The Pendulum swings right...........The Pendulum swings left?

[holeinboatoutatsea]

I've been waiting, as have many others, for the pendulum to swing to the left again for many, many years. After all, it always has, right?

I'm no great student of history, but one of the things that stands out for me is the non-stop brutality and butchery of various peoples of the world since history began.

We all recently got to stand back and think about the Romans and Christians and Jews of ancient times, and their barbaric ways of treating each other. Nothing much has changed.

Maybe there are actually many pendulums swinging back and forth at the same time, and it is a minor miracle when they all end up to the place that promotes peace and prosperity.

Dictatorships have been around since people realized they could intimidate others. In other words, since cave-people times. Man with biggest club who gets others with big clubs to bash heads win. We are there now, though it is "prettied up" with words like civilization. It is difficult for a people to grasp the reality that their leaders are cave-people who don't particularly care for other cave people, and in fact would like to starve, enslave or kill other cave peoples.

I don't have a hard time seeing barbarians for what they are; mass murderers without conciences. I do have a hard time seeing where all the pendulums are, and why they are at that particular point.

I just wanted to get that out. I don't believe we in this country will ever again see a time like the 60's and early 70's. There are too many pendulums.

[everythingsxen]

1. It will swing again...

and when it does.. brother is it gonna SWING!

It is going to be something totally radical. Myabe revolution. Maybe Peak Oil will cause a collapse. Maybe the rest of the world will unite against us and attack. Who knows. It will swing though.

[Q]

2. It's the prevailing propaganda...

...that the country has moved to the right. The reality is that the Republican party and the neocons have bought up the media and TOLD the American people they were becoming more 'conservative'. But most people have never changed. Most Americans and people in general are naturally liberal...believing in civil, workers and individual rights.

- No one wants to be a slave to corporations.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. Kind of agree.

How does that explain the Congress, Exec. and Judicial though?

[BillZBubb]

17. The country HAS moved to the right

Sorry, it is not propaganda. When a clown talking about privatizing Social Security isn't rejected by 70% of the voters, you know the right has grown. Most people probably hold somewhat liberal positions on the environment, but a big chunk of them have no problem voting for a scourge like Bush*. It's the same on many issues.

Sure, no one wants to be a slave to corporations, but the majority vote the way that makes it more likely. The Repugs control virtually all of government.

The right has been winning with: "No one wants to be a slave to the government." And that simplistic worldview has trumped all else.

[Crachet2004]

4. I believe it is a question of longevity...

We are all going to 'shuffle off this mortal coil' sooner rather than later...and it makes us insane-our better nature and sanity collapse in the face of the unknown.

After all, would we pollute if WE were the ones who were going to have to live with it? Would we kill and hate our neighbors, if we knew they had, say, a thousand years to get payback?
Would we work so hard to leave wealth as our monument, if there were no need for a monument? Why achieve great works to be remembered by, if you aren't going anywhere, anytime soon? All the motivators of insanity would cease to have valence.

With increased lifespan, everything could slow down. There would be time for peaceful solutions and understanding, rather than the abrupt answers rendered by war. Who would risk war, if you stood to possibly lose a thousand years of life? Not many, I suspect.

How could anyone Bullshit you, if you were 500 years old? What kind of government would that mean? Who could intimidate you, if you knew ALL the martial arts? There would be time to master them all!

I think sanity will increase as the frontiers of death are pushed back. We know in our gut that religion is probably an invention of Man, to soften the blow that comes too soon. It is a crutch, nothing more. Not many of us are strong enough, to stand naked and alone, in the face of the unknown. It drives us crazy! IMHO.

[stepnw1f]

5. Picture the pendulum swinging more left

due to the resistance of public doubt relating to Bush's already corroding credibility. Need a lot more money to hold all these investigations at bay. Eventually, the media will have to show more and more of the truth to a public that is tuning big media out. Credibility can never be mended...forgivin, but never forgotten.

Things look good.

[Indiana_Dem]

6. The 60s and 70s will never come around again, I agree.

However, there are some similarities. Technology was advancing rapidly, the largest group of concerned youth were around, and that was the time we should've started planning for the future 30 years down the road for a decline in energy resources.

It's also interesting that at the time we should have been contemplating and solving the future energy problems, we were, as we are now, having to deal with social humanitarian issues. Then it was wmoen's lib and civil rights, now it's gay rights. Will this issue take the forefront over energy priorities again?

The world's largest group of youth called the baby boomers, also were confronted with the realities of the "cave-man" mentality of Vietnam and the cold war just as we are now faced with boogeymen like Iraq and other countries who harbor terrorists.

