“Of course,” he says, “we have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which ‘now’ was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents’ have insufficient ‘now’ to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile.”
William Gibson: Pattern Recognition, Chapter 6, "The Match Factory"
I hope that everyone has a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
For precisely the same reasons that are presented in this essay I find the present global situation highly stimulating. We have to do away with hope in order to achieve renewal, too many people still think the ship is still capable of righting itself. I say destruction is inevitable and a precondition, at the social level, for the return of positive values.
> With the abandonment of Marxism, and even of reformist Socialism, and their effective suppression from political discourse in the West
This has turned out to be a very bad idea for the Right as well, as it destroyed the system's ability to adjust and self-modify. In a mixed ideological environment, traditional Leftwing movements could be seen as a kind of populist feedback loop; that's now completely broken. Our oligarchies are increasingly fragile and unsustainable.
There is something that I've always thought that's only tangentially related to this topic: democracy as a god that failed. The naive conception of "democracy" is that people decide what goals the society should pursue collectively. As Arrow and Sen showed mathematically, this is impossible provided that the people actually know what they want and are interested in pursuing them to their logical ends. In practice, NOBODY knows what they really want, at least not in a systematic sense. People usually have a good idea of what they want in the near to medium term that affect their immediate lives, what they don't want more generally (although not exhaustively), and a lot of not-particularly-serious ideas about what they want vaguely but not so systematic that you can mathematically aggregate them into something coherent--and this is a good thing because, if they did, it would be logically impossible anyways.
Besides, it only makes sense for people to not have such a systematic set of ideas about how the world should be run anyways. The world is a very complex place that is changing constantly: the idea that anyone has enough knowledge to "master" it is absurd, let alone masses of people, although it may make sense for some people to specialize in understanding things well enough so that they can protect "their peoples" from harm at least and even bring them some material and other comforts.
This brings us back to the idea of communities and mutual self-help, the idea of "churches," not in the "organized religion" kind of way, but the way, I'd figure, people like Ellul meant. This is how "leaders" naturally emerge, in a "truly democratic" sense: they are chosen not necessarily because they are good at manipulating "the world," but they have proven that "they are good enough" at that craft and have enough of a "character" so that they can be trusted to protect the community. This is, I think, the missing ingredient that efforts by people like Arrow missed (disclaimer: Ken Arrow is/was one of my teachers and he himself often noted something along these lines--just that they are not "mathematically demonstrable.")
I wonder about the role played by the movement towards a more "rational world," born of the Enlightenment thinking (while people like Arrow and Samuelson get the credit for using physics metaphor to describe social phenomena, but the tradition goes back all the way to the Continental Enlightenment thinking: Voltaire admired Newton for precisely this reason. The idea of a clockwork universe prefigures the quasi physics of economics). Arrow did not prove that "democracy" is impossible: he proved that the kind of democracy that the Liberals imagine, of the clockwork kind, is impossible. "Democracy" works with the body of the forms and procedures and the blood of the community, and truth be told, this is true of pretty much any successful form of government (just that, if followed consistently and transparently, the forms and procedures of "democracy" can better maintain trust of the community members, I think). The focus, however, in most "political" (broadly defined) institutions is on the forms and procedures (and how to take advantage of them to gain advantage), with the "community," if it is even conceptualized at all, treated at best a distraction and at worst, as a downright enemy (or, at least an obstacle). Of course, with a great deal of emphasis on how to abuse the institutions to gain short term advantage for one side or another, the basic trust is even further eroded.
Not sure if there is any "solution" to be had, beyond, I suppose "think globally, act locally." For all the take of "international community" or whatever, there is no "community" at a macro level. In the end, communities that matter are ultimately "local" (perhaps not in a "geographic" sense any more, but certainly at a small scale). Trying to counter the dysfunctional "clockwork democracy" by creating counter-ideologies is probably doomed to failure, not just because it is mathematically impossible, but also because it invites hucksters and liars who are peddling hopium of various kinds (In this sense, I think Obama and Trump were basically the same people, even if they sold their goods in a superficially different fashion.) It does mean, I think, that the fundamentals of how society and politics function need to be reconfigured, to shift the focus to the "local." Of course, this is not something that will take place easily--there's way too much invested in the unresponsive superstructures, whether the federal governments of US or Canada or EU or various international institutions that justify themselves by doing "grand things" that are of little or no interest to the masses. So, the ultimate question remains unanswered: what is to be done? Perhaps it is not to be answered at all....
