. Most people still just go along, whether in politics or in submitting to the leader or the boss at work or in non-profits. As George Carlin said, most people don't care that a big red white and blue dick is being jammed up their asshole everyday. Wilful ignorance, and inability to truly think critically about the conditions we live under.

What I might agree with is that in addition to raising our passionate voices to fight the system, we need to be able to listen as well as speak in respectful dialogue, at least some of the time