Does ANYONE here know (or care) what we have lost???

With the passing of the generations born during America's Golden age, there will be very few left who can recall what it was like before the coming of the Corporate State.

What we have lost cannot be measured in dollars, for even with the growing gap between the classes in this country, we are still rich beyond the wildest dreams of most humans on the planet. Nor can it be measured in hours, because our forefathers labored far harder in the fields and the factories of the Golden Age.

In a way that is the most frightening aspect of the culture that the Corporate State has created; it is effectively unable at this point to change course, because it has no baseline. In other words it has nothing to compare itself against; insurance that the machine will not veer from it's predetermined course.

I work in America's heartland, in the very center of the industrial engine that has changed each and every aspect of our daily lives. And every day I look around me, like Orwell's Winston, always hopeful that I will see someone who understands what the machine has taken from them; but sadly, those connections are few and far between. Orwell was confident in the accuracy of his vision; but he could never have foretold that the Ministry of Love would be not an agency of government, but rather the Temple of automation and profitism.

Tomorrow I will go dutifully into that Temple, and tomorrow, a little more of me will be gone.

 

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What is it exactly that you feel we have lost?

WWI?
WWII?
Korea?
Vietnam?
Segregation?
Bad coffee and stale donuts at the corner diner?
Smallpox?
45's?
Bell bottoms?
The Influenza epidemic?
Lake Erie catching fire?
Avocado appliances and rust colored shag rugs?
Liberace?

~Raithere

"Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory." - Franklin Adams

 

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Where's gendanken? She needs to call this guy an alarmist, so I'm not the only one.

Anyways, there is a book about this, the title escapes me. Either way, it says that basically the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, but there is also a net decrease in intelligence and functionality of the poor, while the rich stay human. Bascially but, while performing the same task repeatedly, never changing throughout a worklife, the person looses the ability to change and adapt to their enviroment or changing working conditions, and becomes a tool. They become a permanent underling because they cant change anymore. Then when technology changes, they're fucked and cant adapt, and become a jobless statistic, becuase their job is no longer in demand.

While these poor people are off ruining their minds through repeditive motion, the rich are ou there excercising that muscle and remaining adaptable. We have now reached a point where every peice of the puzzle in a business is replaceable. Even our government, there is nothing that is irreplacable, all important... the word i was looking for, indespensable! (though prolly spelled horendously wrong).

Anyways, it's not orwellian we're experiencing, its something else that i'm too tired to finish typing about. Damn insomnia.

 

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Nope I think Watcher has a point.
Unless of course you can show me another century that encompasses the degree of social and technological change demonstrated by the 20th.

Thats not to say I want to sell my computer and go live in a cave.
Dee Cee

 

Watcher has a good point indeed. We have all turned into corporate slaves in every aspect of our lives. It is easier to turn a blind eye to this, but if you are honest with yourself you can see how society has changed.

Profits are no.1, consumption is all that matters. You are what you consume. You do not exist in this society if you do not consume.

Long fought over labour laws have been 'liberalized', meaning basically that you lost rights you previously had. And all this because of progress. You would think that in a technological advanced society such as hours things would get easier. The opposite is true. Never before have so many people been afraid to lose what they have; to lose their jobs, to lose their ability to consume.

The difference between the rich and poor have increased dramatically in the last decades (that can be found in the statistics). Not only between western countries and the third world, but also within Western countries. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer.

Karl Marx apparently warned us about something like the tendency of the profit rate to decline and the tendency of production to overproduce. This would force the system to seek limitless growth".

And that is basically what we have. Heads roll if there is no economic growth. But who cares about economic growth? Does economic growth equal growth of wellbeing in a society?

 

Well said that monkey!
Dee Cee

 

those first five are wars why do they count

 

I don't see the connection. There are still wars, and imo, there will be wars until the last humans are gone. The only change I see is the death toll. It will be lower on the soldiers, as we move towards robotics/remote armys, and higher for civillains as its getting much easier to kill as time goes on.

OOPS forgot to comment on the topic.

I agree with you. I may be young but the world I'm seeing makes me sick. So many things could be better, but its so hard to find someone who wants the "right thing" instead of a better world for him and his friends. I'm fighting a losing battle with myself, where I'm about to just stop caring, because I'm starting to think that its impossible to change the world.

 

The world can not be changed, get over it. Stop sulking and move on with your life.

This whole thread is stupid. I quit. I'm done with this stupid shit.

 

Hello! That's the very message I have carried throughout all my sciforumer's years...! :bugeye:

In any case... the whole slavery process is caused and maintained by....
the media!

It is the media that creates the illusion of control. It is the media that creates the illusion that the marginal utility of a product actually increases as the quantity of products consumed increases... :bugeye:

It is the media that creates extreme consumerism

It is the media that creates the illusion that we are all free

You are not free. You are slaves of the system. You work everyday and for what? To buy stuff. How meaningless life can be.

I believe Watcher has a point. Unfortunately, most people don't see it. But hopefully, awareness can be brought upon the face of the earth.

Maybe someday we will live to live, wheter then living to buy.......

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Just like me. But hang on there. Know that there are other people in the same position you are....

 

Maybe I'm out in left field picking dandilions but everything I see posted here are causalities - we think we recognize the problem but really, that's part of the problem.

The problem is emphasizing its causes, and its inherant defficiencies producing, in my mind, an effect I call a 'gravitational sphere of logical thinking', keeping us focussed on problems. Lets think outside the sphere here and examine solutions. *I know, this thought hints toward a suggestion made by Eleanor Rosevelt long ago - my intent is not to plagiarize*

Think of what we as individuals can do, individually, to produce solutions. Go here and click on 'Communications' then 'Campaigns' then, at top right, click on the dates to 'view' a better understanding of what I'm talking about - specifically '93.

