Under Construction
The oldschool dichotomy from approximately the late 19th century to late 20th century was basically between the democrats and republicans or the left and the right respectively, the progressive and conservative sociopoliticaleconomic order. The democrats were basically proponents of directdemocracy, mod rule, authoritarian communism, socialism and social liberalism, the republicans - representative democracy, rule of law, libertarian capitalism, corporatism, social conservatism and military expansionism. Neither of them demonstrated any particular concern for the environment or wished to slow, stop or reverse political, economic, scientific and technological “progress”, despite one of the parties referring to themselves as “conservatives”. Even the nuclear family the “conservatives” championed was more/less an innovation. The extreme left wished to abolish the family altogether, leaving way for the state to manage family affairs, or turn it on its head, so that women and children would have equal, if not greater say in how things ought to be run. It wasn’t always this way, for example before the late 19th century, the dichotomy was between the left and the right, except the old left and right were different. Their left was are right, and their right meant preserving the union between Church and State, and the monarchy. I see a new trend emerging, and I really don’t think I’m the only one. It’s been publicly acknowledged that the democrats and republicans have long since merged their ideals and formed a single party, there’s almost no difference between them now and many are beginning to wonder if there ever was. From my studies, I believe there was once some differences between them, but those differences have long since been reconciled, so what we have now a choice between namebrands, faces and little in the way of practicality. They’ve long sinced merged leaving little or nothing to oppose them, little or nothing mainstream at least, but just as nature abhors a vacuum, every action has an equal or nearly equal opposite reaction. Just as the boomers were opposing the status quo of the day, some members of our generation, the one in its early 30s to early teens, are opposing the status quo of our time, our right wing. What is our right wing? It’s whatever nameta9 is proposing in his thread and so much more. It’s frankenfoods, broken homes, the service economy, big government in general, dead end jobs with absolutely no benefits and no security, central banking and authoritarian capitalism, corporate welfarism, globalization and replacing oil and gas with nuclear energy and rockets to mars and all that fancy futuristic utopian crap nameta9 keeps ranting about. It’s the UN slowly taking over and establishing a one world government new world order, where all political social cultural and racial division will be forcefully uprooted and eradicated. The opposition is still in its formative stages, and there’s very little to unify us save our opposition to the status quo. Little in the way of positive doctrines, it’s more defined by what’s it’s opposed to than necessarily what it’s in favor of. However, some key elements are already beginning to emerge, and mind you this is brand new ideology, it only began forming, as far as I can tell, in the first years of this century. Some trends include, well, just the reverse of all those things I mentioned, for starters it’s opposed to Television and all the restrictions television entails, and in favor of the internet, where individuals can play a more active role in their entertainment and information, as opposed to a wholly passive role. This will no doubt have an effect not only in the way we consume music and film, giving rise to more independent artists, but also philosophy and even science, which is no doubt what’s occurring here. Can philosophy and science divorce themselves from academia and survive and thrive on their own, like in previous centuries, with no help or even opposition from government and philanthropists, or as this a personal pipe dream of mine, and all this chatter is unfortunately shallow, superficial and redundant, and not likely to impact academia or popular culture in any meaningful or significant way? Oh well, I still get something out of it, regardless of how popular or unpopular it becomes, in fact, I like it more low key. Perhaps what art, music and entertainment was to previous generations, philosophy and science will be to our generation, or maybe that’s just my personal preferences, as I have little interest in the emotive side of life. Another thing that defines are little movement if I can call it that is general distrust of government and rampant conspiricism and antioccultism, as opposed to compartmentalized trust of government, where some aspects of government are supported and others opposed. Another is general opposition to globalism, high civilization and technology, in favor of localism, environmentalism, relatively healthy, organic living and tribalism. Yet another is preoccupation with leisure activities, hobbies interests and vocations, as well as entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly on the internet, the