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dannysuling In reply to gishzida [2015-05-24 05:26:50 +0000 UTC]

And a big 1960s' "Right on!!!" to you for that comment, my good friend.

There's only one comment of yours I'd quibble with, and that is Heinlein's idea that the Boomer Generation invented the slang phrase "going steady." In fact, use of the term "steady" to mean an exclusive or significant relationship dates back to at least 1905, and was a common expression in the 1920s and '30s. By the early 1950s it had morphed into "going steady," and thus could not not been something that baby boomers invented. The very earliest boomers, born after the war in 1945 or 1946, would not have been old enough yet for dating. That's approximately when I was born, as well. So if "going steady" as US slang phrase was already part of teenager expression then, we're talking about kids born about 1938-1940, something like that. In other words, a pre-boomer generation. Heinlein was wrong, and cynically so. Shame on him for not doing his research better.

A related issue is when American society first began to call teenagers "teenagers—that is, as a reference to age The term actually surfaces in the 1920s, and is in somewhat common use by the end of WWII. So again, teenagers in the early 1950s were being referred to by that category name. However, I'd argue that the baby boom generation was the first to encounter the use of the term to mean a cohort of youth that acted in concert to defy or transcend the values of their parents' generation. That is, the "teenager" became a phenomenon, with his/her own music, dances, slang, clothes, pop culture, and worldview. The baby boom generation owns the full meaning of the word "teenager."

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gishzida In reply to dannysuling [2015-05-24 09:34:20 +0000 UTC]

 I'd forgotten "Glory Road" was written around 1962 and was published in 1963 (I was about 9 or so and would not yet graduate to reading Fantasy and SF for another three years). The character was about 18 when his adventures began putting the "in-story date" as 1961-62 giving the character a birth date around 1943-44. It is my miscalculation about Heinlein's character.

My remarks on "Flower Children" / "Hippies" echo Heinlein's remarks on Beatniks in the same book. I can't say whether he was fibbing on that as well. But from my view point "Flower Children" / "Hippies" were "magical beings" that did not exist in my cultural milieu. My upbringing was in the heart of White Western Suburbia [the western end of the San Fernando Valley northwest of Los Angeles] where few "people of color" lived. The Watts Riots were only a "news item" and did not touch that "lily white" land.

I can say for myself Woodstock was an eye opener culturally and musically. It was the point at which I broke away from the strict "Republicanism" of my parents and opened the door to thinking differently. Now forty five years later I can look back and see that the myth of the "Flower Children" / "Hippies" was "co-opted" to promote a consumer culture. "Woodstock the Movie", counter-culture as it might appear, was actually a serious beginning to "co-opting" and re-directing "youth created culture" as a product -- "We was robbed!"

 It is no wonder that only a few years later (1976) the Media companies planted the seeds for the now nearly perpetual copyright on any "cultural media" (books, movies, music, etc.). To use the  American Express motto: "Ownership has its privileges" -- When you own a peoples' culture you own their future. This leads to a rather creepy idea.

One of the things that Heinlein's character realizes in  "Glory Road" is that he was "manufactured" and "trained" by a long lived, nearly immortal person for the purpose of the story's adventure. What then might be said if you come to control a culture for profit? Wouldn't you want to manufacture consumers? I have a feeling that is what is happening. It might not be a "conscious" or "overt" plan sprung in some back room. Yet just as "A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes", memes and cultures require people to propagate. The better you train your consumers the better consumers they will be and the more the memes will propagate.

So while the era of the "Mad Men" ended they actually took over our culture for the fun and profit of a few--  even instilling the ridiculous idea that the 1% deserve their wealth while the rest of us live in cultural and intellectual poverty. Of course this is just the opinion of an autodidact from the "school of hard knocks". I lack the "academic gravitas" to actually make it valid conclusion.

Thank you my friend, for the entertaining read!

