Unresolved end to saeculum possibility?

[Eric the Green]

(06-09-2022, 07:36 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-08-2022, 08:54 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:Do Millennials really care as much about climate change as they do other things that are affecting us these days (and over the past 20+ years)? Prior to COVID, it seems there were movements for protests against big oil et al on climate change but weren't they mainly participated by Gen Z or the very youngest of the Millennials? Obviously climate change should be the big one for us as Millennials are at the age now (average age 31) where they usually would be having kids - something that affects anyone's outlook on the future in a major way. I for some reason suspect we will prioritise domestic things over global things due to how we're so directly affected. Look at the guns and social system problems and you'll probably see that more people would want to fix those before we tackle climate change and a war in another part of the world. I expect climate change will take a backseat vs things like ensuring their child doesn't become the next school shooting victim and having a decent stable income.

Millennials still have memories of when times were good. They don't have quite the backed-into-a-corner, "we have nothing to lose!" mindset of a lot of Gen Z (well "Gen Z". about half of what we call Gen Z is still later wave Civic, and I'd argue they are the most vocal of the bunch. the Adaptive second half of Gen Z are much more agreeable, goofy/trolly, less opinionated)

Millennials have no memory of "when things were good" if you apply an unbiased measurement to "good times".  There is a 5 decades long march to the right that has empowered the powerful and weakened the already weak.  It's as if a bedridden polio victim looked back on the "good times" when she could still walk with leg braces and crutches.  As a society, we need to aim much higher, but the memory of that target is fadin with the aging populous who do remember.

Yup. The good times never die; they just--- fade away.

[JasonBlack]

(06-09-2022, 07:36 AM)David Horn Wrote: Millennials have no memory of "when things were good" if you apply an unbiased measurement to "good times".  There is a 5 decades long march to the right that has empowered the powerful and weakened the already weak.  It's as if a bedridden polio victim looked back on the "good times" when she could still walk with leg braces and crutches.  As a society, we need to aim much higher, but the memory of that target is fadin with the aging populous who do remember.

But millennials were children during most if not all of the 3T, and were largely protected from what you describe. With exception for the few who acquired great wealth, most of us who grew up working class or above were quite a bit better off then than we are now. It wasn't the best. It certainly wasn't the 1T, but unlike Zoomers, we grew up in an environment where we had enough to lose to be attached to some sort of structure. Zoomers are more likely to say "None of this is working. They have nothing more that they can take away from me, so I might as well go in balls deep".

[Eric the Green]

(06-09-2022, 07:57 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(06-09-2022, 07:36 AM)David Horn Wrote: Millennials have no memory of "when things were good" if you apply an unbiased measurement to "good times".  There is a 5 decades long march to the right that has empowered the powerful and weakened the already weak.  It's as if a bedridden polio victim looked back on the "good times" when she could still walk with leg braces and crutches.  As a society, we need to aim much higher, but the memory of that target is fadin with the aging populous who do remember.

But millennials were children during most if not all of the 3T, and were largely protected from what you describe. With exception for the few who acquired great wealth, most of us who grew up working class or above were quite a bit better off then than we are now. It wasn't the best. It certainly wasn't the 1T, but unlike Zoomers, we grew up in an environment where we had enough to lose to be attached to some sort of structure. Zoomers are more likely to say "None of this is working. They have nothing more that they can take away from me, so I might as well go in balls deep".

Millennials had the advantage of parents who cared about them and taught them high values, in general. Many did not have good material supports though, since neoliberal philosophy had trimmed back social and economic supports to poorer people, including unions and minimum wages, and the middle class was shrinking which meant many parents could not adequately support their family. Millennials have faced huge obstacles to come of age and find a place in society and make a decent living, not to mention follow the careers they were educated for. Some of them did well in spite of this, no doubt. But the cost of education saddled many with lifetime debt. Rising housing costs made it hard for most to afford a home, and rents and mortgages became too high a proportion of their income. They complained, probably justly, that we boomers did not give up status positions so millennials could rise within workplaces and get jobs that they wanted.

This situation will get worse for Gen Z and the Alpha Wave, unless neoliberalism is overturned (it was recently retained by one senator) and climate breakdown is stopped and reversed. Younger generations also face an unsafe society here in the USA, and increasingly so, as guns proliferate and needed reforms continue to be blocked.