final frontier for ours, as opposed to 9 to 5, 40 hours a week in the corporate world, some members of our generation including myself would rather have fewer luxuries and more leisure than previous generations. Another is to get married and start a family much later on in life, a trend that’s been continuing in the west for decades now. Curiously, due to economic difficulties, there has been a resurgence of the family unit to some extent, as families have had to rely more on one another than they have in quite some time. Mindless hedonism and self indulgence doesn’t seem to be a prominent factor in this burgeoning countercultural movement, it would seem, like it has in previous countercultural movements, quite the opposite trend seems to be emerging, a kind of worldly asceticism and ant consumerism and materialism. Also a return to western traditions of philosophy and spirituality as opposed to traditions from the far east. If I’m known for anything here, it’s probably for hyperbole, I may be going out on a limb here, but I believe that as time goes by, this movement will become more and more aware of itself. Eventually it will have a real name, as opposed to conspiracy theorists, preppers, birthers, truthers, and It will be known for what It represents and not merely for what it opposes. It will have its own popular or icons, philosophers, poets, musicians and artists, and political activists and thinkers, which of course will begin on the internet in the underground but eventually become large enough to the point where the mainstream will not be able to ignore them, and may even, like they’ve done with previous generations, begin incorporating, assimilating and, bastardizing various aspects of these various trends. Eventually I’m sure they’ll be some kind of Hegelian dialectic, thesis, antithesis and synthesis at work, though I don’t really believe history is progressive, society seems to have a certain process it undergoes whilst undergoing crisis and change, and Hegel’s dialectic as well as Schopenhauer’s seems to encapsulate this process quite nicely. Of course many, if not most will never fully understand this movement both within my generation and especially generations that preceded ours, as one would expect, and I do not believe my generation will be the most significant to change the direction of our society, rather, I believe we are more of a transitional generation and it will probably be a generation or two or even three (yeah, I’m thinking longterm here) that comes after us, that will have the most significant impact on cultural norms, and we will merely lay the groundwork for that generation. Many will undoubted support the status quo, support the UN, globalism, dictatorship, and the dominant element of our culture will have it’s expressions of art and philosophy and poetry and music and it’s a force to be reckoned with and a part of us all, and I don’t believe it has come to fruition yet either, it’s still in its formative years, though further along than us because it’s dominant, it’s what cnn, mtv, the federal reserve, the un and aipac are doing, and what they’re doing effects us all by default because they’re the most powerful people in the world, whether we like it nort, and they have a plan, mark my words, they have no revealed it to us in full yet, but they have one and we may force these occultists out into the light. The new left, our left, has borrowed aspects from previous generations but it’s a new left, the left is just whatevers new, the right is what’s relatively established and that’s this sytnehsis between capitalism and communism, with imperialism and globalism and cultural Marxism and curiously zionism that we have today, that took us a whole century or vent wo since the enlightenment to fully arrive at, fascism and nazism being more of revival largely rather than something entirely new at the time. This is not the same thing as postmodernism or communism or capitalism or any of that, it’s something quite new, though it has of course borrow heavily from its predecessors. So how do we summarize this movement, how do we encapsulate it. I would say it’s an attempt to balance the forces of extreme modernity and postmodernity with more organic, holistic and natural ways of being, which is quite vague unfortunately, and perhaps could be said of many countercultural movements. One thing that seprates it from the movements of the 60s, is its darker, dystopian characteristics and it’s preoccupation with the negative, doom and gloom, occultism, conspiciricsm and postapocolypticism, and I hope this trend continues, I think its appropriate for our age. It’s the Yin to societies Yang, just as Epicureans, Cynics and Skeptics opposed conventional Greek and Roman values, and then later on Christianity and Manichaeism in completely different ways, in more spiritual ones, or various Daoist and Buddhist elements opposed Confucian society throughout China’s history, just as Confucianism opposed the dominant ideology In China of its day. I neither wholly embrace it or reject it, but I believe that in the next decade or two, it will demand to be addressed by the mainstream and eventually wars may be fought over it.