2-Feb-15 World View -- Washington joins the world in explosive spending splurge

[shoshin]

John, your lengthly comments provoke the obvious(?) response. If you could change your psychology (an anti-prolactin antibody?), would you do it? Seems like you would be a happier person.

And I'm not sure your self-analysis is correct. I doubt that someone "afflicted" as you describe would have the often vitriolic responses to critical comments that you evince.

I guess I like you the way you are.

[gerald]

When I go to other places on the web for news and current events, and both authors and commenters are opining about war and economies and reasons for this and that I want to scream at them that Generational Dynamics explains all of that in a clear and concise way. I think people find the idea that we may never rid ourselves of poverty and war to be abhorrent and they don’t want to acknowledge it.

How do you change something that has been going on since before recorded history? It is the way things are, it is part of reality. However, people want to believe in unicorns shitting skittles, they don't want to believe that a spade is a spade, and this approach is what causes most of our problems. Especially since some/many use this concept to manipulate others.

[gerald]

John, your lengthly comments provoke the obvious(?) response. If you could change your psychology (an anti-prolactin antibody?), would you do it? Seems like you would be a happier person.

And I'm not sure your self-analysis is correct. I doubt that someone "afflicted" as you describe would have the often vitriolic responses to critical comments that you evince.

I guess I like you the way you are.

You raise an interesting point regarding "happy". In discussions that I have had with other people, including my family. the meaning of the word "happy" --- synonyms: cheerful, cheery, merry, joyful, jovial, jolly, jocular, gleeful, carefree, untroubled, delighted. -- Happy has a facet that implys a state of disconnectedness to reality. A person can be seen by others as "unhappy" yet be well connected to and appreciative of the beauty, complexity and mystery of "reality". Once a person has crossed the bridge to this appreciation of "reality" they can't go back, unless they have a "lobotomy", which they don't want. -- I once saw a movie of a person in an insane asylum who was always very happy because she had a box of Kleenex to make paper dolls.
This reminds me of a cartoon of people walking around with bags over their heads and can't see, however one has holes cut in his bag so he can see. Is he unhappy and the others are happy?

hmmm

[John]

> John, your lengthy comments provoke the obvious(?) response. If
> you could change your psychology (an anti-prolactin antibody?),
> would you do it? Seems like you would be a happier person.

I'm not sure that question is even relevant for me at my age. As I
look back, this "psychology" has affected my life all the way back to
high school, and it's one of the (many) reasons why I annoy people.
So at this point I've seen many things that I can't unsee, so taking
some psychotropic drug would not change anything.

If prolactin is indeed the root "cause," then a more relevant question
is whether young children should be tested for too much prolactin. So
this question is for both you and Gerald -- if you could make the
choice, would you choose to make (your) children "happy" or "deadly
realistic"? (And they can't be both.)

> And I'm not sure your self-analysis is correct. I doubt that
> someone "afflicted" as you describe would have the often vitriolic
> responses to critical comments that you evince.
> I guess I like you the way you are.

This is a completely different subject. I used to be "nice," but
that just makes me a target. Since I'm being "deadly realistic,"
a lot of people get annoyed by me, and gang up on me. And so
I've developed a style where if someone is respectful to me then
I'm respectful to them, but if they're vitriolic to me then I'm
vitriolic to them.

The Fourth Turning forum had an extremely vitriolic left-wing culture,
and it was for that reason that I decided to leave and create this
forum, the Generational Dynamics forum. Later I ran into a vitriolic
right-wing subculture at the Breitbart site, which was extremely
unpleasant.

But I learned a lot out of those two experiences. Experience has
taught me when to engage and when to disengage, and how to respond to
vitriolic remarks. I've discovered that it's better to be respected
than to be nice.