[Eric the Green]

(06-06-2022, 07:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2022, 04:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: This Crisis Era can end without a shooting war. It can end with some radically-new arrangement that is likely to be either center-left or Hard Right. Whoever wins, there will be rearguard violence. This one will decide among other things whether property determines power or one-man, one-vote does. One side has reason and science on its side, but is unable so far to enforce its vision; it expects the culture to drive the reality. The other has a firm set of values that it has determined is the ultimate reality., and that brute force in the service of those values will establish what is right.

If the Hard Right prevails, then we will have a hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive society in which any individual thought, let alone any show of dissent, becomes a grave peril. That sort of America will have a brain drain much as have many societies similarly hierarchical, anti-egalitarian, and repressive.  It could also have torture chambers and shooting pits. There might be small rewards for compliance -- maybe occasional trips to an amusement park or a cruise on a riverboat casino -- in the equivalent of the Nazi Kraft durch Freude. Religion will play a role in offering a wondrous Afterlife in return for acquiescence with the hell that America will have become.

It still needs to be remembered that not only is all that true, but our very existence as a civilization is at stake. The climate crisis won't wait. Tipping points are starting now, and more will tip. Without a change of course this decade, we will not be able to reverse the crisis. It is not only the USA but all nations must act. No more should it ever be said that the next 4T will see the climate crisis come upon us. It is upon us now. Never should it be omitted from the list of events and trends within our failed society, such as the above list.

If this 4T fails and the hard right wins, fear will be a constant and ever-increasing pall. No street, no type of facility will be safe from guns. Violence will be oft-erupting, and epic disasters of every kind routine. Ignorance and superstition will rule the day, and that means fear over nothing multiplies as well. We will be in a new dark age that will never lift. Every group will be suspicious and afraid of every other; every group will try to rule over every other. And only some, the most privileged, will win. Exactly how long it will be until our republic and our civilization ends entirely is not clear, but certainly this will happen in no fewer than 2 centuries.

Today, people often still talk as if we have a future. They talk about what we leave for our children. People don't realize that we may have no future. The future is on the ballot, and it is partisan, and we don't realize that.

No MORE than 2 centuries I meant. Or FEWER than 2 centuries. Probably one.

[David Horn]

(06-09-2022, 07:57 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(06-09-2022, 07:36 AM)David Horn Wrote: Millennials have no memory of "when things were good" if you apply an unbiased measurement to "good times".  There is a 5 decades long march to the right that has empowered the powerful and weakened the already weak.  It's as if a bedridden polio victim looked back on the "good times" when she could still walk with leg braces and crutches.  As a society, we need to aim much higher, but the memory of that target is fadin with the aging populous who do remember.

But millennials were children during most if not all of the 3T, and were largely protected from what you describe. With exception for the few who acquired great wealth, most of us who grew up working class or above were quite a bit better off then than we are now. It wasn't the best. It certainly wasn't the 1T, but unlike Zoomers, we grew up in an environment where we had enough to lose to be attached to some sort of structure. Zoomers are more likely to say "None of this is working. They have nothing more that they can take away from me, so I might as well go in balls deep".

Still, the better times were not good times, to say nothing of the best of times.  Xers did better than Boomers simply due to their limited number.  That doesn't mean they did well, and their Millennial children didn't either.  The brief period following WW-II was an anomoly that needs to be reborn as a permanent state.  It's up to you to get it done.  We're spent.

[pbrower2a]

I have no doubt that global warming gone awry will be a huge disaster. The equatorial regions could end up with wet-bulb temperatures above human body heat, which will cause people to die if they are exposed to it for any extended time; in essence, the body cannot cool. The situation projected 50 years from now is monstrous. 

From Wikipedia:

Quote:When ambient temperature is excessive, humans and many other animals cool themselves below ambient by evaporative cooling of sweat (or other aqueous liquid; saliva in dogs, for example); this helps prevent potentially fatal hyperthermia. The effectiveness of evaporative cooling depends upon humidity. Wet-bulb temperature, which takes humidity into account, or more complex calculated quantities such as wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT), which also takes solar radiation into account, give useful indications of the degree of heat stress and are used by several agencies as the basis for heat-stress prevention guidelines. (Wet-bulb temperature is essentially the lowest skin temperature attainable by evaporative cooling at a given ambient temperature and humidity.)

A sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature, environmental heat gain instead of loss occurs. As of 2012, wet-bulb temperatures only very rarely exceeded 30 °C (86 °F) anywhere, although significant global warming may change this.[24][25]

In cases of heat stress caused by physical exertion, hot environments, or protective equipment, prevention or mitigation by frequent rest breaks, careful hydration, and monitoring body temperature should be attempted.[26] However, in situations demanding one is exposed to a hot environment for a prolonged period or must wear protective equipment, a personal cooling system is required as a matter of health and safety. There are a variety of active or passive personal cooling systems;[20] these can be categorized by their power sources and whether they are person- or vehicle-mounted.

Outside labor as in farming, construction, and the maintenance of infrastructure could become dangerous in the more frequent excesses of heat. Cooling someone who must work outdoors in such heat will itself require the expenditure of energy and thus waste heat that contributes to global warming, so we would end up with a vicious cycle. Air conditioning may cool one off significantly, but it warms the local climate.
In my case, the highest dew-point (and wet-bulb temperature) that I ever endured was 26 C (roughly 79 F) during the 1980 Texas heat wave in which Dallas reached a record high of 45C (113 F) twice. With the sort of grim humor that such a condition induces in me, I suggested that "Benito Mussolini is signing autographs" on one of those days, and "Hideki Tojo is signing autographs" on another after going through mobsters, Nazi and Stalinist butchers, serial killers, and such brigands as John Dillinger and Billy the Kid. I was saving Stalin for "114" and Hitler for "115". A 26 C wet-bulb thermometer reading is miserable. That is as cold as the temperature could get at night.   

That is before I begin to discuss inundation (Bangladesh) or desertification (Ukraine) of some of the world's most productive farmland. Ukraine gets such prosperity as it has by exporting grain often to poor countries in the Arab world; peasant farmers of Bangladesh may largely be feeding themselves and what passes as the middle class of Bangladesh, but they feed millions of fellow poor people. Obviously it is poor people who are most vulnerable to ruinous changes of agricultural production, and I am not going to say that well-off people have any more right to food than do poor people; such would be criminal talk of the genocidal category. 

If you thought such horrors as the Holocaust and the Holodomor unspeakable for scale (if not moral enormity), then wait till you contemplate the effects of global warming. The most devastating effects of global warming will not be a 50 C (122 F) reading in Phoenix; it will be wars that people rage because they must get food that is no longer there. Much as we glamorize electronics, entertainment, real estate, and finance, we cannot escape the necessity of agriculture. There is no technological fix for hunger. 

Tip-offs in America will be that Dallas will be about as hot as Phoenix is now, that Detroit will be about as hot as Memphis is now, and that Portland, Oregon will be as hot as Sacramento is now.  Tipoffs in Europe will be that the areas around Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Odessa will be too dry for wheat (which is the ideal crop for growing in the mid-latitudes in areas marginally moist enough to not be grazing land) and that London and Paris will have hot summers. 

Before:

After:


The stark red areas appearing in Spain are hot deserts suggesting an invasion by the Sahara. The light-orange zones that take over the eastern two thirds of the Hungarian plain, northern Serbia, lowlands of Bulgaria and Romania, practically all of Moldova, and southern and central Ukraine, while appearing in splotches in Poland and even Germany are semiarid areas too dry for non-irrigated farming -- even wheat. 
Global warming will consign millions to hunger and heatstroke if we do not stop it. Global warming is genocide.

[Eric the Green]

Yes, and the most interesting thing to realize about it are the "tipping points" that have started or will start soon within a decade or two, beyond which hothouse earth is irrevocable.

It looks really bad at the moment, especially since the ignorant American people are about to give the congress away to the oligarchy and the prejudiced for another decade. Just relying on the market and some blue states for action seems quite inadequate to me.

"tipping points occur when reinforcing (positive) feedbacks within a system take over from stabilising (negative) feedbacks and propel change from one state to another."

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/do...2/wea.4058

[pbrower2a]

One part of the solution -- necessary but not sufficient in itself -- is to make formal education more rigorous at the K-12 level.  The second part is to extend education in practice from K-12 as a minimal expectation (you do not want to be a high-school drop-out) to K-14. There is more to learn just to deal with the complexities that our technologies and our surfeit of entertainment offer. If kids play fewer video games and watch less programming on the Idiot Screen so that they can do more math and language-arts, then so be it. I remember people who grew up without so much mindless entertainment and they seemed none the worse for it.

The rightful focus is on liberal arts. We have more problems with moral failure than with technical inadequacy.