04-08-2019, 11:58 PM
(04-08-2019, 10:52 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(04-07-2019, 06:56 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: In the 4T you see the worst nature of humanity and you see them at their worst. How can you go through a 4T without thinking people are evil by nature and not wanting to fit in with them at all after seeing the nature of human beings?
That's a good question. I'm thinking that more and more. People don't want to face up to the consequences of their votes, and that a decision needs to be made between red and blue.
But obviously, we go through these 4Ts and into a 1T. We have to go through a cleansing by fire to emerge into a better day.
After the Holocaust in the previous 4T, some people asked "how can you any more believe in God, after this?" The reply was, "How can you any more believe in Man (sic)?"
The German Federal Republic changed its educational system, replacing nationalism with civil courage as a moral objective. There is hardly a country in existence in which horrors such as those of the Nazis could ever emerge anew. (Communist-dominated states blamed capitalism and economic inequality, which was cheap and ineffective). Japan renounced war as a means of solving its diplomatic disputes. It may be ironic that Germany, Italy, and Japan, the greatest nemeses to democracy from 1935 to 1943, are now better examples of democracy than the United States of America.
But we did get through it, even in Europe and Japan, and a new consensus developed in which people were fit in, like it or not in some cases.
Quote:So, once one side is victorious in this 4T, and the worst tendencies of human nature are defeated for the umteenth time, we will have purged ourselves of this worst tendency, and even a lot of the people caught up in the wrong path will leave it behind and move on.
As Tennyson puts it in a poem that became a Christmas carol,
"The Wrong shall fail/ the Right prevail"
Evil usually sows the whirlwind and the whirlwind eventually turns upon those who sow it.
Quote:But, it seems to come around again and again. One hope is that this 4T will be less difficult than the last. That's because in the USA, we rose to a high position of prosperity and ability to control our lives that was unprecedented, and this has spread over the world. So we have farther to fall, by that measure, as this saeculum swirls to its end.
But -- the hardships of the Great Depression may have prepared us Americans for war with three Evil Empires (the Demonic Reich, fascist Italy, and Thug Japan) at once, which required great sacrifices of material comfort that Americans were beginning to enjoy again let alone taking the supreme danger of storming the beaches of Normandy. GI kids really had it rough in contrast to any later generation -- and that includes the alleged good times that preceded it.
In many cases our economic and administrative elites are either as rapacious and egoistic as the aristocratic classes that made feudal orders so horrible or are even criminal. I can easily see Trump deciding to invade Cuba or Venezuela and telling Congress to go (bleep) themselves if they balk.
Quote:But lots of folks (like those on the other 4T site) amazingly want to close their eyes to the fact that this is the very namesake of their group-- a 4T. People are not that nice in a 4T; we can't all be "friends" now. There will be a winning side and a losing side, and the winner had better be the good guys. Thus it has ALWAYS been. History is very clear on that point, and could not be clearer. If we are to be successful in this cold civil war 4T, we had better support the good guys in any way that we choose. And do our best to choose correctly.
We come out of this 4T better than we came in, or we put everything that we have long cherished, including Constitutional government and the civil liberties that underpin democracy at risk of permanent failure. Sure, that can take a long time to culminate in the dissolution of the system, as with the Roman Empire which was a rotten order from its inception. (I interpret the doom of Rome with the supposed success in suppressing the slave revolt of Spartacus. Some wars are best lost, and I am tempted to see the Servile Wars as the Roman equivalent of the American Civil War.
With Trump we are on the brink of a "Republic in Name Only", which is what Rome was before Julius Caesar imposed his Empire.
Quote:Human beings are remarkable, amazing creatures; all of us. Even those with whom we disagree. Life is a wondrous miracle, and we can appreciate the goodness and creative source that shines through all people, even those who are on the wrong side right now. So yes, that's how we might be able to live through this 4T. Somehow keep our bearings and remember that despite all the abuse hurled at us "good guys" for telling the truth, that deep down, everyone knows that life is good, and it's good to be challenged to do the best that we can. We grow through hard times. We develop our powers as human beings by being put to the test. I am optimistic we can pull through, and that gradually a place will be made for everyone who might be offbeat and different from the norm. Eventually, we as human beings will grow enough to praise and bless those who go beyond what is normal.
Life is good, or the system is suspect. Part of goodness is that Truth prevails over Power and the Will of leaders. It may take another 1929-style crash to compel us to recognize what matters and what doesn't.
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.