It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted to this blog. One reason is that I’ve been pretty busy, but another reason is that I’m still not happy with the blog’s overall direction. I love web stuff, so I thought if I focused most of my blogging into that niche and built upon it, the blog would move forward with more clarity. Alas, it is just not the case. I don’t think this particular blog works well as a niche blog. It’s supposed to be more personal to me and, frankly, I’m just not very niche-like. I just don’t have one over-arching interest or love that surpasses all else. Furthermore, my multiple interests often seem to conflict. So instead of writing post after post of super-cool web-related stuff, I ended up just not writing anything at all.
Yet again I’ve decided to do a revamp of this blog to better reflect me, and so if one day I want to write about web stuff and the next I want to do a complete 180 and put up a post about how I sanded down my bathroom (soon!), then that’s what’s going to happen. The niche focus is working out very well for my gaming blog, but not so good for me. I refuse to be pigeon-holed!
Today was kind of a crap day. I couldn’t seem to do anything right and just felt downright cranky. Yet, I couldn’t easily explain my mood outside of overall dissonance. There is so much meaninglessness in our society. So many of us prostitute ourselves as corporate drones day after day for money, and for what? What meaningful purpose does it really serve outside of making someone else rich? And that someone else may not even be the type of person who shares our values and who we’d want to support financially or in any way whatsoever. Outside of the money, I often wonder if anyone *really* cares in these corporations. People aren’t going to be honest about it though because they don’t want to lose their jobs, if being a corporate slave is what enables them to feed their families. I’ve seen statistics spouted in various places that at least 70% of the employed population are ready to bolt from their current jobs as soon as the economy improves. That’s a lot of people if it’s true. I wish we lived in a society where the majority of the population spent most of their days in meaningful work (and play!) rather than in the one we have now where people cling desperately to jobs they hate on one side, and are scrounging just to find a job they’ll come to hate on the other. Still, considering the state of our current economy, I don’t know if anyone’s jobs are ultimately going to matter.
Unfortunately, I don’t see the economy improving any time soon. I see politicians (republican and democrat) caring only enough for the next election. I see the overall population vehemently dividing themselves between left and right, liberal and conservative, instead of working together for the overall good. (And no, I don’t mean socialism. I just view cooperation and community as good things.) I see stupid economic “solutions” that boil down to spending ourselves out of debt. It’s insanity! If you have a fiercely divided population, corrupt politicians on all sides, bribery and greed from our major corporations and financial institutions, and an economy based on debt, consumerism, and unlimited, cancerous growth, then I have to wonder how the economy is going to improve with all of the above working stringently against it. It seems much more likely that we are heading down a shorter and shorter road to complete economic collapse. What’s going to happen to all of the jobs that do remain when there is *no* energy to support them, when food and supply distribution is completely disrupted?
We’ve already reached peak oil and have reached or are very close to reaching the peak for other energy resources. We have no viable energy alternatives, and yet no one seems to be talking about it in Washington. (Drill baby drill doesn’t count when there is nothing to drill past the short term.) It’s not something far, far in our future that our descendants might have to figure out; it’s in our present, happening right now. Unpopular subjects when it comes to elections though.
So many want to believe that everything’s going to be okay, and once we get over this bump in the economy, that everything will go back to the way it was before. Now I’m optimistic enough to think that yes, we’ll come through okay and we certainly have the potential for a very good future, but everything is most certainly *not* going to go back to the way it was, and thank goodness for that! It seems a major time of transition is upon us. A change could be a great and exciting thing for the long-term, but are we prepared for a possible, or even probable, economic apocalypse?
Special thanks to Bethesda Softworks for Fallout 3. I’ve been a big fan of the Fallout series for many years and have finally gotten back to playing Fallout 3. Seems kind of fitting that it came out in 2008.
Well, Becky, until this week, I had been unemployed since February. I took a job below my experience and value just so I could work, but while I was out I obsessively watched news channels looking for some sign that things would improve. From my observation, the top 1% of the American population don’t even acknowledge that anything is wrong. They seem to think that the rest of us are doing just fine and if we’re not, it’s our fault so screw us.
It seems to me based on the economic theories I have been studying on and off over the years that a healthy economy results from money moving around, like a river or creek with a flowing current. The money stopped moving around. The economy is in the toilet because all the money got dumped from the system into the control of the so-called 1%, who are now hoarding that wealth and spreading propaganda to justify why they’re holding on to their money.
