How did people live through the 4Ts without becoming misanthropic?

[AspieMillennial]

In the 4T you see the worst nature of humanity and you see them at their worst. How can you go through a 4T without thinking people are evil by nature and not wanting to fit in with them at all after seeing the nature of human beings?

[pbrower2a]

People need friends, allies, and even cronies. People often must make deals to survive. Pure individualism is not tolerated in armies and navies, and it does not work against gangster governments.

[AspieMillennial]

(04-07-2019, 07:57 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: People need friends, allies, and even cronies. People often must make deals to survive. Pure individualism is not tolerated in armies and navies, and it does not work against gangster governments.

I will do whatever I want regardless of whether it's tolerated. I'm used to not being tolerated. Being a slave to the gangster government is the death of the self so either way I'm fucked over. My mentality is since I'll be fucked over either way I'd rather be fucked over while doing whatever I want rather than being fucked over while not doing what I want. I have nothing to lose. No matter which side wins this 4T the winner will create an evil dystopia to me. I see all sides as evil horrible people. So no matter what I lose. So instead of killing myself in a race I know I'll lose I'm gonna just go do what I want.

[pbrower2a]

(04-07-2019, 08:27 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(04-07-2019, 07:57 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: People need friends, allies, and even cronies. People often must make deals to survive. Pure individualism is not tolerated in armies and navies, and it does not work against gangster governments.

I will do whatever I want regardless of whether it's tolerated. I'm used to not being tolerated. Being a slave to the gangster government is the death of the self so either way I'm fucked over. My mentality is since I'll be fucked over either way I'd rather be fucked over while doing whatever I want rather than being fucked over while not doing what I want. I have nothing to lose. No matter which side wins this 4T the winner will create an evil dystopia to me. I see all sides as evil horrible people. So no matter what I lose. So instead of killing myself in a race I know I'll lose I'm gonna just go do what I want.

Life is not that bad. Hardly anyone gets everything he wants out of life. Surely you can find some joy in life, perhaps in things for which others lack the patience and curiosity.

Life is worth the struggle. It may be all that you have, depending on your theological beliefs.

[tg63]

while it's true that the worst in many come out in a 4T (I'm actually finding it rather shocking what has quickly become considered acceptable, esp in leadership), it also brings the best out for many. I'm heartened in my city by the grass roots organizations that have recently coalesced around some key issues, particularly homelessness. Whether it turns into any practical measures, well, we'll see.

[pbrower2a]

(04-08-2019, 11:37 AM)tg63 Wrote: while it's true that the worst in many come out in a 4T (I'm actually finding it rather shocking what has quickly become considered acceptable, esp in leadership), it also brings the best out for many. I'm heartened in my city by the grass roots organizations that have recently coalesced around some key issues, particularly homelessness. Whether it turns into any practical measures, well, we'll see.

We find out at some point what is sustainable and what isn't. Monopoly (or even near-monopoly) and corruption are effective ways of keeping profits high, but at some point people lose all faith in a system that either fails to create money for people outside of the economic elite or the cadre of shysters. As an economy implodes, people find out quickly what they must have and what they can do without. The golf business deteriorated severely in 2008 and 2009 because people realized how expensive it is. People put off replacing aging cars. So the radio doesn't work anymore? Then bring along a boom box. People will find that the difference between 200 channels of cable TV and 25 signals off the antenna is that one  no longer gets televised sports and 24-hour-a-day news coverage, but instead four networks that people really watch, three that few people watch, and a bunch of channels such as MeTV, Antenna, this TV, Laff, Grit, and Bounce that offer reruns of mostly 'classic' TV. Would you rather see reruns of Perry Mason or more on the Kardashian family?

