Here is a great paragraph from this book. It says old people are deluded into thinking that they will save the world. But isn't it them who are destroying the world? (Good Luck to the YOUTH.)
The bulk of today’s gerontologists (Gerontology covers the social, psychological and biological aspects of aging), and demographers, do not yet grasp what’s coming. Ken Dychtwald’s 'Age Wave' and Cheryl Russell’s 'Master Trend' create the impression that Boomers will be much like today’s busy senior citizens—except better-educated, more selfish, and (an easy prediction) much more numerous. This kind of forecast leads to the conclusion that early this century, younger generations will be overwhelmed by extravagantly doctored, expansively lobbying, age-denying old people. To support their consumptive 'Sharper-Image' lifestyles through old age, Boomers would have to impose confiscatory taxes on younger people. This would be an enormous dead weight, if it ever happens. (It won’t.)
Clues of what old Boomers will be like can be glimpsed in the “conscious aging” movement. Cutting-edge books like 'From Ageing to Sageing' speak of new “spiritual eldering-institutes” teaching people to engage in “vision quests.” These new “elders of the tribe” see themselves as “wisdom keepers” who must apply “their dormant powers of intuition . . . [to] become seers who feed wisdom back into society and who guide the long-term reclamation project of healing our beleaguered planet.”
Whew!
Boomer gerontologist Harry Moody sees a twenty-first-century shift to a “contemplative old age” that eliminates today’s focus on activity, and instead “transcends doing, in favor of being.” Elders will be defined as spiritually gifted over their juniors who “are too busy to cultivate the quietness and inwardness, from which mystical experience is possible.” Pain and bodily decline will be accepted, even honored as the necessary burning off of worldly DROSS for the purpose of acquiring higher insights. In sharp contrast to the youth-emulating “uninhibited octogenarians” of Gail Sheehy’s 'Silent Generation', these new earth sages will want to be authentically old people, the critical links in human civilization, without whose guidance the young might sink into Philistinism—but with whom the young can craft what gerontologist David Gutmann terms “the new myths on which re-acculturation can be based.”
I suppose I sort of lean toward contemplation, and away from excess activity. Some of my relatives are trying to prove they are still 40, with 30 mile bicycling, and flying all over the country each month. They know all the airports well.
I feel that this is kind of inevitable - if you lead the world, as the US is often claimed to do, you will be the first to hit new issues while everyone can just follow. Particularly if the pursuit of profit is made the ideal, since the best way to be profitable is to find an unoccupied niche and milk it for all it's worth. Once you start doing that, people drift farther away from each other until they don't understand each other anymore.
Leverage means different things to different people. A physicist or engineer might think of the length of a lever and the amplification of the force applies. A lawyer or policymaker might think of a key statute or interpretation that lets them do what they want - a loophole. Someone in finance will think first of debt - leverage as in a metaphorical lever to improve returns by using other people's money.
And that's a relatively easy term. Try something like "racism", "border control", "freedom", and it'll be so much worse. So, so much worse.
Absolutely fascinating about Jewish and Christian origins. But "inevitable" also means the short-term current trajectory, based on the current power structures, and how they have locked themselves in. They do it with hostility, and anyone that questions them is supporting the "enemy". Kindergarten thinking, but we all fall for it.
The whole western world is based upon the "trickle-down-economy". If a rich man can conjure up $ one billion dollars, you and I might get $1,000. So we let them do it.
There are no unoccupied niches. The 100's of small businesses that occupy these sectors are all "flushed-out" and bankrupted by the same billionaires. When it is a country, they try a coup to set up a puppet government. If the coup doesn't work (the first time), they go into hyper-sanctions and attempt to destroy the economy. In the mean time they set up terrorist networks and kill civilians and assassinate leaders. (But at least we are getting our $1,000.)
I think that I understand the billionaires. It is not you and I that promulgates hostility. Although we have to watch our tongue, and kind of echo the billionaire narrative.
You explain leverage in an easy way to understand. What is the billionaire leverage? It must be forced (at least regional) monopolies. Then just sit back and collect the rent. If western billionaires can own planet earth, then everyone pays rent for each breath.
Is this anxiety stuff? It's a contradiction only if you try to deny it. But really it is totally obvious, and on the surface for all to see.
I asked up at the top, "Is this something that we can contemplate here?" No Likes and one repost. Stats say 10 people opened this email. (23 people opened my last post where there were 3 Likes and one repost.)
I am guessing that I can't talk about anxiety with this group of readers, (you). Anxiety is something that you do all by yourself, or by ignoring it. I feel certain the world situation will worsen. Such strong trajectories cannot be reversed with a miracle. Yet I feel no anxiety over that (almost) certainty. Yes I will die with the rest of them.
The world is in a strong paradigm called DETERRENCE. That means a balance of power, and a balance of terror. They call it MAD. Mutual assured destruction. In order for deterrence to work, nobody can back-down from a bluff. Otherwise there is nothing left of it. So if a Nuke goes off in Russia, One Must go-off in the West. Of this you can be assured. Let's all ignore it then.
Life goes on as usual, and our politicians and our foreign policy are showing a stance of "strength".
This is both my level of confidence, and my level of doubt, (from the title).
Here is a great paragraph from this book. It says old people are deluded into thinking that they will save the world. But isn't it them who are destroying the world? (Good Luck to the YOUTH.)