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dannysuling In reply to gishzida [2015-05-24 20:53:10 +0000 UTC]

A truly delightful reply, G, and, letting alone for now the Heinlein miscalculation, I fully agree with all of your analysis.

I feel like I should add some personal perspective to the issue of "flower children" and "hippies." For the moment, I'd like to restrict my comments to white people, ages 18-25, and the period between 1965-1969. I know this excludes the few hippies who were "people of color," and people who went all groovy after 1969, but you'll see why I imposed these limits

* Drugs: Most of the recreational drug use among middle-class young people began to happen only after 1965, and even then was primarily restricted to colleges and universities. Drugs like psilocybin (in tablet, mushroom, or injection form), hash, or marijuana didn't get to the high schools until the late '60s, but when they arrived the entire culture changed. Until then, the drug culture at the college level was pretty much omnipresent from about 1966. I personally had some very good friends who went the full hippie / flower child route by 1967-68, but by 1969 they were druggies, pure and simple, with all the philosophical stuff long gone out the window. Pot was the primarily drug of choice for being sociable, but LSD was the primary drug for the experiential side.

* The Pill: By far and away the appearance in easy to buy and perfectly legal pill form of birth control was the single most important contributor to the rise of the counter-culture, especially the gentle "flower-power" end of things. So much has been written about this that we tend these days to minimize it or set it on the back burner. But the truth is that for the age group and time I'm talking about, the Pill lifted an enormous moral and social weight from our shoulders. We no longer had to worry about anyone becoming pregnant, if she didn't want to. We know longer had to hide diphragms in the dresser drawer so that Mom or Dad wouldn't see them. By 1968, if you weren't using the Pill, you were either Catholic, extremely socially conservative, or completely ignorant, or some combination of those things. Most of the Catholic women I knew were on the Pill, knowing full well they were going against the Church, but knowing too how incredibly racist and classist the Church's stand was.

* Locale. "Flower children" didn't exist before 1966, give or take a couple of months. And by 1969 they were gone, moved to communes, dead from ODs, changed into political radicals, or simply got re-absorbed into the mainstream culture's "acceptable" behavior. The entire phenomenon was almost gone by the time the media actually began to talk about it. And, in a related way, although we like to think that 1967 was the height of the hippie, especially in San Francisco, most of the people I knew who fit the category in 1966 who already scrambling to figure out what their next step was by late 1967. The meme persisted, and some people stuck with it, but really by 1969 the only people who had gone truly "back to the land" were in cults and communes, not in the cities.

* Politics. In my mind, the "hippie" era came to a screeching halt when Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin proclaimed the birth of Yippiedom in 1968: that is, the highly politicized, proto-anarchist, left-radical conversion of passive non-violent political activity into active, in-your-face, use-the-system-to-bring-itself-down non-violent activity. This was followed almost immediately by the split between SDS non-violent anti-war theory and action and the Weathermen "violence is the only way to combat violence." This entire shift in the "Movement" was galvnaized by the scalation of US military action in Vietnam, the assassinations of Kennedy and King and the ensuing riots in US cities, and the 1968 Paris revolt. There was no "hippie" component to the "fighting in the streets" mentality that began to take over.

* The shift from hippie-dom's idealism to yippie-dom's frustration was mirrored heavily in the music of the time, especially rock. "Sgt. Pepper's" could not have been successful in 1968, because its focus on quiet, stultifying alienation made no sense to us a year later. The cohort that produced flower children and hippies were no longer naive, no longer passive, and pretty much no longer idealistic. We were increasingly ready to hit the streets. The Democratic Party political convention in Chicago was more like the result everyone knew was coming.

