Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 2:52 pm

FullMoon wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 2:39 pm The living will wish they were dead(feel like they're dead?). What was that he's said many times?

The living will envy the dead before this is over.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 11:39 am The China Convergence
Yes, the West is becoming more like China. Here is the real reason why.

N.S. LYONS
AUG 03, 2023

spottybrowncow wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 8:17 pm

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 11:39 am The China Convergence
Yes, the West is becoming more like China. Here is the real reason why.

N.S. LYONS
AUG 03, 2023

Higgie,

That is one of the more fascinating things I've ever read. I would like to add that, in my opinion, the "bourgeois order" is actually the "natural order," echoing many independent studies concluding that conservatives are more in touch with reality than progressives.

My question is, how did so many people lose contact with reality? And why do people more "grounded in reality" not rise up immediately and organize against the managerial class? I suspect part of the reason is what you alluded to in an earlier post (don't have it on hand), that people whose primary desire is to be rich think very differently than ordinary people.

This is only logical: if the law is a tool of human management, how can it restrict and rule over the managers who create it? Laws exist to rule the ruled; if rulers choose to exempt themselves from rules that’s not “hypocrisy,” just power. After all, sovereign is he who decides the exception. An appeal to the supremacy of “the law” (or that “no one is above the law”) is, when you think about it, a rather weird idea: it is only conceivable if even the highest of earthly powers accepts that there is some even higher power (whether a God or some other transcendent, unchanging, and just order which the law itself reflects) that can and will hold them accountable, in this life or the next, for defiling the spirit of the law (justice). Absent such a power the rule of law is nonsensical and only rule by law remains. Managerialism of course cannot permit or even conceive of any power higher than itself; its entire raison d'être is to reorder and control all of existence, and to accept that anything is beyond its reach would undermine its whole basis. Therefore managerialism and rule of law cannot coexist.

My question is, how did so many people lose contact with reality? And why do people more "grounded in reality" not rise up immediately and organize against the managerial class?

The rise of managerialism and the therapeutic state changed all that. From the family up, even the most close-knit self-organized communities – Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” – were steadily broken down by the managerial regime and its relentless internal colonization and centralization. Decision-making power and responsibility was transferred from individuals, families, and communities to distant bureaucracies and credentialed experts, and action made subservient to an inscrutable thicket of abstract rules and regulations. Meanwhile the therapeutic state quickly integrated itself throughout all sectors of the managerial system as the modern therapeutic conception of the “self” – some ineffable inner deity to be constantly attended to, followed, satiated, and worshiped – merged seamlessly with the tenets of managerial ideology and the material imperatives of managerial capitalism.

The counter-culture revolution of the 1960s and its “anti-authoritarian” quest to “liberate” the self from restraints therefore served the managerial regime perfectly. It swiftly broke down traditional informal bonds of stable, resilient communities that had for centuries helped to shelter individuals, and tore up moral norms that had helped them structure and discipline their lives without the aid of the state. So liberated, the self-expressive individual was made a king in name, but left far more isolated, alone, and vulnerable in actuality. Such an atomized individual proved far easier pickings for the mass corporation, which swooped in to offer all manner of ready-to-purchase replacements for what was once the social commons, and for the state, which acted on demand to guarantee the sovereignty of these liberated selves and protect them from their own choices. Their capacity for self-governance thus degraded, and encouraged to think of themselves as reliant on the state for their freedom, the public’s demands for management by a higher authority then only increased relentlessly.

Guest wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2024 10:01 am There are many foreign nations whose cultures are so incompatible with our own way of life, that I would prefer if their people were never allowed to immigrate here.

Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century
Dmitry Orlov
December 14, 2010

The Soviet Union was entirely self-sufficient when it came to labor. Both before and after the collapse, skilled labor was one of its main exports, along with oil, weapons, and industrial machinery. Not so with the United States, where not only is most of the manufacturing being carried out abroad, but a lot of service back home is being provided by immigrants as well. This runs the gamut from farm labor, landscaping, and office cleaning to the professions, such as engineering and medicine, without which society and its infrastructure would unravel. Most of these people came to the United States to enjoy the superior standard of living — for as long as it remains superior. Many of them will eventually head home, leaving a gaping hole in the social fabric.

I have had a chance to observe quite a few companies in the U.S. from the inside, and have spotted a certain constancy in the staffing profile. At the top, there is a group of highly compensated senior lunch-eaters. They tend to spend all of their time pleasing each other in various ways, big and small. They often hold advanced degrees in disciplines such as Technical Schmoozing and Relativistic Bean-counting. They are obsessive on the subject of money, and cultivate a posh country set atmosphere, even if they are just one generation out of the coal mines. Ask them to solve a technical problem — and they will politely demur, often taking the opportunity to flash their wit with a self-deprecating joke or two.

