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Future Shock And The Greening Of America
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
What I find fascinating is our limited ability to make sense of trends unfolding in real time.
During our recent breakfast meeting in Berkeley, author/blogger Jim Kunstler suggested that the coherence of eras waxed and waned, and the present era was incoherent. By this he meant the narratives being propagated by the status quo no longer align with reality, and often conflict with one another, resulting in incoherence.
There is a time lag of many years between fast-changing events and our ability to make sense of them, i.e. construct a coherent account or narrative of what we collectively experienced.
Each era has its Big Events and trends, but the last era with truly ground-shifting changes that affected virtually everyone in the nation in one way or another was the 1960s. 9/11 increased airport security but other than that, the changes wrought by the Global War on Terror (GWOT) only heavily impact narrow slices of the state and populace--the armed forces and security agencies.
The same can be said of the Global Financial Meltdown of 2008-09: the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) destroyed the yield on savings, but the daily-life effects on most people have been relatively restrained compared to far more disruptive eras; some have seen their portfolios skyrocket in value, but most households have seen their real net worth decline. Social welfare did its job of providing a safety net for those who lost their jobs in the recession.
The 1960s visibly changed society in a few short years, and less visibly, the economy. Two books published in 1970, at the end of the tumultuous 1960s, attempted to weave a coherent narrative of what everyone was experiencing: Future Shock and The Greening of America.
Given that these books were embedded in the era, it's not surprising that some of their points appear naively off the mark to present-day readers: Future Shock: what the Tofflers Got Right and Wrong.
Toffler's definition of future shock is a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of time". I wrote about Future Shock and Douglas Ruskoff's Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now in Present Shock and the Loss of History and Context and previously, about Effort Shock and Future Shock.
What I find fascinating is our limited ability to make sense of trends unfolding in real time. The Greening of America, for example, posited three types of consciousness.
"Consciousness I" applies to the world-view of rural farmers and small businesspeople that arose and was dominant in 19th century America."Consciousness II" represents a viewpoint of "an organizational society", featuring meritocracy and improvement through various large institutions; it dominated the New Deal, World War II and 1950s generations."Consciousness III" represents the worldview of the 1960s counterculture, focusing on personal freedom, egalitarianism, and recreational drugs.
Would we agree to these rough categories today? Society seems too fragmented to fit into only three categories; I outlined nine socio-economic classes and felt I was generalizing: America's Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy.
If Future Shock and Present Shock have any predictive value, then we must conclude the speeding up of change is eroding our ability to make sense of present-day trends, as the velocity of change is outrunning our ability to construct coherent narratives.
But just as a parlor game, let's ask: are there three modern-day equivalents of consciousness 1, 2 and 3?
I propose three basic categories:
1. Those who still believe the Status Quo narratives of meritocracy, a just central state, the market can solve everything and whatever it can't solve, the central state can, etc.Those in this class are finding the gulf between their Master Narrative and reality is widening to the breaking point.2. Those who are losing faith in the Status Quo narrative but are resigned to its eventual messy demise.Those in this class indulge in dystopian visions of the future, a world of zombies and warlords. This seems to serve as distraction and entertainment while also offering a rough-and-ready narrative that matches various data points.3. Those who have lost all faith in the Status Quo narrative but see its demise as enormously positive and a huge opportunity for the planet and individuals.I am of course in this camp. The only way forward is through the remains of the wasteful, bloated, corrupt and terribly destabilizing Status Quo. As it fissures, more cracks will appear for what is currently marginalized to become mainstream.
We can give up, or we can busy ourselves with widening the cracks and making best use of the opportunities that are arising from the systemic failure of the old arrangements.
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"..the coherence of eras waxed and waned, and the present era was incoherent. By this he meant the narratives being propagated by the status quo no longer align with reality, and often conflict with one another, resulting in incoherence."
So our insanity ebbs and flows. It doesn't change the fact we are all insane. Rarely do the insane asylum inmates recognize their own insanity.