* This leads us to Woodstock in summer of 1969. I almost went, and kicked myself for not doing so. I do have friends who did go. The event was not as unified as the movie portrayed it, of course. It's easy to forge a wholistic experience when you've got multiple cameras, roving photographers, an editing budget, etc. etc. But the movie did capture a lot of what the counter-culture felt strongly that it was about: peaceful co-existence, drugs to massage individual and group consciousness, good music to bring the collective in focus and provide an outlet for physical activity, free peanut-butter sandwiches to anyone who was hungry, etc. etc. Yes, there was certainly some "hippie" behavior, given the rather unreal scenario of being unmolested on rented property: nude bathing, breast feeding, unlimited sex, families in school buses, etc. But the occasional "hippy-ness" of the scene wasn't the point. The biggest story, of course, was about 500,000 people living through fun and calamity together without violence and with a forming group consciousness. Its vibes were completely encased by Richie Havens singing "Freedom" to open the event, and Jimi Hendrix performing his incredible and politically incendiary version of "The Star Spangled Banner" to close it.

Again, I wish I had been there personally. The good feelings about Woodstock lasted all but a few weeks, until the backbiting and Altamont brought us back to political reality. Woondstock was a passing phenomenon. It was a symbol of how it's possible to make something happen if you work hard enough and are incredibly lucky, and also willing to risk losing money. It happened once. It was the 1967 Monterey Jazz and Pop Festival on steroids. And despite the recent attempts to do it again, it will never really be replicated.

Anyway, just some thoughts and personal reminiscences from having truly lived those days, as an active participant.

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dannysuling In reply to Rebertha [2015-05-23 16:59:18 +0000 UTC]

LOL!

Well, thank you for the compliment. I'd like to think I am a good writer.

And here I was, after reading your first comment, thinking "Damn! I am old!" Because it's true.

Like everyone (you, apparently, included!), I engage in a long-running battle with auto-correct and spell-check software packages. Their algorithms are insidious, their application fascist and undependable, and the frustration and stress they cause are unwarranted and unnecessary.

Or, then again, maybe it's because I never learned how to type?....   Naaahhh!

Thanks much again for your enjoyable commentary. Feel free to add more, any time!

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dannysuling In reply to Rebertha [2015-05-23 16:53:29 +0000 UTC]

Oh lord, point well taken. Anyone who believes that heroes last forever is in for a rude awakening...or, perhaps, ought to try to never awaken at all. Live the dream, they say!

And it's true, process can be healing. It's not that I don't have compassion. I mean, I even understand why Paul McCartney accepted a knighthood! But this doesn't mean that I can't voice my angst. I suppose that does mean that I am sentimental. Yes, you've certainly nailed it. I claim no pedestal, and I have my personal preferences for almost everything.

But you can't tell me that it wasn't a travesty when IBM used "Teach Your Children" to push its ads for the PC. I mean, how twisted and cynical was that? I haven't been able since to listen to CSN's music without thinking of their sell-out. (Or maybe it was the record company's decision, and CSN's disapproval counted for nothing, copyright-wise. I don't know; I haven't done the research. But that doesn't excuse the advertising company that handled the ad for IBM. Shame, shame!)

On the issue of melody: I'm not at all diagreeing with your initial analysis of the melodic line, from a Western music theory perspective. But know, please, that there is nothing "universal" about beauty. The concept is highly cultural, and it would be, IMHO, hubristic (not to mention culturally imperialist) to claim without evidence that the well-tempered scale is "choral, calming, and joyful" to any listener who has never heard a well-tempered scale (and there are hundreds of millions of such folks alive on our planet). Like languages, musical traditions are arbitrary and conventional; they vary from culture to culture, and none are any better or any worse than any others. There aren't many "universals," and the choice of intervals in a scale isn't one of them. Music systems are what they are, and they do what they do, for the people who use them. Period!

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dannysuling In reply to AshBond [2015-05-23 16:35:48 +0000 UTC]

Truly nice to hear from someone with experience in the ad/media field. Thank you, my friend.

I have never asserted that people working in the ad industry aren't skilled. Indeed, as you say, there's a tremendous amount of professional skill involved: writers, editors, compositors, photographers, composers, cinematographers, and so on. And there's a significant skill in knowing how to make a presentation, a pitch, how to listen to clients, etc. etc. Advertising wouldn't be a business if the people in it weren't effective at what they do. We even have annual awards ceremonies for the industry!

