10-09-2018, 10:48 PM
(10-09-2018, 07:24 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:(10-09-2018, 02:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: So far, aging people in power is just slowing down the saeculum from its former speed, which was too fast, and speeded up by a few events such as the assassination of JFK and Hitler's invasion of the west in Dec. 1944 which speeded up the end of WWII, and thus now smoothing out the cycle and bringing it back to a normal 82-84 years. So we'll see how much further it slows.
If you do see a slowdown there is a supreme irony in this, considering that over the past 3+ decades there has been so much talk about the pace of life speeding up, which, among other things, made liars out of so many futurists who all but promised us that advanced technology would lead us into a society of ever-increasing leisure time. Its impact hasn't been farther from the truth. The pace of life has sped up to the point where many if not most folks no longer seem to have time for hobbies or vacations. One of the pluses (I guess) is that the whole "I don't have time" syndrome caused dating services, once considered the last resort for losers, to gain respectability. They also, however, for the most part became very expensive. Singles seemingly no longer had the time, or at least didn't want to make the time, to try and meet somebody at bars or dance. In my own experience, the former was a complete disaster, while the latter offered a little better ratio of success. In the book Gerneration X was due to become Generation Exhausted by the time they reached midlife, and were supposed to help society to slow down. So far I haven't seen any real evidence that this is happening. Are we due for a time for uncovering and expressing our deepest desires and passions?
Those futurists failed to recognize that the increase in productivity would go mostly into property rents, executive compensation, and the profits of quasi-monopolists and crony capitalists. Is the world better now than it was in 1980? I am not sure. We have plenty of cheap entertainment and ready access to the greatest reference tool that has ever existed (the Internet), but otherwise life is not better except for political changes (like the demise of Communism and Apartheid). Maybe we simply exchange one set of exploitative and repressive elites (let us say land-owning aristocrats before World War I) for new ones (fascists in league with old elites) after some illusion of progress.
Working harder and longer to enrich and pamper a privileged class is hardly social progress. Superfluous elites have a tendency of either disappearing or becoming irrelevant, either of them progress. If the common man does not topple them in revolution or find ways in which to bypass their sordid authority, then those elites may start wars for profit intent on extending their domain only to result in defeat and ruin.
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.