(03-08-2020 12:12 PM)stinkfist Wrote: (03-08-2020 11:57 AM)JRsec Wrote: (03-08-2020 09:35 AM)bullet Wrote: (03-08-2020 12:49 AM)JRsec Wrote: (03-07-2020 10:01 PM)bullet Wrote: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020...the-future
Our society has been declining since the 60s is the thesis of the book. Don't really agree with the prognosis, but its an interesting read.
"When Boeing introduced its flagship 707 jet airliner in 1958, the power to cruise at 977 kilometers per hour did more than enable routine transcontinental commercial flights. It fed the optimistic self-understanding of a society proud to have entered the Jet Age. More than sixty years later, we are not moving any faster. Boeing’s latest plane, the 737 MAX, has a cruising speed of just 839 kilometers per hour—to say nothing of its more catastrophic limitations.
The since-retired 707 was a success. The new MAX looks like a failure. As for the 747 jumbo jets that we are still flying today fifty years after their 1969 debut, they are a sign of what Ross Douthat calls decadence. By “decadence” he does not mean delicious sensuality or over-the-top indulgence (think Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate dancing mid-flight in the upper-deck cocktail bar of a 747 in last year’s Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood) but stagnation and complacency, a dissipation of creative energy, a jaded will merely to muddle through...."
Well the 707 and later beefed up 747 are really just retooled B52's. Have we really improved upon that aircraft? Look at its longevity and usefulness.
When the briefly put the Missouri back into operation it had one massive advantage over the nuclear navy. A cruise missile would have a hard time sinking it. The armor plating was just too thick. It was good weapons platform for what it was designed for, but only its mission was outdated. The Brits learned this lesson in the Falklands when they lost an aircraft carrier.
So toss in the Apollo 11 and the subsequent Moon Landings and other than putting a rover on Mars what exactly have we done?
I expect to get some hate for what I'm about to say but think about it before responding:
We know we live in a finite solar system with a sun that will go supernova when it runs out of fuel, and that we are subject to E.L.E. events with comets, asteroids, and other possibly rogue planets which have escaped their orbits. We also know that super volcanic eruptions can lead to extinction. Therefore it only seems prudent as a species that we should always be working toward viability in space with the ability to overcome distances and the issues of interstellar logistics for the preservation of the species. God did give us a brain and told us to be good stewards of this earth and I believe implied in that directive is the command to be good stewards of life in general and if God created the earth and people then God also created all of the heavens and in it is implied permission to travel space and to advance the species.
Now the part that some people won't like. Nature teaches us that life advances and survives with the most able of any species. Any effort and time we waste being concerned with the least developed of our cultures, or the slowest of our species, is an impediment to the ultimate survival of it. We need charity and care for all who need assistance, but we must travel in all areas of endeavor at the speed of the most able because upon their shoulders rests survival.
God could come at any time. But until God does the burden of advancing humanity rests solely with us.
IMO, we will continue to devolve until a massive crisis makes us stare into the face of extinction and only then we will advance again at the speed of the brightest and best. The Plague begat the Renaissance. Only when humanity is faced with death and hardship does it exalt innovation in all areas of life and give itself to move past its superstitious thinking which define as man corrupting God's directives.
In line with your last paragraph, notice how often great people are born poor. Sometimes they are born rich and become great with all their advantages. What is unusual for the middle class to become great leaders. They are too comfortable and don't have all the connections and advantages of the rich. The poor are driven by need. The middle class don't "need" it.
In competitive things I did like chess and running, I was driven forward by poor performances, not by good ones. You see that in sports coaches. It is a very rare coach like Nick Saban who doesn't get complacent with success. Our society is complacent.
I think the biggest differences are simple ones. Throughout my education there was one thing that my instructors drilled into our heads, "The pursuit of excellence." That ideal was long ago abandoned for minimum standards.
We no longer strive to make ourselves ever better, we strive to clear the lowest bar so we can advance, but advance towards what? Being slightly better than the dumbest for whom the minimum standards are prepared so they might matriculate and not fail only to clog the system. Adapting to, and thriving from, this low standard are teachers who now benefit from less blowback because so many grades are inflated and so many parents are relieved. At least until the Lohans of the world need to buy their kids into college.
Minimum standards have, and are, dumbing down our society.
in summary, the phrase is "strive to create and promote incentive"....
and relative to the rest of the thread(s) en macro, the law of diminishing was always given relative to time as fewer ops find ze open door....
IMO, what too many whiff is the U.S. is in infrastructural/educational despair with an aging % whose wealth is being siphoned whilst promoting the 'soy factor' as valid....that's right up your 'alley', JR....
8 years of Zero was a fk'n crippler in context...
Incentives for my generation:
1. To be able to feed oneself when graduation from the 12th grade meant you were on your own.
2. To be able to provide shelter for oneself and clothe oneself.
3. To have an income sufficient for the acquisition of transportation and enough savings to be able to afford to get married.
4. Enough to have children and get them educated.
5. Enough to be able to lay aside for retirement more savings.
Those have all been destroyed by student loans that students don't believe they actually have to pay back.
Destroyed by parents so cowed that they let 30 year old neerdowells stay at home and eat at the parents table.
Destroyed by government giving housing or providing shelter.
Destroyed by walk away from obligation auto loans.
Destroyed by government who pays for illegitimate children and feeds their mommies as well.
And now destroyed by the attack on marriage in general.
And destroyed because government pays them no matter how much they fail, and gives them free time, since no work is required, to organize gangs, burglarize, steal, rape, and sell drugs to the children of those who do work to pay for their asses through taxes.
If a citizen is going to be on the public dole two things should happen:
1. As long as they live off of the taxes from others they should not be allowed to vote.
2. If they get a check they should be working for 8 hours a day 5 days a week performing some public service.
That way vagrancy laws can go a long way to ending daytime working hours crime.
Why? Because all self determination must begin with the accountability to support at least yourself and acquiring full rights should be the incentive to achieving it.