Generational Dynamics World View

[pbrower2a]

(12-13-2020, 01:44 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-13-2020, 12:11 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: The problem is that knowing what's coming is not a blessing.  It's a curse.  I know that it's been a curse to my life, and undoubtedly to many others.  As King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, the more you know the more miserable you'll be.  I agree.

1:12 I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

1:13 And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.

1:14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

1:15 That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

1:16 I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

1:17 And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

I’d agree that the Agricultural Age was a mess.  Solomon had it right in his view of the time.  Tribal thinking was common.  Those who had much tried to use violence to get more.  It was cost effective, at least for the winners.  Groups of people hated one another, commonly fell victim to xenophobia.  If your view of life is that tribal thinking is inevitable and forever, as it once was, you get depressed.  I see Solomen as a WEIRD guy, a reader, way ahead of his time.  Surrounded by tribal thinkers, no wonder he got depressed. 

You don’t have to have a worldview so depressing.  Well, maybe you do.  People don’t change their view of the world unless it fails them totally.  It is easier to disregard reality than to change your perspective.  Pointing out the your own descriptions of how your world view has failed you doesn’t do any good.  You cling to your perspective all the harder.

I just have to say the roundhead / enlightenment / WEIRD / blue perspective has not resulted in the same depression and failure.  Real wisdom doesn't come with the depression you describe.  It is just that you are stuck with Generational Dynamics, with tribal thinking.

(Aside:  I do remember a Doonsbury cartoon.  At the time, Duke was governor of a far Pacific culture.  He had to judge between two women, each claiming custody of a baby.  His number two suggested there was a president.  Duke agreed.  Just cut the baby in half.  The response of the two women?  "Sounds fair."  "Are you crazy?")

I'll take depressing wisdom to foolishness that leads to ruin.  That may not be particularly WEIRD, although Solomon may have been WEIRD for his time. The Hebrew Bible, the Torah is in part a tale of how people went from being hunter-gatherers to (except for art) a sophisticated civilization by the standards of the time. The Jewish failure at art was the ban on "graven images" which could be used as idols. 

Wise people (not that I can quite put myself in their number, but I share the pain) find much vexation in seeing people deprecate rational science in favor of crankiness (anti-vaxxer nonsense) or superstition, or who see an idol with clay feet as something admirable. I would recognize any personality cult as an abomination before God if I am to take the Commandment "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" seriously. Even without being a particularly religious person, I see huge trouble with any personality cult, even if the weak one around Donald Trump, and that one is weak only because Donald Trump is not the competent despot that someone like Antichrist Hitler or Satan Hussein was. Someone like Abraham Lincoln, FDR, or Sir Winston Churchill was satisfied that he was doing the Lord's Work in the name of a People willing to do much the same. 

Fitting end to some idols:



Down goes the statue of a serial mass-murderer in Iraq.



Hungary, 1956.   



Off to the literal trash-heap. Liberated Germany, 1945.



The literal person (or his cadaver) as an object of desecration. Mussolini. He was already dead when the abuse began.

...just think of what I would like to see with some idols in Iran and North Korea.

*******

The story is told that two women claiming motherhood of a baby made their claim before King Solomon. He could not resolve the dispute directly, so he threatened to cut the baby in half and give one half to each. One woman said that that was better than nothing, and the other was aghast that what she considered her child would be killed, saying: 

I would rather surrender my baby to someone else than have it killed.     

The woman who said she would rather lose her baby to another woman than have it killed proved that she was the mother, as Solomon saw it.