Political compass for the21st century

[Eric the Green]

(02-10-2019, 11:24 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: Self-actualization... what are the actual results of this? Many people even neglected their own families for this during the "Awakening", but was that worth it? I don't think so.

It definitely was worth it, while what is not worth it, is the forgetting, ignoring and condemning of it. We lose all the value of cultural and spiritual enrichment if we junk it just because some people neglected their families. Some people have higher priorities than raising children. That brought some problems for some Gen Xers, no doubt. But many Gen Xers turned out well enough with the self-reliance that their "neglect" brought them, even if their own neglect of their recent past has debased the culture. The shallowness and divisiveness of our culture today, it's capture by market values and religious-right mania, is due to the fact that self-actualization, human potential and counter-culture did not reach far enough, and was not seen as it really was and was suppressed or resented. 

Gen Xers who resent their childhood forget that dysfunctional families and mistreatment of children were the norm in ALL the preceding years of American history, and as far back as you can take it. No-one really had it any better; certainly not Boomers, and it was even worse for their predecessors. What was realized in the sixties was just how dysfunctional our families were, and some human potential therapies came out of the era that addressed this, as well as experiments with alternative kinds of families.

The counter-culture and other sixties trends such as the riots and watergate did contribute to decline in respect for authority, which has it down sides, especially in the drug culture, which declined more recently, and since has risen again in a very-debased and market-driven form.

The biggest problem for Gen X and Millennial children was the triumph of market values which, contrary to what some people say, was not brought about by the counter-culture, but by the reaction to it; especially the political reaction to the 60s/70s reform movements which threatened the power of the market values culture. They fought back and instituted trickle-down libertarian-free-market economics and neo-liberalism, and THIS is what has crippled our children, having dried up economic opportunities for them. Unfortunately, Gen Xers grew up under Reagan, and thus have largely supported neo-liberalism, even though it is really the cause of their problems more than the awakeners who neglected their families.

There is no other means than an Awakening to lift up our USA culture, rather than continue its current fall into debasement and madness. To recover any value in our culture at all, we must recover our historical awareness of the times when we reached higher. That means the best achievements and awakenings that have happened in many eras of our past, including previous 4Ts as well as 2Ts-- the social moments that are also (when we do our best) extended to some extent in the following 1Ts and 3Ts.