The debt crisis has been a cyclical issue that has been revisited time and time again over the years and seems to come up when the economy sucks, nobody has jobs, and a democrat is in office. It is the issue of choice for conservative Republicans. It really cheesed me off that while I was out of work and being called a moocher by the conservative right, the primary issue on the minds of the right wing was the debt, not getting Americans back to work.
Back when I was with Joy, I ran across a book called _Generations: A History of America’s Future_. The authors’ argument was that historical events in our country follow a cyclical pattern driven by the personality types of four archetypes that characterize generations. The most focused pattern started with the generation that imposed Prohibition, the Lost Generation that survived the Great Depression, The GI Generation that fought in World War II, the so-called Silent Generation, and closing out the circle with the Baby Boomers, who start the cycle again.
The book was written right after I had come out of Campbell University, and I was drawn to the ideas, which have since been expanded upon and refined, but the authors have stayed their theory has held up for nearly 20 years now.
Essentially, the first generational type in this cycle is the Idealist generation, characterized by the Prohibition generation and the Baby Boomers. They come along with ideals and the conviction that they can change the world, so this is a generation of ideals and activism. The second generational type is a gilded generation that essentially parties on the gains set up by the previous generational types (I didn’t mention the Civil War generation or the Gilded generation before this). The third archetype is a caretaker generation and the children of the idealist generation, characterized by the Lost Generation and Generation-X (us). We come along in this environment established by the idealist generation and find ourselves having a lot of trouble getting our footing, whether that is ideologically, financially, or metaphysically. As a generation, for instance, Generation-X has endured a Recession in the 90s and a period where work was scarce and an even bigger Recession where our safety nets were pulled right out from under us. We are also the generation that has faced the most rotten conditions that our society can throw at us, so we build up an independent survivalist personality that we instill in our children, the warrior community generation, embodied in the GI Generation and the Millennials (Generation Y). Generation Y includes the kids protesting in cities throughout the country and my sons. They are the ones that the authors of _Generations_ argue will set things right.
Now, if we are to believe the argument of the authors, Strauss and Howe, the global protests going on right now are not hippy sit-ins by any stretch of the imagination. This is militant activism that is destined to explode in a powder-keg of righteous violence against a rotten establishment. Inevitably, this generation will tear everything down, and necessarily, will rebuild society. That is the great achievement of the GI Generation – they built our country to unprecedented levels of prosperity for everybody, middle class and rich alike. The rebuild phase of what is to come will be the great achievement of Generation Y, too. But, I believe that the polarization of our politicians and the selfish hoarding of the 1% has made destruction of the current society a nearly entirely necessary step in this dance. Whereas the GI generation were able to build on a society that was in place, Generation Y will have to blow everything away and start over – because the Monolith has been cracked so much that the stone is slipping off its foundation.
At the end of the day, we are due for a major explosion in our society, but it is a necessary and positive thing that will repair the damage that collaboratively corrupt institutions have done to our society. Our values have undergone a major shock, and the cycle will correct when Generation Y fixes everything.
Then the cycle will start over again with another idealist generation.
Whether anyone or any generation will be able to fix everything is still up in the air (hopefully there will be something left to fix), but I certainly agree that the pressure in the pot is practically at its limit and something is going to have to give, and soon. And it probably won’t be pretty. I think the Occupy protests are just the beginning of a very lengthy period of disruption.
Jokes about Obama and comments like, “how’s that hope and change working out for ya?” aside, real change is necessary. Too many want to keep their heads in the sand and try to put everything back in the same boxes as before, but it isn’t going to happen. As long as people remain divided, picking sides between Democrat and Republican when both parties are two sides of the same corrupt coin, there isn’t going to be any fixing of anything. It isn’t going to matter which party wins any election when the guy (or gal) in the White House is just the puppet. Had McCain won the last presidential election, all the same stuff would still be happening.
I’d been reading your stuff on your employment situation and am glad you finally found something. I see a lot of irony in the whole employment situation. I don’t really like to generalize, but if we are going to generalize the generations, I find it ironic that the boomers, who are probably one of the more self-absorbed and entitled generations are labeling the younger generation as the “entitlement generation”. They protested back in the 1960′s and it was handy dandy then, but somehow it’s different now when other people are doing it.