[NoOneImportant]

John, a few thoughts re: your post. Perhaps some of this may be of use, if not just discard it. Forgive the length

John wrote:

I've been doing this now for 12-13 years. It's gone through stages.
At first it was a theoretical exercise, almost as if I were solving a
math problem. Then it began to become more real, as things began to
happen. I was always able to rationalize this in my mind as being
able to pretend that I was a Martian watching what was happening
without any emotional attachment. Sometimes I would joke was that it
was like we were all in a moving theater watching a horrible movie,
and the doors are locked so we can't get out.

I think that there is a bit of self-protection embodied in the above - there is a pathology of thought involved in the analysis of evil; a mental progression, if you will. We have lived most of our lives in a parochial protected America. Even during the height of the Cold War, here the evil and the monstrous were identified, imprisoned, and/or executed - not for vengeance but rather for self protection. Essentially, the closest most of us have ever come to real evil is a news article. That distance from the reality of real evil creates a level of abstraction, a distance, if you will; a distance that results in a self-protection. "Yes evil exists", we will readily acknowledge... but "excuse me as I really do have to go and mow the lawn now." The closer we get to real evil the scarier the issues become (note the transition above from a safe uninvolved mathematical abstraction, to the impartial Martin observer, then to one who doesn't necessarily participate in the evil, but who is not free to exit the "theater". The actions progress literally from the abstract, to observing evil by choice, then to being constantly involuntarily subject to observing evil without escape. In the final case there is no more cutting of the grass; the evil is no longer an abstract set of categorized numbers. Over time the abstraction has been stripped away, the numbers become people, the evil becomes, in fact, real acts of barbarity executed on real human beings. The academic engages in abstract factual analysis without realizing the enormity of the facts represented by the clean and sterile numbers that he analytically consumes. The second observer (the Martin) chooses to observe, and may, at his discretion, choose not to look. The final observer is given no latitude, the evil is in fact real for him, and for him, it is inescapable. The academic has no emotional involvement at all; the Martin is emotionally protected by the voluntary decision to view, or not to view as he chooses; the final observer has had all protection stripped away... for him the evil is palpable, and he can't get away, he is morally locked into viewing. This brings us to the first part of the Cassandra Curse. When you come to know that evil is, in fact, real; you strain with great effort to obtain insight into what is coming - that it (evil) might be avoided. In the military the idiom is: "forewarned is forearmed." While that may, or may not work for the military depending upon their generational memory, that is not the case with individuals. In effect, that effort to "see" the coming evil is done most often without having the ability to personally affect, evil's intent, or outcome. Often the best we may hope for is to "outlast" the tornado, and thus to attempt to stay out of the coming evil's way. It is of interest to note that Policemen are notorious for having experienced this effect; for once the abstraction of civilized human interaction has been stripped away there is no going back -- trust no one, verify everything.



Additionally John wrote:

One thing I think about all the time is -- how come I'm the only one
doing something like this? Or, perhaps more to the point, why do I,
John Xenakis, seem to be only person in the world capable of doing it?
I know that with over 7 billion people in the world, that statement is
preposterous. And yet, after 12 years, my web site is unique in the
world. How is that possible? A lot of the things that I write about
don't every require anything like generational theory. There are
plenty of people in the world who have the same or superior analytical
abilities as me, and yet that doesn't seem to make a difference.

