[Plantagenet]

The other obstacle to change is the use of dialectic techniques of absorbing the critics language, making coherent debate impossible through the Orwellian use of DoubleSpeak.....

"Save Social Security" means destroy Social Security.

Right-o. Now you are getting it.

And right on schedule here come's the latest Orwellian use of DoubleSpeak----Obama's new proposal to "Save Social Security" ..... by cutting benefits for SS recipients.

Obama's proposal to cut social security is a wake-up call for liberals

This kind of Orwellian manipulation of language by both Rs and Ds is a very negative cultural change in the USA-----wars are "police actions"......Abortion is "choice"....higher healthcare costs come from the "affordable care act".......illegal aliens are undocumented workers......reductions in the rate of budget increases are "budget cuts".... discrimination on the basis of race is "affirmative action"....and so on.

What Orwell called "DoubleSpeak" is so common today that we've coined a new and more innocent word for it----now we call it "spin"----.

[PrestonSturges]

Everyone has a purpose in life, and Plant's purpose is to be a bad example. No matter what comes next, we have to deal with the problem of the person who always insists on being the center of attention.

[Plantagenet]

THe UN actually has a treaty to protect the world's "intangible culture" ---the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage The UN defines the intangible culture as including oral traditions, songs, music, drama, skills, crafts, and the other parts of culture that can be recorded but cannot be touched or interacted with.
.
According to the UN, "Intangible Cultural Heritage means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. For the purposes of this Convention, consideration will be given solely to such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments, as well as with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, and of sustainable development"

--------------

GIven this definition of our intangible culture on a global basis, the biggest source of changes we are seeing around the world is coming largely from the American mass media. As Hollywood films and music and American pop culture and American street culture penetrate into every corner of the world, the young around the world are drawn like flies to the movie images of freedom, wealth, sex, and youth that Hollywood is selling, and as a result the world is losing the magic of local diversity and ancient cultural traditions.

[Newfie]

Thanks for the definition.

I still feel mostly lst in this thread but that brought some clarity.

Question for Ibon. Does this definition fit your idea as posited in th OP?

In short, is this what you were talking about?

[Newfie]

GREAT! Now I feel like a dupe dope.

[Ibon]

Thanks for the definition.

Question for Ibon. Does this definition fit your idea as posited in th OP?

In short, is this what you were talking about?

This is what I meant. This definition is somewhat broader though than what I was referring to. We cannot preceisely measure certain intangible moods and impressions that are in the collective soup of a culture but that do have profound consequeces particularly in a cultures willingness to change or move on an issue long held as intractible.

Nobody, absolutely nobody saw the fall of the berlin wall and the emergence of Gorbachav and Perestroika coming 5 years before in 1985 in what at that time had already been 40 years of cold war polarity with the west. What was finally exhausted in the collective that created a tipping point toward change?

Who would have seen 5 years ago that a broad segment of the American society would suddenly embrace gay marriage.

Did something change, a certain innocence lost in American culture that existed right up to the moment when JFK was shot followed by MLK and Bobby Kennety 60's? Did this loss of innocence, an intangible, affect the social movements that followed? How we viewed the Vietnam war?

What about after 911? Or when we found out there were no WMD in Iraq. Or when the housing bubble tanked. Think about how these examples act like erosion to undermine what we consider this intractable status quo. Think of all the record temperatures, crop failures, droughts, melting ice caps and how silent many of opponents of climate change are suddenly. What is now incubating in their minds?

Or what Hoffer or are referring to of this ennui that sets in a culture shortly before revolutions.

Recognizing these intangibles cannot help you predict anything specific but recognizing that it can trigger change is worth to take note when we assume we are entrenched in a stubborn inertia.

As an analogy, we look at climate change and see the danger of certain tipping points like the release of methany hydrates that might accelerate global warming.

Think of these intangibles that affect the collective mood in a culture also having the potential to act as tipping points where suddenly public opinion, long seen as intractible and stubbornly conservative, can suddenly take a leap forward.

Think of all the profound consequences coming our way in this century as a result of overshoot.

Every culture and collective has an almost instinctive need to follow a narrative that promises the fulfillment of ideals. Specific ideals change with time and circumstance but when a culture in descending and exisitng institutions no longer can hold the dreams that make up part of this cultural narrative, then this ennui sets in. At that point pay attention.

The equilibrium of the long assumed intractible status quo is about to be punctuated with a shift.

It can happen. It has many times before.

[PrestonSturges]

Or as the guy who taught our economics class said:

Anything that can't go on forever, won't.

[PrestonSturges]

The other interesting point from Hoffer is the use of denial. Believing anything requires denying a hundred obvious contradictions. And if you look at all the things that people deny - global warming, slavery causing the civil war, evolution, Obama is an American, and of course everyone's favorite, the Holocaust - it makes a lot of sense that denial is one of the chief ways that groups form their identity.

