Generations, "Niceguys," Darwin, Sheep and Wolves
Ilya Shambat
One frequent criticism of the baby boom generation is that they
thought that they were God. Having known many people of all ages, I
knew only one person who actually thought that he was God. He was
close to my age, and he stopped thinking that he was God when he got
the right medication.
The good ones among baby boomers, originally, believed that the
universe itself is divine, and that beautiful state of affairs can be
had here. For this reason they fought for civil rights, human rights,
social freedoms, peaceful instead of military solutions, and better
treatment of the environment. There were others later who did bring in
wrong ideas. These came to believe such things as that "there are no
innocent victims" and "everyone creates their reality" (so abuse and
victimize as many as you can, as it is them doing it and not you);
"positive thinking good, negative thinking bad" (so ignore all
criticism of your actions, however wrong they may be); and that self-
esteem is a prerequisite for and a determinant of good behavior (it is
neither).
Others, who were not hippies or New Agers and many of whom were not
baby boomers, took these beliefs and used them to silence the
scientists and the environmentalists who knew of the coming climatic
catastrophe, claiming that they were negative; to put America $10
trillion in debt, claiming that anyone protesting this was lacking in
optimism; to destroy public service, claiming that unless one has
everything he cannot be of help to anyone; and to make abuse the norm
of man-woman relationships, claiming that those at its receiving end
were causing it or were negative or were losers or were lacking in
self-esteem. The wrongful beliefs were used to perpetrate a monstrous
world-threatening evil, with most of this evil coming not from the
Left but from the Right.
The evil that did come from the Left was political correctness. A
prudish hysterical love-hating beauty-hating sex-hating ideology took
over America's centers of education and much of its media. This
ideology not only militated against love and beauty; it militated
against democracy itself. With standard of public discourse being
"nobody can say anything that can offend anyone," was banished meaning
as well as sincerity from public discourse. Anything that means
anything will be controversial; and anything controversial will offend
someone. With political correctness, insincerity, prissiness and
hypocrisy became not only the aggressively imposed norm of public
discourse, but also of people's behavior, people's thinking and
people's lives.
None of this of course is causally linked to the stated claim that
baby boomers thought that they were God. This was a result of
exploitation of wrongful beliefs by the American Right that would use
anything to advance its rapacity, as well as of short-sighted thinking
on the part of frumpy brainy women who wanted to lord it over other
women without realizing the damage their actions did to women, to men,
and to man-woman relationships. But there is an attitude common to
baby boomers that is very wrongful, and it is as follows. They
identify with their generational interest more than they do with
anything else. And that is a problem for anyone who has to share a
planet with them.
I would describe it as bad-neighbor policy: bad neighbor to those
before them and those after them. When they were young, it was "trust
nobody over 30." When they had children themselves, they saw them less
as their future and more as their competition. This led them to be
ugly bullies, beating up on their children and later beating down on
people one third their age and claiming them not to be as enlightened
as themselves when their supposed enlightenment led them to act in
such a despicable manner. First they were socialist, and everyone had
to be socialist with them. Then they were capitalist, and everyone had
to be capitalist with them. Then they were religious, and everyone had
to be religious with them as well. No thought in either case was taken
to any other generation.
At any given time, the world contains people of all ages, who all have
different needs. One must be mindful of all these if one is to create
any kind of a livable world. With some great exceptions, the baby
boomers failed to see this and acted accordingly. But people who are
now living, including the baby boomers who are now living, have a
chance to avoid and atone for this terrible mistake.
Generation X had a different problem. They bought into the World War
II generation's claim that their children - the baby boomers - were
spoiled evil brats who destroyed the supposedly great culture. This is
another major error. Yes, the World War II generation won the Second
World War; they also fought the Second World War for the other side.
And the dogmatic heavy-handed authoritarianism of that generation is
just as responsible for starting wars as it is for winning wars.
The fact is, if the Gen-X'ers were brought up in the 50s climate they
idolize, they would have wanted something different as well. Many of
them would simply not have survived such an upbringing; and if they
did, would have more to say about it than they do about the baby
boomers. So that while they worship their grandparents and see their
parents with contempt, they know nothing of the reality that their
grandparents created and in which their parents lived. It is a common
practice for grandparents to be wonderful to their grandchildren when
they had been horrible to their own children. And while the Gen-Xers
are seeing the good face of the World War II generation, they have not
seen its terrible face that their parents had - and still have - to
endure.
A lot of these people are pining for "traditional values." They have
seen Leave It To Beaver and Ricky Loves Lucy, but they know nothing of
the reality behind these decoys. The 1950s were not "happy times," and
1980s were not "happy times here again." There were huge problems with
both decades, and baby boomers had every right to seek a different way
of life - as much as the people now have every right to reject the
short-sighted 1980s ethic that brought about the current catastrophe.
For all these things there are real solutions. But they are no more
about "positive thinking" or "self-esteem" than they are about blaming
"the sixties generation" or damning the world "of flesh" and thinking
that burning it will get one into heaven. The real solutions are not a
matter of attitude or faith or psychology; they are a matter of
applied intelligence. And it is this, and not any of the preceding,
that has the chance of actually saving the world.