And that, alas, is exactly my point. It's exactly that advertisers are so skilled and effective that advertising is so dangerous. The populace at large, while endowed with (you should excuse the expression) "common sense," is much less skilled, and hugely more naive, about what these kinds of skills can do and have done. Like highly skilled scammers, hackers, credit-card fraud crooks, etc. etc., such skills easily become weapons against society. And advertising IS a weapon, make no mistake. Coca-Cola is one of the most dangerous legally-produced foodstuffs in the world, for all sorts of reasons. Sure, advertisers can and do sell harmless products, even socially useful ones. Advertising in this sense is a double-edged sword. But the industry can (and did) also sell DDT, thalidomide, assault rifles, etc. etc.

Imagine...no, really, just imagine...if all the creative people involved in corporate advertising decided instead to devote their energies full time to socially important projects, whatever they may be.

I know, I know, who decides what "socially important" is? And, after all, we're talking about jobs that people use to support their families, right? To which I say, "Give me a break!" The engineers making Patriot missiles at Raytheon work to support their families, too. Does that make their products more socially acceptable?

I also recognize your conflation of the categories "advertising" and "art." I'm assuming this is so because, as you say, some ads are "gems" in their own right, and what, after all, is art? Is art the making (i.e. the skills)? Is art the talent (i.e. the people who have the skills)? Is art the output (the song, the dance, the painting, the photograph, the ad)? Or is art what gets placed in places that are supposed to be only for art (like private collections, museums, Sotheby's auction house, PBS documentaries)? Or is art merely another domain for investment purposes?

There are highly creative societies whose languages don't have a word for what we mean by "art," and whose traditions do not value innovation and the cult of the individual artist's expression. Do we exclude their creative efforts from the concept "art"? I'm saying this only because I worry a lot when people use highly amorphous terms to include highly dangerous behavior. (Sort of like saying one person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter.") All labels carry political weight, and we should be careful about how we use them.

I confess: I'm not always careful enough, myself!

I suppose this issue that you raise about the skills involved in advertising really comes down to a "do the ends justify the means?" conundrum. Or in this case maybe it's the "do the means justify the ends?" Yes, perhaps that's really the issue.

I'm not by any stretch of the imagination an idealist. I'm way too cynical for membership in that club (and as Groucho once said, "I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member"). And so I agree with you that as a society we get what we deserve, and what we deserve isn't very much. All I can say is "What a shame!"

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AshBond In reply to dannysuling [2015-05-23 17:38:27 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

First of all, I did not think for a moment you were being dismissive of any of the skills in the advertising industry, and I hope I did not give that impression. I recognise that every job has its own skill set and place in society. The best people at any job, no matter whether it is flipping burgers or sweeping the street, know how to do it efficiently and effectively. The tragedy is actually that people do not try to learn the skills required in any area of activity and believe they can get away with sloppiness. Such an attitude is disastrous in say, bridge building or as you mentioned, making Patriot missiles. It matters in all walks of life that people do not think their efforts unimportant or worthy of being dismissive.

Few of us get to anywhere near the level achievable to be great at anything. The usual argument is to get to 10,000 hours of practice. With the pressures of everyday living, not many can devote the time to trying to achieve that goal.

So, I trust you can see I do not make any special case for advertising practitioners. In my time I wasn't good enough to come up with a slogan like 'teaching the world to sing' but it helped at my level to earn money to raise my family. I think I always knew it was trivial, except that within the level of my job I tried to do the best trivial I could. As it happens (and this may be contentious) I loathe graffiti: the people who do it did not build the wall they deface and however 'talented' they may seem they have no idea of the skill required in laying one brick on another. Nor did they make the paint (Da Vinci, et al, had to learn how to make paint as well as apply it) but equally I accept we cannot make the cars we drive. There has to be some trade off of time and money in a system of bartering. In the same way then I see advertising as graffiti in another way. It could not exist without a wall to paint on or a wavelength to occupy.