When attempting to shout in a vacuum the natural inclination is to believe that "there are no others like me." The Left biased media in America has a vested interest, John, in making you feel alone and isolated. During the waining days of the Carter Administration (another idiot who was proclaimed as: "...possibly the brightest man to ever occupy the Oval Office....") I was experiencing a deep feeling of disenfranchisement. I can still remember the feeling of deep despair. Here was a former Governor of Georgia, a former Sub commander who was eviscerating the US Military, after the enormous tragedy of millions being murdered with the fall of South Vietnam, and in the killing fields of Cambodia. Every action he took was counter intuitive. Then, as now, it was a time of pure unadulterated idiocy. Bubbles were everywhere: in the markets, in real estate. Banks were failing at a record rate. Home interest rates were at 22%, the prime rate was at 16%, inflation was running at 11-12% per year. Nothing was working, and there appeared to be no one beside me who appeared to care; no one except one man: Ronald Reagan. In an instant people like me -- millions of them -- came out of the the wood-work and we elected him. The idiot from Georgia was sent packing, after having requested campaign aid from the then intact Soviet Union; that would be the very same Soviet Union who, at that time, was in possession of 48,000 nuclear devices targeted at the West. John, the message I am trying to convey is that there are others. The Generational Dynamics aspect of what you do changes what you do. GD brings order from chaos. Without GD the daily news becomes brownian (essentially random) - chaos. While the inability to precisely time the various GD phases is disconcerting, what is reassuring is that GD gives a measure of order to what until now has been considered to be random events that emerge out of apparent chaos; i.e., events bubbling up out of the ever expanding soup of humanity - a soup that every generation or so has produced some thug that has gone on to sweep huge swaths of humanity out of existence. GD is, perhaps, not exactly a panacea, but GD provides, via generational memory, an explanation where none has previously proved to be all that suitable.

Additionally, John wrote:

Also puzzling is other people's reactions to my web site. Some want
to read it every day, others absolutely can't stand it, and can't
stand me as a result. Ten years ago, friends I've known for years
treated my a harmless kook, but now, as the world worsens as predicted
by my web site, those friends now shun me. This is similar to the
mythical Cassandra, whom I've written about many time.

John, denial is, again, a self-protection mechanism. If one doesn't like where we are headed, then simply deny that we are headed there! There is no need to address a dire destination if you reject that's where we're headed -- it's analogous to the narcissist's rejection of the need to reflect. Reject the evil destination, and to that end you may reject the messenger -- "...how does he know anyway." I have a sister who sees the world through rose colored glasses. I have ceased to attempt to give her insight, or guidance into where we are headed. She prefers, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, to see the world as a "nice" place, where someone will always arrive in time to save her, and those she cares about, from evil. Those who choose to be blind, may not be able to be saved. Here (Generational Dynamics) we are not discussing the tragedy of a fairly insignificant Asia Minor city (Troy), but rather here Troy is the world. For many, what has always been is necessarily what they prefer to believe is what, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, will always be. They are the ostrich: " ...if I refuse to see the jeopardy, then QED there is no jeopardy, none" -- okay, good luck with that. For those who think like that, preparation is something that they will do when it's forced upon them. John, you tell them things that make them uncomfortable; whereas they can't mute you, they can refuse to listen to you, and in turn, if they can't discredit you, then they will certainly hate you. Take solace from Churchill; he spent 20 years out in the cold; imagine his hurt, rage, and frustration as he was forced to watch, impotent, the rise of German militancy, and further at having to ally Brittan with Stalin -- the frustration at having to use one monster to, in effect, defeat another. We thus come to the second part of the Cassandra Curse: "... destined never to be believed." Be rest assured, that disbelief by the delusional in no way impacts the ultimate veracity of the evidence leading to a prediction. You just have to ignore them (disbelievers) ... find new friends for reality is a stern mistress, she cares not an iota as to whether they believe or not.


Additionally John wrote:

Over the weekend, I heard something that really struck a chord. There
was a BBC World Service show called "Why Factor," with the subject
"Sad/Gloomy Music." It turns out that some people can listen to sad
music and really enjoy it, while other people listen to sad music and
absolutely can't stand it.