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.earnmore9.com
I can't believe this ad actually works on zh. Wow.
Boris is anxious wait for startup kit to arrive! If so success, maybe Boris is once and for all give up lost hope for rise in spot price for Copper.
If your life changed so much, why are you still pushing stupid ads to people who know better like a desperate Macareau trying to pimp his grandmother for bus fare?
Motivation is pure joy sharing of secret of successful happy life. Is like parable of woman who is find ruble under basket and now is tell all friend and neighbor that once is lost is now found. Are you never feel this way?
On other hand, maybe person is sell oil of snake to eager greedy citizenry...
Damn, it is GOOD to see you back, Boris! Keep up the great work!
Why is ZHer so happy for look at hairy back of Boris!? You are enjoy look at back nipple? You are wanting more, please to visit live webcam at http://nakedapartment.ru/boris.
we are all insane.
That's what they want you to think.
As I have looked around and watched people over the decades, I have concluded that either I am insane or the vast majority of other human beings on this planet are insane. The experiment isn't over yet...
Those who want you to think that you are insane (or stupid) have been doing their damnedest to make that happen for some time now. They put Miley Cyrus (and such) all over the news not only to avoid talking about real news but to make you think MC is real news or at least that others think she's real news. I have yet to find anyone who follows the news that is interested in MC. We aren't as crazy as they want us to be yet.
Another example was the "Ron Paul" is insane cross-media promotion. Ron Paul was obviously the sanest man in government and yet we're supposed to think that we are crazy because we understood him perfectly when he talked about the economy or society.
The biggest narrative is quite simple, but the financial incentives are to keep it on the "down low."
The people who define money (as debt, which sets up an artificial zero sum game where one person's monetary wealth is another person's inextinguishable debt - think about that alone for at least five minutes) and use corporate fronts to generater said debt-money out of thin air and by the trillions, the Debt-Money Monopoly, have used their money power to finance society's establishment institutions in the form that they want them. In other words, they've set up, and covertly so such that not one in 5,000 can accurately describe the system, Debt-Money Monopoly fascism under the false veneers of both capitalism and socialism.
That's THE NARRATIVE. Everything else is a distraction. Every major evil comes back to the above. Endless wars, endless bankster bailouts, criminal injustice system, Corzine, JP Morgan, major drug running and money laundering, an impoverished planet with 10s of millions starving to death, the elimination of freedom, propaganda media pretending to be news, etc...
Resistance is futile.
When we point to the evidence of the false flags and find that the inside was rather sloppy in its plan and then begin to ask the poinyant questions we are usually hit with redacted reports. These blackouts are done in the name of national security so Fcuk off.
The NWO has otherwise said "ok, smart guy, you caught us, but there is nothing you can do about it. Look the bus is leaving with the media sheep and they are headed away from this scene. Better luck next time; sucker"
So you have descovered you are not insane. Everything that has happened is accounted for.
A crime is commited, a scape goat is captured, the real culprits are safe, the govment adds more security at the cost of real freedom, and the 99.8% are happy and don't touch that dial.
Gee now whose advantage would it be to accelerate change faster than a societies mechanisms could cope. Let me see, would it be Progressives self hating, human hating Progressives. Progressivism, Socialism, Communism; the soul sicknesses that cannot be cured.
I predict that we are "F*CKED"
Like him I am in his camp 3 as he defines it. The problem is keeping the current round of assholes running things from rising to the top of the new system. After all, it appears that many of the current serfs like having the assholes in charge.
Then become the asshole you want to see in charge of the world
I would like to remove the asshole factor from the equation. However, it appears assholism is rampant at all levels.
Yep both assholeism and shitbirdism are rampant across the globe.
That's pretty damn funny! I'm going to use that line if you don't mind. LOL.
With a touch more eloquence...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbbYp7dcYFo
The new system will be a completely new paradigm. It's possible that some may transfer between regimes, but much harder than say, German Nazi officers in WWII.
Georg Simmel, an early 1900's sociologist talked about the tragedy of culture.
