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degringolade“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
At the end of the day, this is why the vast majority American are not happy. At the end of the day, this is why the US is inching toward the failed state status. At a very minimum, it will be a continuing gridlock. This is the condition that I fervently pray for.
The mythical “Men on the street” really don't think, they believe. They have been fed a ration of crap their whole life and been told that it is the whole truth. I am impressed by just how many different plates of shit we have been fed and just how many people have bought in. The list is stunning in its breadth; Free-market, American Exceptionalism, Calvinist Christianity, these have become the New Holy Trinity here in Red America. They are opposed by a completely different set of odd beliefs. In the land of Blue, the piecemeal faith of sexual identity, globalism, and social justice creates a strangely ineffective and slightly insane counterpoint to the ravings of the Red.
We have lost the leaders of our society. They seem to have vanished and left in their place poseurs who mouth the words needed to convince the gullible that they, the poseurs, and only they, have the gift of prophecy required to fulfill the needs of the nation. But if the beliefs of the two countries is so deeply riven that any promise will piss off half the population, nothing good will come out of the attempt.
But what no one wants to talk about is how neither of the two beliefs stated can be reconciled with the facts on the ground. Both beliefs require infinite growth on a finite world. Both require human nature to have something that human nature doesn’t seem to have any evidence of possessing. The two beliefs are proven failures.
The clowns we get are the clowns we deserve. Because there are vanishingly few of us here in the good old USA that bother to think about the nature of our faith (and I am not at all certain I belong to the thinking subset), we vote in the clowns that seem most likely not to disturb whatever particular secular faith that we espouse. But to provide for one set of beliefs tears at the fabric of the other belief so the enmity is permanent, the defect is structural.
The mass-democracy overlaying a Republic that we tout as exceptional is just going to stay here and fester. It cannot resolve the conflicting goals of the two populaces that inhabit this chunk of North America, so it will just continue down the path it is on. No change, no fixes, just the same shit.
Now, I see this as kind of a win. If you take the view that I do that we are going into a decline in living standards in order to reach a long-term point of stability, this might offer a means of doing it that will string the pain out in a manner to prevent a revolution. I have been reading Jorge Ortega y Gasset lately and while I don’t bemoan the loss of the “Nobility” that he so cherishes, I do have to agree that the masses have gotten a little demanding of late.
The equalizing demands of a generous democratic inspiration have been transformed from aspirations and ideals into appetites and unconscious assumptions.
--The Revolt of the Masses: Jose Ortega y Gasset,
I am kinda thinking that we are at, or are close to, the zenith of the culture of materialism that passes itself off as high culture here in the West. I tend to think that it downhill from here. Whether one likes it or not, the wealth pump that allowed the 5% of the world population here in the US to consume 40% of the world’s manufacturing and 25% of the worlds energy is drying up. Even more alarming is the downhill slide in hydrocarbon availability that will accelerate this decline. Simply put, the US will have to start living on it’s fair share of the pie and we most certainly aren’t prepared for that.
So what I am hoping for is a decades long political gridlock. Because if that occurs, the exigencies of the real world will have time to work their magic. We will shed a lot of the demands of the masses and they will come to grips with a new system where they have and use less and will manage to find happiness and comfort anyway.
But what will keep this sensible approach on track. What I see as the biggest threat is the possibility of the union of the external proletariat and the internal proletariat to allow a person/party to execute a plan that will “keep things the way they are”. This would be very bad. The best analogy I can use for our situation is that we are in a car going somewhere, with just enough gas to make it to our destination provided we turn off the engine and coast on the downhill, drive at 50 mph when we are under power, and cross our fingers.
Nearly any plan that would claim to “keep things the way they are” or, even worse, “continue our progress to domination of the universe”, would not take into account the world of limitations we live in. Using the example above, this plan would have us trying to do 75 mph all the way and, when we ran out of gas, we would be stuck. The only reason we can do the 75 mph now is that we stop and rob gas stations on the way.
Nope, I am hoping for gridlock. Where we start slowing things down and taking away things little by little until we get to a point where we can all make it. This kind of thought won’t make me popular at any of the nice dinner parties, but I usually find them kinda boring anyway.
Faith in modern culture was a gloomy one: it meant that tomorrow was to be in all essentials similar to today; that progress consisted only in advancing, for all time to be, along a road identical to the one already under our feet. Such a road is rather a prison which —elastic— stretches on without ever freeing us.
