When you are living through an age, it is very difficult to see the currents with which the age will be identified. Few people living in the Jazz Age would have guessed they were living in the Jazz Age. In this age, society is whipsawed by one trend after another, so it seems impossible to know which one will be remembered. Maybe this is the geriatric age where aging Baby Boomers ruled the day. Perhaps the democratic age, where mob rule plunged the West into darkness and chaos.
One option may be the age of meaning. This is the time when people are always searching about for meaning and purpose in their lives. They turn the trivial into all-important moments, so they can pretend to be in a struggle. They invent victims of imaginary oppression so they can play the white knight. Every crisis, it turned into a crusade that quickly takes on the trappings of religion. Ours is an age where everyone is on a vision quest and they force the rest of us to play along.
For example, lost in all of the handwringing about Afghanistan is how some became emotionally attached to a place they ignored for two decades. Suddenly, getting our “allies” out was a holy mission. They spent all day on-line playing “digital Dunkirk” as if they were really doing something heroic. All of a sudden, the media was full of stories from people who claimed to working to get their friends out of the country. Of course, those friends were always heroic Afghans, not Americans.
This quest for meaning was not limited to LARP’ing on-line. Two congressmen flew over there against the wishes of the government in order to play hero. They were not satisfied with making noises about it on the House floor. They had to be in the middle of the action. Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma decided to play Rambo and went over to personally rescue people. These pointless and foolish acts are driven by a need to be seen as men with a purpose beyond the role they play.
Of course, for close to two years we have been hit by a tsunami of this from women claiming they are in the “front lines” of Covid. Just look at the language. They imagine they are in real trenches fighting real monsters. When it started, every nurse and doctor went on-line every day to tell us how exhausted they were, as if they were rescuers working day and night to save people from a collapsed building. Many got swept up in their fantasies on-line for the same reason.
The main reason the Covid panic is not old news is the people swept up in the cause cannot let go of it. For many, this was the first time in their life they woke up in the morning with a sense of purpose. There are nefarious reasons behind the government response, but it is aided and abetted by the quest for meaning. There are many more people who want to believe the stories are true than those who are offended by the assault on their liberty by the state in response to the problem.
The best way to see this quest for meaning is in things that are not driven by a sense of crisis, but by history. Here is the ridiculous governor of Virginia inserting himself and his co-religionists into the history books. They get to feel like heroes for righting a past wrong, that was probably not wrong. The facts are not important. They need to be part of the long gone struggle. Since the line for the Emmett Till ride is way too long, they picked a different event to exercise their quest for meaning.
This is one reason events like the civil right movement are talked about as if they happened yesterday. Part of it is nostalgia, for sure, but a big part of it is a secondhand nostalgia by people who have no direct connection to the events. Instead, they seek to fill the need for meaning and purpose in their present lives with fantasies about having experienced emotionally important events of the shared past. This allows them to feel like they are part of the struggle from the safety of home.
Bourgeoise restlessness is not a new thing. This desire to do something important seems to be the result of leisure. Young men from good homes have gone off to seek adventure since there have been young men from good homes. We live in an age in which large swaths of the population are idle. Poverty is no longer a threat, as even the poor have more than they need. In one respect, the quest for meaning in a post-scarcity phenomenon driven by an excess of middle-class people.
Another driver though is the devastation wrought by liberal democracy. Social capital in the form of family and community has been used to fire the great engines of the technological state. The transactional replacements, on-line community, social media groups and mass media, are a poor substitute. Like emergency meal replacements, manufactured community can keep you going for a while, but it is a constant reminder of the loss of the real thing, as well as a poor substitute.
At the end of the Time Machine, the protagonists realizes that the future he witnessed was not the failure of man, but the result of his success. “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.” Once those challenges were conquered, there was no need for the sort of men who rush to the sound of danger. Over time those types faded away and were replaced with the type who easily lived a carefree life as food.
We are learning a similar lesson. Like all living things, humans are wired to do what is necessary to reach sexual maturity. What has always made man unique is the desire to live beyond that point. To look into the heavens for purpose and then manifest that purpose on earth for the benefit and admiration of our people. The dream may be small or grandiose, but it is the dream that gives meaning to life. We are not meant to live in adult daycare centers, marking our days consuming the latest products.
Perhaps the tech overlords will make the virtual quest for meaning good enough to keep the species going for a while longer. We will plug into the machine and have our dreams made true by an algorithm. Maybe we simply make ourselves insane in the increasingly chaotic quest for meaning. Whatever happens, there is a good chance that people look back at this age and know that we were spoiled for choice in the material realm but starved for choice in the spiritual realm.
