Is.3.1For behold the sovereign Lord of hosts shall take away from Jerusalem, and from Juda the valiant and the strong, the whole strength of bread, and the whole strength of water.
2The strong man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet and the cunning man, and the ancient.
3The captain over fifty, and the honourable in countenance, and the counsellor, and the architect, and the skilful in eloquent speech.
4*And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.*
A related effect is that adults aren't even always wiser, or rather the world changes so fast that their wisdom is no longer applicable. A well-known example is the old wisdom "go to college to get a good job", which used to be good advise but no longer is.
"To the extent that fast-changing technology is built on older technology, but can be used without understanding of the older technology, then youth will appear to be competent but will not be able to sustain the civilization they have inherited."
In addition, the number of Gen Z who will prefer to ask on Discord / WhatsApp / etc "what is X?" (where X is something you can easily find out online) rather than just googling it is absurd.
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On the subject of rapid technological change, I do wonder if this will is going to impact people, either by delaying the end of neuroplasticity in millennials & zoomers, or in making them just more culturally open to changing trends.
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Besides rapid technological changes, I think there are a few other trends that relate to the idealisation of youth:
> The boomers & their "[my age] is the new [decades younger]" attitude.
> Totalitarianism, which very often idolised the youth who overthrows the old regime etc etc. The young are full of fire and energy - and generally lacking in wisdom - and in the glorious new Year Zero regime that's just what you want for your stormtroopers, literal or metaphorical. Wise or small-c conservative people (which people tend to get with age) do not make good vanguards of the Party.
> The sustained campaign to reduce the minimum age at which children can engage in or consent to things normally only restricted to adults.
Good points, Teleros. The implications for neuroplasticity are quite interesting. But since neuroplasticity is a neotenous trait, and neotenous traits are always associated with domestication, that would suggest the future is a highly domesticated perpetual man-child. You can't run the world with men like that.
Careful about "Totalitariansim". These movements arose during the Disillusion after WW1 among winners, losers and neutrals alike in various forms largely because none of the kings and queens came through with wartime promises despite the long and bloody deadlock.
American Progressives correctly understood the need for a bigger gov't to regulate teh enormous merger corporation of the era designed to administier prices vs teh destructive, destabilizing competition that Adam Smith wrapped his entire philosophy around.
Communists took it to the point of abolishign property rights while "Totalitarians" were more along teh American Progressive line with German Cartels and Frederick's long standing "Camarilla" in the lead.
From another view, "Totalitarians" wished to modernize Tradition, not overthrow it with a "year Zero" remake which the Communist intent and why Nationalist opposed Communists of that time.
Bioth were revolutionary, as oposed to monarchy and the feudal class ystem. Some even saw them a "liberal" in that sense. But Communists eminated from the Jacobins via Marx while "Totalitarinas" were still heirarchical and Platonic. "Authoritarian" meant subject matter authorites running things while Communists opted for a proletarit committee process of amateurs. We, IMO, opt for a personality contest via "elections".
As for indoctrinating youth, that goes back forever.
It's useful shorthand though for the assorted movements that arose, mostly after WW1. Besides, "everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state" does sum up the fascist, nazi & communist attitudes pretty well. Anyway, time to go off-topic :D ...
"American Progressives correctly understood the need for a bigger gov't to regulate teh enormous merger corporation of the era designed to administier prices vs teh destructive, destabilizing competition that Adam Smith wrapped his entire philosophy around."
On the contrary - Jonah Goldberg in "Liberal Fascism" (about the one good thing he wrote :P ) notes how it was big business that tended to write their own regulations. Meanwhile, Standard Oil was steadily losing market share well before it was broken up. Sure, you need *strong and effective* government to prevent abuses, but that's not the same as *bigger*.
"From another view, "Totalitarians" wished to modernize Tradition, not overthrow it with a "year Zero" remake which the Communist intent and why Nationalist opposed Communists of that time."
I don't think that the totalitarians of the era were particularly enamoured of tradition at all. It was all about shiny new stuff, from TV & radio to aeroplanes & such. Mussolini was, to be sure, more pragmatic than most, but it's not like Hitler was interested in restoring the German monarchy, and FDR's attitude to the legality of the New Deal was... not terribly respectful of the Constitution or its principles. Nationalists opposed communists generally because communism still sold itself as an *international* movement.
I was initially impressed but look into the footnotes and you'll see how far Goldberg takes his breathless quotes out of context.
Goldberg still seems to think of a "boot smashing a human face" withotu ever wondering why any movement like that would be so popular. The answer is different in every country and h ere, Goldberg gives himself away, by lumpng them all together.
Stanley Payne is a better revisionsit source, taking the time for each coutnry, its gripes and circumstance, and you discover that these nationalist parties were very different except in pursuing thier own national interest as Wilson called "self-determination" or Putn, today, "multi-polarity".
Goldberg's problem is as others, expecting that a free people act like we do when in fact, many of them already are! After Schleicher andBrunig, it was Hitler or the KPD, as von Papan saw it. Say what you want about him, but controlled campaign donations whichis just what Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell do.
A salient fctor about Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Cordraneau was that they were all politcal outsiders who "drained the swamp" as Donald Trump once proposed.
This is the Heroic Archtype : Napoleon : theend of democracy as even our FOunders understood might happen.
As Napoleon once said, "Half the people are bleow average."
To be fair to that ghastly little Corsican, I'm not sure that he actually said that.
Anyway... certainly Goldberg can be criticised for not going into all the details as to why these parties proved so popular ("German civil war? What German civil war?"), but I can forgive him given the length of his book, his target audience, and the goal of his book. But I do think he's right in identifying a powerful common thread between these various movements - ie the totalitarian one. Ron Unz has also done sterling work in showing how FDR had undesirable voices in the media silenced BTW.
Now, having a revolutionary party engage in swamp-draining is somewhat to be expected, simply because when you sweep out all the old guard to replace them with your people... I mean it's only a matter of time until you get a new swamp, but the old one at least is gone, and the new one will probably start off a lot shallower. But it will grow, and, due to the intensely politicised nature of the new regime (think "theoretically disinterested civil service" vs "party members only civil service"), that swamp will soon be very deep indeed.
If Napoleon didn't say that, Goldberg might as well have, given his target audience and the goal of conflating today's liberals with yester year's "fascists" which is just another cheap shot ad hominem : bad people are fasicsts, which misses the all but salient point of eternal jewish persecution.
"Totalitarian" is just another bad word for "autocracy".
Whether you'd rather be eaten by a fine lion or knawed by rats depends on the lion, rats and circumstances. Napoleon did well with both until the lions caught on to his tricks with the rats.
“You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
The political spectrum runs between autocracy and democracy, with reality in the middle.
The only thing sacred about any of it is not making too many mistakes.
If you can do that by flipping a coin, then God Save the Coin!
In the farier days of civilization, we censored quite a bit. George Carlin's "7 Dirty Words" was a break thru. He was funny, clever. But the people who followed were dead serious and stupid. Martin King was quotable but the riots he instigated have become the "free speech" of George Floyd. The really stupid people were the ones who hitched their political careers to it, self serving as it was.