Perhaps democracy should (also, or instead?) be seen as a set of mechanisms which validates outcomes. If you have a system which steadily increases living standards for the vast majority of the population, and the latter approve of that, then you probably have a pretty democratic system, regardless of the specifics of the decision-making processes.
I think that's reasonable, although with the proviso that "living standard" is a murky and dicey notion. In the end, perhaps, the particulars of how to define and measure it don't matter as long as a majority (or a suitably large supermajority?) Of the population "approves"? But this brings us back to the question of procedures, rules, etc. to set forth what it takes to "approve" the status quo.
Yeah, we should be under no delusion that democracy is easy; it isn't. Every society will have to devise their own democratic processes and adapt them to each stage of their economic development. One thing should be clear: one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work. Or to put it a different way, there is no static set of universal values called "democracy" that can be imposed mechanistically everywhere, as Western liberals tend to believe.
For kindness to flourish at eye-level requires us first to perceive one another as human beings who are worthy of kindness.
This capacity is being eroded at alarming speed by the pervasive and destabilising force that is social media, where a black and white, 'us vs them' mindset flourishes.
When individuals are zealously distilled into lists of negative adjectives and hashtags, they become abstracts rather than people. We all know where this leads, and it goes both ways. In dehumanising others who we perceive as morally defective, and therefore deserving of any mistreatment that we choose to mete out, we dehumanise ourselves.
This would be bad enough if it remained within the fences of social media platforms. However, a malign capillary action is drawing this ugly mentality into the echelons of those organisations who should be seeking to elevate themselves above what amounts to playground bullying.
For kindness to make a comeback necessitates a return to the world - that troublesome, tangible existence, filled with subtleties and grey areas that defy hard and fast definitions. It is a place where, the more time you spend in the company of someone who you may share little common ground with, the harder they become to pigeon-hole.
Kindness is to invite the possibility of suffering into one's own life in the hope that there will be some wider benefit. It's a gamble.
I know of two families who took in Ukrainian refugees. For one the experience was overwhelmingly positive. For the other it was awful, never to be repeated.
> the actual process was one of deliberate, if incoherent, attempts to impose abstruse, unworkable and even dangerous economic theories, which nonetheless were strongly supported by certain groups, notably the rich. This wasn’t a conspiracy though
When an economic doctrine (neoliberalism) is promoted for decades, when this doctrine is promoted in particular by the wealthy, when this doctrine results in growing inequality, the result of which the very same wealthy growing wealthier, this is all just happenstance? I believe the technical term for this Coincidence Theory.
> Those people I know who fought against the apartheid regime in South Africa spent much
> of their time in what everyone agreed was a hopeless, even pointless cause.
Does anyone here know whatever happened to Myrna Blumberg? She must be quite elderly by now but I haven't found any online obituary so perhaps she's still with us.
I volunteer at a bicycle collective. We recycle donated bicycles and help homeless people fix their bicycles, and also sell some bicycles to the hipsters who live downtown.
The other day a young couple came in with bicycles that needed attention. They did not fit the homeless stereotype, but they did not have much money. We spent a couple of hours working with them on their bicycles and charged them maybe $15 for parts.
They said we were amazing, like "something out of an Ayn Rand novel," the "last socialists" helping people without trying to make money out of it. I thought that was interesting framing. It made me realize again the conceptual gulf between me and kids these days.
Sorry. But we are beyond fucked. There is no future and în our hearts we all hope that the russians will lose their temper and release the nukes. We are fed up with life and just want to die în a nuclear cloud.
"People cannot fight for something they cannot conceptualise, and no-one is around at the moment to do the conceptualising thing."