He argued that objective culture, information, discoveries, art, etc. any human product, is growing at a much faster pace than subjective culture, our individual ability to internalize all of these cultural products.
He argued all the way back then that objective culture would outpace subjective culture and that we would become controled by things we did not understand because our individual ability to know everything was not going to match what could be known. He called this the tragedy of culture.
It is, in fact, inevitable. Future shock is a nice way to dress up this old idea.
Furthermore, while individuals seek integration (an integrated self concept), he argues so do societies. Society's integration will often come to interfere with the integrity of the individual, and the individual's self concept. In a way, another way of going at the tragedy of culture.
T. S. Eliot made similar observations. The Wasteland describes a culture which is fragmenting due to a loss of mutually held beliefs. In one of his essays he said (paraphrasing), "I ask not that people read more books but more of the same books."
What made the contemporary generation a "lost generation," was living in a world made unknowable by the failure of mutually held beliefs which was further shattered by the experience of total war introduced in 1914-18.
That's a great point. I hadn't thought about that dimension of the collapse until now. Thanks! To me it's a classic structural criticality situation, pile of sand stacks, then cascades to a new stable equilibrium. I believe we're just at the point of cascade.
Oh, and good to see you again. The ZH old timers are getting more rare these days.
Hey, Missy. Great stuff but useless unless theories are able to empower us to save ourselves. From what I'm not sure, but at least in an attempt to lower our apprehension and our ambivalence thresholds. Living comfortably and without fear is a universal goal in any society, and ours is failing us.
MsCreant
most of todays culture has been genetically modified.
I don't think its demise is positive at all.........it's going to suck.....many will suffer
Things definitely need to change. The System is going open loop now. The US Government is doing a lot of things that are not in the best interest of its citizens (the corporations maybe, but not the average citizen). Textbook example: we are running huge deficits, but practically inviting hordes of unskilled people in who can't be assimilated easily (if at all) and require immediate & massive Government assistance. ZIRP is another example. It is tremendously destructive to the Economy, but will not be reversed because the Entitlement State cannot may collapse if rates rise even a little. Next stop: NIRP.
While change IS needed, it will be wrenching in the short to midterm once it starts. Still amazed that the fall of the Soviet Union was as bloodless as it was. We will not be so lucky. Either the Entitlement State collapses or it becomes all encompassing. Either outcome will not be pretty, though I think the latter is more likely than the former. Too many useful idiots out there who want free stuff. Too many citizens who are armed, but lack the balls to use their guns.
It is only positive cause it needs to happen. I wish it had already happened cause the longer we wait the worse it will be. But that is the nature of it. Yes it is going to suck and many of us aren't going to be around on the other side. I hope I and all my fellow ZH'ers make it through intact and have prepared as well as my meager means will allow. But one won't know till it is over.
I should clarify my post - the government will not allow itself to change - they will kill all of us before that happens - it's going to suck
"Silent Spring" by Rachael Carson and the faux science involved was the game changer.
The rest are pretenders.
Oh yes I was hooked by it at the time.
"Silent Spring" continues to kill across the world.
Is there any long term value of the populace to the NWO?
TGIT- OBAMAS #42 – Operation Zero
Home - by BigFurHat - June 29, 2009 - 22:21 America/Chicago
Click picture to see comic strip
https://web.archive.org/web/20101008004747/http://iowntheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/obamas42strip.jpg
It is very easy to understand what is happening to the American country and people, and the west in general.
Go into the bathroom, flush the toilet and watch. At first there is a dumping of water into the bowl. This rapid rise in water level fills the neck of the toilet's drain pipe hidden deep inside the toilet, causing a siphon to develop. This siphon causes water that is draining away to pull even more water into it, increasing the rate by which the water is drained away.
However, the aperture of the toilet at the bottom of the bowl is only so large, so much of the siphon's energy goes into causing the water in the bowl to swirl, a whirlpool, instead of draining away.
After some time though, the water in the bowl gains enough speed that it can more easily traverse the bowl's aperture and rapidly drain away trough the toilet's siphon.