Asked, "How did we get here", would be letting the wrong people have a voice. BIll Ayers should have been hung for treason, not become a curriculum, writer. But it wasn't unconsitutional at all. The Supreme Court said so! If no one obeyed the constituion, then what good is it?
It's time for another upheaval but we have no leaders as we did in 1776. The Founders were the Colonial legislators, planters, wealthy, had fought with the British 1754-1763, and had their own militias ready to fight again.
We have none of that, at least, not yet.
"Seen politically, systems follow one another, each consuming the previous one. They live on ever-bequeathed and ever-disappointed hope, which never entirely fades. Its spark is all that survives, as it eats its way along the blasting fuse. For this spark, history is merely an occasion, never a goal." ~ Ernst Junger
I was initially enamored with "Liberal Fascism" until I looked up the footnotes and realized how much Goldberg took out of context.
Truth is, many conservative Europeans (Ernst Junger, Julius Evola) did see the PNF and NSDAP as "liberal" in opposing the old feudal class system and opening up high positions to commoners. However, Junger and Evola (who wrote for a large readership) didn't see it as a good thing but 'Americanization" and mob rule which is paradoxically what American and British critics also complain about.
Alexander Dugin is probably closer to the truth in that these popular movements attempted to replace power mythos of divine right rule and clergy with race and nation as the last alternative to self-cetnered hedonistic individualism of liberalsim today., whatever else Ayn Rand may have thought about it.
As before, it was new and revolutionary, but it was also revampng traditoin, not trying to eradicate it, as probably a European might undersatnd rather than an American of the day which is why it's so easy for Goldberg to conflate Communists, Socialists and Nationalists of that time.
Significantly, FDR's New Deal put Big Business incontrol while European "Corporatism" put gov't in charge of Big Business which why American plutocrats howled about "freedom" they'd long since deprived the average American of since Reconstruction.
As to how unconsitutional the New Deal was, I'mnot sure anymore. The Reconstruction Amendments left teh Feds with unprecedented power of which even the Yankees become apprehensive by 1876. There isn'tmuch to which the "equal protection " clause of the 14th can't be applied, including "gay marriage". Giving the Feds jurisdiction over race and sex doesn't leave much out. Supreme Court decisions of the 1880s-1900 tried to relegate the Reconstruction Amendment to only the Federal gov't but Prohibition and Civil Rights turned it around again.
It was also normal from earliest days of railroads to form a joint stock company and bridbe state senators with stock for right of way and later, U.S. Senators for land grants in the New Territories to fund construction. Land Grant colleges was a similar scheme. The corruption Goldberg attributes to the New Deal was nothing new whereas the Grand Fascist Council was. German cartels were old as Frederick the Great and effeccient gov't control long established by teh time of the NSDAP.
What was struck down as unconstituional ws FDRs Natina lRecovery Act which was something of a Grand Fascist Council.
> Careful about "Totalitariansim". These movements arose during the Disillusion after WW1 among winners, losers and neutrals alike in various forms largely because none of the kings and queens came through with wartime promises despite the long and bloody deadlock.
Partially. I'd say the main reason is the logic of industrialization itself. The logic of totalitarianism is the logic of the whole world conceived as one giant factory floor.
WW1 imposed the first "total" mobilization of the belligerants' civilian economies under their agencies created just for that purpose. (These things have only gotten more sophisticated and intrusive as the difference between peace and war becomes ever more ambiguous.)
But they also emanated from late 19th Century "boom and bust" cycles that clearly were the result of unrestricted capitalism and the merger of smaller organizations that fit in laissez faire becoming international behemoths that clearly didn't.
The nature of gov't-corporate relations was chagned still more by the need for new, mass produced, thechnically complex weapons required of all to fight the war and every war since.
The citizen solider drove a tank, not horses into batle. But when we went h ome, he'd drive a tractor, not oxen he bred himself. Idyllic village life had been replaced by urban residentialareas whichhad become slums. The Total Government rebuild them and imposed safety and health regulations upon all, the 8 hour day, ect. which protected labor from price competition. But it also took profits and other corporate interests seriously, undersanding that a gov't would stand only as long as it could provide both prosperity and mass content. IT was somewhat feudal, in having a class sytem in which each had a role that gov't (king" managed for his own benefit coinciding with the interests of all. That interwar Totalitariansim focussed upon nation and race was a hold over from the 19th Century that transcended teh Disillusion of WW1 in holding everyone together in leiu of religion which had long been in decline although Total Gov'ts were far more accomodating in terms of national tradition than Communists.
Today, I'd say it's not a matter of whether or not economies will be mangaed, but by who and for what purpose? More importatant, perhaps, is at what level? National? State? County?
Global IMO is right out, currently proving itself a disasterous residue of the world wars.
It stems from Corinthians 1, about the parts of tehbody andchruch belonging to one being.
Typically, each industry is organized into a "corporation" of companies participating in it and they collectively lobby the gov't for legislation affecting all.
This is actually what Rockefellor and Carnegie did with their trusts and mergers. It's also what medeival craft guilds did for allcarftsmen in a field.
These are the experts but gov't also has its experts, "authorites" as subject matter, who manage the corporations so agrarian workers can afford steelplows and steel workers can afford bread and comapnies make profits. It's not communist : property rights are sacrosanct. But it prohibits hoprizontal or vertical exploitation. Successfulmangement makes a strong ecnomy and a strong military to defend it.
This isn't theonly "totalitarian" scheme but it was the most prevalent nmixed ecnomies. Russia has a mineral-staple export economy today which requires partnering with an indutrail country like China (it couldhave been us) adn that is what drives Russian policy and its internal structure, very different from ours and Europe, which is mostly banks and financiers, at this point : no wonder they wnat to shut down farmers! All very general here, of course, but that is sort of the idea.
Total Governemnt isn't what it's opponents made it out to be anymore than capitalism or communism are what their adherents claim.
Michael Rechtenwald (Google Archepeligo) and John Medaille (from Rerum Novarum) pose an emerging view, that political power and wealth tend towards monopoly, capitalism from one direction and communism from the other.
The Elightenemnet Idea of natural equilibrium thru competition or "checks and balances" is not stable but precariously exists only as a dynamic equilibtrium, just like its physics coutnerpart. Change one parameter in the gas law, and PV=nRT moves somewhere else on the energy terrain. Politics has alotmore paramerters and so does economy which change with time and technology.
The family petite bourgeosie workhouses of Sith and Ricardo's day have been replaced by huge corporations and there is no going back. Ma and Pa can't afford it!
Total goiv't intrudes only where it has to in order to. The worker requires a living wage if the proprietors wants to sell anything, is the idea. Depressions occur when the rich have too money mony in investments, luxury goods, ect. Keynes works becuse it retrunsmoney togeneral circulation but must be paid back, which we don't don't and why we're in trouble. Money, commodities, labor and land obey differnt laws of supply and demand. In fact, little of this contradicts Smnith or Ricardo. It's teh stupid capitalist-communist argument that makes it seem so, greed and envy being the vested interests.