First phrase of that sentence is true, second is false. And I cannot imagine our host is not reconceptualizing.
All sorts of people in all sorts of places in this breathing world are busy conceptualizing and experimenting for what comes next. It's been well known for 70 years at least that it must be of the spirit if it is save the flesh, as General Mac Arthur put it to Congress.
Just in the realm of statecraft, for example, non-alignment -- no agreements/treaties/MOUs/sanctions to improve one nation at the expense of another -- is gaining approval because it's the only system -- in Ellul's sense -- reasonable in a world of space-based ISR-networked, stand-off, precision, hypersonic weapons as well as Russian-serious level AD and EW capabilities.
There are serious people in this world, in many nations. They are trying to think AHEAD of the demise of geriatric infantilism which our host here treats under the rubric "loss of hope." What can/should/must guide the conduct of affairs after New York and City of London financial speculators are put in their place for exposing themselves?
SCO+, BRICS+, GCC, EAEU and other organizations comprising serious people study and experiment with structures of thought and order which conduce to mutually-beneficial regularity, fairness, and predictability in inter-nation communications. Individuals, too, some without institutional connection, work in this area.
For instance, just regarding The USA, although hardly complete, post-infantile standards of USA statecraft are worked up:
In the late 60s, I almost traveled to Bordeaux to study, post-graduate, with Jacques Ellul. I did not because, while I knew and admired his work, and had a personal reference for entrance to his presence, I felt he was not as far forward in system re-conceptualizing as I wanted to be. Not a fault of his, just the situation. A man and his times, etc. Also, I did not speak French. Perhaps I was arrogant. It's not impossible. Anyway, I did not study with the man, although I then admired and still rely on and admire him. He was a good man in the classical Christian sense of that accolade.
I think it was Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" that mentions the many simulations conducted in populations with various attributes, from "selfish psychopathic" to "collaborative". And their simulations resulted in systems very stable for both collaborative "societies" or the "psychopathic" ones.
However, we have so much evolutionary "blank slate" heavily tilted towards collaboration.
Give me some years of drought in North America, some food shortages, and we'll see the sharpening of pitchforks and burning of the entrenched political machines.
There are people working to erode this TINA mentality. The Dawn of Everything is, on the intellectual plane an ultimate cry for battle that is hard to resist and seems hard to find arguments against. Even as a fictional piece, the imagination of a smorgasbord of societies, in total opposition to our indistinguishable ones of absolute monocultures, is something to behold.
"Have you noticed, Stil, how beautiful the young women are this year" Children of Dune. Frank Herbert
The dawn of everything - a new science of human history with David Wengrow:
I'm 40, I had a discussion about all of this yesterday with a client of the same age, the corruption, the lies, the hysterical money printing and virtue signalling, the system crashing and all of that, and we were both.. let society crash, it deserves to crash. It's not worth saving...
Not that it's beyond saving, which it isn't, but that it's our moral duty to let society burn down by itself, without us lifting a finger to save it.
Our Hope is that we will be restored to humanity through this.
I'm seventy and retired. I suppose that the extra thirty years have allowed me a little more kindness, but I can understand where you are coming from. I can't say as I agree, but understanding is there.
I tend to think that we are just playing out a game that started a long time before we came around. The game is the aggrandizement of the west at the expense of the rest of the world. We spent the last seventy years creating Davo's man and now that he has arrived, we wonder just what we and our parents and grandparents were thinking.
I am not at all thrilled with the idea of a societal crash. But I recognize that it may well be in the cards. Like I said, I am not thrilled about the idea. I spent time in the jungles of SE Asia in the seventies watching a culture come apart at the seams and it is not an outcome that I want to emulate.
I cannot thank our host enough for the very thoughtful work that he has put into this site. But in a sense he is pointing out to us that the decisions made during the past fifty years are coming to roost. I suppose that the best way to describe this are the words that I plan to have on my gravestone.
Sure, a societal crash would be horrible and isn't desirable, my point here was the sentiment which is very genuine.