And whoosh, in a flash, all the water is sucked right on out into the sewer system.
The banksters dump their printed lucre onto the economy, which, after a rapid rise in activity, then drains away to Zion, slowly at first, and then whoosh, in a flash, all is sucked away into Zion's clutches in the sewer.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
Great analogy. A big ol' green arrow for ya.
True, but the lucre was created out of nothing:
" By your magic spell all the nations were led astray." - Revelation 18:23
In the end, everyone will realize that it was never worth anything, and it was created out of thin air:
"I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind." - Ecclesiastes 1:14
Then will everyone understand the importance of Jesus' words:
"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." - Matthew 6:24
Then comes the Judgment of the Sheep and the Goats:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
- Matthew 25:31-46
PS- It isn't just "Zion" that will be judged- nor are they the only one responsible for the state of affairs.
AMEN
>>The banksters dump their printed lucre onto the economy, which, after a rapid rise in activity, then drains away to Zion, slowly at first, and then whoosh, in a flash, all is sucked away into Zion's clutches in the sewer.<<
Actually, it "issued lucre" as what they do is issue debt. Very little of which is actually "printed."
These details are important.
It is the debt mechanism that causes the "sucked away" part. All debt-money issued to society has to be paid back at some point (if the debtor doesn't pay, the lender pays. If the lender doesn't pay, society pays). The debtors have to pay interest to the creditors who earned the interest. The only way to do so is for the lenders to give all the interest money they earned back to the debtors. Instead, they hoard the money.
This fact was brought up to Steve Keen on his Forbes blog and he ran away like a cockroach that noticed the light had been turned on.
Go to Keen's blog here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevekeen/2015/03/30/the-principal-and-inter...
Click on "Comments" off to the left under his picture and read through them. My namesake absolutely exposed how Keen supports a corrupt system where the Banksters earn more money than the producers in society (it was his model of choice afterall!) and he also exposed the lie that all Debt-Money Monopoly is returned into the hands of the debtor.
Professor Keen, probably sensing that his employment and Forbes blog was in jeopardy, mumbled about needinig a more complex model (he doesn't, this is simple stuff!) and then hasn't touched the subject with a 10' pole ever since.
VERY MUCH worth the read.
If anything, Prof. Keen CONFIRMS Toffler's thesis of Future Shock, at least the Societal Conditioning element. Toffler stated that The Primary Education Model practiced in America was all about conditioning children (baby boomers) to be responsive to factory whistles and to perform with minimal oversight and instruction. Keen does Just That, but updated for the 3rd wave Toffler educated crowd which were conditioned by schooling to have limited or no skills for logic, argument, and determination/discernment.
Keen shows he is just another stooge for societal destruction with his effort to soft-sell the intentional destruction of fiat money and interest allowed to central bankers. Look at the word ALLOWED. All Owed... Does work out that way, eh?
Keen's repliers are effective and stay on track with a logical perspective. Guess there are still a few not partaking of the Prozac-Soma and willing to take "instruction" from their academic betters. Of course, like all in the public purview these days, what is being sold more resembles a walk down mainstreet by hero of They Live before and after he's found the special glasses!
WORTH the time to read the comments at forbes' site and read at least as far as Keen's statement of agenda: "to dissuade and disprove the conspiracist argument that Central Bank debt can never be repaid because the "money" to pay the interest is never created". Pity that Keen has to out himself so plainly as water-carrier for "them who live" by taking up a cause he can't "explain" with partyline logic to the unwashed masses.
Charles Smith quote “What I find fascinating is our limited ability to make sense of trends unfolding in real time.” I agree but the planned and orchestrated demise of the Grand ole USA is well documented by the Council on Foreign Relations actions. The fascist New World Odor is making their move for world domination.