It was the Athenian Greeks who first came to understand the allure, and therapeutic effect of the tragic upon the human psyche. Tragedy, whether in music, poetry, art, drama, or sculpture provides a beneficial effect that in drama ultimately found it's acme (IMO) in the plays of Sophocles, and 2000 years later in Shakespeare. As events unfold in a tragedy (or in a movement of sad piece of music) it takes us, personally, vicariously into the midst of human trauma. In tragedy, we are initially taken into the unfolding events, much as your Martin observer, as impartial, disinterested, and divorced of emotion (I have personally used the term fly-on-the-wall.) . When tragedy is done well, e.g., Bethoven's Fur Elese for example, we are invisibly at once transformed from the fly-on-the-wall, without realizing it, into an active participant in the tragic unfolding events. We actually experience, and "live" those events as the tragedy unfolds for us; we deal with the issues presented; we suffer the distress, the anxiety of the circumstances, and the emotional pain of the outcome. We become Othello, we become Antigone, we become Oedipus, we become the grief stricken Romeo tormented by Juliet's "death", we become a revived Juliet only to find her heart's desire so recently dead that he is still warm, we become the two families of the dead youths each forced to confront the hubris that resulted in the loss of what held so much human promise. Tragedy does indeed take us closer to reality, for it evokes the deep emotions that we seek never to see actualized. It forces us into a reflection that we would ordinarily not willingly engage in -- and the great miracle is that it does it non-destructively, and we are forever changed by the experience. We can never return to who we were before. We can never again become the effete academic, or the disinterested Martin observer. We are forever changed; it's a change that can make us more human -- if we permit it.

John, regarding music, regardless of your age, permit me to suggest that you get a Casio LK-280 lighted keyboard - they are fairly inexpensive (roughly $200), and are sold at Walmart, Toys-R-Us, Target, themusicianfriend.com and other places. Their attraction is that they have a programmed facility to lead the beginner through the learning to play 60 - 80 well known tunes (some classics, some not) stored within the device; each tune may be learned within a few days per tune. The device is not a toy, it is a completely self-contained unit. It consists of a: power brick, USB port, integrated speakers, display, and a 61 key keyboard. It is suitable for taking instruction on the keyboard (should you desire to take a few lessons), or it makes self-teaching practicable. I've played the guitar for much of my adult life (and I must be brutally honest, and admit that I play very very badly, but it satisfies)... the guitar is a very difficult instrument, had I not started playing the guitar so many years ago, I would long ago have switched to the keyboard (regarding the guitar, good time/money after bad you might say). The skills of playing the keyboard are analogous to the skills necessary to type. If you can type, then you can learn to read music and play the keyboard. Playing music is a facility that satisfies for a lifetime, as while playing it is all consuming -- while you are playing, everything else just goes away. After all those years of playing the guitar I only play 10 or twenty tunes. As I learn new tunes, however, I look for note sequences that sound good to me. Then, at a later nondescript time I will spend hours sitting in the dark stitching note sequences from various tunes that I have "learned" together, just to see what they sound like (I call it wandering around on the guitar); i.e. what sounds good to me. Playing music mentally completely consumes me, and while wandering around on the instrument most of what comes out is atrocious, the rare occasion when I find something that works and sounds pretty to me it is just simply the greatest thrill -- simple things for simple minds .

Sorry that I don't know a thing about prolactin, or hormones. But as in the very bad old joke, I do know how to make a hormone? Don't pay her

Sorry for the length.

[John]

> I have a sister who sees the world through rose colored glasses. I
> have ceased to attempt to give her insight, or guidance into where
> we are headed. She prefers, in spite of overwhelming evidence to
> the contrary, to see the world as a "nice" place, where someone
> will always arrive in time to save her, and those she cares about,
> from evil.

Perhaps both of you should be tested for prolactin levels.