As the economic effects of the Great Devaluation take effect, bureaucratic, monopolistic behemoths collapse due to incompetence and over-compensation to executive elites who are good mostly at kissing up to reactionary politicians. A paleontological analogy may be the Chixcolub disaster that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs; in the aftermath the world opened up to mammals to fill the niches of just about every dinosaur bigger than a modern-day domestic cat. If you ever saw the T. Rex skeleton at the Chicago Museum of Natural History, you will notice that it is close to a stuffed African elephant. Even the elephant would have had no chance around T-Rex. A depression is a wondrous time for starting a business, if only as a faute a mieux situation for people who do not have jobs but can find cheap real estate, inventories, raw materials, and machinery and plenty of people with unmet needs, including a need for a job. Profits are then low because everything is competitive and one has to plow most of the profits back into the business. But society becomes more widely entrepreneurial, and much less monopolistic with wealth and income less concentrated. Government might have a role in alleviating extreme distress for individuals or in addressing regional poverty, but even that ends up going through small business-- often start-ups.

The last 4T so destroyed stock valuations that the economic elites could not buy the political system; this one allowed those elites to do so and give us a profits-first, profits-only, Humanity-be-damned society. We came out of the Great Depression as generally better people than we went into it, and we were better off for such. This time we solidified the positions of people who resemble the pigs of Orwell's Animal Farm. Our economic elites have never been so scummy in ideology and behavior and with no use. At least the Gilded plutocrats were pioneers of such necessary big business as railroads, electrical power, and petroleum, which is more than I can say of today's elites better at grabbing wealth than at creating it.

Does anyone want my idea of making America great again? We were better off when retailing, banking, and much manufacturing were cottage industries unable to buy lobbyists to control the politicians. Opportunity existed in small towns as well as giant cities. Because one could make a genuine living in a place other than a favored metropolis, people didn't have to abandon rural, small-town, and small-city (let alone such urban wrecks as Cleveland, Detroit, and St. Louis) to go where the money is -- and where rents are stratospheric. We may have paid MSLP at a local store for toys, clothes, housewares, electronic gadgets, and records... but in many ways that is far better than getting stuff from Wal*Mart that will quickly end up in the landfill when it breaks or goes obsolete, let alone having to spend over half one's after-tax income in some expensive cities to hold a responsible job that does not exist in Lima, Ohio -- or Buffalo, New York.  Give people the economic relationships of the 1950s without the white privilege and male chauvinism, but better roads instead of the Blood Alleys of the time and better medical technologies, and most of us would be perfectly happy.

[Eric the Green]

(04-07-2019, 06:56 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: In the 4T you see the worst nature of humanity and you see them at their worst. How can you go through a 4T without thinking people are evil by nature and not wanting to fit in with them at all after seeing the nature of human beings?

That's a good question. I'm thinking that more and more. People don't want to face up to the consequences of their votes, and that a decision needs to be made between red and blue.

But obviously, we go through these 4Ts and into a 1T. We have to go through a cleansing by fire to emerge into a better day.

After the Holocaust in the previous 4T, some people asked "how can you any more believe in God, after this?" The reply was, "How can you any more believe in Man (sic)?"

But we did get through it, even in Europe and Japan, and a new consensus developed in which people were fit in, like it or not in some cases.

So, once one side is victorious in this 4T, and the worst tendencies of human nature are defeated for the umteenth time, we will have purged ourselves of this worst tendency, and even a lot of the people caught up in the wrong path will leave it behind and move on.

But, it seems to come around again and again. One hope is that this 4T will be less difficult than the last. That's because in the USA, we rose to a high position of prosperity and ability to control our lives that was unprecedented, and this has spread over the world. So we have farther to fall, by that measure, as this saeculum swirls to its end.

But lots of folks (like those on the other 4T site) amazingly want to close their eyes to the fact that this is the very namesake of their group-- a 4T. People are not that nice in a 4T; we can't all be "friends" now. There will be a winning side and a losing side, and the winner had better be the good guys. Thus it has ALWAYS been. History is very clear on that point, and could not be clearer. If we are to be successful in this cold civil war 4T, we had better support the good guys in any way that we choose. And do our best to choose correctly.