The bankster Washington Empire of Debt, Fraud and Chaos is about to morph into the New World Order Empire of Debt, Fraud and Chaos with the coerced passage of the fascist agenda of “secret” trade agreements that supersedes American sovereignty as a nation, Congress and American Law. The totalitarian, criminal fascist that destroyed our American democracy and Free Enterprise System of capitalism that was free from multinational corporate monopoly criminal domination of our economy; are now escaping prosecution for their financial and Treason crimes.
China might, but Russia will not be beaten down by the criminals, so war is inevitable; the psychopathic, fascist criminals will blow up the world rather than be brought to Justice. History repeats itself after Hitler world domination fascist. The fascist criminals have already blown up the world financial markets and our democracy.
Criminal Psychopaths do not think like regular people, this is an insight into how a psychopathic New World Order Empire nut job thinks.
Greece is the birthplace for western civilization and democracy and in a globalized world western civilization must be destroyed to make way for the fascist New World Order Empire. The same for the USA; democracy and our Free Enterprise System, free from corporate monopoly economy, must be destroyed to make way for the new empire of fascist in the New World Order Empire.
This is our last chance to prosecute the bankster criminals and repudiate the DEBT and to stop WW!!!
stop WWW3? Isn't possible. WWW3 is just a question of when.
I know, Americans are so brainwashed stupid they have no real idea of the death and degradation that lay before them. They are clueless and their dumfounded arrogance against democracy (government of, for and by the People) is surreal, so, they probably deserve what is coming to them. After the make-over, this daily life will be a distant dream replaced with a short, dirty and brutal life.
Jefferson stated that Americans would have to fight a revolution for their democracy and freedom every 100 years.
IMO, most of the "Americans" of which you speak live in big cities. City-dwellers depend on uninterrupted streams of food, water, fuel & electricity that are provided for them at a reasonable price. Those necessary goods are growing more & more expensive. In the old days cities were more for defence than for commerce. Now city-life is all commerce. Thomas Jefferson's hope was that the majority of U.S. citizens would remain on their family-farms. Nowadays less than 5% of U.S. citizens make their livings from working the land. That ratio is probably more-or-less accurate for all of western civilisation. There is a certain sense of falsity about modern city living
"9/11 increased airport security but other than that, the changes wrought by the Global War on Terror (GWOT) only heavily impact narrow slices of the state and populace--the armed forces and security agencies."
Really? The multiple wars? The torture? Persecution of whistle-blowers? Gitmo? Massive warrantless surveillance? Drone strikes? Militarization of local police? This is the author's idea of "narrow"?
All of this has a price. Our waning liberties have been destroyed, the Constitution shredded. Since direct taxation to pay for all of this utter bullshit would evoke a tax revolt, the thugs in Washington have resorted to what governments have been doing for centuries: monetary debasement.
Eventually the bill comes due. We'll pick up the tab in the form of an epic depression or a hyperinflationary depression. Either way, the average American will be impoverished, pissed off, and completely clueless as to what happened or who was to blame.
Well said. I too was dumbfounded by the author's assertion that 9/11 carried little social impact.
Agreed. Little social impact? Are you shitting me?
There have been numerous assinations and false flags in the history of the US: Lincoln, KFK, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin, ad nauseum.
911 was different. It was the singular even that is bringing the globe to a crisis, vreated by the factions of a desperate empire. The end result remains to be seen, but given the speed and sheer volume of information available to anyone - anywhere, events can occur at nuclear velocities.
Perhaps the one saving grace for humanity is the revulsion expressed by the non empirial world in the formation of the BRICS alternative.
There is one Sword of Damacles that poses danger to the world: The Sampson Option.
Friendly Flight Attendant
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IKz0YuhaeIY
All we can do is laugh at them.
What did you expect? Your nation was founded on the back of monetary debasement for fuck's sake.
NOT TRUE!
At least, not once The Constitution was in place and our money was defined in weight and specie relative to gold and silver. Perhaps The Articles Of Confederation likewise defined our money? I am not one who has pursued that document as probably should have. Articles Of Confederation reputedly the more perfect document for retention of Individual and State Rights. Why would it not also be more "perfect" for preservation of monetary property?