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It reminds me of the G.K. Chesterton quote: ““When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing, he believes in anything.” In a similar sense, when you take away a unified purpose in society, the individual doesn’t merely lack meaning, he projects meaning onto everything and hunts for it any way he can.
Today we have narcissists who crave attention by any means (mainly via social media). This is the only meaning they can find in their life.
“These pointless and foolish acts are driven by a need to be seen as men with a purpose beyond the role they play.”
Everyone is playing a role these days. Everyone wants to be the hero of their own action/drama movie. And they see you and everyone else to be their popcorn eating audience. But if everyone is a movie star, there is no audience.
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Great stuff from Zman. May I suggest our host write part 2 of this essay on the Age of Recognition?
As Reynard implied, the quest for meaning and the quest for recognition seem to have merged these days. It’s not enough to search for meaning, because in this age of narcissism and exhibitionism, meaning has no meaning unless society recognizes the individual seeker.
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“Quest for recognition” “age of exhibitionism”
*chef’s kiss*
That’s perfect. You said it much better than I could. I hope you don’t mind if I steal those phrases.
That’s very interesting point though about the need for recognition. In the past we had a homogeneous and monolithic society. We belonged to true communities. “Recognition” from the community was granted by age old traditions, and was on a much smaller scale– it was entirely parochial. We had traditions, rituals, rites of passage for such a thing.
I grew up in a Catholic family. The individual goes through several rituals and rites of passage throughout their life: baptism, confirmation, marriage, milestone anniversary, funeral. These are all societal moments of recognition. I have an unread copy of Bowling for Soup sitting around, but I know we had many more secular institutions, like men’s clubs, which fulfilled the same purpose. There are very few options now days. There is no community, there are no traditions, and consequently there is no recognition besides what we can scrap together from total strangers in a virtual setting.
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I’d abbreviate and describe Global Clown World as “the Age of Narcissism and Histrionics”. The madness is being driven by an excess of mental illness, not an excess of middle class searching for a higher purpose.
Perhaps normal people are starved for choice in the spiritual realm, but our progressive enemies are quite fulfilled in their version of the great awakening. We see it as madness, but they see it as a jihad. The danger is their religion sweeps across the land like Muslims in the 7th century, and we’re in for a thousand years of a Clownworld Sultanate.
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The rural and small town life before agricultural technology, Wal Marts, and highway improvements got out of hand is probably the closest I personally got to happiness on earth. We still had the old timers around who remembered the very early 20th century, a time before rural electrification.
There was strong community and churches then.
The same thing was present in cities within the ethnic neighborhoods where until the freeways and the suburbs and the shopping malls destroyed those connections communities flourished.
Man needs more than technology to thrive.
But what we will probably get is VR devices strapped to our heads so that we can tour those long gone places in our heads.
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> The same thing was present in cities within the ethnic neighborhoods where until the freeways and the suburbs and the shopping malls destroyed those connections communities flourished.
Let’s not forget how they were enriched by diversity.
This age strikes me as being the age of Globohomo: Weimar part 2 (pretty much a repeat but gone global). Most of the planet now had a culture created by the tribe for hysterical females. All of the preposterous narratives are lies that appeal to emotions, the more hysterical the better.
The lone major patriarchal holdout with a chance of not succumbing is China. Most of the white pills these days seem to come from them. Billionaires humbled. Entertainment stars ripped of their pedestal. Boys urged to be more masculine with camps to help them become more manly. Many (but not all unfortunately) feminists silenced and pound me too shut down except for when it benefits the patriarchy.
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People of the future looking back on our age and trying to describe it? We don’t do that now, we used to make an honest effort. They will do what present historians and the like do now, manufacture a narrative that fits their agenda. You know, negroes hanging from poles and trees everywhere. It was bad back then.
Kind of like he that controls the past controls the present. We live in the age of lies. Hopefully your future robot historians will craft an honest research. I suspect we may not get them but will get your future ape historians.
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That’s why I don’t think I can stomach sending kids to public schools. I think about their history and “social studies” textbooks. How will these depict the last decade? George Floyd will be sanctified, BLM will be a just crusade, and so on.
Science is no better. We just apply a fresh coat of brown paint uon Cheddar man and voila! “Britain was always black, now make way for a mass migration of brown people to settle back in their homeland!”
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> When it started, ever nurse and doctor went on-line every day to tell us how exhausted they were, as if they were rescuers working day and night to save people from a collapsed building.
Look at the rhetoric now, and it’s clear the meaning of many health care people is not to care for the sick, but punish the heretics. While a lot of it is LARPing, reddit and twitter are full of doctors and nurses practically giggling with glee at refusing Ivermectin and putting the unvaxxed on ventilators.