The Corruption of "Niceguys"
The Internet can be a useful place to watch social trends. For a long
time, on discussion forums dedicated to relationships, there was a
group of young men who called themselves "nice guys." These young men
claimed that women only went out with "jerks" and used the "nice guys"
for comfort and friendship, but never for a sexual relationship. I
watched this group become more and more aggressively misogynistic, as
they went from "women only go with jerks" to "women make irresponsible
choices in partners" to "women are stupid and evil" to "women must be
played, abused and controlled." This stance was then used by men's
organizations worldwide to press their agenda of brutality and
oppression. Which of course is precisely what the actual jerks wanted
in the first place.
A wife-beater thrives on perception of women as stupid and evil. Such
a perception allows him to indulge in unchecked unapologetic brutality
against his wife and children; and if the woman attempts to leave, to
claim her departure as further evidence of women being evil, and of
the rightness of his behavior. Which behavior he then, in many
situations, makes every effort to force on everyone around him,
claiming that it represents true manhood or ethics or family values or
righteousness. With males who had been originally sympathetic toward
women having turned into haters of women, the agenda of the jerk was
advanced by the "nice guys" without the jerk having had to lift a
finger toward that end. The more people saw women as stupid and evil,
the more the jerk gained in his ability to abuse women. So now, the
jerks have been wanting to go all the way and take away from women all
their rights, including even the right to vote.
The sympathies of the "nice guys" having gone form women toward wife-
beaters, the backlash against women's rights gathered steam and
steamrolled over protections against brutality and child sexual abuse.
All this, of course, benefiting the jerks. The "nice guys" became the
lapdog of the brutes whom they had rightly despised in the first place
and an accessory to their evil ends. They were losers at first, ad
they became losers again - though now, not losers for feminism, but
losers for barbarism. Meawhile the abusers became even more of abusers
as they were empowered by these people as abusers.
All this served dictatorial ends of those who wanted to see human
nature as evil and to treat people accordingly. Bush, Taliban,
Ahmabinejad, the Black Shirts, and others of similar character and
agenda, blossomed through all these wrongs. And while many of those
who shaped 1990s feminism were in fact misandrist and malicious, it is
not them that got the wrath of the backlash, but rather the women who
liked their men enough to be with them and were, by the men they
chose, horribly punished for having made the error of liking them.
This tragedy of errors can only be resolved by people gaining a brain.
If one sees life as a battle between men and women, with every person
made to be loyal to one or another chromosome - and not to humanity,
to life, to their individual self, or to the people they love - then
one has no business having heterosexual relationships at all. To abuse
one's wife is to piss in one's own pond; to want one chromosome to
dominate everything is to deny the contributions, wisdom, and
achievements, of one half of humanity. Neither of these are actions of
intellect any more than they are actions of ethics. And both ethics
and intellect demand better treatment of wives and children than one
advanced either by jerks who have always been jerks or by the jerks
that the "nice guys" became as they developed such convictions.
Misrepresentations of Darwin
In "Darwin's Deadly Legacy," the author argues that evolution was the
reason for the genocides and demicides of 20th century. Nothing can be
further from the truth.
Anyone who has actual understanding of evolution knows that evolution
is based on mutation, and that differences that crop up among specimen
are the source of all richness of life. Anyone who has actual
understanding of evolution also knows that life continues through
ecosystemic balance among different species, all of which have adapted
for the ecosystem and are necessary therefor. The two great lessons
from evolution are therefore diversity and coexistence. Any ideology
that militates against diversity, that tries to wipe out ethnic
groups, that claims one race as being superior and all else as
inferior, that destroys individuality and forces similitude, that
wants to do away with "freaks" or "sociopaths" or "deviants," is a
betrayal of evolution and its true lessons.
"Social Darwinism" that claimed that the culture that's best in war is
superior and deserves to dominate, Nazism that claimed that Aryan race
was superior race meant to rule the world, personality psychology that
wants to do away with anyone who has a different idea than the time
and the place, and similar abortions of ideologies, thoroughly
misconstrue evolution. True understanding of evolution is diversity
and coexistence, not malignant narcissism that seeks to wipe out
everything other than itself.
Another major lesson of evolution is that there are many ways to get
things done rightly. The tigers, the reindeer, the insects, the
plants, and other forms of life, all are different adaptations, and
all of them work. This refutes the Communist belief that Communism is
the only way of getting things done rightly, as much as it refutes
those in capitalism who think that absolute capitalism is the only
functional and ethical system.
Nowhere in evolution is there conceived such a thing as "the master
race"or a superior culture. Nowhere in evolution do we see there being
a single right way of life. What we see is different ways of getting
things done, from which humans stand to learn. In nature, we see just
about everything: Competition, collaboration, self-interest, altruism,
lone-wolf approach, teamwork, patriarchy, matriarchy, and a huge
variety of functional forms that are functional through different
mechanism. True interpretation of evolution sees all that and respects
it. The brutalist ideologies such as Social Darwinism and Nazism are
not Darwin's legacy; they are legacy of ignorance and deception by
those who would use anything and misconstrue everything toward that
end.