Totalitarian governments exist for their people and are organized according to each nation or people. Germnay's cartel system worked well in its "Camarilla". Spainand Italy couldn'tmake it wor and retrune to a typically libeal system of the day. Russia has made the Camarilla work under Catherine and Communists, now Putin. So has China. Our corporae-gov't "revolving door" has been teh case since 1776-the Founders were also the richmen of the colonies. In its day, it was fine. But by 1860 it generated the Civil War and has only gotten worse with Reconstruction and indusrializationof the Progressive Era.
Well, we're already in the post-industrial era. What the logical conclusion of the information age is I'm not sure, although Balaji S. Srinivasan has some interesting ideas. https://thenetworkstate.com/
Regarding the fuddy-duddy factor, it's more than an issue of neuro plasticity; it's a matter of already having an adequate skill with the previous technology. Many changes are not improvements; they are just fashion. And even when they are improvements, the marginal gain of using the new tech is small if you have mastered the old.
For example, the QWERTY keyboard is a horrible layout, but I have mastered it. If someone were to come out with a better layout, it would make sense for a young person to use the new layout, but it would also make sense for me to stick to QWERTY as I took a year long class mastering it in high school, and have used it ever sense.
I am writing this reply on a Windows 7 machine. Having to relearn how to use an operating system is a waste of time. The marginal improvements in Windows X (a weak implementation of virtual screens is the only one I know of) do not justify the bother of learning where all the controls moved to.
Likewise, I actually read the paper manuals for Microsoft Word back in 95. Microsoft has since shitcanned that knowledge by hiding templates and moving the controls all over the place. So I now use LibreOffice as its interface is more stable.
And I may yet take the plunge and go all Linux, as I have been using it part of the time since I installed it on a first generation Pentium using 70 floppy disks. While the location of the X11 files seems to change with every release, I can generally make Linux do what UNIX did in the 80s.
I will learn a new tool when I can *add* it to my toolset.
Very true. My brother is something of a tech savant and can master new technology even though he's well into his 50s. But for the most part he doesn't bother to do so, for the reasons you've outlined.
Agreed: a tutor/mentor/aprenticeship model is the way to go. Note that tutors can change depending on what the student is "into" over the years.
Another well-documented aspect is that totalitarians and revolutionaries have always tried to separate the youth from the elders. Sometimes literally (taking children from their families, enlist youth in ideological orgs where they are set straight etc.) but first and foremost spiritually/mentally. The youth lacks the wisdom and life experience to see through radical ideas and radical change, plus the oldsters might have memories of a better, pre-revolutionary time, so the youth must be convinced that the oldsters are stupid and shouldn't be listened to.
This is btw why I often have a problem with mindless boomer bashing. Sure, many deserve it, but the danger is always that too much youthful enthousiasm leads to ideas gaining the upper hand that are disconnected from real life wisdom and good old boring common sense.
Yes! That "generation" thing was largley poetic decvice referring to generations of the zietgiest more than real people.
After all, Obama is no "boomer" and neither is Macron, Zelensky nor Dylan Mulvaney while "Kid Rock" , who shot up cans of Bud Lite, is.
IIRC, Social Security started the idea of "Baby Boomers" depleting SS funds when they came of age, as though it was all their fault, never mind these people had paid into SS as required by law (by employers, before they ever got their paychecks) and it was the Feds who looted it via IOUs with no pay back deadlines.
I believe Alvin Toffler wrote on these things in his book Future Shock. But my memory is fuzzy on this as I read it around 40 years ago. This subject was definitely active when I was a child and the early boomers were revolting.
Two other drivers besides rapidly changing technology:
1. Advertisers target the youth heavily as that's when brand loyalty is formed. "You're the Pepsi Generation!"
1b. As a side effect, the free entertainment industry aimed ever more programming at teenage/young adult audiences in order to please advertisers.
2. Political factions target youth for the same reasons advertisers. And totalitarian ideologues go that extra mile to teach the young to dishonor their parents or worse. Both the Nazis and the Commies loved their youth organizations.
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I really like your suggestions for internships and getting children/teens to see their parents in work mode.
I'd like to see more engineering vs. pure science taught in the public schools. The young need to appreciate how many layers of technology are required to support our civilization. Perhaps as a substitute for scouting, with its camping trips, how about a Young Survivalist Club? Instead of pretending to be an army scout, members pretend that they are rebuilding civilization from scratch.
Yes, Toffler developed the concept of future shock. I don't recall that he specifically highlighted the impact that future shock would have on inter-generational relations and wisdom transfer, though. To be fair, I only read one of his books and it was 30 years ago... We're in the future he warned of.
As a retired educator who spent 40 years in the classroom, my experience has taught me that this phenomenon has been not only happening due to our technological advancements, but also because I witnessed each new generation of parents become less involved in their child's education until an unusual circumstance, like the pandemic we just went through, provided them with a window into the kind of content their child was learning. Those parents who were shocked at discovering this through their child's distance learning experience realized action needed to be taken in correcting the situation if what the discovered didn't align with their values. Then too, education in the public sector has gradually been shifting to a focus on being a surrogate parent, mostly for the lower income families, or single parent families, who had little time to actually parent their child(ren). I also personally believe that the rise in crime - gang activities, looting of stores, vehicle thefts, etc. - in urban centers of our country has been a result of the phenomenon being described in this latest post. There clearly is less respect for their elders by a growing number of youth today.
Jul 12, 2023·edited Jul 12, 2023Liked by Tree of Woe
Nice post. I think you're right that competence or lack thereof in the face of rapidly changing technologies is part of the answer, but there are other parts: (1) the egalitarian ratchet effect (https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why ) requires ever-increasing levels of wokeness, and younger generations with more pliable minds are much more likely to imbibe the latest levels required, leaving older generations "behind the times"; (2) youthfulness is immaturity and ignorance, and globohomo wants to keep its population in this state as long as possible, ideally past childbearing years so TFR among whites continues to collapse; and (3) advancing levels of technology requires much fewer and fewer people to keep society functioning (well, in theory), so we have an ever-increasing more or less paper-shuffling, idle, over-educated class that doesn't have an impact on the real world, which furthers this sense of immaturity.
I agree with you that people working with their hands, avoiding indoctrination through formal education, and getting an apprenticeship is the best way toward maturity and past the idealization of youth...
The concept of the egalitarian ratchet (I've also seen it called a 'holiness spiral') is so key to understanding what's going on. I agree with you on all 3 points.
Really interesting and insightful analysis! Especially the phenomenon you observed of older adult leaders actually being less competent due to their failure to understand new and important technologies. We can add that to the list of things causing incompetence, such as the "Peter Principle" and DEI mandates, to explain the dysfunction in so many of our institutions. Great post with a lot of good food for thought!
Our civilization is definitely in uncharted territory, and we've got the stupidest, least imaginative, least capable, and least competent cretins at the helm.