We loath our societies and feel nothing but contempt towards it. There is no loyalty, nothing. If it burns down we don't feel like we would miss it. We are early millenials white males and the system has never shown us anything other than hate, contempt and left us blowing in ever harsher winds while protecting our elders from their own mistakes at our expense.
If the society came crashing down on them, their weight on our backs would dramatically lessen. As long as it's there we are nothing but slave labour, toiling in a futile attempt to build a future for ourselves under the crushing weight of boomer entitlement.
Well....yes. Boomers are the spoiled brats of history. You hâd booming economy, cheap housing, stabile society.........and you fucked up. Even here in eastern Europe we hate your guts, so imagine your sons and grandsons what they feel about you. Its no secret that you are entitled pieces of shit.
I didn't say that, I said our elders had been protected, and that we had been burdened with the costs.
In 2008, you got a bailout and we got to pay for it. The entire expansion of the money supply since had been to keep zombie companies afloat and boomer retirement funds and homes increased in value, at our expense. Ie, asset inflation.
Making homeownership a either a pipedream or a highly leveraged purchase with maximum exposure to increases in interests rates for us. Or inflating rents while wages remained stagnant.
Not to mention us having to support imported welfare Queens on top of that. I live in Sweden, and that cost is not marginal.
So our cost benefit situation is easy. Let it burn down, everyman for himself and we will be better off.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to our host and my fellow commenters!
“Of course,” he says, “we have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which ‘now’ was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents’ have insufficient ‘now’ to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile.”
William Gibson: Pattern Recognition, Chapter 6, "The Match Factory"
I hope that everyone has a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
For precisely the same reasons that are presented in this essay I find the present global situation highly stimulating. We have to do away with hope in order to achieve renewal, too many people still think the ship is still capable of righting itself. I say destruction is inevitable and a precondition, at the social level, for the return of positive values.
> With the abandonment of Marxism, and even of reformist Socialism, and their effective suppression from political discourse in the West
This has turned out to be a very bad idea for the Right as well, as it destroyed the system's ability to adjust and self-modify. In a mixed ideological environment, traditional Leftwing movements could be seen as a kind of populist feedback loop; that's now completely broken. Our oligarchies are increasingly fragile and unsustainable.
There is something that I've always thought that's only tangentially related to this topic: democracy as a god that failed. The naive conception of "democracy" is that people decide what goals the society should pursue collectively. As Arrow and Sen showed mathematically, this is impossible provided that the people actually know what they want and are interested in pursuing them to their logical ends. In practice, NOBODY knows what they really want, at least not in a systematic sense. People usually have a good idea of what they want in the near to medium term that affect their immediate lives, what they don't want more generally (although not exhaustively), and a lot of not-particularly-serious ideas about what they want vaguely but not so systematic that you can mathematically aggregate them into something coherent--and this is a good thing because, if they did, it would be logically impossible anyways.
Besides, it only makes sense for people to not have such a systematic set of ideas about how the world should be run anyways. The world is a very complex place that is changing constantly: the idea that anyone has enough knowledge to "master" it is absurd, let alone masses of people, although it may make sense for some people to specialize in understanding things well enough so that they can protect "their peoples" from harm at least and even bring them some material and other comforts.
This brings us back to the idea of communities and mutual self-help, the idea of "churches," not in the "organized religion" kind of way, but the way, I'd figure, people like Ellul meant. This is how "leaders" naturally emerge, in a "truly democratic" sense: they are chosen not necessarily because they are good at manipulating "the world," but they have proven that "they are good enough" at that craft and have enough of a "character" so that they can be trusted to protect the community. This is, I think, the missing ingredient that efforts by people like Arrow missed (disclaimer: Ken Arrow is/was one of my teachers and he himself often noted something along these lines--just that they are not "mathematically demonstrable.")