Deep inside everyone knew the medical community was full of low-key psychopaths, but now it’s socially acceptable for them to show their hate and contempt.
you know who was good at giving people meaning in their lives? that’s right. watch “Triumph of The Will” and pay attention. the first couple of times i watched it, i thought all the shots of uniformed people were of military members. they are not. they are all party members. the guys who are literally ditch diggers are carrying their shovels like rifles (as well as wearing uniforms). tens of thousands of people in a huge week long jamboree, culminating in the big rally.
the problem with virtual quests is they lack a physical component – as well as lacking real human contact.
the blueprint for taking back America, is there for any who will pick it up and run. Chuck Palahniuk knows what i am saying here.
start organizing get togethers where a group of guys learns how to work together, while picking up practical skills – that are oh so conveniently are handy in a 4G environment. and never ever talk about “the plan” or anything to do with politics. anyone that insists on doing so is almost certainly a gov plant.
have quarterly meetups for a region, and a national meet up once a year. i would push it down to the neighborhood level, where sons and fathers go to the local school field and just do shit as a group. practical stuff mostly, but you can use sports too as a way to improve group cohesion. i promise you if one dad started doing this, he would have four or five dads the second week, etc.
just let the politics be implicit, don’t scare off the normies with fiery talk. it’s the sons who are important, the dads are just along for the ride.
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watch “Triumph of The Will” and pay attention.
Not a bad idea, it’s on YT. You get to see what Nürnberg looked like before it got razed. It’s cheering Aryans all around, horseplaying Hitlerjugend, blond peasant girls in traditional garb, cute white children. No f*gs, no hippies and no joggers. Terrible quality, alas, somehow nobody ever restored it.
The sound bites are rather trite, although Goebbles and Uncle Adolf gives a good show. The massed martial pageantry and the marching doesn’t really do it for me, it’s terribly un-Danish, but it’s no wonder that the Nazis scared people.
start organizing get togethers where a group of guys learns how to work together
A f*g-free boy scout organization would be a good place to start, parents would love to have their little space aliens pulled away from their phone for a few days.
Orange Man really missed a trick there with his half-hearted Reagan nostalgia.
The worst lunatics are always the people who were fully aware of, but unable to participate in, some great social upheaval. All the damage we associate with “The Sixties” (or “the Boomers,” if you prefer) was actually done by people just a hair too old or young to be hippies. The original stuff — Civil Rights, the Port Huron Statement, all that — came from guys born in the late 1930s. They had vivid memories of WW2, and even more vivid memories of the angry young strangers they met in 1946 and were told to call “Dad.” All the early “Sixties” stuff was their revenge. The later stuff came from the Tom Hanks type cohort — people who are certain that they would’ve ended racism and the Vietnam War at Woodstock, if they hadn’t been in sixth grade at the time. They are responsible for “the 90s,” the worst decade in human history.
Take it back as far as you like. Your most enthusiastic bagel-bashers — Himmler, Goebbels, Heydrich, Eichmann — had vivid memories of WW1… that they just missed. The Social Gospel lunatics of the 1880s just missed the Civil War, and so on. What Orange Man should’ve done, then, is weaponized 80s nostalgia. As I wish I could remember who said, the 80s were the last golden Indian summer of America. The worst people today are the ones who have vivid memories of it, but didn’t really get to experience it — hence the popularity of stuff like that “Stranger Things” show, which I’m told is basically “1982, the TV Series.”
One could build a robust movement around people who felt they got cheated out of “The 80s,” in the same way the previous generation destroyed the world because they got cheated out of “the Sixties”… if one were so inclined.
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Two congressmen flew over there against the wishes of the government in order to play hero.
Reminds me of the scene in Charlie Wilson’s War (excellent movie, by the way) where some evangelical Congresscritter is visiting an Afghan refugee camp. He holds a rousing speech, and every time he says “God”, the towelheads all cheer, so he imagine they’re just like him.
Speaking of, here’s a topical key scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2cjVhUrmII
3
reminds me of when a congressman went down to guyana to check on jim jones. didn’t make it back alive.
Before starting today’s, I must say I missed entirely what was laid out clearly in yesterday’s “Christian Zionism”.
Hechler lit the fire under Herzl’s “next year, in Jerusalem!”, hoping to bring the eschaton. Herzl’s rather practical idea to create The Jewish State was “well, why don’t we just buy it?”, and the Pennies for Jerusalem program was born.
Jerusalem was a deserted derelict, Palestine a wasteland mismanaged by six Arab families, legates of the Ottomans.
Once again, Jacob craftily used guile to take the birthright due his bigger, dumber brother- us, “Esau”, the Aryans he had been marrying into.
We taught them to organize and made it possible, again. Such a deal!
The Zman had hinted at the man behind the curtain and we antisemites started baying. It turns out the enablers cranking the gears are Christian!
So easy. Like candy from a baby.