Human beings are remarkable, amazing creatures; all of us. Even those with whom we disagree. Life is a wondrous miracle, and we can appreciate the goodness and creative source that shines through all people, even those who are on the wrong side right now. So yes, that's how we might be able to live through this 4T. Somehow keep our bearings and remember that despite all the abuse hurled at us "good guys" for telling the truth, that deep down, everyone knows that life is good, and it's good to be challenged to do the best that we can. We grow through hard times. We develop our powers as human beings by being put to the test. I am optimistic we can pull through, and that gradually a place will be made for everyone who might be offbeat and different from the norm. Eventually, we as human beings will grow enough to praise and bless those who go beyond what is normal.

[pbrower2a]

(04-08-2019, 10:52 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-07-2019, 06:56 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: In the 4T you see the worst nature of humanity and you see them at their worst. How can you go through a 4T without thinking people are evil by nature and not wanting to fit in with them at all after seeing the nature of human beings?

That's a good question. I'm thinking that more and more. People don't want to face up to the consequences of their votes, and that a decision needs to be made between red and blue.

But obviously, we go through these 4Ts and into a 1T. We have to go through a cleansing by fire to emerge into a better day.

After the Holocaust in the previous 4T, some people asked "how can you any more believe in God, after this?" The reply was, "How can you any more believe in Man (sic)?"

The German Federal Republic changed its educational system, replacing nationalism with civil courage as a moral objective. There is hardly a country in existence in which horrors such as those of the Nazis could ever emerge anew. (Communist-dominated states blamed capitalism and economic inequality, which was cheap and ineffective). Japan renounced war as a means of solving its diplomatic disputes. It may be ironic that Germany, Italy, and Japan, the greatest nemeses to democracy from 1935 to 1943, are now better examples of democracy than the United States of America.
But we did get through it, even in Europe and Japan, and a new consensus developed in which people were fit in, like it or not in some cases.

Quote:So, once one side is victorious in this 4T, and the worst tendencies of human nature are defeated for the umteenth time, we will have purged ourselves of this worst tendency, and even a lot of the people caught up in the wrong path will leave it behind and move on.

As Tennyson puts it in a poem that became a Christmas carol,

"The Wrong shall fail/ the Right prevail"

Evil usually sows the whirlwind and the whirlwind eventually turns upon those who sow it.

Quote:But, it seems to come around again and again. One hope is that this 4T will be less difficult than the last. That's because in the USA, we rose to a high position of prosperity and ability to control our lives that was unprecedented, and this has spread over the world. So we have farther to fall, by that measure, as this saeculum swirls to its end.

But -- the hardships of the Great Depression may have prepared us Americans for war with three Evil Empires (the Demonic Reich, fascist Italy, and Thug Japan) at once, which required great sacrifices of material comfort that Americans were beginning to enjoy again let alone taking the supreme danger of storming the beaches of Normandy.  GI kids really had it rough in contrast to any later generation -- and that includes the alleged good times that preceded it.

In many cases our economic and administrative elites are either as rapacious and egoistic as the aristocratic classes that made feudal orders so horrible or are even criminal. I can easily see Trump deciding to invade Cuba or Venezuela and telling Congress to go (bleep) themselves if they balk.

Quote:But lots of folks (like those on the other 4T site) amazingly want to close their eyes to the fact that this is the very namesake of their group-- a 4T. People are not that nice in a 4T; we can't all be "friends" now. There will be a winning side and a losing side, and the winner had better be the good guys. Thus it has ALWAYS been. History is very clear on that point, and could not be clearer. If we are to be successful in this cold civil war 4T, we had better support the good guys in any way that we choose. And do our best to choose correctly.

We come out of this 4T better than we came in, or we put everything that we have long cherished, including Constitutional government and the civil liberties that underpin democracy at risk of permanent failure. Sure, that can take a long time to culminate in the dissolution of the system, as with the Roman Empire which was a rotten order from its inception. (I interpret the doom of Rome with the supposed success in suppressing the slave revolt of Spartacus. Some wars are best lost, and I am tempted to see the Servile Wars as the Roman equivalent of the American Civil War.