How was the Mao Cultural revolution carried out? The youth were taught that the Four Olds were the obstacle to the new utopian society. Old habits, old ideas, old customs, old culture. The youth were turned loose on the old and physically attacked their parents as the problem.
Yeah, that's the point I was trying to make with regard to them knowing how to use the new technology but not knowing how to create the new technology or use the old technology necessary to do so. They're wizards at WhatsApp but ask them to program and they've got nothing.
Jul 12, 2023·edited Jul 12, 2023Liked by Tree of Woe
Regarding the point made about "Elite Incompetence"... perhaps so. But that just makes the Demon summoning all the more inevitable. If one goes through the ATU (I.e. Aarne-Thmopson-Uther) index for Folklore, what classifies as "incompetence", lacking wisdom, etc is the precursor to attempts at summoning those Beings that can "more benevolently take charge of things". The Blacksmith and the Devil" which is ATU-330, is the quintessential tale about said sequence of events.
Relevant: "" In that case, let’s look at ATU 330, “The Smith and the Devil,” which seems to have originated in the Bronze Age about 6,000 years ago. The story is pretty straightforward: A blacksmith makes a pact with the devil (or Death, or a jinn, or another supernatural being), selling his soul in exchange for the power to weld any objects together. The blacksmith then uses his newfound power to weld the devil to a surface, forcing him to renege the soul part of the deal. ""
The last part of the story is incomplete (I would argue). The Demon will return... to collect that payment (with loads of interest of course) which he was owed in the original deal!
Jul 13, 2023·edited Jul 13, 2023Liked by Tree of Woe
I am honoured by the praise (however, I think I am underserving of it).
I started off in Cognitive Science and Philosophy; so the move to Languages and Linguistics was not too difficult. As for my know-how regarding ATU (and related indexes which basically 'behave' no different from meta-analyses of tomes of literature); I reckon someone with a skillset similar to mine can achieve far greater than myself given 3-5 hours of focused (no interruptions!) "Deep Work" study sessions daily, over 5+ years.
Everyday, everyone on the planet gets 24 hours of Time... 7-9 on average is taken by Sleep whilst the rest exist as "Free Experience Points" that they can use to improve whatever it is they wish to. I just happened to use 3-5 of those (properly) day in and day out on these sorts of topics.
Syed Naquib al-Attas wrote about this at length in "Islam and Secularism". This was done some 40+ years ago. In particular, Chapter-4: "Islam: The Concept of Religion and the Foundations of Ethics and Morality" has a segment speaking about the young, the middle-aged and the old:
>>Consequently, they [i.e. the middle aged] look to youth with nostalgia and set high hopes that the youth may yet bring forth the longed for perfect model and exemplar in life for all society to emulate; and this attitude towards youth is the very core of the worship of Youth, which is one of the dominant features of Western Civilization since ancient times. The crisis of identity experienced by the middle-aged is somewhat similar to that experienced by the youth, with the exception that, for the middle-aged, the freedom to choose their destiny is increasingly limited, for time relentlessly moves on like a Greek tragedy to the very end. The old, in such a society, are mere creatures forgotten by society, because their very existence reminds the youth and the middle-aged of what they would be like which they want to forget. The old remind them of dissolution and death; the old have lost physical power and vitality; they have lost success; they have lost memory and their use and function in society; they have lost friend and family -- they have lost ***the future***. When a society bases its philosophy of life upon secular foundations and espouses materialistic values to live by, it inevitably follows that the meaning and value and quality of life of the individual citizen therein is interpreted and measured in terms of his position as a citizen; his occupation and use and working and earning power in relation to the state. When in old age, all this is gone, so likewise his identity -- which is in fact moulded by the secular role he plays -- is lost. The three generations that in such wise comprises Western society are forever engaged in search for identity and meaning of life; are forever moving in the vicious circle of unattainment; each generation dissatisfied with its own self-evolved values of life; each generation finding itself a misfit. And this condition, we maintain, is what we mean by injustice (i.e. "zulm").<<
Correct. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk basically put it best: "Nobody has got enough time for an entire generation anymore!". In the 20th century the cycles were 20-30 years in length; and now it is rare to find people who think in terms of even 2-3 year cycles let alone 5-10. This scenario is the complete opposite of what (as you correctly note) was the feeling for most of Human History: That the elders; who have been around for decades on end... have achieved greater detachment, wisdom, etc.
Yes, the long view was one thing that hereditary monarchy provided via the reign of a king and his dynasty for which republican gov't can only provide a dictator which came to an end during the Cold War, maybe by 1945.
Democracies are even worse for the long view.
The idea of "checks and balances" providing stability ignores the floods, forest fires and mudlsides of "natural law" that are part of that "equilibrium,".
Even in science, a constant flux exists at the interface between material phases that may reach equilibrium under certain conditions but are dynamic.
Equilibrium is precarious. Someone always wins.
Change one parameter of the gas law and the equlibrium moves.
Another point of why the young (seemingly) don’t need the wisdom of the old is Google. For example, instead of asking one’s parents for advice on raising a child, many young parents today just Google their various concerns (thinking they’ll get the answers they need)
Excellently done. I’m glad you decided to tackle this bizarre phenomenon of the “idealization of youth”—it is, of course, one of the most glaring indicators of the inversion of all natural and healthy values in our civilization. Or—perhaps better—“anti-civilization.”
Of course, that’s why traditional civilizations had their “senatus” or “gerousia,” the council of elders—only those loaded with wisdom and experience had any business guiding a society; youth can be courageous, passionate, self-confident, but it can also be impetuous, foolish, and can lead a society to ruin. We see this in our own societies: misgoverned by old fools who claim the mantle of wisdom and the privileges of old age, while employing grotesque plastic surgery techniques and anti-geriatrics in a vain attempt to restore some semblance of youth to their decaying flesh.
Absolutely. Dwelling on this phenomenon has definitely helped me understand the importance of Tradition -- as well as why our traditional ancestors spent so much time thinking about how to teach *virtue* to youth. Reading Plutarch is an eye-opener in that regard.
Is.3.1For behold the sovereign Lord of hosts shall take away from Jerusalem, and from Juda the valiant and the strong, the whole strength of bread, and the whole strength of water.
2The strong man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet and the cunning man, and the ancient.
3The captain over fifty, and the honourable in countenance, and the counsellor, and the architect, and the skilful in eloquent speech.
4*And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.*
Wow. That's an end times prophecy I hadn't seen before.
Wow.
This.
For the win!
A related effect is that adults aren't even always wiser, or rather the world changes so fast that their wisdom is no longer applicable. A well-known example is the old wisdom "go to college to get a good job", which used to be good advise but no longer is.
Great point!
"To the extent that fast-changing technology is built on older technology, but can be used without understanding of the older technology, then youth will appear to be competent but will not be able to sustain the civilization they have inherited."
In addition, the number of Gen Z who will prefer to ask on Discord / WhatsApp / etc "what is X?" (where X is something you can easily find out online) rather than just googling it is absurd.
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On the subject of rapid technological change, I do wonder if this will is going to impact people, either by delaying the end of neuroplasticity in millennials & zoomers, or in making them just more culturally open to changing trends.
