Degeneracy is a Symptom: On Conspicuous Despair, the Ponzi stage of being alive, and why your grandparents are wrong about you.
tl;dr: Wealth consolidation and oligopolies have stagnated economic growth. This you probably know, but the author amazingly shows that the rise of “social degeneracy” is merely a symptom of this problem. He tracks this phenomenon around the world and throughout history. We either tackle the problem early and directly or–my words, not his–the rivers will flow with blood.
That’s was a an excellent read. Thank you. Makes me rethink some things that I see myself doing.
What are some of those things?
There was someone on Ask Lemmy last night wanting to know what they should do in school for work. The comments were all depressingly optimistic, not quite seeming to grasp the devastating role of educational debt in the lives of graduates in an economy that does not even cover living expenses.
Just how I don’t care if I “make it” or achieve social status in general.
How far does that go?
Like I don’t need to drive a Mercedes, but I would like to have a professional identity. It’s nice to say, “I’m an X” instead of “I work at Y.”
A professional identity outside of property owner is provisional. Source: I am a jaded software developer who is experiencing pressure from the property class to redefine our professional identity to “meat puppet”.
propertyless class
from “They are the way the propertyless class makes its position visible to itself and to others.”
The proletarii constituted a social class of Roman citizens who owned little or no property. The name presumably originated with the census, which Roman authorities conducted every five years to produce a register of citizens and their property, which determined their military duties and voting privileges. Those who owned 11,000 assēs (coins) or fewer fell below the lowest category for military service, and their children—prōlēs (offspring)—were listed instead of property; hence the name proletarius (producer of offspring).
I mean, it would not surprise me this guy is translating Marxism. Evaluating the economic determinants of history is a very Marxist enterprise.
i wondered who Henry Fudge is and duckduckgo led me to his youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0u7SQ-Bca8
tl;dw?
r u henry?
I refer to him and explictly say I’m using my words, not his, to summarize the article.
What are these breadcrumbs you are hallucinating?
no breadcrumbs, just checking.
then, frankly, i can’t understand why you may be interested in what he writes or thinks? He is more of a “wannabe influencer” than a thinker (if i may borrow an outdated term). A hyped hotchpotch of things already written, said a million times 🤷
is he trying to sell himself or convey ideas?
It’s a curse to belong to his generation. I hope he finds his way 🤷I liked the article, so I shared it.
I think what he did, which I haven’t read before, is globalize the phenomenon, which I appreciate, because I find the national boundaries we draw around our problems something a distraction.
I’d also add that if you think writers in published magazines aren’t self-promoters, you aren’t a very careful reader. Most think pieces are an appeal to some group. For me, the most obvious are the right wing “independent” thinkers whose opinions always seem to line up with capital. Ezra Klein recently gave the game away when Israeli’s unpopularity forced him to abandon his pro-Israel stance for reasons that have been obvious for since 1948.
But appealing to audiences is part of the game across the political spectrum, it’s not something “this generation” inventeed and therefore you do not need to weep for them.
I’d also add that if you think writers in published magazines aren’t self-promoters, you aren’t a very careful reader.
all my friends are skeletons
and beat the rhythm with their bonesi mostly read people who were long dead before the internets and probably majority of those ghosts haven’t even seen screens 🤷
But appealing to audiences is part of the game across the political spectrum, it’s not something “this generation” inventeed and therefore you do not need to weep for them
i can’t help it. I prefer books written after ideas to ideas gathered to sell books or to promote “self”
i was reading Peter Singer, for example, just before … this. He is still alive 😅 his writing is clear and as the books title (Animal Liberation) suggests, it has more to claim than "me, me, me!
i mostly read people who were long dead before the internets and probably majority of those ghosts haven’t even seen screens
That means you are less likely to understand the cultural context they are writing in and how they are speaking to it (ie marketing themselves).
Veblen’s leisure class wastes resources to prove it has more than it needs. The despairing class wastes itself to prove it has less than it requires.