I wonder about the role played by the movement towards a more "rational world," born of the Enlightenment thinking (while people like Arrow and Samuelson get the credit for using physics metaphor to describe social phenomena, but the tradition goes back all the way to the Continental Enlightenment thinking: Voltaire admired Newton for precisely this reason. The idea of a clockwork universe prefigures the quasi physics of economics). Arrow did not prove that "democracy" is impossible: he proved that the kind of democracy that the Liberals imagine, of the clockwork kind, is impossible. "Democracy" works with the body of the forms and procedures and the blood of the community, and truth be told, this is true of pretty much any successful form of government (just that, if followed consistently and transparently, the forms and procedures of "democracy" can better maintain trust of the community members, I think). The focus, however, in most "political" (broadly defined) institutions is on the forms and procedures (and how to take advantage of them to gain advantage), with the "community," if it is even conceptualized at all, treated at best a distraction and at worst, as a downright enemy (or, at least an obstacle). Of course, with a great deal of emphasis on how to abuse the institutions to gain short term advantage for one side or another, the basic trust is even further eroded.
Not sure if there is any "solution" to be had, beyond, I suppose "think globally, act locally." For all the take of "international community" or whatever, there is no "community" at a macro level. In the end, communities that matter are ultimately "local" (perhaps not in a "geographic" sense any more, but certainly at a small scale). Trying to counter the dysfunctional "clockwork democracy" by creating counter-ideologies is probably doomed to failure, not just because it is mathematically impossible, but also because it invites hucksters and liars who are peddling hopium of various kinds (In this sense, I think Obama and Trump were basically the same people, even if they sold their goods in a superficially different fashion.) It does mean, I think, that the fundamentals of how society and politics function need to be reconfigured, to shift the focus to the "local." Of course, this is not something that will take place easily--there's way too much invested in the unresponsive superstructures, whether the federal governments of US or Canada or EU or various international institutions that justify themselves by doing "grand things" that are of little or no interest to the masses. So, the ultimate question remains unanswered: what is to be done? Perhaps it is not to be answered at all....
Perhaps democracy should (also, or instead?) be seen as a set of mechanisms which validates outcomes. If you have a system which steadily increases living standards for the vast majority of the population, and the latter approve of that, then you probably have a pretty democratic system, regardless of the specifics of the decision-making processes.
I think that's reasonable, although with the proviso that "living standard" is a murky and dicey notion. In the end, perhaps, the particulars of how to define and measure it don't matter as long as a majority (or a suitably large supermajority?) Of the population "approves"? But this brings us back to the question of procedures, rules, etc. to set forth what it takes to "approve" the status quo.
Yeah, we should be under no delusion that democracy is easy; it isn't. Every society will have to devise their own democratic processes and adapt them to each stage of their economic development. One thing should be clear: one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work. Or to put it a different way, there is no static set of universal values called "democracy" that can be imposed mechanistically everywhere, as Western liberals tend to believe.
If one suffers, all suffer. If one exults, all exult.
For kindness to flourish at eye-level requires us first to perceive one another as human beings who are worthy of kindness.
This capacity is being eroded at alarming speed by the pervasive and destabilising force that is social media, where a black and white, 'us vs them' mindset flourishes.
When individuals are zealously distilled into lists of negative adjectives and hashtags, they become abstracts rather than people. We all know where this leads, and it goes both ways. In dehumanising others who we perceive as morally defective, and therefore deserving of any mistreatment that we choose to mete out, we dehumanise ourselves.
This would be bad enough if it remained within the fences of social media platforms. However, a malign capillary action is drawing this ugly mentality into the echelons of those organisations who should be seeking to elevate themselves above what amounts to playground bullying.
For kindness to make a comeback necessitates a return to the world - that troublesome, tangible existence, filled with subtleties and grey areas that defy hard and fast definitions. It is a place where, the more time you spend in the company of someone who you may share little common ground with, the harder they become to pigeon-hole.
Kindness is to invite the possibility of suffering into one's own life in the hope that there will be some wider benefit. It's a gamble.
I know of two families who took in Ukrainian refugees. For one the experience was overwhelmingly positive. For the other it was awful, never to be repeated.
To perceive one another as human beings requires us first to perceive one another as God.
That, however, does not, would not eliminate the phenomena of conflict, loss, and sorrow.
One cannot step into the same stream twice.