[Ibon]

This thread has run it's course but a last food for thought is perhaps this link to the recent PO news article about the lurking inconsistency.

http://peakoil.com/enviroment/the-lurking-inconsistency

our scientific understanding of nature is based on mechanism, on material and efficient causation with no room for final cause, for teleology or purpose. Yet we ourselves, and higher animals in general, directly experience purpose, and, within limits, act in a self-determining manner. If we are part of nature then so is purpose; if purpose is not part of nature then neither, in at least one significant way, are we.

Increasingly ethics, morals, and religion enters into the discussion about human evolution and ecology particularly in regards to our species ability to develop "internal" cultural strategies that could eventually mitigate to what degree we end up at the mercy of the external consequences of human overshoot.

Science and technology form only part of the answer to our species ever reaching a steady state of living within carrying capacity where no further degradation to the biosphere occurs and where we eventually reach a population and consumption per capita that could even allow for the healing of the damage done.

There is an interesting degree of synergy recently in the topic of this thread that is touched on in this article and recently over on John Michael Greer's site.
What is cooking in the collective soup?

[PrestonSturges]

We want to pick up the thread of our main problem. If fascism relies so successfully on the mystical thinking and sentiments of the masses, then a fight against it can be effective only if mysticism is comprehended and the mystical contagion of the masses is tackled through education and hygiene. It is not enough that the scientific view of the world gains ground for it move much too slowly to keep pace with the rapid spread of the mystical contagion. The reason for this can only lie in our incomplete understanding of mysticism itself.
-Wilhelm Reich, the Mass Psychology of Fascism, 1945

There's nothing there that gives me any hope.

[careinke]

The other obstacle to change is the use of dialectic techniques of absorbing the critics language, making coherent debate impossible through the Orwellian use of DoubleSpeak. Hoffer doesn't really explore this, but he does describe how the revolutionary slogans are swiftly adopted by counter-revolutionary forces, and the revolution itself becomes an oppressive tool of the status quo - maybe a new status quo, or maybe just the same old status quo.

People who get elected yapping about the "Constitution" write blatantly unconstitutional laws, and they come back again and again and again looking for gaps in the Constitution. Most Constitutions are very short, so you can truthfully say that there is no right to vote, there is no right to habeas corpus, there is no right to privacy. So people that run on the "Constitution" are basically signalling their goal of destroying constitutional rule.

"Save Social Security" means destroy Social Security.

The Federalist Society represents the anti-Federalist "states rights" neoconfederates, just the opposite of its name

People like Scalia who have spent decades complaining about "activist judges who legislate from the bench" now say it's the courts job to legislate from the bench and reverse the legislative branch....just because.

People who claim to be fighting "Fascism" are generally spewing most of the classic Fascist talking points.

People who claim to fighting "racism" can certainly be found on white supremacist web sites and hoarding ammo for their fantasy "race war."

People who claim to be filled with love are likely to be sidetracked by apocalyptic fantasies where they hunt down and kill anyone that disagrees with them.

Preston, I feel sad for you

[PrestonSturges]

Preston, I feel sad for you

Whatever lets you sleep at night, do what you have to.

[careinke]

Preston, I feel sad for you

Whatever lets you sleep at night, do what you have to.

I'm over it, have much more productive things to do. Please continue on with your paranoid fantasy's.

[PrestonSturges]

Preston, I feel sad for you

Whatever lets you sleep at night, do what you have to.

I'm over it, have much more productive things to do. Please continue on with your paranoid fantasy's.

Proverbs 29:9
If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs,

[PrestonSturges]

OK, look at the IRS "scandal." Groups publicly claim to be political, then they submit applications to be nonprofit nonpolitical groups, and the applications are approved, then the groups scream bloody murder anyway.

All of this shows that our political anti-corruption laws are so weak as to be worthless.

But here comes the GOP "fighting corruption" when they are clearly targeting the few very weak anti-corruption laws we have left.

[SeaGypsy]

"THe UN actually has a treaty to protect the world's "intangible culture" ---the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage The UN defines the intangible culture as including oral traditions, songs, music, drama, skills, crafts, and the other parts of culture that can be recorded but cannot be touched or interacted with. "

B/S. Culture is continuously touched and interacted with. Check out what passes for indigenous culture in developed countries (USA & Australia spring to mind)- an homogeny has been created based on market driven imperatives. From what I hear the same is happening globally.

[PrestonSturges]

And just in keeping with theme of dialectics and how much of conservative rhetoric is about deception - look at your local paper for the Tea Partiers talking about reversing the "radical" swing to the "far left."

Lately, I've been challenging that statement by saying "Let's not argue about whether this "radical swing to far left" is real or imaginary, you are explicitly promising an equal and opposite radical swing to far right to reverse this "far left transformation" you claim has happened. We may not agree on whether government has been subverted by the "radical left," or if that is just a hallucination, but we can all agree you are promising an equally "radical" swing to the right. You say that's just to get us back to "normal," but it's still promising a "radical" and transformational change."

The responses so far have been incoherent but entertaining.