With Trump we are on the brink of a "Republic in Name Only", which is what Rome was before Julius Caesar imposed his Empire.

Quote:Human beings are remarkable, amazing creatures; all of us. Even those with whom we disagree. Life is a wondrous miracle, and we can appreciate the goodness and creative source that shines through all people, even those who are on the wrong side right now. So yes, that's how we might be able to live through this 4T. Somehow keep our bearings and remember that despite all the abuse hurled at us "good guys" for telling the truth, that deep down, everyone knows that life is good, and it's good to be challenged to do the best that we can. We grow through hard times. We develop our powers as human beings by being put to the test. I am optimistic we can pull through, and that gradually a place will be made for everyone who might be offbeat and different from the norm. Eventually, we as human beings will grow enough to praise and bless those who go beyond what is normal.

Life is good, or the system is suspect. Part of goodness is that Truth prevails over Power and the Will of leaders. It may take another 1929-style crash to compel us to recognize what matters and what doesn't.

[David Horn]

(04-08-2019, 11:37 AM)tg63 Wrote: while it's true that the worst in many come out in a 4T (I'm actually finding it rather shocking what has quickly become considered acceptable, esp in leadership), it also brings the best out for many. I'm heartened in my city by the grass roots organizations that have recently coalesced around some key issues, particularly homelessness. Whether it turns into any practical measures, well, we'll see.

Things tend to get worse slowly over time until a breaking is reached, then, redress happens quickly.  That's the reason why decades of illiberal politics (even under Woodrow Wilson) lead to FDR's 100 days.  I'm not predicting that again, but pent-up demand operates in politics just like it does in the marketplace.

[Hintergrund]

Not everyone in a 4T is evil.

[AspieMillennial]

(05-14-2019, 08:36 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Not everyone in a 4T is evil.

No but most people in a 4T are evil. The new ideas I see coming within this 4T and the last are evil. My response to living through a 4T is to be angry at the world for forcing me to live in this era.

[pbrower2a]

People are vulnerable to propaganda especially when the Other Side is completely shut out of the debate.



"The Jewish nose is crooked at its tip. It looks like the number 6."

...as if a crooked nose is somehow more objectionable than an ideology of soulless cruelty. I have encountered some nasty antisemites on the Web, and I have told them that despite being about half German and Swiss (the rest largely English, Welsh, and Scots-Irish, and no Jews) something like

"If I had to choose between being a Jew and a Nazi like you, I would be a Jew because as a Jew I could keep my cultural and moral values. That would be the easiest decision that I could possibly make". I fit three Jewish stereotypes on the Web (as a liberal with a German-sounding surname, and I need not relate the third), so I am hardly surprised that neo-Nazis wish that they could gas me.

The best defense of Jews would have been for Jews to show that they were normal people, that they were not an organized conspiracy (the war criminal Ernst von dem Bach admitted that the concept of a Jewish plot was provably false when he admitted to Polish prosecutors that the Jews did not even have a news service to guide such a plot), and that the "Jews" most objectionable to German Christians (the "Jewish Bolsheviks") were themselves rogues -- and that the fault of the "Jewish Bolshevik" was in not being Jewish enough (the position of Sir Winston Churchill). Jews may have been much of the population of small-business owners, but small-business owners who cannot manipulate prices are the true heroes of capitalism.

The problem for the Jews was that they had no means for which to counter the propaganda of such a swine as Julius Streicher whose racist bilge loses all credibility under a simple challenge. The totalitarian order of Nazi Germany denied Jews the right to act as normal people. The controlled mass media and the corruption of formal education within a totalitarian state corrupt people who cannot know anything else.

[Snowflake1996]

(04-07-2019, 06:56 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: In the 4T you see the worst nature of humanity and you see them at their worst. How can you go through a 4T without thinking people are evil by nature and not wanting to fit in with them at all after seeing the nature of human beings?

For me I stay positive by looking at the attitudes and potential in both my generation and the upcoming homelanders after us. I tend to see eye to eye and get a long very well with most people aged 38 and younger.