The bulk of today’s gerontologists (Gerontology covers the social, psychological and biological aspects of aging), and demographers, do not yet grasp what’s coming. Ken Dychtwald’s 'Age Wave' and Cheryl Russell’s 'Master Trend' create the impression that Boomers will be much like today’s busy senior citizens—except better-educated, more selfish, and (an easy prediction) much more numerous. This kind of forecast leads to the conclusion that early this century, younger generations will be overwhelmed by extravagantly doctored, expansively lobbying, age-denying old people. To support their consumptive 'Sharper-Image' lifestyles through old age, Boomers would have to impose confiscatory taxes on younger people. This would be an enormous dead weight, if it ever happens. (It won’t.)
Clues of what old Boomers will be like can be glimpsed in the “conscious aging” movement. Cutting-edge books like 'From Ageing to Sageing' speak of new “spiritual eldering-institutes” teaching people to engage in “vision quests.” These new “elders of the tribe” see themselves as “wisdom keepers” who must apply “their dormant powers of intuition . . . [to] become seers who feed wisdom back into society and who guide the long-term reclamation project of healing our beleaguered planet.”
Whew!
Boomer gerontologist Harry Moody sees a twenty-first-century shift to a “contemplative old age” that eliminates today’s focus on activity, and instead “transcends doing, in favor of being.” Elders will be defined as spiritually gifted over their juniors who “are too busy to cultivate the quietness and inwardness, from which mystical experience is possible.” Pain and bodily decline will be accepted, even honored as the necessary burning off of worldly DROSS for the purpose of acquiring higher insights. In sharp contrast to the youth-emulating “uninhibited octogenarians” of Gail Sheehy’s 'Silent Generation', these new earth sages will want to be authentically old people, the critical links in human civilization, without whose guidance the young might sink into Philistinism—but with whom the young can craft what gerontologist David Gutmann terms “the new myths on which re-acculturation can be based.”
I suppose I sort of lean toward contemplation, and away from excess activity. Some of my relatives are trying to prove they are still 40, with 30 mile bicycling, and flying all over the country each month. They know all the airports well.
.
I feel that this is kind of inevitable - if you lead the world, as the US is often claimed to do, you will be the first to hit new issues while everyone can just follow. Particularly if the pursuit of profit is made the ideal, since the best way to be profitable is to find an unoccupied niche and milk it for all it's worth. Once you start doing that, people drift farther away from each other until they don't understand each other anymore.
Leverage means different things to different people. A physicist or engineer might think of the length of a lever and the amplification of the force applies. A lawyer or policymaker might think of a key statute or interpretation that lets them do what they want - a loophole. Someone in finance will think first of debt - leverage as in a metaphorical lever to improve returns by using other people's money.
And that's a relatively easy term. Try something like "racism", "border control", "freedom", and it'll be so much worse. So, so much worse.
I write these things for discussion, meaning of course I do not know, nor can I predict the future.
These days I study a broad range of pre-modern history. There is a hell of a lot of violence and suppression in it. Is that the meaning of "inevitable? I just read a piece from one of our co-authors, Librarian. https://library4conciliation.substack.com/p/5-ancient-rus-and-the-great-steppe
Absolutely fascinating about Jewish and Christian origins. But "inevitable" also means the short-term current trajectory, based on the current power structures, and how they have locked themselves in. They do it with hostility, and anyone that questions them is supporting the "enemy". Kindergarten thinking, but we all fall for it.
The whole western world is based upon the "trickle-down-economy". If a rich man can conjure up $ one billion dollars, you and I might get $1,000. So we let them do it.
There are no unoccupied niches. The 100's of small businesses that occupy these sectors are all "flushed-out" and bankrupted by the same billionaires. When it is a country, they try a coup to set up a puppet government. If the coup doesn't work (the first time), they go into hyper-sanctions and attempt to destroy the economy. In the mean time they set up terrorist networks and kill civilians and assassinate leaders. (But at least we are getting our $1,000.)
I think that I understand the billionaires. It is not you and I that promulgates hostility. Although we have to watch our tongue, and kind of echo the billionaire narrative.
You explain leverage in an easy way to understand. What is the billionaire leverage? It must be forced (at least regional) monopolies. Then just sit back and collect the rent. If western billionaires can own planet earth, then everyone pays rent for each breath.
Is this anxiety stuff? It's a contradiction only if you try to deny it. But really it is totally obvious, and on the surface for all to see.
.
I asked up at the top, "Is this something that we can contemplate here?" No Likes and one repost. Stats say 10 people opened this email. (23 people opened my last post where there were 3 Likes and one repost.)
I am guessing that I can't talk about anxiety with this group of readers, (you). Anxiety is something that you do all by yourself, or by ignoring it. I feel certain the world situation will worsen. Such strong trajectories cannot be reversed with a miracle. Yet I feel no anxiety over that (almost) certainty. Yes I will die with the rest of them.
The world is in a strong paradigm called DETERRENCE. That means a balance of power, and a balance of terror. They call it MAD. Mutual assured destruction. In order for deterrence to work, nobody can back-down from a bluff. Otherwise there is nothing left of it. So if a Nuke goes off in Russia, One Must go-off in the West. Of this you can be assured. Let's all ignore it then.
Life goes on as usual, and our politicians and our foreign policy are showing a stance of "strength".
This is both my level of confidence, and my level of doubt, (from the title).
.