05-01-2022, 10:57 AM
(04-30-2022, 11:54 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:(04-27-2022, 05:36 AM)galaxy Wrote: This article is the highest-profile, but there's been a lot of discussion of this lately, whether in film, television, and literature, or on social media. Society is already in the mindset that will raise a new generation of Prophets/Idealists.
https://www.vox.com/culture/23025832/eve...urning-red
I have mixed feelings about it. For people my age it really does feel like we are the generation that will correct all of the failings of our own parents, but that's what the GIs and Silents thought too, and look how the Boomers turned out. Not well.
There's a real comfort that comes with knowing the cyclical nature of modern history, but there's also a nihilism and hopelessness that comes with it, knowing that it's impossible to truly "fix" any problem. The fix will create new problems, to be fixed by a later generation, which will in the process recreate the original problems. I guess that's the thing I'm struggling with. There's something really beautiful in it, but it's also so hopeless.
I was just thinking about this same topic. A big reason why generational theory is such a powerful cycle is because people over-correct for the wounds of their own childhood, rather than base it what their own child is going through. In this case, the parents saying they're sorry....aren't actually the ones who need to apologize. It's the ones who believe they've done nothing wrong who typically need to own up to their mistakes. Apologizing to your child for how YOU were treated generally just leads to that child developing an entitled attitude. "they're apologizing? it's probably because they've wronged me by somehow not giving me what I want, so now I will demand it louder and more indignantly".
The timing is of course about right for kids to start being raised to be Idealists or Prophets. What will be different is the presence of plenty of Prophets who will know what went wrong with their elites . Obviously Donald Trump exemplifies Idealist vice without Idealist virtues, and the remaining Boomers (we are now old, but not too old to make a difference) may be some mitigation. Donald Trump will almost surely be the loudest expression of the Boom generation and, to the shame of many fellow Boomers, the one most remembered, if for all the wrong reasons.
The worst sort of Idealist is the one who exploits others severely yet insists upon being recognized as a benefactor. So it was with the loudest proponents of slavery among the Transcendental generation -- they thought that they were the best thing to ever happen to Africans and that the abolitionists would burden freed slaves with responsibilities for which ex-slaves were completely unready.
Our assembly-line workers, our miners, our farm laborers, our domestic servants, and our salesclerks were humbled. They saw the system as repressive, inequitable, and hierarchical -- and beyond challenge. Boomer executives schooled with their MBA degrees relished getting well paid to treat others badly. I doubt that we can maintain that while having more than a veneer of democracy. Maybe one has the vote, but one must get one's vote approved by one's employer, which means that one's vote is as useful as a piece of used toilet paper. Boomer executives may have been the most rapacious exploiters since the time of slavery. They acted without mercy, and they pushed the sorts of politicians who believe as they do that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as such results in their power, indulgence, and gain... well, maybe they will support wars for profit, but not the sorts likely to result in the overthrow of the gravy train for America's shareholders and executives.
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.