--The Revolt of the Masses: Jose Ortega y Gasset,
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
At the end of the day, this is why the vast majority American are not happy. At the end of the day, this is why the US is inching toward the failed state status. At a very minimum, it will be a continuing gridlock. This is the condition that I fervently pray for.
The mythical “Men on the street” really don't think, they believe. They have been fed a ration of crap their whole life and been told that it is the whole truth. I am impressed by just how many different plates of shit we have been fed and just how many people have bought in. The list is stunning in its breadth; Free-market, American Exceptionalism, Calvinist Christianity, these have become the New Holy Trinity here in Red America. They are opposed by a completely different set of odd beliefs. In the land of Blue, the piecemeal faith of sexual identity, globalism, and social justice creates a strangely ineffective and slightly insane counterpoint to the ravings of the Red.
We have lost the leaders of our society. They seem to have vanished and left in their place poseurs who mouth the words needed to convince the gullible that they, the poseurs, and only they, have the gift of prophecy required to fulfill the needs of the nation. But if the beliefs of the two countries is so deeply riven that any promise will piss off half the population, nothing good will come out of the attempt.
But what no one wants to talk about is how neither of the two beliefs stated can be reconciled with the facts on the ground. Both beliefs require infinite growth on a finite world. Both require human nature to have something that human nature doesn’t seem to have any evidence of possessing. The two beliefs are proven failures.
The clowns we get are the clowns we deserve. Because there are vanishingly few of us here in the good old USA that bother to think about the nature of our faith (and I am not at all certain I belong to the thinking subset), we vote in the clowns that seem most likely not to disturb whatever particular secular faith that we espouse. But to provide for one set of beliefs tears at the fabric of the other belief so the enmity is permanent, the defect is structural.
The mass-democracy overlaying a Republic that we tout as exceptional is just going to stay here and fester. It cannot resolve the conflicting goals of the two populaces that inhabit this chunk of North America, so it will just continue down the path it is on. No change, no fixes, just the same shit.
Now, I see this as kind of a win. If you take the view that I do that we are going into a decline in living standards in order to reach a long-term point of stability, this might offer a means of doing it that will string the pain out in a manner to prevent a revolution. I have been reading Jorge Ortega y Gasset lately and while I don’t bemoan the loss of the “Nobility” that he so cherishes, I do have to agree that the masses have gotten a little demanding of late.
The equalizing demands of a generous democratic inspiration have been transformed from aspirations and ideals into appetites and unconscious assumptions.
--The Revolt of the Masses: Jose Ortega y Gasset,
I am kinda thinking that we are at, or are close to, the zenith of the culture of materialism that passes itself off as high culture here in the West. I tend to think that it downhill from here. Whether one likes it or not, the wealth pump that allowed the 5% of the world population here in the US to consume 40% of the world’s manufacturing and 25% of the worlds energy is drying up. Even more alarming is the downhill slide in hydrocarbon availability that will accelerate this decline. Simply put, the US will have to start living on it’s fair share of the pie and we most certainly aren’t prepared for that.
So what I am hoping for is a decades long political gridlock. Because if that occurs, the exigencies of the real world will have time to work their magic. We will shed a lot of the demands of the masses and they will come to grips with a new system where they have and use less and will manage to find happiness and comfort anyway.
But what will keep this sensible approach on track. What I see as the biggest threat is the possibility of the union of the external proletariat and the internal proletariat to allow a person/party to execute a plan that will “keep things the way they are”. This would be very bad. The best analogy I can use for our situation is that we are in a car going somewhere, with just enough gas to make it to our destination provided we turn off the engine and coast on the downhill, drive at 50 mph when we are under power, and cross our fingers.
Nearly any plan that would claim to “keep things the way they are” or, even worse, “continue our progress to domination of the universe”, would not take into account the world of limitations we live in. Using the example above, this plan would have us trying to do 75 mph all the way and, when we ran out of gas, we would be stuck. The only reason we can do the 75 mph now is that we stop and rob gas stations on the way.
Nope, I am hoping for gridlock. Where we start slowing things down and taking away things little by little until we get to a point where we can all make it. This kind of thought won’t make me popular at any of the nice dinner parties, but I usually find them kinda boring anyway.
Faith in modern culture was a gloomy one: it meant that tomorrow was to be in all essentials similar to today; that progress consisted only in advancing, for all time to be, along a road identical to the one already under our feet. Such a road is rather a prison which —elastic— stretches on without ever freeing us.
--The Revolt of the Masses: Jose Ortega y Gasset,