As for Communism, Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848; Charles
Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species in 1859. And while Marxian
interpretation of human being's highest rationality is being that to
benefit the collective, while that of capitalism is self-interest,
evolution shows that both are part of nature, and both would be found
in people now and at any other time.
If there are any existing belief structures that are supported by
evolution, it is Buddhism that believes all life to be sacred; Wiccan
and Native American spirituality that value the planet and what lives
on it; environmentalism that recognizes the irreplaceable quality of
the natural treasures; and those who see human potential and want to
see it produce for humanity. What is not supported by evolution is the
belief that life is evil and that it should be destroyed, both inside
people and in the environment. This is the true reason for opposition
of fanatics within Islam and Christianity to evolution. Given the
underlying beliefs, it can very well be said that life-affirming, life-
sustaining, ethic of evolution is far superior in its principles to
the ethic of those who want an end of the world in our lifetime and
direct their activities toward bringing about that end.
Sheeps, Wolves: Any Other Species?
A common metaphor for human interactions in Christian and Christian-
influenced areas has been that of the sheep and the
wolves. The sheep are seen as good, wolves as evil. My question: What
about all the other species?
Nature contains huge variety. To claim that people can only be one of
two species of that variety is extreme folly. What about antelopes and
gazelles? What about tigers, lions and leopards? What about dolphins,
reindeer, koala bears, mongoose, elephants, lemurs, birds?
The wolf-sheep paradigm wants to do away with all these, and such has
in fact been the result of implementation of sheep-wolf thinking: A
plundered planet and a culturally impoverished, homogeneized,
humankind. The sheep-wolf thinking wants everyone to be at every level
a sheep - and claim that, if one is not at every level a sheep, then a
wolf. The foolishness that is behind this thinking is responsible for
huge range of evils now faced by humanity.
In personality psychology, anyone who is not at every level its
product is seen as basically inhuman and irredeemably evil. This is
the case regardless of how much good the person does. The Orwellian
concept of crimethik has been introduced through claims that people
can be made criminal by their personality - that is, by their
thinking. And with that, has been introduced a very real
totalitarianism - not one of government, but one of whatever
unchecked, unbalanced, and unaccountable groupthink, usurps the power
to run the place and the time, to shape people, and to define people
in reference to itself.
From the perspective of the rest of the world, sheep and wolves work
together. The shepherd sends the wolves across the world to clear the
land of all other species; the sheep come in and overgraze the place.
That some wolves would start going after some of the sheep, should be
expected. And yet such things are met with horror, which horror did
not accompany the full-scale destruction of other, beautiful, species,
all around the world, to make room for the sheep.
The worst evils in the world have come from the belief that people
are, or should be, the same. This belief is responsible for genocide,
jihad, imperialism, Stalinism, and demicides, witch hunts, and
holocausts of all kind throughout the history of the world. The demand
that people must at all levels be sheep is totalitarianism that goes
all the way to the core of the people. As such, it is a betrayal of
life, liberty, and all that the countries subverted by this con
against their original purpose are meant to be about.
The sheep and the wolves are a false duality. One should be neither a
sheep nor a wolf. One should think outside false thinking to allow
more clarity. There are millions of beautiful species around the
world, that are being brought to the brink of extinction by the sheep,
the wolves and the shepherds. One should identify with these species
and give them a real chance at a life, while also doing the same for
the planet and its inhabitants.
Ghod Dhammit
news:00fd364c-1d6f-4f0c...@e21g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
> Boomers and Xers: Respective Errors
>
> One frequent criticism of the baby boom generation is that they
> thought that they were God.
My, aren't you the crackpot. Me, I AM Ghod, Dhammit! Also, I note that you
refer to baby boomers in the past tense...are you under the impression that
we've gone away? Have you any more ravings? If so, please deposit them in
the nearest round file.
SkyEyes
> "Ilya Shambat" <bettermillen...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Hear, hear, Ghod Dhammit! I'm another Baby Boomer. We're a long way
from being history.
Brenda Nelson, A.A.#34
BAAWA Knight
EAC Professor of Feline Thermometrics and Cat-Herding
skyeyes nine at cox dot net
John Baker
<betterm...@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
Long-winded little twit, aren't you? And in all that, you managed to
say absolutely nothing. Ever think of going into politics?
panam...@hotmail.com
snip
Your personal discomfort over the fact that some people do not believe
in your god/s is not evidence of anything other than your personal
discomfort.
-Panama Floyd, Atlanta.
aa#2015, Member Knights of BAAWA!
"..the prayer cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next."
-Mark Twain
Religious societies are *less* moral than secular ones:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
ZerkonXXXX
> One frequent criticism of the baby boom generation is that they thought
> that they were God
So?