Boomers: The Evil Generation!

[Mouthwash]

There's really not much point in me defending my position, then, if you've already made up your mind about it.

Even if you demonstrated that a state, classless, communal society came into being somewhere, it's still a long haul to explaining why we should ignore the Soviets, Chinese, and every other country that adopted communism.

 

[Birdjaguar]

(@Birdjaguar)

Generally misraised, politically inept, dominated by authoritarian thinking bordering on the fascistoid, squandering wholesale the social progress GenX has fought for and won.

Nope.
That wasn't hard at all.

"Generally misraised" would fall under the sins of the Greatest Generation if it were true.
The "Authoritarian thinking" that exists within the BB generation flows from the religious right and the wealthy conservatives who got rich in the 80s and 90s. they made a conscious effort to dominate politics and only represent a lesser, more vocal element, of the generation.
"Squandering the social progress..." uh, the only reason that GenX had the opportunity to fight for all that social progress was because BB opened the door to such things being actionable. Gay rights, women's rights, social justice, racial equality only happened because BBs fought for them in the 60s and 70s. The fact that the conservative wing of the generation opposed those changes does not change the facts. By 2000 the moneyed right wing of our nations had taken control of the levers of power in Washington and out of Washington and finally had an opportunity to push against all the social changes that were working their way forward.

Mitch McConnell is not a boomer. Lindsay Graham is. The Koch Brothers are not boomers. Rush Limbaugh is. Roger Ailes is not. Trump is. Harold Simmons was not a boomer,
Sheldon Adelson is not a boomer, Peter Thiel is not a boomer (born 1967), Julian Robertson is not a boomer, Foster Friess is not a boomer. The last 5 guys are the top Republican donors. Do you see the pattern? The divisive conservative movement of the past two decades have been driven by the pre BB very rich. They captured the minds of the aging BB white folks through Fox, Rush et al.

 

[Farm Boy]

Unless I'm mistaken, Metatron is talking about my (barely)generation, not yours.

 

[Lexicus]

Even if you demonstrated that a state, classless, communal society came into being somewhere,

Stateless, classless communal society was the form of society under which all modern humans, Neanderthals, and other hominids existed for a couple of million years before states, classes and private property emerged.

 

[Peuri]

Stateless, classless communal society was the form of society under which all modern humans, Neanderthals, and other hominids existed for a couple of million years before states, classes and private property emerged.

All this doesn't change the fact that we don't live in hunting groups of about 10, going up to about a herd of a 150. We live in societies of millions of people, and that is where things like nationalities and religions were invented to help us cope with the fact that our mental capabilities are limited and help us function in societies that are way too complex for our social brains. This whole conversation about "boomers" is just one example of how our brain needs simple stories for us to understand them. If we had the mental capabilities to hold millions of individual people in it, instead of just a few hundred or so, these sorts of discussions would be unnecessary.

 

[Synobun]

Stateless, classless communal society was the form of society under which all modern humans, Neanderthals, and other hominids existed for a couple of million years before states, classes and private property emerged.

Bring me back to the glory days of fighting to the death with roaming predators as I worry frantically over whether or not my child's broken leg will result in sepsis.

 

[inthesomeday]

I don’t know what it is about this fact that makes people think you’re advocating primitivism.

“Oh yeah gommie? The state is immortal. Name ONE time there wasn’t a state.”

“50,000 years of behavioral normalcy before agriculture, and many contemporary anthropologists say thousands of years after that for a lot of societies—”

“LMAO look at this silly hunter gatherer larper. Yeah have fun without MEDICINE you barista bolshevik”

 

[civvver]

Bring me back to the glory days of fighting to the death with roaming predators as I worry frantically over whether or not my child's broken leg will result in sepsis.

Well there do exist anti vaxers and paleo eaters. The intersection of those groups is probably as close as you can get.

 

[Lexicus]

Bring me back to the glory days of fighting to the death with roaming predators as I worry frantically over whether or not my child's broken leg will result in sepsis.

"What? You sound like you yearn for those days, Frank."
"No, I'm just saying, those were the days"

 

[Peuri]

I don’t know what it is about this fact that makes people think you’re advocating primitivism.

“Oh yeah gommie? The state is immortal. Name ONE time there wasn’t a state.”

“50,000 years of behavioral normalcy before agriculture, and many contemporary anthropologists say thousands of years after that for a lot of societies—”

“LMAO look at this silly hunter gatherer larper. Yeah have fun without MEDICINE you barista bolshevik”

A state is like clothes. As the environment of people changed, they invented ways to cope culturally to the limitations of their biology. A wish to return to a stateless world would require a return to a similiar environment that existed prior to the state.

 

[civvver]

A state is like clothes. As the environment of people changed, they invented ways to cope culturally to the limitations of their biology. A wish to return to a stateless world would require a return to a similiar environment that existed prior to the state.

