Seniors Will Soon Outnumber Kids

10 Comments

1. Great discussion!

   Originally posted this on Catherine’s blog:

   Catherine said “…we live on a very primitive planet.”

   Primitive is an understatement. In one generation, “technology” has removed from our collective conscience what makes us human and tricked us into thinking we are advanced. Media and product consumption numbs minds. Only other humans make us human. Period.

   I’ll never forget my first international relations course. On the first day, the professor drew fish on the board to make his point: the world is unkind, and big fish eat little fish — so-called “realism.” He may not have understood that he was describing the human condition, but I can still see the board in my mind. I can also still remember how depressing it was to see and hear. Greed rules.

   In this technoworld, we have less need for other humans, and therefore can marginalize them in our own minds. It’s about me, mine and those for which I care. That’s it. The irony is that the rural — or areas considered “primitive” compared to big cities — are in the best position to endure if the “techno-blinders” are removed and society returns to a primitive state. Cities, on the other hand, will be in big trouble. One can’t eat a PC or TV or iPod. Many people can’t keep their houseplants alive. In 18 years of schooling, I was never introduced to simple farming, but I learned calculus. Hmmmm.

   At 40, and after years of city living and debt accumulation, I moved to rural Oregon, bought a 1980 doublewide trailer, and started teaching. In less than two years, I know almost everyone on my street, I drive less than 50 miles a month, I grow much of my own food and barter for the rest. I own my trailer and the property on which it sits. And I have never been happier. I do not mean to boast. It’s more of a confession. An awakening available to everyone.

   My Los Angeles-based friends think I’ve lost it. What they don’t know is that they don’t HAVE it. They are unaware of the world outside their own — even though they are bombarded with media. They value homes and cars and things (and ultimately, themselves) relative to what other humans have. Real “value” can only be discerned from within. When we let the collective determine “value” we all lose.

   As other posters have pointed out, only human connections — those made without technology — give us real hope. While I am grateful for the opportunity to post here, this post will also go into the inevitable black hole of technology (and thus, apathy). It reinforces all that I detest. But it’s better than being ambivalent, or at least I hope so.

   A new political party? A new nation? How can we break free from the primitive without major upheaval?

2. McLuhan also said “the medium is the message.” Hence, the content is secondary at best, but most likely irrelevant.

   Further, it was in Ellul’s Technological Society where he promotes the premise that the use of “technique,” irrespective of the specific technique employed, will push humanity toward draconian centralized rule. Hence, humanity must dismiss technique, whether it formulated through the mass production of culture, mass production and distribution of food, mass centralized distribution of information and perception, etc.

   In short, we cannot employ the technology that is leading us down this path to fight this slide. We must dismiss the technology and the techniques being employed altogether.

3. I think it was Marshall McLuhan who said it the best…

   “Today in the electronic age of instantaneous communication, I believe that our survival, and at the very least our comfort and happiness is predicated on understanding the nature of our new environment, because unlike previous environmental changes, the electric media constitute a total and near instantaneous transformation of culture, values and attitudes. This upheaval generates great pain and identity loss, which can be ameliorated only through a consciousness of its dynamics. If we understand the revolutionary transformations caused by new media, we can anticipate and control them; but if we continue in our self-induced subliminal trance, we will be their slaves.
   Because of today’s terrific speed-up of information moving, we have a chance to apprehend, predict and influence the environmental forces shaping us-and thus win back control of our own destines. The new extensions of man and the environment they generate are the central manifestations of the evolutionary process, and yet we still cannot free ourselves of the delusion that it is how a medium is used that counts, rather than what it does to us and with us. This is the zombie stance of the technological idiot. It’s to escape this Narcissus trance that I’ve tried to trace and reveal the impact of media on man, from the beginning of recorded time to present.” http://www.vcsun.org/~battias/class/454/txt/mclpb.html

   Jerry

4. “These are all the choices of people who have come to these choices on their own.”

   Please read Ellul’s Propaganda, or Eddie Bernays’ Crystallizing Public Opinion or Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. Then come back here and let us know your opinion.