I have a relative who makes very good living in advertising and digital creation, which his left-leaning wife probably detests but they live very well off what he does. Some of the readers of this may even have downloaded an app he once did for the iPhone and thus kindly contributed to his ability to buy a house in London, which is not in the price range of many these days. Anyway, my point is that people make a living from all sorts of things. A lot of them, like the manufacture of Thalidomide, was a miscalculation: it was intended to help people but didn't turn out that way. As the old saying goes, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. I am not sure though that advertising made such a product more desirable. A lot of advertising actually is intended to tell people something is available. As the Romans had it, Caveat Emptor: Let The Buyer Be Aware. I think it a shame people are taken in by glitter and bright lights and seduced by promises that are so transparent it is laughable. Sadly, not many people are taught to be critically aware, and imagining that a family sat round a table eating fries are all so happy they are beaming with joy is if I am honest, remarkably dumb. But if you like fries, you need to know they are also available coated in chocolate or whatever...

From my point of view I have fallen for buying some rubbish from ads that I admired. My father, who also worked in advertising, once told me people in advertising were the easiest to sell to because they get wowwed by their profession's 'art' rather than what the product is. I try to say, 'Do I need this so-and-so?' but I have to eat, I have to live. yes, i even have to buy toilet paper. Right now I sit typing this at a computer I thought worth buying. The question is whether I bought because I liked the ad or chose it because part of me said: 'I think I can use that for what I want.'

I honestly don't know.

In the end ads must be meaningless. There are many discussions we can have about society and art and appreciation and even desire. I mean, we are exchanging views on advertising and selling and desire on a site that, er, has art very much based on desire. I draw, among other things, women tied up. I have no great desire to do it to anyone but a very willing female and even then under specific conditions and cheerfully I recognise what I do is fantasy. But that doesn't devalue it or reduce my desire to do it because I like fantasy. Actually, if I am honest even this piece here is advertising: someone could read this and think, hey this guy is not entirely without hope so I might just look at his work.

Or I could just blast out in 144 point type on orange and purple: Go To My dA Page! Now! On second thoughts, I won't you will be glad to know.

Do the ends justify the means? Oh my, we are getting into one of the great questions of human life... And that is for another time I think. Look out for my ads on that

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dannysuling In reply to AshBond [2015-05-23 17:51:28 +0000 UTC]

Thanks once more for adding calm and thoughtful input that puts my own energetic rant in perspective. I believe that your analysis, while you don't use the word, gets to the psychological and sociological essence of the issue. It is all about desire, about how we as individuals and as a society go about seeking to improve our life situation, using the tools we have available and inventing new ones if we can. We've been doing this for thousands of years of hominoid evolution, and advertising is merely a recent example.

I'm not standing down, of course, but I'm certainly willing to stop shouting, now that I've gotten it off my chest!  

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AshBond In reply to dannysuling [2015-05-23 18:09:46 +0000 UTC]

Keep standing. Feel free to shout. Make chests lighter!

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dannysuling In reply to AshBond [2015-05-23 18:47:10 +0000 UTC]

Why not? It's the Real Thing!

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dannysuling In reply to kite-san [2015-05-23 04:57:09 +0000 UTC]

Hiya my good friend.

Everything you say I concur with. Except that I'll put my own cycnicism up against anyone's with high confidence I'll come out on top, and therefore would never deign to say that your genertion is more cynical than mine.

Consider: baby boomers were most likely the most idealistic generation in the history of the West, and yet our attempts to right the world came to inglorious ends as, one by one, our movements were co-opted by governments, corporations, religions, and our own nihilistic disillusionment at each of our failures. We literally became the "Co-opted Generation" in a matter of 1.5 decades. But your cohort...you guys have had the opportunity to open yourselves to us, to listen, to learn about the dangers, to redirect yourselves away from the blatant falseness of things and bring them down, turn them aside, much more effectively and permanently than we were able to. And your failure to do this is perhaps more excruciating than ours, but equally disastrous.