Until it happens to them (and it does…and with all the age discrimination that goes with it), they don’t seem to realize that just getting a job in and of itself is a full time job. You can’t just work hard, be smart, and someone out there is going to give you a chance. Doesn’t happen that way anymore if it ever really did. You have to get through a whole system of “qualification gauntlets” and multiple interviews just to be considered, and that could very well be for a job that is far beneath your experience and value, and won’t even pay a self-sustaining wage.
(That’s only going to get worse if we go through a long period of hyperinflation after a financial crash.)
Telling people to “just get a job” is trite and isn’t going to solve the problems we have with this economy. We need to get to a point where we aren’t depending so much on these corporations for jobs in the first place. The big global corporations don’t care about this country or the people in it outside of $$$. My thinking is currently leaning much more towards building more localized economies and communities. We need economic systems that are not based on ever-increasing debt and consumerism.
I actually messed up the paradigm and the order in the prior comment.
The cycle goes with the following four types:
Idealist (Missionary generation at the turn of the 20th century)
Reactive (Lost generation who endured the Great Depression)
Civic (GI generation who fought World War II)
Adaptive (The 50s generation we often associate with the smiling guy with the pipe in his mouth)
The cycle started over again with the baby boomers (Idealist), then Generation X (Us – pragmatic), the millennials (born after 1981 – civic), and what is commonly called Generation Z, but I don’t think that they’ve been given a name yet. That would include my two boys.
You hit the nail on the head about the baby boom generation. Yes, they take a lot for granted. I read an article Friday night about how people have forgotten that they achieved their levels of success with help – the GI bill, federal student grants for college students, subsidized loan programs, and other legs up to help them obtain the skills they used to get to where they sit comfortably in their ivory towers. This is a part of the problem we’re experiencing. A big mover in the tea party movement seems to be that they got theirs and they’ll be damned if anyone else gets the same breaks they got to get where they are. It is an incredibly short-sighted and selfish way of evaluating humanity and even where they fit in the whole scheme of things.
Strangely, they aren’t even considering the implications in the knowledge management of the companies where they serve at the executive level. There is no sense that they are doing anything to prepare their younger folks to do the jobs that they are about to vacate in the next few years. I think that a lot of companies are going to tank as the boomers retire. It turns out that the motive of these so-called idealists seems to be that they just wanted their half of the pie, and now that they have it, they don’t want to ensure the success of their children.
What is going on throughout the country and the world is only the beginning. The Millennials (Generation Y, if you will) are a civic generation that correspond in Strauss and Howe’s cyclical history schema with the GI generation – the men and women who pull together to achieve something great for the good of the community, ultimately. That is what they are doing, and as much as everyone is saying “nonviolent” this and “those violent savages” that, ultimately, the defining moment of this generation will be a revolt. If it succeeds, the whole system we know now will undergo a massive change, hopefully with the right corrections to get our country on the right track. If it doesn’t, the course of history is anybody’s guess. Strauss and Howe have shown that the generational development can skip an archetype. Apparently, something happened after the civic generation came along that caused an implosion of a generational identity. The next generational archetype was supposed to be a better one than the Silent (Adaptive) generation, but it wasn’t. Then came the Baby Boomers.
The boomers have taken advantage of the most benefits of any generation before or after. They are the largest generation in terms of population, and the reason we’re all going apeshit about “entitlements” is that we don’t know how we’re going to pay for their august years because there are more boomers than members of any other generation. So, naturally the solution they’ve come up with is to use up all the resources we have now without regard to us or our children. This is a major criticism of that generation.
That is part of what Generation Y is out there protesting. Sure, there are members of other generations on the streets, too, but the generation at the center focus of all this is Generation Y, who just graduated from college into – this.
What’s ahead? It won’t be pretty. The peaceful protest thing – that is all just a PR item to keep support, which it deserves. There is an old tradition that has been supported by the church fathers in Europe and was justified when our ancestors took up arms against the oppressive rule of British overlords, leading to the birth of this country – violent revolution. If the system does not work short of violence, it is perfectly viable to incite violent revolution. I don’t see that as a bad thing if it becomes necessary. Our politicians would do well to take heed to the groans of their people, or suffer their wrath.