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Besides rapid technological changes, I think there are a few other trends that relate to the idealisation of youth:
> The boomers & their "[my age] is the new [decades younger]" attitude.
> Totalitarianism, which very often idolised the youth who overthrows the old regime etc etc. The young are full of fire and energy - and generally lacking in wisdom - and in the glorious new Year Zero regime that's just what you want for your stormtroopers, literal or metaphorical. Wise or small-c conservative people (which people tend to get with age) do not make good vanguards of the Party.
> The sustained campaign to reduce the minimum age at which children can engage in or consent to things normally only restricted to adults.
Good points, Teleros. The implications for neuroplasticity are quite interesting. But since neuroplasticity is a neotenous trait, and neotenous traits are always associated with domestication, that would suggest the future is a highly domesticated perpetual man-child. You can't run the world with men like that.
*logs onto Twitter*
Oh. Oh, shit.
Careful about "Totalitariansim". These movements arose during the Disillusion after WW1 among winners, losers and neutrals alike in various forms largely because none of the kings and queens came through with wartime promises despite the long and bloody deadlock.
American Progressives correctly understood the need for a bigger gov't to regulate teh enormous merger corporation of the era designed to administier prices vs teh destructive, destabilizing competition that Adam Smith wrapped his entire philosophy around.
Communists took it to the point of abolishign property rights while "Totalitarians" were more along teh American Progressive line with German Cartels and Frederick's long standing "Camarilla" in the lead.
From another view, "Totalitarians" wished to modernize Tradition, not overthrow it with a "year Zero" remake which the Communist intent and why Nationalist opposed Communists of that time.
Bioth were revolutionary, as oposed to monarchy and the feudal class ystem. Some even saw them a "liberal" in that sense. But Communists eminated from the Jacobins via Marx while "Totalitarinas" were still heirarchical and Platonic. "Authoritarian" meant subject matter authorites running things while Communists opted for a proletarit committee process of amateurs. We, IMO, opt for a personality contest via "elections".
As for indoctrinating youth, that goes back forever.
"Careful about "Totalitariansim"."
It's useful shorthand though for the assorted movements that arose, mostly after WW1. Besides, "everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state" does sum up the fascist, nazi & communist attitudes pretty well. Anyway, time to go off-topic :D ...
"American Progressives correctly understood the need for a bigger gov't to regulate teh enormous merger corporation of the era designed to administier prices vs teh destructive, destabilizing competition that Adam Smith wrapped his entire philosophy around."
On the contrary - Jonah Goldberg in "Liberal Fascism" (about the one good thing he wrote :P ) notes how it was big business that tended to write their own regulations. Meanwhile, Standard Oil was steadily losing market share well before it was broken up. Sure, you need *strong and effective* government to prevent abuses, but that's not the same as *bigger*.
"From another view, "Totalitarians" wished to modernize Tradition, not overthrow it with a "year Zero" remake which the Communist intent and why Nationalist opposed Communists of that time."
I don't think that the totalitarians of the era were particularly enamoured of tradition at all. It was all about shiny new stuff, from TV & radio to aeroplanes & such. Mussolini was, to be sure, more pragmatic than most, but it's not like Hitler was interested in restoring the German monarchy, and FDR's attitude to the legality of the New Deal was... not terribly respectful of the Constitution or its principles. Nationalists opposed communists generally because communism still sold itself as an *international* movement.
I am delighted that someone else agrees with me that Liberal Fascism was a good book and also the only good book by Jonah Goldberg!
I was initially impressed but look into the footnotes and you'll see how far Goldberg takes his breathless quotes out of context.
Goldberg still seems to think of a "boot smashing a human face" withotu ever wondering why any movement like that would be so popular. The answer is different in every country and h ere, Goldberg gives himself away, by lumpng them all together.
Stanley Payne is a better revisionsit source, taking the time for each coutnry, its gripes and circumstance, and you discover that these nationalist parties were very different except in pursuing thier own national interest as Wilson called "self-determination" or Putn, today, "multi-polarity".
Goldberg's problem is as others, expecting that a free people act like we do when in fact, many of them already are! After Schleicher andBrunig, it was Hitler or the KPD, as von Papan saw it. Say what you want about him, but controlled campaign donations whichis just what Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell do.
A salient fctor about Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Cordraneau was that they were all politcal outsiders who "drained the swamp" as Donald Trump once proposed.
This is the Heroic Archtype : Napoleon : theend of democracy as even our FOunders understood might happen.
As Napoleon once said, "Half the people are bleow average."
To be fair to that ghastly little Corsican, I'm not sure that he actually said that.
Anyway... certainly Goldberg can be criticised for not going into all the details as to why these parties proved so popular ("German civil war? What German civil war?"), but I can forgive him given the length of his book, his target audience, and the goal of his book. But I do think he's right in identifying a powerful common thread between these various movements - ie the totalitarian one. Ron Unz has also done sterling work in showing how FDR had undesirable voices in the media silenced BTW.
Now, having a revolutionary party engage in swamp-draining is somewhat to be expected, simply because when you sweep out all the old guard to replace them with your people... I mean it's only a matter of time until you get a new swamp, but the old one at least is gone, and the new one will probably start off a lot shallower. But it will grow, and, due to the intensely politicised nature of the new regime (think "theoretically disinterested civil service" vs "party members only civil service"), that swamp will soon be very deep indeed.
If Napoleon didn't say that, Goldberg might as well have, given his target audience and the goal of conflating today's liberals with yester year's "fascists" which is just another cheap shot ad hominem : bad people are fasicsts, which misses the all but salient point of eternal jewish persecution.
"Totalitarian" is just another bad word for "autocracy".
Whether you'd rather be eaten by a fine lion or knawed by rats depends on the lion, rats and circumstances. Napoleon did well with both until the lions caught on to his tricks with the rats.
“You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
The political spectrum runs between autocracy and democracy, with reality in the middle.
The only thing sacred about any of it is not making too many mistakes.
If you can do that by flipping a coin, then God Save the Coin!
In the farier days of civilization, we censored quite a bit. George Carlin's "7 Dirty Words" was a break thru. He was funny, clever. But the people who followed were dead serious and stupid. Martin King was quotable but the riots he instigated have become the "free speech" of George Floyd. The really stupid people were the ones who hitched their political careers to it, self serving as it was.
Asked, "How did we get here", would be letting the wrong people have a voice. BIll Ayers should have been hung for treason, not become a curriculum, writer. But it wasn't unconsitutional at all. The Supreme Court said so! If no one obeyed the constituion, then what good is it?
It's time for another upheaval but we have no leaders as we did in 1776. The Founders were the Colonial legislators, planters, wealthy, had fought with the British 1754-1763, and had their own militias ready to fight again.
We have none of that, at least, not yet.
"Seen politically, systems follow one another, each consuming the previous one. They live on ever-bequeathed and ever-disappointed hope, which never entirely fades. Its spark is all that survives, as it eats its way along the blasting fuse. For this spark, history is merely an occasion, never a goal." ~ Ernst Junger
I was initially enamored with "Liberal Fascism" until I looked up the footnotes and realized how much Goldberg took out of context.