Happy holidays to all, and here's my thought for right now.
"It is clear that the old order must pass away, but it is not yet possible for the new one to be born"
Not to worry. The new order decides when it is possible to be born and then does it.
Very good essay.
One could add - The milk of human kindness rests on a surplus of resources.
That surplus is out - in The West.
> the actual process was one of deliberate, if incoherent, attempts to impose abstruse, unworkable and even dangerous economic theories, which nonetheless were strongly supported by certain groups, notably the rich. This wasn’t a conspiracy though
When an economic doctrine (neoliberalism) is promoted for decades, when this doctrine is promoted in particular by the wealthy, when this doctrine results in growing inequality, the result of which the very same wealthy growing wealthier, this is all just happenstance? I believe the technical term for this Coincidence Theory.
À propos:
> Those people I know who fought against the apartheid regime in South Africa spent much
> of their time in what everyone agreed was a hopeless, even pointless cause.
Does anyone here know whatever happened to Myrna Blumberg? She must be quite elderly by now but I haven't found any online obituary so perhaps she's still with us.
I volunteer at a bicycle collective. We recycle donated bicycles and help homeless people fix their bicycles, and also sell some bicycles to the hipsters who live downtown.
The other day a young couple came in with bicycles that needed attention. They did not fit the homeless stereotype, but they did not have much money. We spent a couple of hours working with them on their bicycles and charged them maybe $15 for parts.
They said we were amazing, like "something out of an Ayn Rand novel," the "last socialists" helping people without trying to make money out of it. I thought that was interesting framing. It made me realize again the conceptual gulf between me and kids these days.
Sorry. But we are beyond fucked. There is no future and în our hearts we all hope that the russians will lose their temper and release the nukes. We are fed up with life and just want to die în a nuclear cloud.
"People cannot fight for something they cannot conceptualise, and no-one is around at the moment to do the conceptualising thing."
First phrase of that sentence is true, second is false. And I cannot imagine our host is not reconceptualizing.
All sorts of people in all sorts of places in this breathing world are busy conceptualizing and experimenting for what comes next. It's been well known for 70 years at least that it must be of the spirit if it is save the flesh, as General Mac Arthur put it to Congress.
Just in the realm of statecraft, for example, non-alignment -- no agreements/treaties/MOUs/sanctions to improve one nation at the expense of another -- is gaining approval because it's the only system -- in Ellul's sense -- reasonable in a world of space-based ISR-networked, stand-off, precision, hypersonic weapons as well as Russian-serious level AD and EW capabilities.
There are serious people in this world, in many nations. They are trying to think AHEAD of the demise of geriatric infantilism which our host here treats under the rubric "loss of hope." What can/should/must guide the conduct of affairs after New York and City of London financial speculators are put in their place for exposing themselves?
SCO+, BRICS+, GCC, EAEU and other organizations comprising serious people study and experiment with structures of thought and order which conduce to mutually-beneficial regularity, fairness, and predictability in inter-nation communications. Individuals, too, some without institutional connection, work in this area.
For instance, just regarding The USA, although hardly complete, post-infantile standards of USA statecraft are worked up:
https://theological-geography.net/?p=69242
In the late 60s, I almost traveled to Bordeaux to study, post-graduate, with Jacques Ellul. I did not because, while I knew and admired his work, and had a personal reference for entrance to his presence, I felt he was not as far forward in system re-conceptualizing as I wanted to be. Not a fault of his, just the situation. A man and his times, etc. Also, I did not speak French. Perhaps I was arrogant. It's not impossible. Anyway, I did not study with the man, although I then admired and still rely on and admire him. He was a good man in the classical Christian sense of that accolade.
I think it was Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" that mentions the many simulations conducted in populations with various attributes, from "selfish psychopathic" to "collaborative". And their simulations resulted in systems very stable for both collaborative "societies" or the "psychopathic" ones.
However, we have so much evolutionary "blank slate" heavily tilted towards collaboration.
Give me some years of drought in North America, some food shortages, and we'll see the sharpening of pitchforks and burning of the entrenched political machines.
