07-18-2019, 08:25 AM
(07-18-2019, 04:03 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Could society go back to 3T mood rather than proceed to 1T after an unsuccessful 4T?
I think it is a possibility, in the early 2010s there was some regeneracy with all the futurism going on and interest in reorganising the economy. But since about 2015 it mostly died down and 90s nostalgia became prominent. Sander's campaign was perhaps the last "progressive" event in America. Worst aspects of gen X culture seemed to vanish between 2006 and 2014, but with the wave of 90s nostalgia they are back. Fashion is uglier again, and the movies are increasingly dark and cynical. Is the Anglosphere heading back into 3T?
Not likely. I would expect the result of a failed 4T to be a more complete rejection of the depraved qualities of the 3T which brought about the catastrophe. Economic realities would be hard, and such would preclude the perverse indulgence that defines the degenerate time of the latter part of the 3T. Cultural norms might return to earlier times
So if one wants to contemplate the most severe failure of a 4T, then look to Germany in the last one. Many of the demobilized soldiers will get shovels and plowshares for such basics as food and reconstruction. The cabaret with its sleazy entertainment will be a low priority. The book publishers will be printing new textbooks to replace the propaganda-laden ones that the Nazis used to inculcate Nazism in impressionable minds. Going back to literary classics (although adding Communist propaganda in the Soviet zone) will be good for quick profits. Faust supplants Mein Kampf. In Japan, the people who enforced the growing of rice in paddies in southeast Asia under gunpoint for use by the Japanese military are demobilized to meet the needs of the autumn rice harvest in Japan itself.
A failed 4T means shame, disgrace, and ruin. People will seek to eliminate what brought about shame, disgrace, and ruin. Politics? Bad business practices? A sick culture? Those will be unwelcome. People start over, one hopes with more wisdom. People will seek the tried-and-true instead of half-ass novelty. People will need food, energy, shelter, transportation, and clothing before they seek anything else.
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.