08-12-2020, 07:29 AM
(08-10-2020, 08:27 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 10-Aug-2020 World View: Crisis wars
(08-10-2020, 02:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > The last Crisis Era could have gone very badly.
I won't attempt to explain it now, but after almost 20 years of
analyzing crisis wars, I've become convinced that they can't end any
other way, almost to the point of being preordained. Generational
crisis wars are forces of nature, huge existential struggles between
entire populations and generations. One individual battle may go
either way, but in the end, the war will end where it had to end.
COVID-19 kills like a bungled war (because of Donald Trump) and costs huge amounts of expenditure. If it hits middle-class and rich people it devours their assets. If it hits poor people it devours a budget if the government eats the cost. As in a Crisis War we have a demonized enemy, but instead of Hitler, Mussolini, or Tojo in the last Crisis it is a nearly-spherical body with some insidious-looking appendages. It has impaired much of what makes life normal.
Yes, it is an existential battle between the human population and a population of viruses. As in other Crisis Eras people speak of extermination. But this time the SARS-2 virus is certifiably non-human. As in other Crisis Eras it has things happening that supposedly don't happen. Hale people do not ordinarily die of respiratory infections in the USA or other advanced countries unless their bodies are already at risk from degenerative diseases or from horrible habits (drugs, HIV, life-long alcoholism). Even so the typical death involving respiratory infections in America has typically been pneumonia that finishes off someone with cancer or congestive heart failure (among other things) when the doomed person faces an overload of medical stresses.
Many people treat COVID-19 like a war. Sanity still has its survival value, and it is safe to say that despite the impediments that sanity puts upon mindless hedonism, sane people are far happier. Mental wards are nasty places for residents and staff alike. People have died because they defied common sense, as in attending mass gatherings in which respiratory infections can spread... and even holding COVID-19 parties in which people expose themselves to the disease. From what I hear I would rather get a bite from a rattlesnake than get COVID-19... and I have typically thought of a rattlesnake bite one of the worst things that could happen to me. COVID-19 will be met effectively with rational leadership in government, in the commercial sector, in the non-profit sector, and by the choices of many seemingly-ordinary people. This time nobody needs to charge machine-gun nests or make radio broadcasts or listen to the BBC in fear of the Gestapo or Kempeitai. Instead of working like fiends many of us will need to stay home.
COVID-19 will have a scarring effect as did the last Crisis era. Obviously a 4T puts an end to the quick-fix habit of a 3T with its excessive indulgence in intense, but expensive and ephemeral delights. We are finding new ways to do old things...
One of the most important skills that anyone can learn is the knack for making the best out of a bad situation. Those unable to do that will make inevitable calamities even more destructive, and such people are often the highest risks for suicide.
Crises need not be wars. Plagues will suffice.
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.