[pbrower2a]

(05-17-2019, 06:51 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(05-14-2019, 08:36 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Not everyone in a 4T is evil.

No but most people in a 4T are evil. The new ideas I see coming within this 4T and the last are evil. My response to living through a 4T is to be angry at the world for forcing me to live in this era.

(01-04-2020, 08:47 PM)Snowflake1996 Wrote:

(04-07-2019, 06:56 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: In the 4T you see the worst nature of humanity and you see them at their worst. How can you go through a 4T without thinking people are evil by nature and not wanting to fit in with them at all after seeing the nature of human beings?

For me I stay positive by looking at the attitudes and potential in both my generation and the upcoming homelanders after us. I tend to see eye to eye and get a long very well with most people aged 38 and younger.

All people have the choice between good and evil. They may not choose their genes, their intelligence, deformities or freedom from such, class origin, or the culture into which they are born, but they must choose whether they will do good or evil. Maybe there is a continuum, and all of us must make compromises especially in desperate circumstances... but we can all choose to not murder, rape, steal, torture, do wanton destruction, abandon the helpless... In a free society we have the obligation to vote for leaders who will not do evil. (America failed at that in 2016 with the President). In a not-so-free society we must avoid becoming perpetrators of evil.

Evil is not a good means of self-preservation even at the national level. Criminality is good for getting one imprisoned or, through resistance to the prescribed judgment, maimed or killed. One must decide that it is far better to be the poorest pauper than the richest gangster. 

I look at a prospect of the current President threatening to destroy 52 cultural sites of Iran... any such deed is a great and pointless crime. Should he do even one of them, then I expect the Democratic President who follows him to ensure that he be arrested on behalf of the Hague Tribunal. Note well that Iran has a heritage going back nearly three millennia, from both antiquity and the Islamic era... 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50996602

... when I see language of this sort I recognize another spate of monstrous vandalism, that of Nazi demolition of synagogues throughout Europe. Some of those were architectural masterpieces as well as havens of intellectual activity wherein congregants discussed questions that keep arising because human nature does not really change. It is of course the Humanity behind those synagogues that was infinitely more precious, and the Nazis... well, we know enough of that perverted story already.

I cannot see an ethical difference between someone brought up as a Christian destroying a synagogue and someone brought up as a Christian destroying a mosque. Any mosque, synagogue, or church is the Lord's House, and any malicious destruction of one is an offense before God Almighty.

[Bill the Piper]

(05-17-2019, 06:51 PM)A spieMillennial Wrote:

(05-14-2019, 08:36 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Not everyone in a 4T is evil.

No but most people in a 4T are evil. The new ideas I see coming within this 4T and the last are evil. My response to living through a 4T is to be angry at the world for forcing me to live in this era.

I despise the radical Greens, SJWs and neoreactionaries but I liked the futurist climate of the early 2010s especially the Pirate Parties though I can't help laughing at the name. No self-respecting person calls emself a pirate. The American Revolution was another good idea born during a 4T.

IMHO the 3T is most disgusting turning, as it's all about hedonism and nihilism.

pbrower2a Wrote:The best defense of Jews would have been for Jews to show that they were normal people, that they were not an organized conspiracy

To their credit Jews never resorted to a racist concept of nationhood. There are blonde Russian Jews and Black Ethiopian Jews, and I never saw them arguing about racial purity. Their concept of nationhood is more like a dynasty, sharing descent from common forefather Abraham. The far-right never understand this and continues to denounce "Jewish racism" which hardly ever existed.

[pbrower2a]

(01-05-2020, 12:09 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(05-17-2019, 06:51 PM)A spieMillennial Wrote:

(05-14-2019, 08:36 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Not everyone in a 4T is evil.

No but most people in a 4T are evil. The new ideas I see coming within this 4T and the last are evil. My response to living through a 4T is to be angry at the world for forcing me to live in this era.

I despise the radical Greens, SJWs and neoreactionaries but I liked the futurist climate of the early 2010s especially the Pirate Parties though I can't help laughing at the name. No self-respecting person calls emself a pirate. The American Revolution was another good idea born during a 4T.