Yeah I think so. Look at the history of man, no technological innovation really for thousands of years, then bam! pyramids and aquaducts and stuff. Why? Cus they organized into some sort of ordered society and had property. And then look at the progress from then up to the 20th century and beyond. I heard one stat that there has been more tech progress in the last 50 years than the rest of man's history combined. Not sure if I believe all that, but it's astounding. And it exists within these systems. Not saying the systems are perfect or anything.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yeah I think so. Look at the history of man, no technological innovation really for thousands of years, then bam! pyramids and aquaducts and stuff. Why? Cus they organized into some sort of ordered society and had property. And then look at the progress from then up to the 20th century and beyond. I heard one stat that there has been more tech progress in the last 50 years than the rest of man's history combined. Not sure if I believe all that, but it's astounding. And it exists within these systems. Not saying the systems are perfect or anything.

Well, more like they organized into some sort of ordered society where the whims of one man consumed the lives and labor of vast numbers. Yes, sometimes those whims produce something cool like penicillin, but far more often they produce a big pile of rock with their name on it.

 

[Patine]

Fascistic "thinking" such as?

@metatron is as well known for sweeping and generalized (and mostly fallacious) stereotyping as you proclaimed yourself to be on the last page and several other people are obviously highly guilty of, as did @Synsensa and a few others , as well, like @Mouthwash, who has paranoid, conspiracy-oriented delusions of a non-existent coherent "leftist" faction, and gripes and bellyaches about this phantom group constantly. All these individuals freely, and by choice (and any sort of inherent demographic) willfully part of contributors to all the problems being addressed by consequence, and certainly not offering (or capable of doing so, under their current mindset) any constructive solutions.

 

[Lexicus]

I think it is interesting that our time is highly anomalous in human history for another reason: we subscribe to the religion of "progress", indeed we are so submerged in it that we scarcely imagine that other ideas are even possible. We believe, firmly, that each generation is wiser, better educated, etc. than the previous one (and it would be regarded as borderline insane to question this), yet every generation, everywhere on Earth, up until, say, about 1700 or so in Europe was united in its insistence that true wisdom and greatness belonged to their ancestors.

What a shift that represents! And it took barely 150 years for the cult of progress to take an almost complete hold over the minds of almost all Europeans.

 

[Synobun]

I don’t know what it is about this fact that makes people think you’re advocating primitivism.

“Oh yeah gommie? The state is immortal. Name ONE time there wasn’t a state.”

“50,000 years of behavioral normalcy before agriculture, and many contemporary anthropologists say thousands of years after that for a lot of societies—”

“LMAO look at this silly hunter gatherer larper. Yeah have fun without MEDICINE you barista bolshevik”

Seems perfectly relevant when that's the argument being presented. You can't really use "the hundreds of thousands of years of prehistoric humanity" as proof of functioning stateless humanity and then reject the conditions of that proof.

 

[Lexicus]

"The argument being presented" is simply that this happened, not that it represents a desirable state for humanity to return to.

 

[Patine]

At no point does scripture advocate socialism.

But it does condemn greed, a life of acquisition, war, violence, execution, hatred, holding of grudges, judgementalism, and, by strong implication, unwilling and undesiring conversion and baptism, at least in the Ministry of CHRIST which, in a proper CHRISTian faith, transcends and overrides the rest of the Bible in the case of a conflict.

 

[inthesomeday]

Yeah I think so. Look at the history of man, no technological innovation really for thousands of years, then bam! pyramids and aquaducts and stuff. Why? Cus they organized into some sort of ordered society and had property. And then look at the progress from then up to the 20th century and beyond. I heard one stat that there has been more tech progress in the last 50 years than the rest of man's history combined. Not sure if I believe all that, but it's astounding. And it exists within these systems. Not saying the systems are perfect or anything.

I’ll be super honest, I thought this was an ironic post at first because the first three or so sentences are a great satire of a lot of anthropological myths. This entire quote exemplifies a dead linear narrative of progress that used to dominate historiography in the... 60s, maybe. Pure teleology.

Seems perfectly relevant when that's the argument being presented. You can't really use "the hundreds of thousands of years of prehistoric humanity" as proof of functioning stateless humanity and then reject the conditions of that proof.

The argument went like this:

1. Ideal society is stateless.
2. Then show us an existing example! (Fallacy)
3. Here is an existing example.
4. For no reason, I declare your example insufficient! (Fallacy)

 

[Synobun]

When is #4 supposed to happen?

 

[Lexicus]

I’ll be super honest, I thought this was an ironic post at first because the first three or so sentences are a great satire of a lot of anthropological myths. This entire quote exemplifies a dead linear narrative of progress that used to dominate historiography in the... 60s, maybe. Pure teleology.

It is no coincidence that the emergence of the cult of Progress happens at the same time as the high age of European colonialism. Europeans needed some means to place themselves at the cutting edge of history. That way, the destruction of entire civilizations, genocide, enslavement, anything and everything could be justified as the unfolding of history itself, the continuation of Progress. Indeed, the argument even went so far as to suggest that these crimes were, ultimately, good for the victims, since through them the victims would be brought into the light of civilization, and ultimately would be able to share in Progress themselves! Those who lived, anyway.

Here's a polemic counterpoint to this view: the true pinnacle of history was the complex societies of the New World, annihilated by biological happenstance (though of course Europeans wasted no time in convincing themselves that it was because of the inherent superiority of European culture and/or of Europeans themselves). In reality European civilization is now under a curse, manifested in the insane hubris with which it is destroying the biological and physical conditions of its own existence, and the curse will not be lifted until European civilization is consigned to the same grave into which it pushed all the civilizations it encountered from 1492 on.