Alas, as far as "individual personal bonds" goes: the question is "bonding with whom?" Who can anyone trust? I no longer even trust myself. The real measure of a true cynic is that he or she knows that, no matter what, worse is to come, even as we hope for better!

We shall all have to live with that, until either the "worst" comes or we finally defeat it.

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kite-san In reply to dannysuling [2015-06-04 22:30:30 +0000 UTC]

I've needed a lot of time thinking about how to reply. Ironically, i think that the "except when all you can see is the inside of a blindfold" that i tossed in as a pervy joke is actually the most relevant bit, what with the necessary process of vetting playmates for BDSM.

How to trust, who to trust. It wasn't until you dug into NekoPunch that i even realized that struggling with that was a core piece of the narrative there, of most of my stories.  But the only answer i've got, and one that's definitely gotten me burned more than once, and can't help BUT get me burned, is extending a tiny amount of trust to anyone who asks for it. To test, to explore, to find a given individual's threshold of trustworthiness, to analyze what sort of things can provoke irrational states where normally viable trust isn't applicable, or intensely intimate states where significantly more trust than baseline for that particular relationship can be safely extended. Of course, this inevitably leads until finding how much trust is too much in a given situation, but also to finding the rare few people one believes, rightly or wrongly, that one can trust completely.

And i know i'm not the only one working by such a mechanism, as the phenomenon of neotribal "family-built" groupings of people scattered across the globe amongst whom bonds closer than blood are shared is one that's becoming more and more prevalent. Not without their hiccups or explosions, nobody is going to be perfect at their trust-viability-analysis.

The question has become steadily more and more complex, as the baseline expected honesty of the world plummets, as the ways someone can screw someone else over continue to expand exponentially. But that doesn't mean it's not answerable. There are no unanswerable questions, only ones to which we have not yet found a consistent answer.

We haven't had the opportunity to turn aside the blatant falsehood of society. As long as advertising works, and finds people willing to buy in, it'll keep escalating on its current route. Same reason why telemarketing calls still exist, even though 99.9999%* of calls only induce frustration, stress, and/or rage, it only takes a few people willing to put down money to make it worthwhile.

But stripping back some of the falsehood in our own lives. That's something that as individuals we can do, and a fair number of us are at least trying to.  You can't fight the overarching corporate architecture of the world with a protest. They own all the money, nearly all of the property, nearly all of the food, water, means of communication, etc.  But you can fight lies, in small ways, simply by refusing to be a liar.

Will it change anything big? probably not, or at least not any time soon. take just about any long-established democracy or republic in the world, for every person who has a passionate position ont he issues, has researched things, and is voting based on a cantidate's established history and positions, there's a few dozen who are voting for the party they were told they agree with (whether blanket jingoism, lack of knowledge, or simple no-fucks-to-give-because-they're-all-the-same disenfranchisement), a few hundred for whom one singular issue blots out any kind of rational discourse, and where voting isn't mandatory, a few thousand not voting at all.  And why shouldn't they? Everyone knows political campaigns are fuelled entirely by lies and slander. The moment a candidate would even try to talk detailed hard-numbers policy, the nation's collective eyes will glaze over, and write them off as an 'intellectual elitist'. 

As to who's more cynnical? That i don't doubt you'd win on. Hell, personally i probably end up more idealistic than cynical (except when i'm crashy). But that doesn't change that the accusation of being more cynical, bitter, insular, ambitionless, listless, and lazy, one generation to another, isn't flung on a continuous basis.









*This statistic provided by the International Bureau of Pulling Implausibly Large Numbers out of the Collective Rectum (IBPILNCR).