Truth is, many conservative Europeans (Ernst Junger, Julius Evola) did see the PNF and NSDAP as "liberal" in opposing the old feudal class system and opening up high positions to commoners. However, Junger and Evola (who wrote for a large readership) didn't see it as a good thing but 'Americanization" and mob rule which is paradoxically what American and British critics also complain about.
Alexander Dugin is probably closer to the truth in that these popular movements attempted to replace power mythos of divine right rule and clergy with race and nation as the last alternative to self-cetnered hedonistic individualism of liberalsim today., whatever else Ayn Rand may have thought about it.
As before, it was new and revolutionary, but it was also revampng traditoin, not trying to eradicate it, as probably a European might undersatnd rather than an American of the day which is why it's so easy for Goldberg to conflate Communists, Socialists and Nationalists of that time.
Significantly, FDR's New Deal put Big Business incontrol while European "Corporatism" put gov't in charge of Big Business which why American plutocrats howled about "freedom" they'd long since deprived the average American of since Reconstruction.
As to how unconsitutional the New Deal was, I'mnot sure anymore. The Reconstruction Amendments left teh Feds with unprecedented power of which even the Yankees become apprehensive by 1876. There isn'tmuch to which the "equal protection " clause of the 14th can't be applied, including "gay marriage". Giving the Feds jurisdiction over race and sex doesn't leave much out. Supreme Court decisions of the 1880s-1900 tried to relegate the Reconstruction Amendment to only the Federal gov't but Prohibition and Civil Rights turned it around again.
It was also normal from earliest days of railroads to form a joint stock company and bridbe state senators with stock for right of way and later, U.S. Senators for land grants in the New Territories to fund construction. Land Grant colleges was a similar scheme. The corruption Goldberg attributes to the New Deal was nothing new whereas the Grand Fascist Council was. German cartels were old as Frederick the Great and effeccient gov't control long established by teh time of the NSDAP.
What was struck down as unconstituional ws FDRs Natina lRecovery Act which was something of a Grand Fascist Council.
> Careful about "Totalitariansim". These movements arose during the Disillusion after WW1 among winners, losers and neutrals alike in various forms largely because none of the kings and queens came through with wartime promises despite the long and bloody deadlock.
Partially. I'd say the main reason is the logic of industrialization itself. The logic of totalitarianism is the logic of the whole world conceived as one giant factory floor.
Yeah, it kind of was aka "managed economy".
WW1 imposed the first "total" mobilization of the belligerants' civilian economies under their agencies created just for that purpose. (These things have only gotten more sophisticated and intrusive as the difference between peace and war becomes ever more ambiguous.)
But they also emanated from late 19th Century "boom and bust" cycles that clearly were the result of unrestricted capitalism and the merger of smaller organizations that fit in laissez faire becoming international behemoths that clearly didn't.
The nature of gov't-corporate relations was chagned still more by the need for new, mass produced, thechnically complex weapons required of all to fight the war and every war since.
The citizen solider drove a tank, not horses into batle. But when we went h ome, he'd drive a tractor, not oxen he bred himself. Idyllic village life had been replaced by urban residentialareas whichhad become slums. The Total Government rebuild them and imposed safety and health regulations upon all, the 8 hour day, ect. which protected labor from price competition. But it also took profits and other corporate interests seriously, undersanding that a gov't would stand only as long as it could provide both prosperity and mass content. IT was somewhat feudal, in having a class sytem in which each had a role that gov't (king" managed for his own benefit coinciding with the interests of all. That interwar Totalitariansim focussed upon nation and race was a hold over from the 19th Century that transcended teh Disillusion of WW1 in holding everyone together in leiu of religion which had long been in decline although Total Gov'ts were far more accomodating in terms of national tradition than Communists.
Today, I'd say it's not a matter of whether or not economies will be mangaed, but by who and for what purpose? More importatant, perhaps, is at what level? National? State? County?
Global IMO is right out, currently proving itself a disasterous residue of the world wars.
Right. If the choice is global capitalism vs national capitalism, I'm choosing the latter.
I don't care about the money anymore.
I want My People.
So does that suggest that totalitarianism is a logical outcome of industrial capitalism? If so that seems... bad.
On the other hand, a "national capitalism" that at least prioritized the interests of our people would be preferable to what we currently have.
"National capitalism" is actually "corporatism".
It stems from Corinthians 1, about the parts of tehbody andchruch belonging to one being.
Typically, each industry is organized into a "corporation" of companies participating in it and they collectively lobby the gov't for legislation affecting all.
This is actually what Rockefellor and Carnegie did with their trusts and mergers. It's also what medeival craft guilds did for allcarftsmen in a field.
These are the experts but gov't also has its experts, "authorites" as subject matter, who manage the corporations so agrarian workers can afford steelplows and steel workers can afford bread and comapnies make profits. It's not communist : property rights are sacrosanct. But it prohibits hoprizontal or vertical exploitation. Successfulmangement makes a strong ecnomy and a strong military to defend it.
This isn't theonly "totalitarian" scheme but it was the most prevalent nmixed ecnomies. Russia has a mineral-staple export economy today which requires partnering with an indutrail country like China (it couldhave been us) adn that is what drives Russian policy and its internal structure, very different from ours and Europe, which is mostly banks and financiers, at this point : no wonder they wnat to shut down farmers! All very general here, of course, but that is sort of the idea.
Total Governemnt isn't what it's opponents made it out to be anymore than capitalism or communism are what their adherents claim.
Michael Rechtenwald (Google Archepeligo) and John Medaille (from Rerum Novarum) pose an emerging view, that political power and wealth tend towards monopoly, capitalism from one direction and communism from the other.
The Elightenemnet Idea of natural equilibrium thru competition or "checks and balances" is not stable but precariously exists only as a dynamic equilibtrium, just like its physics coutnerpart. Change one parameter in the gas law, and PV=nRT moves somewhere else on the energy terrain. Politics has alotmore paramerters and so does economy which change with time and technology.
The family petite bourgeosie workhouses of Sith and Ricardo's day have been replaced by huge corporations and there is no going back. Ma and Pa can't afford it!
Total goiv't intrudes only where it has to in order to. The worker requires a living wage if the proprietors wants to sell anything, is the idea. Depressions occur when the rich have too money mony in investments, luxury goods, ect. Keynes works becuse it retrunsmoney togeneral circulation but must be paid back, which we don't don't and why we're in trouble. Money, commodities, labor and land obey differnt laws of supply and demand. In fact, little of this contradicts Smnith or Ricardo. It's teh stupid capitalist-communist argument that makes it seem so, greed and envy being the vested interests.
Totalitarian governments exist for their people and are organized according to each nation or people. Germnay's cartel system worked well in its "Camarilla". Spainand Italy couldn'tmake it wor and retrune to a typically libeal system of the day. Russia has made the Camarilla work under Catherine and Communists, now Putin. So has China. Our corporae-gov't "revolving door" has been teh case since 1776-the Founders were also the richmen of the colonies. In its day, it was fine. But by 1860 it generated the Civil War and has only gotten worse with Reconstruction and indusrializationof the Progressive Era.
