(12-19-2022, 04:35 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:(12-19-2022, 03:41 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I fit the Reactive pattern on character traits well. I am a Boomer.
Interesting, I would have taken you as somewhat more agreeable. You seem to tolerate conflict relatively well though, so it's not too surprising.
I'm one of those kids who grew up in middle-class privilege, but got burned as the neoliberal norm set in. I am able to tolerate disagreement to a point (if I can learn something) but beyond that -- you have seen my debates with kinser (whether a Stalinist or a pro-Trump fanatic) and Classic X'er (who says that anyone who believes differently from him isn't a real American. Classic X'er seems like the sort who would be an enforcer of some king in some "American" version of a KZ-lager.
(A hint: the only lager I have any use for is a beer).
History is almost Hegelian; all forms of progress, even in culture, require conflict but also some resolution. Good ideas ideally triumph and bad ones fail; meritorious culture thrives and schlock goes to the landfill or the bonfire of the vanities. Neoliberal ideas were great for those with the wealth and privilege but horrible for everyone else. I cannot accept that the Common Man exists solely to make people already filthy rich even more filthy rich, to indulge the worst tendencies of dissipation among the rich at the cost of all hope for those who provide the service, or to be brutal enforcers of the will of those who own the assets. Technology typically serves the promotion of alternatives unless callow interests hijack it (think of televangelists).
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.