About the only differences I see right now include first, a smaller group of youth who, for the most part, are concerned but ever so distracted by advanced technology & society that they have time to do little else. The preoccupation with advanced technology & society of youth today probably can be compared to the introduction of psychadelic drugs that played the pied piper leading the baby boomers away from their principles & good intentions from the beginning.

The second difference would have to be the minute amount of time we as humans have to create new alternative or renewable energies before our resources dwindle to nothing but incredibly expensive forms.

So in essence, the "pendulum" (depleted energy sources) has come down quite a bit in the last 30+ years and we're basically in the same position: tied down by social issues and "cave-man" wars, still reliant on oil as the main generating source, and with distracted youth who could possibly change the world if they chose to if they weren't so "drugged" by technology.

You're right. Nothing much has changed in a long time. That's not very encouraging. I will hate to see the withdrawal symptoms when technology begins to decline for lack of energy.

[Deja Q]

16. Not as much technology as the media being an influence...

All these pop shows, reality shows, shows promising that you too can be a rich star... nobody needs advanced technology to do that; the equipment made in the 1950s was more than sufficient.

But as a whole, little has changed. The 60s seemed to be the big attempt to change things. But 'do your own thing' as individuals became perverted into 'do your own thing' as corporations, which is a fair reason as to why we're hated by some...

[Lone_Wolf]

7. The Conservatives have invested lots of money...

The Conservatives have invested lots of money in Conservative Think Tanks whose goal is to create a regressive society that moves itself further and further to the right. Amitai Etzioni's Communitarian Society is a prime example. If the Communitarian ideals are adopted by a society, the society will naturally move itself to the right in a self-perpetuating manner. The mechanism behind this is social demonization of progressive thought while conservative thought is praised and rewarded. In theory, as time passes, progressive thought becomes weaker and eventually become extinguished while conservative thought is reinforced and becomes stronger.

I know this sounds radical, but the Conservatives has spent tons of money and have actually suceeded in getting many conservative ideals woven into the fabric of society.

If you think about it, it is truly diabolical.

[holeinboatoutatsea]

8. It is diabolical

Amitai Etzioni's Communitarian Society

hadn't heard of that - will check it out - thank you.

got this much already:

Amitai Etzioni is the founding father and leading voice of contemporary communitarianism. His goal is to catalyze a national moral revitalization and preserve civil society. Consequently, he barely discusses communitarianism within its philosophical traditions. Instead, his sprawling, inconsistent, and intellectually deficient writings are pragmatic and aimed at an audience of activists and policy-makers rather than intellectuals. Etzioni wants to do for society what the environmental movement seeks to do for nature.

interesting.

[Lone_Wolf]

12. You have to look pretty hard to find negative stuff on it...

A lot of liberals have been sucked into it because they don't understand it. Essentially, Communatarianism is a movement that seeks regressive social change.

[holeinboatoutatsea]

How large is it now

and how long has it been around? I can look, I know, and will, but this intrigues me.

[Lone_Wolf]

14. The Spirit of Community was written in 1993

So it has been around for over 10 years.

I don't know how large it is because it Etzioni is trying to influence people who make social policy. It is impossible to say how much of it is used in socal planning. My guess is it is very large at this point as we are in a very conservative time right now.

[Lone_Wolf]

15. I should add...

that a majot tenent of Etzioni's Communitarian thesis is that individual rights often conflict with the rights of the community. Therefore Etzioni argues that community rights should take precedence over an individual's rights.

For example, Etzioni would argue that police randomaly searching people's homes unnanounced for drugs should be allowed because it is in the communities best interest to be drug free.

[Indiana_Dem]

18. So is this more like communism?

I never really understood the differences between communism, socialism & Marxism, Stalinism, etc. I never really had a class that studied it in depth and if I did, I probably wasn't interested and didn't pay attention. Or is this a newer or combined type of thought?

[Lone_Wolf]

19. Communism is more of an economic theory

Communism essentaiily means there is no private ownership.

With Socialism, there can be private ownership, but public ownership of the means of production.

Marxism is a type of communism. It is different than the communism the USSR practiced. In the USSR all of the power was centralized under the state. In Marxism, power is not centralized.

None of these are the same as Communitarianism. There are similarities, but they are more different than the same. If I were to describe Communitarianism, it would be more like a Christian Fundalmentalist State; kind of like a Christian version of Taliban Afghanistan.

[Indiana_Dem]

9. Do you mean like communal like as in a "hippie" commune

as I know it? You mean kind of like what I learned in college in Sociology classes and Psych classes as a kind of peer pressure push of ideas for the perceived cohesiveness and survival of the group? I don't know how to describe what I think you're saying...