Somewhat further down the hierarchy are the people who actually do the work. They tend to have fewer social graces and communication skills, but they do know how to get the work done. Among them are found the technical innovators, who are often the company’s raison d’être.

More often than not, the senior lunch-eaters at the top are native-born Americans, and, more often than not, the ones lower down are either visiting foreigners or immigrants. These find themselves in a variety of situations, from the working visa holders who are often forced to choose between keeping their job and going home, to those who are waiting for a green card and must play their other cards just right, to those who have one, to citizens.

The natives at the top always try to standardize the job descriptions and lower the pay scale of the immigrants at the bottom, playing them against each other, while trying to portray themselves as super-achieving entrepreneurial mavericks who can’t be pinned down to a mere set of marketable skills. The opposite is often the case: the natives are often the commodity items, and would perform similar functions whether their business were biotechnology or salted fish, while those who work for them may be unique specialists, doing what has never been done before.

It is no surprise that this situation should have come about. For the last few generations, native-born Americans have preferred disciplines such as law, communications, and business administration, while immigrants and foreigners tended to choose the sciences and engineering. All their lives the natives were told to expect prosperity without end, and so they felt safe in joining professions that are mere embroidery on the fabric of an affluent society.

This process became known as "brain drain" — America’s extraction of talent from foreign lands, to its advantage, and to their detriment. This flow of brain power is likely to reverse direction, leaving the U.S. even less capable of finding ways to cope with its economic predicament. This may mean that, even in areas where there will be ample scope for innovation and development, such as restoration of rail service, or renewable energy, America may find itself without the necessary talent to make it happen.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 2:52 pm

FullMoon wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 2:39 pm The living will wish they were dead(feel like they're dead?). What was that he's said many times?

The living will envy the dead before this is over.

FullMoon wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2024 3:58 pm

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 2:52 pm

FullMoon wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2024 2:39 pm The living will wish they were dead(feel like they're dead?). What was that he's said many times?

The living will envy the dead before this is over.

This lady wrote a book about nuclear war and has been making the rounds on podcasts. She's very believable but this caught my attention yesterday after we had this discussion. She attributes this very same quote that John regularly said to Nikita Kruschev. Minute 2:20:
https://youtu.be/WHMnupCCIJ4?si=xAbByqylqO4qA7Q0

But Wikiquote says it's not so:
Misattributed
edit
The living will envy the dead.
No instance of this statement, allegedly in reference to nuclear war, has been found in Khrushchev's writings or documented remarks, as indicated in Respectfully Quoted : A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). Herman Kahn used "the survivors [will] envy the dead" in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War.
content://com.brave.browser.FileProvider/offline-cache/f31b9af7-cc92-4385-b191-8cd6241c6bfe.mhtml

I just thought it odd that the very same day I was exposed to this quote in 2 different scenarios. It seems nuclear war is a topic of concern now. Rightly so since we're well beyond the Cuban Missile crisis currently and the sheeple bask about hardly noticing they're in chute heading to slaughter.

Letter From Jacqueline Kennedy to Chairman Khrushchev0
Washington, December 1, 1963.
Dear Mr. Chairman President, I would like to thank you for sending Mr.Mikoyan as your representative to my husband’s funeral.

[Page 314]
He looked so upset when he came through the line, and I was very moved.

I tried to give him a message for you that day—but as it was such a terrible day for me, I do not know if my words came out as I meant them to.

So now, in one of the last nights I will spend in the White House, in one of the last letters I will write on this paper at the White House, I would like to write you my message.

I send it only because I know how much my husband cared about peace, and how the relation between you and him was central to this care in his mind. He used to quote your words in some of his speeches-”In the next war the survivors will envy the dead.”

You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up. You respected each other and could deal with each other. I know that President Johnson will make every effort to establish the same relationship with you.

The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones.

While big men know the needs for self-control and restraint—little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride. If only in the future the big men can continue to make the little ones sit down and talk, before they start to fight.

I know that President Johnson will continue the policy in which my husband so deeply believed—a policy of control and restraint—and he will need your help.

I send this letter because I know so deeply of the importance of the relationship which existed between you and my husband, and also because of your kindness, and that of Mrs. Khrushcheva in Vienna.

I read that she had tears in her eyes when she left the American Embassy in Moscow, after signing the book of mourning. Please thank her for that.

Sincerely,

Jacqueline Kennedy

“People aged 30 to 34 — 60% of them in 1990 had one child. Now it's 27%,” he said. “People are opting out of America. They're not optimistic about it. They're not having kids. Young people aren't having sex. They're not meeting, and they're not mating. The pool of emotionally and economically viable men shrinks every day, which lessens household formation. So we have a real issue.”