07-23-2022, 07:42 PM
(07-23-2022, 03:34 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(07-22-2022, 10:19 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: 1) People valuing self-regulation and composure over "having their voice heard". well, no; or both.
2) People saying "I don't know enough about that to have a strong opinion". yes, plus desire to know more
3) Respecting fatherhood. yes, or non-fatherhood
4) Respecting the "mother" part of "single mother" rather than just the "single" part. yes to both
5) A culture where people are shamed for making presumptive accusations rather than taking even a little bit of time to understand the circumstances. yes
6) Not assuming every male who shows affection for a child is a pedophile. yes
7) Actually having relationships that last more than 3 years. yes
(04-01-2020, 05:51 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: More social life at the local level... think of the old ice-cream social.I can get behind these
Lesser reliance on electronic entertainments and more upon the human touch.
After this horrible plague dies out, we are going to confront what is essential to happiness (meaning in life, or at least its quest) and what isn't. We may end up living at an economic level from the past because we do not know how to live in an age without scarcity.
Yes. It looks that way now, because we have voted for it. We have voted for the breakdown of our climate and our environment. It is coming upon us now. Unless we correct our votes soon, we will have nothing but scarcity for another 4000 years or so. It means we can't reincarnate into a better life, or leave a better life for our children, and that means so much to us. It is really too bad. I feel sad over this. It is happening ONLY for the convenience of a few CEOs, and a few politicians they have bought like Manchin. Really sad. Can we wake up? Can we learn to vote correctly? Can we value the environment we used to have in "the past"? Can we listen to what science is saying, instead of our desires for immediate wealth? Or upholding market ideology? We didn't necessarily value that environment, until we learned we are about to lose it, in the late sixties. Even now, not enough people value it.
Certain elites tend over time to become so powerful that they can arrange the system of economic rewards to serve themselves for being themselves. Competition is squeezed out for both production and opportunity. The system rewards people for kissing up to elites; Inequality intensifies; imagination and creativity go unrewarded; culture is debased to mere entertainment that gets coarser with every iteration; the political system ends up endorsing the desires of those elites over all else. Birth becomes more important than talent.
Power and property get concentrated; smart people waste their talents in bureaucracies in return for not criticizing the System; small-scale entrepreneurialism gets squelched, and the entire order becomes a command-and-control system. Innovation dies, and vice flourishes. The System may do a good job of diverting people with ceremonies such as parades and processions, but even education gets degraded. Communications get degraded to propaganda. People with intellect, conscience, and cleverness are dangerous unless they sell those out. The character Winston Smith of 1984 exemplifies what sort of person one becomes: someone with no genuine beliefs, feelings, or creativity.
The proles get survival and some occasional entertainment -- garbage such as pornography and low entertainments on the "telescreen" What passes for a middle class is so corrupt and dependent that it blinds itself to the ugly reality. The elites live like royalty while showing austerity in public but living in opulent splendor in secret.
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.