There are people working to erode this TINA mentality. The Dawn of Everything is, on the intellectual plane an ultimate cry for battle that is hard to resist and seems hard to find arguments against. Even as a fictional piece, the imagination of a smorgasbord of societies, in total opposition to our indistinguishable ones of absolute monocultures, is something to behold.
"Have you noticed, Stil, how beautiful the young women are this year" Children of Dune. Frank Herbert
The dawn of everything - a new science of human history with David Wengrow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHRNmSSXdE
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to Everyone!
I'm 40, I had a discussion about all of this yesterday with a client of the same age, the corruption, the lies, the hysterical money printing and virtue signalling, the system crashing and all of that, and we were both.. let society crash, it deserves to crash. It's not worth saving...
Not that it's beyond saving, which it isn't, but that it's our moral duty to let society burn down by itself, without us lifting a finger to save it.
Our Hope is that we will be restored to humanity through this.
Sorry to respond with a cliché, but... I have to say... be careful what you wish for.
I'm seventy and retired. I suppose that the extra thirty years have allowed me a little more kindness, but I can understand where you are coming from. I can't say as I agree, but understanding is there.
I tend to think that we are just playing out a game that started a long time before we came around. The game is the aggrandizement of the west at the expense of the rest of the world. We spent the last seventy years creating Davo's man and now that he has arrived, we wonder just what we and our parents and grandparents were thinking.
I am not at all thrilled with the idea of a societal crash. But I recognize that it may well be in the cards. Like I said, I am not thrilled about the idea. I spent time in the jungles of SE Asia in the seventies watching a culture come apart at the seams and it is not an outcome that I want to emulate.
I cannot thank our host enough for the very thoughtful work that he has put into this site. But in a sense he is pointing out to us that the decisions made during the past fifty years are coming to roost. I suppose that the best way to describe this are the words that I plan to have on my gravestone.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Sure, a societal crash would be horrible and isn't desirable, my point here was the sentiment which is very genuine.
We loath our societies and feel nothing but contempt towards it. There is no loyalty, nothing. If it burns down we don't feel like we would miss it. We are early millenials white males and the system has never shown us anything other than hate, contempt and left us blowing in ever harsher winds while protecting our elders from their own mistakes at our expense.
If the society came crashing down on them, their weight on our backs would dramatically lessen. As long as it's there we are nothing but slave labour, toiling in a futile attempt to build a future for ourselves under the crushing weight of boomer entitlement.
If the society came crashing down on them (boomers), your backbone would snap and you would lie paralyzed or dead.
Your sentiments are those of boomers you despise, only focused on them, as they focused their arrogance and wrath on their parents.
Try to cut the cycle of blame. War is the father of all things.
Nice. So us boomers are the problem. Good to know. My friends and I will be happy to know that we are the source of all evil.
Piss off.
Well....yes. Boomers are the spoiled brats of history. You hâd booming economy, cheap housing, stabile society.........and you fucked up. Even here in eastern Europe we hate your guts, so imagine your sons and grandsons what they feel about you. Its no secret that you are entitled pieces of shit.
Well then. I suppose you won't be invited over to the mansion for cocktails then.
Ta Ta.... Gonna go cook my dinner
It is good of you to lump us working schmoes in with our betters so that you can have a good two minute hate.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year
No I wont invite to dinner parties you old fart. You can t last 2 minutes în Easter Europe without being clubbed to death.
I didn't say that, I said our elders had been protected, and that we had been burdened with the costs.
In 2008, you got a bailout and we got to pay for it. The entire expansion of the money supply since had been to keep zombie companies afloat and boomer retirement funds and homes increased in value, at our expense. Ie, asset inflation.
Making homeownership a either a pipedream or a highly leveraged purchase with maximum exposure to increases in interests rates for us. Or inflating rents while wages remained stagnant.
Not to mention us having to support imported welfare Queens on top of that. I live in Sweden, and that cost is not marginal.
So our cost benefit situation is easy. Let it burn down, everyman for himself and we will be better off.
Thanks you for this. Very timely, of course.
Your best.