05-31-2018, 12:11 AM
(05-30-2018, 11:57 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(05-29-2018, 07:08 PM)TheNomad Wrote:(05-29-2018, 06:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The civic heroes swing in youth and get in the groove, but then the children call them squares; and by then, they are.
I've observed the shifts in archetypes through their ages and what part of the saeculum (high/crisis, etc) they are in. The authors make a big deal out of this. The most blatant example is the Prophet flower children who went on their mystic journeys and protested war and then when they become older, they turn the opposite: they become Elders who want to force morality (their version) on everyone, they mostly become conservative, and they themselves refused to go to war in youth but have no problem sending their youngers to do that.
So, the are right the first portion of the millenials are wild children with all that comes with it (chlamydia, tats, piercing, raucous music, high-risk behavior, drugs, etc) and the latter half of them transform into a phalanx of mediocrity in almost all ways.
They can have that so long as they fix all the institutions and the mindless processes we deal with every day where no on is in charge or takes responsibility for anything on a business/corporate level and all that which has already been mentioned.
I WANT SQUARES! They at least care about things and act like human beings. They don't simply sell you a new $600 phone with the vapid excuse your old phone was exposed to water damage and cannot be repaired. Yeah, my phone had some grime on the screen so I soaked it in a tepid bowl of water because clearly that is just something I would do with an electronic device. These people coming up now will even be proud to work in McDonald's and make sure you get what you need - stuff like that.
I can't be the only one who feels like WHATEVER store or business you deal with, there's a crew on the front lines placed there deliberately because they don't know shit about their jobs. For me, it seems everywhere I go or interact with, they just started the job yesterday and (forgive me but maybe not) cannot speak enough english to make sure I do get what I need. And neither do they care.
We need people to start caring.
If there ever comes something like a LIVING WAGE where ANYONE can work ONE (1) full-time job and actually afford rent, things might get better and workers may actually care about their job and the customers they deal with. The infamous quote by Bush II was how proud he was a man in the audience was able to work three (3) jobs to make ends meet.......... because to him, that was an indicator America is the greatest in the world that if you work hard enough you can make it.
We are living in something arguably on the opposite spectrum from a "Social" structure. I challenge anyone to say we are not living in some corporatocracy with a fascist bent. It has been this way for most of my life. Every time the vultures cry out "SOCIALISM" that only means they may be facing diminishing balance sheet numbers and the CEO instead of receiving, say, $4m for their inane efforts, the Board has to explain to them it may be rather like $2.5. I'm crying a little about that. Doctors are fearful they will not exceed into private practice and own his/her jaguars and lounging in Positano for months a year. But the new people coming will see HEALTH as a public service not a way to create wealth on the backs of those who cannot afford their outrageous services. THAT is why "Obamacare" had all the talking heads wiping the sweat from their brow on cable news and using the words "Socialized Medicine" as many times as their breath will allow them. And why rump's TOTAL platform is to roll back every progress the Obama admin made. How people keep getting sucked by this idea of Trickle Down Wealth, I don't understand. They voted for rump because he is a white male and they believed he would "stir things up" being not overtly affiliated with the side that eventually backed him in their primary.
Trickle Down only means you've been pissed on.
They all need to go.
I don't know if I really want "squares" or not, but I'm in total agreement with you on the above, and very well said.
I still hold out the faint hope that there's still a lot of boomers around somewhere who didn't flake out and become worse than their parents, as beechnut related. I certainly don't fit that mold, but I noticed the change in my fellow boomers when the 3T started in 1984, and so many have since become righteous asses and authoritarian boors (of course I get righteous too, and I always was since 1967). It's also true that a lot of older boomers were never originally hippies, but were Eisenhower Republican types; and many of the later Jones-Xer cusp boomers never really got the hip vibe to begin with and are conservatives. It all depends to some extent on whether you live in the blue or the red world. That goes for Generation X too; the ones I know locally in the SF Bay Area are not all so cynical and rough and anti-hippie (though some are), as opposed to many I have encountered online who are.
Well, of course I don't want squares culturally. But the trade off that they are stringent arbiters of structural solidification hell yes.
The culture war of the boomers is their defining factor. As they age, it matters not what political affiliation, they are sentient robots of ideology which I don't think can unlearn their programming. You make a good point not all boomers were picking flowers. There was great strain among their peers who believed in the government and the war and hated people with long hair or smoking weed. That's sometimes forgotten. But what did they get for their troubles.... it isn't really known to me, but a huge portion of those people (the non-hippy boomers) who were killed in vietnam. And the ones who returned were often hated instead of heroified (<- a word?).
One of my all-time favorite movies is Born on the Fourth of July. It changed my life in no small way. It's a heavy film. I piece together a lot of ideas from various sources both fiction and non-fiction. There's a scene in that movie where Ronnie (the maimed war veteran) returns to visit his friend who did not go to war but instead went to college and started a business. The business was a fast food restaurant. The friend shows Ronnie the meat patties have a HOLE in the middle which is used to stuff pickles and tomato, etc.... it's kind of their GIMMICK.
Something small and silly right? But think of the greater symbolic significance of that. It was a time when America began losing all moral compass. When greed and trickery toward the common man began to enter the greater consciousness. We began to see consumers as PREY, rigging everything to suck maximum $$ from them for our own benefit. This has grown over the years exponentially. f@cebook is this thing where you are told it's about sharing and connecting and all the nice things we want to hear. When in reality, it is an information collection platform to sell to outside interests, exploiting all users by identifying their habits for the same purpose, and it now recently is clear the network is fundamentally in full control of election propaganda, who sees what, who is exposed to which candidates, etc.
But the metaphor of the hole in the meat burger is kinda profound. He even went so far as to know how much each burger was saving the business due to the missing meat. Corporations have drilled down on us so hard it's almost laughable. Sitting in meetings CREATING ways to rip us off or making sure we spend more than we have to on their products/services... and who ends up winning? Those at the top as usual because America refuses to regulate such practices. Because regulating means Socialism and we all know Socialism is one step from the gulag of bread lines. It is known.
The same people always screaming about Socialism are the ones whose corporations benefit from lack of regulation. Or, they themselves benefit. At the same time, leaving the responsibility of regulation to a government just as corrupt is nonsensical.
Ultimately, regulation cannot be regulated. It must come from individuals with a moral compass who DECIDE to do the right things instead of entering politics for the sole purpose of making it a career to make connections to build personal wealth.
The latter half of the millennials I think can do this. I keep going back to the "virginal" quality of them, and they even look like nice people. They seem nice. They seem as if they could enter positions of responsibility without some massive oversight to make sure they don't go with their hand in the till.
It's shitty to keep saying the boomers need to leave already, but is true. Boomers cannot regulate anything because as politicians they've lost most of their moral compass anyway..... and second, most are indebted to for their livelihood any things that would need regulation. And corps will just replace them with other, more willing servants if the don't comply.
Everyone keeps saying "but everyone has a voice, the reps must listen to their constituents". I haven't found an answer to this. It takes money to get near these politicians, who can pay people to stand in lobby lines for days to get their issues heard. Money is a problem. Fine if someone can own 7 yachts, but that person should have no more access or influence on politicians than anyone else. I don't have that answer