Quote:We are going to need some pragmatism to squelch fanaticism and promote compromise. If we are to have the sort of economy that can bring both prosperity and social justice, then we will need an economic basis in a strong economy. That is the social-market economy that taxes big and rewards people with what is really good for them, like high-quality education and solid medical care no matter what their means. We will need to level the unequal results between regions in America that we once glossed over when the American economy had plentiful industrial jobs in which anyone with a good work ethic and a suitable body could find work despite limited education. At one time the best career advice for many was to take "67" and "66", "51" and "66", "45" or "41" to Chicago or even "41" past Chicago to Milwaukee, "31" to South Bend, some combination of "27", "23", and "25" to Detroit or Flint, "21" to Cleveland, "19" to Pittsburgh or Erie or with "21" to Cleveland or "119" to Buffalo, "15" to Rochester, "11" to Syracuse... with the arguable exception of Pittsburgh such is now horrible advice, and not because the Interstates have supplanted some of those highways. Those are now poor destinations for people trying to improve their lives even if the drive is easier and safer. People should not have to spend 60% of their disposable income on rent because the many places in which such is unnecessary are economic wrecks. 

Our world is getting more complex, and we are going to have to be wiser with our earnings and our votes, so we are going to need more formal education, extending K-12 as a norm to K-14 just so that people can learn how to avoid getting exploited, becoming a public charge, or simply wasting time watching witless fare on the Idiot Screen.  

 

Quote:IMHO the 3T is most disgusting turning, as it's all about hedonism and nihilism.

Mindless hedonism... the latter part of a 3T, the part that I call the Degeneracy, is the one in which people sow the seeds of the 4T whirlwind. Capitalism without conscience, judgment without morality, politics without wisdom... note that the penultimate phase of the last three Crises (including this one) were the financial panics of 1857, 1929, and 2008. (Mindful hedonism might be something like binge-listening to Mozart's piano concertos, which won't hurt one). 

I would also add social myopia -- the lust in part for get-rich-quick-and-easy schemes that turn into get-ruined-quicker schemes. The cure is to look for the long term with low yields and much effort, and no graceful exit if something goes wrong. Those eventually pay off in the 1T, but the good habits well serve the 4T.   

pbrower2a Wrote:The best defense of Jews would have been for Jews to show that they were normal people, that they were not an organized conspiracy

To their credit Jews never resorted to a racist concept of nationhood. There are blonde Russian Jews and Black Ethiopian Jews, and I never saw them arguing about racial purity. Their concept of nationhood is more like a dynasty, sharing descent from common forefather Abraham. The far-right never understand this and continues to denounce "Jewish racism" which hardly ever existed.

I have been surprised at times to find that people who look much like me are Jewish. I come from an antisemitic family that taught me from childhood to beware the hooked nose and people talking through their noses, people of unrestrained greed and materialism. Then I find at some point that some very good people have hook noses through which they speak... and that the values that I cherish are compatible with Judaism. Culture? Classical music is largely kosher, so to speak. As for the pervasive greed and materialism, I found such neither dominant among Jews nor lacking among gentiles of all kinds. Jewish culture? It would fit me well.

Sometimes I wonder whether the Jews took in lots of orphans from the commonplace wars and persecutions... or abandoned children that a young woman could not admit to having. Albigensian crusades? Crackdown on Hussites? 

Maybe I should have been brought up Jewish. Then again, maybe I would be wondering what pork and shellfish have to offer as forbidden delights... on the other hand, Torah and Talmud study would be good preparation for law school. I love how Adam Schiff eviscerated Trump behavior, and (((Superman))) is by far the best legend created in American literature.  There are George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Irving Berlin; Scott Joplin was obviously not Jewish, but a Jew taught him some sophisticated counterpoint that gave coherence to his rags. 

Besides... there was nothing wrong with the German people between 1933 and 1945 that Judaism would not have solved. Think about it.