   The science of mass persuasion is so highly developed that it is not even sensed by those who are so-called “well educated” in this system. Moreover, to say that the “Mass Man” has choice is naive beyond comprehension. It is this naivety that keeps us in our position of utter and total subservience, and it is about time we stop dismissing the evidence and come to terms with the control systems that dominate our existence from cradle to grave.

5. Oh no!

   The population of the world might actually be stabilizing! The horrors!

   The sane and rational of the world realize you cannot keep breeding and multiplying without eventually running out of room and resources. That is why there is a correlation between IQ and number of children produced.

   There is no “they” that are manipulating the abortion rate, nor the euthanizing of pain-filled dying patients, or the number of gay people who choose to marry.

   These are all the choices of people who have come to these choices on their own.

   As for the “morality” of religion… PLEASE!

   What is moral about religion?

   Religious people lie to children about the true nature of the world all the time. That alone, is immoral (not to mention all the silly killing and stuff found in most religious texts…)

6. Jerry, all that you mention, in your first comment here, was planned and is deliberate. All of it!

   John, the culture of death is part of the destruction of humanity as we know it. Again, planned, promoted, and carried out by social planners to support greater goals. And as far as the risk that you speak of regarding a so-called government with no ethical framework, especially one grounded in faith and/or religious teachings….. well, that day has already come … we are living in it, right now!

7. If you have ever watched the documentary Fog of War what you say about no deep religious convictions was so glaringly evident near the end of Mr. McNamara’s speech that I still find it utterly incredible. How I often thought too myself could this be and the failure!?

   Jerry

8. We are increasingly living in a culture of death. Death to the defenseless and innocent(abortion), death to the integrity of the family( gay marriage and societal breakdown) and death to vulnerable elderly( euthanasia laws in Oregon & now proposed in Massachusetts). Think of it 43% of Americans don’t pay income taxes and most people don’t attend religious worship services. Essentially what I’m saying is we are at risk to a populist based government run by people who have no deep religious convictions that shape their lives. Dt. 6:5

9. Yep as I said in another post 2 world wars and the baby boom generation of the 1950 and 60’s has so changed the demographics of our world that we and our children are going to pay a terrible-are paying a terrible price. In fact, don’t you know my own family is still paying the price for the sins of two world wars. Everything has changed including even ones culture and this especially because of the worldwide immigration that resulted from the European conflicts and the family break ups. What a mess and you know what about the other side of the coin to the over-population issue and that is the problem of their not being enough babies being born? Countries like Canada now are largely depending upon immigration to solve this issue. This has even brought to my remembrance a documentary on England and how drastically things have changed from a country that at one time was one culture known largely as WASP that is White Anglo Saxon Protestant to a nation that is now a mixture of every concievable nation under the sun. There was one scene I will never forget and that was/is the difference of a famous street scene from the 1920’s to today. It spoke volumes about the changes that have taken place over the last 50 to 80 years and not all for the better I might add! What a mess!

   Jerry

10. This is one of the reasons that US States are claiming that they are broke, and using this manufactured excuse to drastically modify state based health care programs (Obama’s doing the same thing by the way). In short, those over the age of 65 are under enormous attack as they no longer add value to the Globalist system.

    If you want to take this to its most draconian analysis, one could formulate with ample evidence an argument that shows that the baby boomers were part of a massive pump and dump strategy in the Globalists grand strategy called the Great Work. The boomers were leveraged through the last half of the 20th Century to create enormous wealth, facilitating the manufactured Cold War and the massive buildup of weapon systems that facilitated global dominance. They funded the move of the manufacturing base to the East, and ensured that this new base of operations would be financially successful. They built up the global technology network (“The Internet”), facilitating cheap global communications to support the international free trade agenda, while also creating a new mechanism (‘high technology’) for extensive social monitoring and perception management. All of this and more was possible because of the innovation and hard work of mostly a single American generation – the boomers.

    Now, that generation’s use-by-date has been passed, they are truly useless eaters (their words not mine) and therefore are expendable. I would argue that if the globalists have their way, the census figures of 1.3B will never be reached.

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