The United States' motivation/rebellion was seated in our response to monetary debasement and foreign rule without representation. The Continental did give way to Honest Money and at least one President who routed the money boyz and destroyed their plans. For a while, America was as hoped-for and designed. Of course, there were those who realized they could profit from debasement and all it would take was manufacture of a "crisis" which could only be solved by deficit spending.
"Central Banking" really has always been about looting the Nation; at least to those opportunists who sought "service" in its employ....
I like #3 also but things are getting interesting. I think the existing system must implode and never again can individuals or corporations be allowed to have more than 10,000,000 and definitely no more human governments. Governments are organized crime entities. They cannot be allowed to exist with modern tech. It doesn't work.
no more human governments
Correct. Unless you're advocating for rule by artificial intelligence.
never again can individuals or corporations be allowed to have more than 10,000,000
The only way to force individuals into a particular wealth bracket is through government so that proposal is a non-starter. But don't worry, folks who get rich by hard work and innovation and not through political cronyism are not a threat. If an individual or corporation can satisfy enough individuals to make billions of dollars in a free market then that's a good thing which can only last as long as that individual or corporation continues to satisfy its customers.
I can't comprehend the totality of all this but pick up that sweet little "smart phone", think just a little of all the jobs and post again. That is simply one small part. Production of hard goods is what is needed. The problem that at current labor rates the USA simply can not compete on a "free trade" basis unless you can crack the old monthly nut with say $400.00 max.
Weimar Germany had Consciousness 3 proscribed for it:
"Consciousness III" represents the worldview of the 1960s counterculture, focusing on personal freedom, egalitarianism, and recreational drugs.
http://www.darkmoon.me/2013/the-sexual-decadence-of-weimar-germany-by-lasha-darkmoon/
In the mid 1960’s America’s WASP leadership passed into history. WASP leadership was ousted by Jewish money power control, especially starting in 1912.
The concept of Noblesse oblige allowed WASPS to have honor and sympathy for those further down in the social order.
From Sailer:
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/08/noblesse-oblige-in-21st-century.html
“I've written several times about the valuable old concept of noblesse oblige. In essence, it meant that in feudal times, it meant that those on the top of a social order were honor-bound to personally fight to defend the social order, including those lower down in society, in which their privileged position depends.
Clearly, that concept needs to be updated for a 21st Century in which leading cavalry charges is no longer the most important manifestation of defense of the nation, but a public discussion over what exactly are the responsibilities of the people who have benefited most from living in America, and who they are, is long overdue.”
Sailer goes on to implicate Jewry as absentee when it comes to Noblesse Oblige.
Weimar was destroyed from without by private banking short sellers inducing hyperinflation, and then buying up the country. These recent Galacian Jews in Weimar then tried to take over the country as evidenced in Red Berlin, and their predatory proscriptions on the German people.
The U.S. finds itself in the same position, only it is more slow death and rot from within. The same fingerprints of the tribe’s Weimar’s consciousness 3, are on today’s America. The parallels are striking.
Without jettisoning the Jewish private credit system, which funds dystopia, then there is no chance for America – or the West. The tap root of Jewish supremacism and its ideological desire to destroy, rather than build, is nourished by usury via the Jewish private credit system. In effect, civilization is funding its own destruction. The WASPS had Noblesse oblige; Jewish supremacism has occulted Kabala, and hence thinks others are lesser animals to be harvested.
Your noblesse oblige is a fiction developed to facilitate control of the poor and the credit money system is not any more specific to Jews than it is to old money in the US.
Nobless oblige existed, IN FEUDAL TIMES (I specifically disclaim any relevance to the foregoing anti-Semitic rant -- Jewish culture in fact has its own parallels to the concept, from which sprang 19th century Socialism as an ideal). Which is what irritates the crap out of me with people constantly referring to our rising wealth disparities as "neofeudalism".