> It was the Athenian Greeks who first came to understand the
> allure, and therapeutic effect of the tragic upon the human
> psyche. Tragedy, whether in music, poetry, art, drama, or
> sculpture provides a beneficial effect that in drama ultimately
> found it's acme (IMO) in the plays of Sophocles, and 2000 years
> later in Shakespeare. As events unfold in a tragedy (or in a
> movement of sad piece of music) it takes us, personally,
> vicariously into the midst of human trauma. In tragedy, we are
> initially taken into the unfolding events, much as your Martin
> observer, as impartial, disinterested, and divorced of emotion (I
> have personally used the term fly-on-the-wall.) . When tragedy is
> done well, e.g., Bethoven's Fur Elese for example, we are
> invisibly at once transformed from the fly-on-the-wall, without
> realizing it, into an active participant in the tragic unfolding
> events. We actually experience, and "live" those events as the
> tragedy unfolds for us; we deal with the issues presented; we
> suffer the distress, the anxiety of the circumstances, and the
> emotional pain of the outcome. We become Othello, we become
> Antigone, we become Oedipus, we become the grief stricken Romeo
> tormented by Juliet's "death", we become a revived Juliet only to
> find her heart's desire so recently dead that he is still warm, we
> become the two families of the dead youths each forced to confront
> the hubris that resulted in the loss of what held so much human
> promise. Tragedy does indeed take us closer to reality, for it
> evokes the deep emotions that we seek never to see
> actualized.

This gets to a related matter which also goes to the heart of this
whole subject. As a Greek I know that a sense of tragedy is in my
bones. As you point out, tragedy as an art form was invented in
ancient Greece, and three of four great tragic artists of all time
were Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides of ancient Greece, with the
fourth being Shakespeare.

You mentioned that Generational Dynamics brings order out of random
events, and tragedy does the same thing.

Many people misunderstand the deepest meanings of tragedy. If a
child is killed in a random traffic accident, then it's a terrible
event but it's not a tragedy in the classical sense, because of that
randomness.

The essence of classical tragedy is that the tragic event is not
random. The tragic event is inevitable: it MUST occur, and the reason
it must occur is because of the nature, the personality, the character
of the protagonists. A true tragedy cannot be prevented, even by
those who foresee it, because the forces bringing about the tragedy
are too powerful for anyone to stop.

Like the child killed in a random traffic accident, the protagonists
of a true tragedy have a great future before them, and in the Greek
view, perhaps even a heroic future. But the heroic future turns into
disaster because the players in the true tragedy move step by step
towards that disaster; and all of us on the outside can see it
coming, because these particular players are uniquely capable of
inflicting this disaster on one another.

It would not be wrong to describe the Generational Dynamics web site
as displaying the greatest tragic play in human history. The
countries of the world -- The US, China, Greece, Israel, Iran,
Pakistan, India, Russia, etc. -- are all moving towards a tragic
disaster that only they are uniquely capable of inflicting on one
another. The script for this play is being written in the daily World
View articles. Nothing can be done to prevent this tragic disaster,
but through Generational Dynamics we have a way of standing on the
outside, and watching it come, step by step by step.

[NoOneImportant]

Great observations all.

[gerald]

"Good" and "Evil" are opposite sides of the same coin. It is like positive and negative, construction and destruction, male and female. These exist to provide " interest" to/for existence. If for example everything was going great for you, how long would it be before you would seek a "challenge"? A challenge which you might lose? Have you ever watched gamblers in a casino? And the excitement of the gamblers? The excitement of winning or losing? Is that any different - but in degree - between good and evil?

interesting

[MarvyGuy]

I am quite ashamed to say anything after these last few posts which are a study in artful communication I find nowhere else. I can only say that GenDyn was an epiphany that I have since returned to almost daily for close on to 4 years now. I have made a few significant changes (only to realize that they are perhaps worthless). I still plan on repainting the house though. So thanks John, Gerald et al and most especially nooneimportant , I enjoy every post. I wish we could all meet at this cafe I know of in Honfleur, and toss around ideas most would consider rediculous.

[NoOneImportant]

MarvyGuy wrote:

I still plan on repainting the house though. So thanks John, Gerald et al and most especially nooneimportant , I enjoy every post. I wish we could all meet at this cafe I know of in Honfleur, and toss around ideas most would consider rediculous.

Ridiculous? Yeah, but they're OUR ridiculous ideas... enjoy your posts. The get-together would be fun, always interesting comments - bright people are in short supply. The interaction here is addictive. There is nothing like following one of Gerald's tin-foil hat links, and saying to myself... huh? Always something interesting here. A great place to find really interesting stuff.