Powell Memorandum at 50

[beechnut79]

(10-04-2021, 01:56 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(09-08-2021, 01:02 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-08-2021, 12:18 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(09-08-2021, 09:30 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-07-2021, 10:32 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Golly isn’t it very obvious that the right wing won and for the most part continues to do so despite obvious flaws which the lid has come off of.

The left won the culture and the right won the economy -- at least that's the narrative that seems to dominate most discussions like this.  We may be on the brink of real change, but greed is hard to defeat when it has the kind of power it does today.

I am not sure that the left really won the culture. If they did wouldn't we still be in the "free love" mindset?

I don't think it matters.  We're still open about sex, and comfortable with consenting sex of all types, assumiing the consenting are old enough to consent.  That sex is now a mundane enough issue that it has gotten boring (or at least not exciting) makes the point.  Nothing is nearly as tempting as the illicit.

Sex is indeed on the way to becoming taboo again. I myself don't care much about sex workers and prostitution; if people resort to that service, it's the sign of worse underlying personal problems. The me-too movement and the excessive fear of sexual predation is closing off people from the value of sexual relationships. This is also the fault of those predators themselves who took sexual permissiveness as justification to pursue predatory male impulses left over from ancient history and patriarchy. So the problem comes from both sides; misconduct itself and the fear that causes over-reaction and excessive punishment and inhibition.

So the walls that came down in the sixties are being erected again. How far will this go? It's certainly confirms the saeculum cycle, and the views of the authors regarding trends between 4T and 2T. 

The larger problem is loneliness and alienation in general, aggravated by the pandemic recently. This is a problem created by our industrial and tech society, so it goes beyond our current 4T. Community breakdown has happened, and extended families have collapsed. Too much individualism has happened in free-market societies. Loneliness leads to frustration and aggravation of the impulses of frustrated males who take advantage of their power over women in the workplace and on the streets. Obviously, moving away from neoliberalism and other features of out-of-control capitalism and a trend toward rebuilding community is needed. I think further progress, begun in the sixties and now forgotten, will be made as the Awakening period returns again. 

I doubt much will change in the 4T on the personal levels, but if progress can be returned to our politics and our institutions, at least hope will return to our collective mindset, which would reduce the feelings of alienation and bring back a society with greater trust, and from that grows more permissiveness and breakdown of walls, and if greater awareness of our inhibitions and frustrations goes along with this, then perhaps some growth in society towards better relationships will happen.

Right now, it is Senators Sinema and Manchin who stand in the way of everything that we need.

So, how long do you think we have until we see the next "time you may embrace"? Another thing that surprises me is how few people claim to miss the freer, more swinging times that I came of age in. I am one of those who does, every day.

[pbrower2a]

"Freer, more swinging times"? Do you mean the 3T?

It could be fun, all right, but the fun was largely in primary colors. It was close to the most intense, but evanescent and costly, delights such as sex, drugs, cheap thrills, mindless culture, and the world of the shopping mall.

The id is easy to please if one does not contemplate the cost in personal health, credibility, material success, social cohesion, and savings. The more sustainable delights take more time, effort, and sophistication to achieve, but they don't leave one with an oversized belly, unwelcome pregnancies, jail terms, cirrhosis, emphysema, wrecked vehicles, and poverty. I know -- I am the sort of person who outgrew the lust for vehicular speed before I was eligible to get a driver's license. I prefer a slow drive on California 1 or Michigan 22 to the thrill of testing my mettle by pushing down the pedal. Depending on where I live, I might have one or the other as a possibility at age 65.

[beechnut79]

No, I meant the majority of the 2T, that time when, for the male gender, a hard penis was as good as hard currency. Even if you weren't that much into it you could still meet and mingle with people a lot easier in those pre-cellphone days than you can now. Some feel that the hookup sites and apps have taken over where free love left off, but am not so sure about that. Studies have shown that people in general are having much less sex today than the 20 and 30-somethings of our youth did. Very likely there are many contributing factors, including a general power struggle within the society which seems to be spoiling the mood. And, while it was a wild and fun time in many ways the period did also have its dark sides. In some circles cheating on one's spouse or lover created many bruised egos along with many visits to divorce courts. There were more workplace flings in those pre-sexual harassment times and although workplace romances still do exist (we are reminded of this every Valentine's Day), the journey from boardroom to bedroom is located with more speed bumps these days. You now have to be way more careful to avoid saying something that you may regret later. Do however think things there went farther than they really needed to.

Nevertheless, every year when the fourth Thursday of November rolls around I give my thanks that I was able to be part of the world during that halcyon period after The Pill and before AIDS. No doubt the best time in the history of the world to be single.

[pbrower2a]

(10-22-2021, 10:18 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: No, I meant the majority of the 2T, that time when, for the male gender, a hard penis was as good as hard currency. Even if you weren't that much into it you could still meet and mingle with people a lot easier in those pre-cellphone days than you can now. Some feel that the hookup sites and apps have taken over where free love left off, but am not so sure about that. Studies have shown that people in general are having much less sex today than the 20 and 30-somethings of our youth did. Very likely there are many contributing factors, including a general power struggle within the society which seems to be spoiling the mood. And, while it was a wild and fun time in many ways the period did also have its dark sides. In some circles cheating on one's spouse or lover created many bruised egos along with many visits to divorce courts. There were more workplace flings in those pre-sexual harassment times and although workplace romances still do exist (we are reminded of this every Valentine's Day), the journey from boardroom to bedroom is located with more speed bumps these days. You now have to be way more careful to avoid saying something that you may regret later. Do however think things there went farther than they really needed to.

Nevertheless, every year when the fourth Thursday of November rolls around I give my thanks that I was able to be part of the world during that halcyon period after The Pill and before AIDS. No doubt the best time in the history of the world to be single.

Part of the last transition between 2T and 3T was the presence of AIDS that made "swinging" lifestyles characteristic of the 2T inordinately risky. To be sure (and I see technology more likely to adapt to cultural change than to force it) technologies can substitute for institutions that go under. Something that can kill or disable people is far more powerful in changing the culture than is a technology that changes the methods by which people do things. Likewise, so is economic reality that has no cause in technology. People in their twenties (late-wave Boomers) and teens (X) around 1980 had to make conscious choices on whether to have a rollicking sex life (gay or straight) or avoid HIV/AIDS which was then a veritable sentence of death.

Perhaps even more important was that the economic order of the last 3T was a Gilded Age on steroids in which tycoons, landlords, and executives waxed fat while exploiting workers severely. Although America became more advanced techno;logically and its manufacturing capacity (the part that wasn't off-shored) became more efficient, wages stagnated while corporate profits, executive compensation, and property rents soared.  Many people were working two jobs just to meet rents in an economy devoid of any mercy, one in which the plutocrats acted like stereotypes out of Marxist critiques of capitalism. MBA schools created a cadre of rapacious, amoral executives as "professional" standards of management replaced advancement from within. GI executives that had a more humanistic bent vanished from the scene, and in came the 20th-century and early-21st century equivalents of the fictional Simon Legree. They were often just as cruel and crude as Harriet Beecher Stowe's stock villain.

If one is working 60-75 hours a week just to avoid hunger and homelessness so that plutocrats can live like sultans, then even if one is still young one might be too exhausted to have a sex drive. People may have worked harder in the last 3T, and may have even been the most competent workers ever, but never since the slave-owning era was the share of labor income so low. No, investment was not rising as a share. Life was to be suffered, but one was obliged to smile through it all out of love for Ol' Massa... excuse me, the "most wonderful people who ever existed who deserved to get everything possible.