Feudalism was the REACTION to the corruption of the Roman Empire, with its dizzying disparities of wealth and privilege, in which membership in the Senatorial class, or the 1% in modern parlance, made a man immune to all state taxes and impositions and most justice BY LAW. Feudalism was the SOLUTION to the idea that the rich were entitled to everything for no excuse other than their wealth, and that those who were not wealthy, were obligated by that mere fact to render total obedience to every caprice of the mighty. Feudalism substituted the idea that with power goes responsibility; that for every privilege there is a corresponding duty; that a lord is require to render "honor for honor, faith for faith", and that no man is above Divine Justice. It substituted carefully specified rights and privileges for the poor, to go with their obligations of servitude. It could not utterly uproot the facts of concentrated wealth and power with destroying all wealth, but it placed those powers under the firm leash of law supported by the power of the Church.
Nobless oblige was an important tool to mitigate class inequality. We could use a little bit of it about now.
I am so sick of people who spout off about how all of society's ills are the fault of other socio-economic groupings than their own.
No blame or responsibility ever attaches to them or their class or race or sex personally. It is always someone else's fault.
If you were a woman, you would be screaming about the evil patriarchy.
If you were black, it would be down with whitey.
If you were hispanic, it would be the evil gringo oppressors.
But let's be honest. However evil you believe the Jews to be, you can't wait for the rules to be off and then, speaking of harvesting lesser breeds of humanity, a hunting you will go.
Ain't that right?
I think you confuse the meanings of "prescribe" and "proscribe". You need to look that up; I do not think you meant what you wrote.
As regards insanity - in individuals it is rather rare - but in groups, parties, nations, etc., it is the rule.
As to the third category opining optimism, perhaps.
Consider the scientific method - does error come for truth or truth come from error?
Shall we extract great truth from our great error?
Finally, the phoenix does not arise from the egg nor the womb, but from the ashes of its own demise. And is it any less the phoenix?
There's your optimism.
Show me any time in history where there has been great change and no conflict.
If your optimism is based on the old order collapsing and yet you still ascribe a great change, then you must logically accept that a part of your optimism derives from opportunities arising from great conflict.
But I am sure after the great conflict, those who survive indeed will see great opportunity.
Especially the fucking elites.
If you happen to be one of the victims of the great conflict, its hard to see beyond the zombies and warlords.
Unfortunately that is always the precursor to calm and opportunity and future optimism
I believe the "future shock" they were referring to,was the battery jumper cables hooked up to the testicles of Amerikan prisonors in Abu Ghraib,and Guantanamo Bay..
was thinking today that 199 is unrecognizable in comparison to 2015.
Well, yeah, you could say that.
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
Charles Mackay
When the man takes your job, bread, home, and basic security, you will gladly see the man hanging from a tree limb, his house burned to the ground, and his family pet roasting on the barbeque. Moreover, when this happens it will not be a shock to anyone but the man, and his family pet.
Make sure to buy plenty of HP Sauce, or A1, for roast Fido, or Fluffy, eh.
A coherent narrative is constantly being issued and updated. The fact that it is utter bullshit does not minimize its effectiveness. There is no future shock because it is all deadened and perfected through decades of marketing expertise.
Yeah but can you explain QE Shock....
There's nothing new about not being able to see the future while it's a work in progress. That goes back to the Old Kingdom, if not Sumer and Akkad. Hindsight has always been 20/20; foresight no so good. As for the Three Categories of Consciousness, merely the description of "I" shows how much the status quo has changed. Because in 1960, no one except right-wing loonies really thought that "The Market" was better able to deal with economic instability than The Government. Mainstream Republicans had more faith in Government than the most LeftWing Demogogues today. Nobody looked to The Market to put a man on the moon or desegregate the school system or Beat The Commies.
Now the essential split, as the author points out, is between those naive and self-interested fools who think that The Market can still save them, and those who recognize that The Market as we have known it (as a pampered pet of the Government, which gives It anything It demands) has a life expectancy that may be exceeded by our own. And among the second, the question is, what will we do when Government and Market go down to Hell together, and are we looking forward to the opportunity?