Well, we're already in the post-industrial era. What the logical conclusion of the information age is I'm not sure, although Balaji S. Srinivasan has some interesting ideas. https://thenetworkstate.com/
Regarding the fuddy-duddy factor, it's more than an issue of neuro plasticity; it's a matter of already having an adequate skill with the previous technology. Many changes are not improvements; they are just fashion. And even when they are improvements, the marginal gain of using the new tech is small if you have mastered the old.
For example, the QWERTY keyboard is a horrible layout, but I have mastered it. If someone were to come out with a better layout, it would make sense for a young person to use the new layout, but it would also make sense for me to stick to QWERTY as I took a year long class mastering it in high school, and have used it ever sense.
I am writing this reply on a Windows 7 machine. Having to relearn how to use an operating system is a waste of time. The marginal improvements in Windows X (a weak implementation of virtual screens is the only one I know of) do not justify the bother of learning where all the controls moved to.
Likewise, I actually read the paper manuals for Microsoft Word back in 95. Microsoft has since shitcanned that knowledge by hiding templates and moving the controls all over the place. So I now use LibreOffice as its interface is more stable.
And I may yet take the plunge and go all Linux, as I have been using it part of the time since I installed it on a first generation Pentium using 70 floppy disks. While the location of the X11 files seems to change with every release, I can generally make Linux do what UNIX did in the 80s.
I will learn a new tool when I can *add* it to my toolset.
Very true. My brother is something of a tech savant and can master new technology even though he's well into his 50s. But for the most part he doesn't bother to do so, for the reasons you've outlined.
Agreed: a tutor/mentor/aprenticeship model is the way to go. Note that tutors can change depending on what the student is "into" over the years.
Another well-documented aspect is that totalitarians and revolutionaries have always tried to separate the youth from the elders. Sometimes literally (taking children from their families, enlist youth in ideological orgs where they are set straight etc.) but first and foremost spiritually/mentally. The youth lacks the wisdom and life experience to see through radical ideas and radical change, plus the oldsters might have memories of a better, pre-revolutionary time, so the youth must be convinced that the oldsters are stupid and shouldn't be listened to.
This is btw why I often have a problem with mindless boomer bashing. Sure, many deserve it, but the danger is always that too much youthful enthousiasm leads to ideas gaining the upper hand that are disconnected from real life wisdom and good old boring common sense.
Yes, as much as [some of] the boomers deserve to be bashed, I don't partake of generalized boomer bashing. I try to judge individuals as individuals.
Fairly soon Gen X will be all that's left of Americans who remember what America was like, and I hope we aren't ridiculed the way the Boomers are.
Yes! That "generation" thing was largley poetic decvice referring to generations of the zietgiest more than real people.
After all, Obama is no "boomer" and neither is Macron, Zelensky nor Dylan Mulvaney while "Kid Rock" , who shot up cans of Bud Lite, is.
IIRC, Social Security started the idea of "Baby Boomers" depleting SS funds when they came of age, as though it was all their fault, never mind these people had paid into SS as required by law (by employers, before they ever got their paychecks) and it was the Feds who looted it via IOUs with no pay back deadlines.
"Boomer Bashers" are essentially duped.
> it was the Feds who looted it via IOUs with no pay back deadlines.
And Boomers who voted for the politicians that did that.
"The Social Security Act of 1935 is a law enacted by the 74th United States Congress and signed into law by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt."
And the Boomers had decades to fix the problem.
The Boomers ate the apple in teh Garden of Eden, too,,,
I believe Alvin Toffler wrote on these things in his book Future Shock. But my memory is fuzzy on this as I read it around 40 years ago. This subject was definitely active when I was a child and the early boomers were revolting.
Two other drivers besides rapidly changing technology:
1. Advertisers target the youth heavily as that's when brand loyalty is formed. "You're the Pepsi Generation!"
1b. As a side effect, the free entertainment industry aimed ever more programming at teenage/young adult audiences in order to please advertisers.
2. Political factions target youth for the same reasons advertisers. And totalitarian ideologues go that extra mile to teach the young to dishonor their parents or worse. Both the Nazis and the Commies loved their youth organizations.
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I really like your suggestions for internships and getting children/teens to see their parents in work mode.
I'd like to see more engineering vs. pure science taught in the public schools. The young need to appreciate how many layers of technology are required to support our civilization. Perhaps as a substitute for scouting, with its camping trips, how about a Young Survivalist Club? Instead of pretending to be an army scout, members pretend that they are rebuilding civilization from scratch.
Yes, Toffler developed the concept of future shock. I don't recall that he specifically highlighted the impact that future shock would have on inter-generational relations and wisdom transfer, though. To be fair, I only read one of his books and it was 30 years ago... We're in the future he warned of.
As a retired educator who spent 40 years in the classroom, my experience has taught me that this phenomenon has been not only happening due to our technological advancements, but also because I witnessed each new generation of parents become less involved in their child's education until an unusual circumstance, like the pandemic we just went through, provided them with a window into the kind of content their child was learning. Those parents who were shocked at discovering this through their child's distance learning experience realized action needed to be taken in correcting the situation if what the discovered didn't align with their values. Then too, education in the public sector has gradually been shifting to a focus on being a surrogate parent, mostly for the lower income families, or single parent families, who had little time to actually parent their child(ren). I also personally believe that the rise in crime - gang activities, looting of stores, vehicle thefts, etc. - in urban centers of our country has been a result of the phenomenon being described in this latest post. There clearly is less respect for their elders by a growing number of youth today.
With 40 years of experience, how bad would you say the decline has been? It seems quite bad from my vantage point.
Nice post. I think you're right that competence or lack thereof in the face of rapidly changing technologies is part of the answer, but there are other parts: (1) the egalitarian ratchet effect (https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why ) requires ever-increasing levels of wokeness, and younger generations with more pliable minds are much more likely to imbibe the latest levels required, leaving older generations "behind the times"; (2) youthfulness is immaturity and ignorance, and globohomo wants to keep its population in this state as long as possible, ideally past childbearing years so TFR among whites continues to collapse; and (3) advancing levels of technology requires much fewer and fewer people to keep society functioning (well, in theory), so we have an ever-increasing more or less paper-shuffling, idle, over-educated class that doesn't have an impact on the real world, which furthers this sense of immaturity.
I agree with you that people working with their hands, avoiding indoctrination through formal education, and getting an apprenticeship is the best way toward maturity and past the idealization of youth...
The concept of the egalitarian ratchet (I've also seen it called a 'holiness spiral') is so key to understanding what's going on. I agree with you on all 3 points.
Really interesting and insightful analysis! Especially the phenomenon you observed of older adult leaders actually being less competent due to their failure to understand new and important technologies. We can add that to the list of things causing incompetence, such as the "Peter Principle" and DEI mandates, to explain the dysfunction in so many of our institutions. Great post with a lot of good food for thought!