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dannysuling In reply to kite-san [2015-06-05 00:22:04 +0000 UTC]

Dear Kite my good (if geographically distant) friend,

How can it be that one person can write simultaneously so densely and yet so clearly? You always astound me at your skill in doing so!

I have no argument with any of what you say. I admit to the factual content (especially the data provided by the IBPILNCR), as well as the insightfulness of your cultural and social analysis. Makes incredible sense to me.

...Except for one small piece, which I do not believe the available data justify (at least, the data available to me). You assert:

'the phenomenon of neotribal "family-built" groupings of people scattered across the globe amongst whom bonds closer than blood are shared is one that's becoming more and more prevalent.'

I'm not aware of any information confirming such a trend, which sort of sounds like a combination of Margaret Mead's 1920s Samoa, the kids' clan in "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome," and BF Skinner's "Walden Two." I'm not at all dissing the movement (if it is a movement). So please don't mistake my sentiments. But I'm very skeptical that there is such a movement, and that if this scattering of groups does exist that they share any social norms in common. But what fascinates me is the phrase "bonds closer than blood," exactly because small historically documented clan-based societies have not found any better solution to intense intra-family or intra-clan conflict than violence. Indeed, sometimes violence, in the form of highly choreographed battles or one-on-one fights, is sometimes exactly how trust relationships are established and maintained!

I do need to provide a disclaimer, here: though I'm trained somewhat as an anthropologist, I do not have the expertise to argue this particular point at great length. I'm just working here on what I've learned, and perhaps things have shifted on me.

I believe you are dead-on right about how individuals...and societies...calculate whether or not to trust, and that establishing the rules for such a decision – whether formal, tacit, or strictly gut-feeling – is something every single one of us does on an ongoing basis. This is exactly at the core of what makes us human, and it has solid evolutionary sense to it. In my view, cynicism like mine comes from the personal experience of making too many alpha- and/or beta-errors (an alpha-error is conferring trust when one shouldn't; a beta-error is withholding trust when trust ought to be granted). This tendency to misjudge and apply the wrong rule begins early in childhood and, if not corrected through learning and exposure to enough models, is really, really difficult to reverse. I'm not saying I'm damaged; nah, I'm pretty damn functional and have a few very deep, implicitly trusting, profoundly loving relationships. And I'm not saying that I have no idealism to offer, because I do. But more often than not acting on my idealism has led to pretty significant punishment (alpha-errors). So let's just say I'm rather cynical about the idealism I have, but I still have it. (Jesus? did that make any sense?)

So again I say I've never called any generation cynical lazy, or anything else. I know better than to stereotype. I know there are people who do. Just as there are people who believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim fanatic, and that homosexuals can be "treated" for their "disease." Stereotying is one way that some people deal with their fear of the complexity and diversity of life, but which ultimately only makes things worse....

Besides, I'm not afraid to say that, based on my experience getting to know you as best I can, I do in fact trust you!!!

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kite-san In reply to dannysuling [2015-06-07 03:11:25 +0000 UTC]

It isn't anything as organized as a movement, so much as a phenomenon that's become an outgrowth of the increasing base falsity of society. In a mode of communication where you can control exactly how much truth and how much falsehood you put forth at any given time, and no one can easily confirm or deny it, people who have lacked the ability or opportunity to form bonds of trust are more than eager to put forth as much truth as they can, simply because it's a relief to be truthful in an arena where someone would have to go to much more significant lengths to hurt them with it. And at the same time, the urge to live up to the trust being shown by others in the same position is ALSO there.

But the data does support the growing number of people getting more and more of their social contact exclusively online. Similarly to how for you and i, the bond we share is real, those bonds are equally real for the people for whom those are their only bonds (a state i used to be in, after all). And networks of such people are the start of the formation of such groups.

i do get what you mean about cynicism about your idealism. From my perspective, i went through 'any showing of trust is an alpha error' -> trust loses all value, so showing trust in the expectation of being hurt carries no risk because it has no value -> holy shit, someone has taken trust and not betrayed it, i have no idea how to react to or deal with this, and onwards from there actually needing, as an adult, to learn how to actually navigate trust in a situation in which there actually exists the possibility of good outcomes. But, getting reasonable at it. Hell, last couple of years even learning how to cut out toxic people to whom my only value is my ability to provoke orgasms (which is not to say cutting out sexuality from my life, haha no, but if i'm going to provoke orgasms, i want to do it for people who value me for more than that).