Personally, I'm an optimist and I make no apologies for that.
:m:

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my caterwauling post. Even though it is crystal clear that we HAVE lost something precious, I always struggle to define it; so that's why I asked the question. Whenever there's a discussion of this topic there are a lot of comments about Marx, who I must admit I have never read. Maybe it's time.

Anyway, spuriousmonkey at least gave me something concrete the work with, the concept of "wellbeing". For lack of a better term, perhaps that is exactly what we have lost. Wellbeing as a culture, wellbeing as individuals. We have watched that slowly erode over the years. I think many people understand that something is wrong, that something is out of balance; but they struggle to identify it, because they have never known anything different.

I contend that we are becoming less and less humans, and more and more automatons. The things that made us human, a sense of community, a desire for human companionship, compassion, kindness... these have become unnecessary. Who needs them when we can always nurse at the glass teats that we have in our bedrooms and living rooms? Glass teats like the one I am looking into as I type these words; and like the other one spewing meaningless blather to me at this instant from CNN.

From the moment I arise to the time I go to sleep I am surrounded by technology; since my car is safely ensconced in a garage with an automatic door, I may successfully avoid contact with the outside world all day long. Which of course, is another part of our wellbeing that we have lost, our connection with the environment that evolved us.

I wonder how many antidepressant pills are popped in America every day? Maybe that is a way to quantify what we have lost.

 

I don't think so. The level of presciption is only an indicator of the willingness to prescibe. A wise man once told me that unhappiness, like pregnancy, is a natural function of the human condition and one should not meddle or medicate unless that condition veers sharpley from the norm.
Of course that was back in the day before (?western) society began to believe that it had a right to be happy and drug companies left it up to prescibers to decide who needed their products.

I think there maybe something here that contributes to the topic but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is.
Dee cee

 

Holy shit Dee..., you've captured my thoughts to a tee! And I figured I was the only one thinking in this mode - my mistake

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Within every adversity in life lies an equal or greater opportunity to benefit oneself by.
You have only lost something when you begin to blame outside circumstances to be the cause of your problems.
It is not what happens to us in life that matters, but the meaning we give to it.
Watch your power disapate as you blame outside influences for your own thoughts and actions.
Victims blame.
Take your power back and take responsibility for your lot in life.
Do something.
The only thing any of us may have lost is our fierce independence for thought and personal responsibility.
Thats what are elders had.
The media is not to blame.
They are a symtom, not the cause.
The cuase stems from each and every one of us who refuses to take complete responsibility for our own thoughts and actions.
No if's, ands or buts.
Simple.
Take the power back.
yah.

 

the golden-age? my hairy ass.

have you noticed that every generation, right around the time they start to see their own power (physical and societal) begin to diminish suddenly it's proclaimed, "the golden age is ending!". Christ, how many golden ages are there? apparently they follow one after the other if you believe each time this is claimed.

It's a natural feeling I think but ultimately it's just narcism. A generation, sure of it's own unsurpassable greatness, just feeling itself disappear. It's a bit sad but since each generation seems to go through it I suppose it's just a desperate attempt to not be forgotten.

 

I tried that but I couldn't get past the Prime Ministers security detail.
So 'Fuck it!' I thought. I don't need the PM to help me in my quest for self determination. So I left my job and set out to be a fisherman. Thats all I ever wanted, to live free in the surf, eat the food that I had prepared. Perhaps swim in the strong currents of a clear tidal river. I took my new found freedom and began to walk north. I had to walk much further than I expected, only the tarmac road was open to me, each side of the road was fenced with barbed wire and signs warning 'trespassers beware'. I could no longer walk a straight line across the land of my birth, so much of it was closed to me. The blacktop burnt my toes for I had long since thrown away the shoes that in a past life constrained my wondersome feet. Road and fences stretched before me until at last I reached the sea. As I stood at that junction of land sea and air I surveyed the scene around me. Before me lay the cold silent waters and behind me lay the cacophony of man. A sign beside me read "No Swimming. No Fishing. By order of the majority" I came to realise that there was nowhere for me to go. I would never find peace because all this land had been constructed to contain and codify me and in this process I had never been consulted. Despite my desire for privacy, everybody knew my name the kids behind fast food counters would always fake smiles and the Readers Digest prize draw envelope would always track me down. It seemed I was truly free, just as long as I never tried to climb out of the box.
So now, years on, working a good job, a valuable social service they say, I pay my bills and give up my taxes and after a while the life of a fisherman became just a distant dream.
But sometimes I strain to see if I can still hear the sound of the waves....

Like that?
Just couldn't find an easier way of putting it.
Dee Cee

 

Well I agree with you about that, but that is really not what I am driving at here. What I am talking about has nothing to do with generations, it has a lot more to do with powershifts. The foundations of our culture have changed, slowly but inexorably, over the last 100 years; from human-centric to profit-centric, and to support that focus, techno-centric. What I'm saying here isn't anything new, or generation-specific; I think that a lot of folks with vision began to see the trends somewhere around the WWII timeframe.

 

EXACTLY.

But in order to take the power back, people have to first understand that they have LOST their power. And therein lies the difficulty. Since they have no comparative, they have no concept of what they have lost. Your statement captures the intent of my original post.

So I choose to take some of my power back by posting my whimsical worldview here on sciforums.

 

Perhaps people need to stop reading the Bible and start reading the Poetic Edda.