Thanks! They're stacking the deck for full spectrum incompetence. (That would be a good blog post.)
Our civilization is definitely in uncharted territory, and we've got the stupidest, least imaginative, least capable, and least competent cretins at the helm.
How was the Mao Cultural revolution carried out? The youth were taught that the Four Olds were the obstacle to the new utopian society. Old habits, old ideas, old customs, old culture. The youth were turned loose on the old and physically attacked their parents as the problem.
Great point -- and a cautionary tale.
Many Gen Z people have shockingly poor computer skills - touch screen phones and everything being an app have replaced the laptop or desktop.
I once taught a class of highschoolers for a project and they struggled to even log in to the learning platform we were using
Yeah, that's the point I was trying to make with regard to them knowing how to use the new technology but not knowing how to create the new technology or use the old technology necessary to do so. They're wizards at WhatsApp but ask them to program and they've got nothing.
Regarding the point made about "Elite Incompetence"... perhaps so. But that just makes the Demon summoning all the more inevitable. If one goes through the ATU (I.e. Aarne-Thmopson-Uther) index for Folklore, what classifies as "incompetence", lacking wisdom, etc is the precursor to attempts at summoning those Beings that can "more benevolently take charge of things". The Blacksmith and the Devil" which is ATU-330, is the quintessential tale about said sequence of events.
https://www.tor.com/2016/02/22/fairy-tales-older-linguistic-analysis/
Relevant: "" In that case, let’s look at ATU 330, “The Smith and the Devil,” which seems to have originated in the Bronze Age about 6,000 years ago. The story is pretty straightforward: A blacksmith makes a pact with the devil (or Death, or a jinn, or another supernatural being), selling his soul in exchange for the power to weld any objects together. The blacksmith then uses his newfound power to weld the devil to a surface, forcing him to renege the soul part of the deal. ""
The last part of the story is incomplete (I would argue). The Demon will return... to collect that payment (with loads of interest of course) which he was owed in the original deal!
You are exceptionally well-read, sir.
I am honoured by the praise (however, I think I am underserving of it).
I started off in Cognitive Science and Philosophy; so the move to Languages and Linguistics was not too difficult. As for my know-how regarding ATU (and related indexes which basically 'behave' no different from meta-analyses of tomes of literature); I reckon someone with a skillset similar to mine can achieve far greater than myself given 3-5 hours of focused (no interruptions!) "Deep Work" study sessions daily, over 5+ years.
Everyday, everyone on the planet gets 24 hours of Time... 7-9 on average is taken by Sleep whilst the rest exist as "Free Experience Points" that they can use to improve whatever it is they wish to. I just happened to use 3-5 of those (properly) day in and day out on these sorts of topics.
Syed Naquib al-Attas wrote about this at length in "Islam and Secularism". This was done some 40+ years ago. In particular, Chapter-4: "Islam: The Concept of Religion and the Foundations of Ethics and Morality" has a segment speaking about the young, the middle-aged and the old:
>>Consequently, they [i.e. the middle aged] look to youth with nostalgia and set high hopes that the youth may yet bring forth the longed for perfect model and exemplar in life for all society to emulate; and this attitude towards youth is the very core of the worship of Youth, which is one of the dominant features of Western Civilization since ancient times. The crisis of identity experienced by the middle-aged is somewhat similar to that experienced by the youth, with the exception that, for the middle-aged, the freedom to choose their destiny is increasingly limited, for time relentlessly moves on like a Greek tragedy to the very end. The old, in such a society, are mere creatures forgotten by society, because their very existence reminds the youth and the middle-aged of what they would be like which they want to forget. The old remind them of dissolution and death; the old have lost physical power and vitality; they have lost success; they have lost memory and their use and function in society; they have lost friend and family -- they have lost ***the future***. When a society bases its philosophy of life upon secular foundations and espouses materialistic values to live by, it inevitably follows that the meaning and value and quality of life of the individual citizen therein is interpreted and measured in terms of his position as a citizen; his occupation and use and working and earning power in relation to the state. When in old age, all this is gone, so likewise his identity -- which is in fact moulded by the secular role he plays -- is lost. The three generations that in such wise comprises Western society are forever engaged in search for identity and meaning of life; are forever moving in the vicious circle of unattainment; each generation dissatisfied with its own self-evolved values of life; each generation finding itself a misfit. And this condition, we maintain, is what we mean by injustice (i.e. "zulm").<<
The wisdom of old age is detachment, when the passage of seasons are like days of a week ending in the stars.
From here, little is hidden anymore, meaning lost to those who may finally have found theirs.
Youth would do well to begin like this but I doubt the world could tolerate many.
I'd guess that's why a prophecy isn't well understood until it's too late.
Correct. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk basically put it best: "Nobody has got enough time for an entire generation anymore!". In the 20th century the cycles were 20-30 years in length; and now it is rare to find people who think in terms of even 2-3 year cycles let alone 5-10. This scenario is the complete opposite of what (as you correctly note) was the feeling for most of Human History: That the elders; who have been around for decades on end... have achieved greater detachment, wisdom, etc.
Yes, the long view was one thing that hereditary monarchy provided via the reign of a king and his dynasty for which republican gov't can only provide a dictator which came to an end during the Cold War, maybe by 1945.
Democracies are even worse for the long view.
The idea of "checks and balances" providing stability ignores the floods, forest fires and mudlsides of "natural law" that are part of that "equilibrium,".
Even in science, a constant flux exists at the interface between material phases that may reach equilibrium under certain conditions but are dynamic.
Equilibrium is precarious. Someone always wins.
Change one parameter of the gas law and the equlibrium moves.
Politics is even worse for it.
Well put. I have heard related ideas here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko.
Another point of why the young (seemingly) don’t need the wisdom of the old is Google. For example, instead of asking one’s parents for advice on raising a child, many young parents today just Google their various concerns (thinking they’ll get the answers they need)
Good point! Which makes it all the worse that Google has become a propaganda organ for globohomo. You cannot get truth there, just spin.
Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything.
-Moe Szyslak
The modern worldview in one sentence!
Excellently done. I’m glad you decided to tackle this bizarre phenomenon of the “idealization of youth”—it is, of course, one of the most glaring indicators of the inversion of all natural and healthy values in our civilization. Or—perhaps better—“anti-civilization.”
Of course, that’s why traditional civilizations had their “senatus” or “gerousia,” the council of elders—only those loaded with wisdom and experience had any business guiding a society; youth can be courageous, passionate, self-confident, but it can also be impetuous, foolish, and can lead a society to ruin. We see this in our own societies: misgoverned by old fools who claim the mantle of wisdom and the privileges of old age, while employing grotesque plastic surgery techniques and anti-geriatrics in a vain attempt to restore some semblance of youth to their decaying flesh.
Absolutely. Dwelling on this phenomenon has definitely helped me understand the importance of Tradition -- as well as why our traditional ancestors spent so much time thinking about how to teach *virtue* to youth. Reading Plutarch is an eye-opener in that regard.