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dannysuling In reply to kite-san [2015-06-07 15:26:52 +0000 UTC]

It's been a hard road for you, and I'm full of admiration for the immense progress you have made, all the while retaining that fine-honed intellect and the delicious aesthetic sensibility that surrounds it. You go, girl!

As for the topic of discussion, I'm not disagreeing. It's just that, overall, when it comes to the internet I'd prefer to keep my skepticism functioning!  

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kite-san In reply to dannysuling [2015-06-07 21:41:56 +0000 UTC]

That's more than fair, without skepticism, we'd believe anything!

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Rebertha In reply to dannysuling [2015-06-06 09:15:13 +0000 UTC]

Thanks loads for the 1967 LP release list and offer to write more. I just returned to this mighty debate you started, and not a day too soon. I really like kite-san, you are a wonderful example of how high-level thinking and a good sense of humor go hand in hand. I identify with you both, and thus have 2 comments, first the "k", then the "d":

I get what is meant by bonding among people with nothing more than the underlying sense of shared righteousness. One gets what one attracts, but since life is more complex than that, I do find the trust engendered in transient moments or weeks to be of a purity incomparable to people with whom contracts must be signed, or old friends who one retains through nostalgia but who cannot possibly be trusted as they once were. I'm sure Danny has met plenty of mad-dog Dead-heads further on down roads passed, but I trust the ethic and its idea of family. A whole lot more than the guy in Argo who says to the Iranian babysitter, "We can be tender amongst ourselves - but when it comes to those heathens, we need to stick together and decapitate them without any further thought." How can men dedicated to slaughtering those unlike themselves possibly make real tender love to his ... other, his woman? I believe that question is at the core of society's sexual dysfunction. But the river of good-natured people is a tribe - not special to this particular era of horror, but because the world is much smaller now and the lines closely drawn - between madness, good will, and a highly security-conscious middle - I can see why k would feel it like a new movement. 

When it comes to trust and idealism, unlike Danny I no longer have anyone I can trust. I've been way too idealistic. But my trump card is that I trust the cosmos, elements, and biorhythms of life deeply and implicitly. So all human relationships are just a subset of that. The transition has made me a hustler for innocence, a player whereas before playing was just for the theater. I'm doing fine. But the days of conversations like this with in-house facial expressions rather than this special form of e-eye-contact are over for now!

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dannysuling In reply to Rebertha [2015-06-06 16:32:22 +0000 UTC]

Yes, for sure. What you've said makes good sense, and if this is what Kite-san has in mind about "tribe" then I'd say she (and you) are accurate in your description. There certainly are enough people of good will that it's possible to envision a positive, IF (and it's a big "if") they can find each other, stay by each other, and survive the forces around them that will resist their efforts to heal the world. Of this I'm skeptical, but that means that I see an ongoing glimmer of hope. I suppose such hope is the cosmic boundary to my cynicism.

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dannysuling In reply to loraxxx [2015-05-22 19:54:28 +0000 UTC]

Agreed. That was the marketing thrust, for sure. And you are kind and gentle to leave the underlying motivations and themes out of it. But the truth is that the subtexts to the ad were nasty, insulting, and manipulative...if you were someone like me.

Perhaps it's best that most people aren't like me. On the other hand, that's why we are all constantly bombarded with the inanities and lies of advertising. If none of us paid attention to ads, they would go away....

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loraxxx In reply to dannysuling [2015-05-25 09:39:47 +0000 UTC]

you do have a point...

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