[Lone_Wolf]

11. Well... let me say this...

It is not really is like a commune, although there is some simularities. Both use informal social control like peer pressure. The Communitarian society uses peer pressure, shaming, etc. to get people to conform along conservative ideals. In some ways, it is the opposite of the hippie communes, which were progressive-type societies.

I should also mention that the Communitarian Society also heavily uses institutions like schools to indoctrinate people with Conservative ideals while ferreting out progressive thoughts. Essnetially people are taught from the day they are born things like "following orders is good," "obeying your superior is good," "thinking for yourself is bad," "hard work always pays," "being on time is good." These are taught to youngsters as universal truths.

Etzioni makes a strong case for it in his book The Spirit of Community. What is really worrisome is on the surface, Communitarianism sounds almost Utopian. Many liberals who don't understand its darker motives have actually embraced it as an answer to some of societies problems.

[rman]

20. Right. I was going to say the swinging is concerted,

and refer to the fact that when the pendulum swings to the right it does so in several significant nations at the same time; ww2 (pretty obvious), and now (arguing europe is swinging to the right as well in spite of some eu opposition to this war). But the RW investment in framing the issues is even more direct evidence of concerting.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

Either way, eventually people do get fed up and catch on; in that respect the swinging back of the pendulum is 'natural'.

[Lone_Wolf]

21. I really hope the pendulum will swing the other way...

...but there are no guarantees. My feeling is this: just because it has happened in the past, is no guarantee that it will happen in the future (I REALLY hope that I am wrong on this point).

I think that you are correct. The Conservatives are acting in a concerted fashion and have been doing so in years. From what I understand, Richard Mellon Scaife and the Coors family are notable donors to Conservative think tanks and conservative causes. Here's a great website:

Buying a Movement

They have infiltrated the Universities to educate people with Conservative ideology. For example, I don't think it is any coincidence that many notable Right Wingers earned their degrees from the University of Chicago.


BTW, if you are interested in how issues are framed, here is a great website that is associated with Dr. Lakoff.

Rockridge Institute

The Conservatives have invested lots of money in framing issues. In fact, they have a 30 year lead on us.

[Cat Atomic]

10. It's more of a spring than a pendulum.

People with power and influence are always pulling on it, taking a little more ground every day. Eventually they pull so damned far, the general population wakes up and snaps the spring back to the center.

Or it just breaks in half, leaving the privilidged standing there admiring their work while everyone else sets about building Guillotines.

[MAlibdem]

13. i believe in humanity's potential

and human progress. See below...

The Individualistic Collective: Notes on Human Progress through Modern Society

“Even the smallest of the smallest can make the biggest dreams come true. Everyone matters.” –Kermit the Frog in “A Very Muppet Christmas”

The vastness and emptiness of the universe is inconceivable. There is an infinite amount of space, of great nothingness and of comparatively tiny everythingness, of unimaginable distances that light cannot traverse if given and infinite amount of time. In this void is one of an infinite number of galaxies, that holds one of a million stars, that holds one of nine planets, that holds one of millions of species of organisms, that is the hope for a meaningful existence for the universe. If human progress is not a real fact, if humanity cannot provide meaning in the universe, what hope for meaning is there? And if there is no hope for meaning, if life is meaningless, why do humans exist at all?
That humanity exists is incredible, the odds against humankind’s existence are staggering. But we are here, and we exist, and we thrive, and we progress. That is why humankind is the hope for meaning in the universe, not our mere existence, but our proven and ever-increasing potential for progress.
In The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski posits that human civilization could only develop with agriculture. He insists that “civilization can never grow up on the move” (60). Only with an assured food supply could humans settle in villages and cities. Then, as agriculture improved, some laborers were freed from the need to farm, and became artisans and craftsmen. These craftsmen were afforded a degree of creative and artistic freedom that no human before experienced (78). Only when these humans were freed from concerns about the most basic of needs, food, shelter, and warmth, could progress begin in a process that has continued to the present.
Human society has arrived at a point where this potential for continued progress is ripe. Society, particularly western society, is marked by extreme freedoms afforded to each individual that are fiercely protected by society as a whole. Modern democratic governments give citizens the rights to pursue their own meaning and purposes in life, but demand contributions in the form of taxes and military services from citizens to ensure that societal conditions remain stable enough that people can pursue their goals. This phenomenon, what I call individualistic collectivism, allows humans to pursue progress as they see fit, and ensures collective security to provide for the most basic needs of all. This arrangement fits very well with humankind’s biological nature, and is a result of societal growth and changes since the emergence of humankind as a species distinct from other primates. Humans evolved to this state of society and government, because of the interaction of human nature and human reason. The concept of individualistic collectivism is based on the evolution of various societal structures that are real and ever growing. These structures include human progress in technology, in liberty and equality, in morality, and in literature and the arts.


...It goes on for seven more pages.