Quote:DN:
One of the problems for them is their low view of what being human means. I'm not sure how you would deal with that. Even when it's sharply satirical of human follies, classic literature before the 20th century exhibits some sense of human dignity, if only indirectly. Swift may want to force us to see the Yahoo in ourselves, but his is not a mind promoting vulgarity, a cheapened sense of the human. (I wish I could find a certain quotation from T. S. Eliot on this.) It is one thing to make us feel ashamed of the way we live, another to promote the worst in us, as our social media and so on tend to do.
Very, very interesting observation, Dale. Let me zero in on one part only:
"...their low view of what being human means."
I will state up front that my own view of this, evolved over 70+ years, could be described using your phrase, but with one very important addition:
"...and yet not feel debased by this realization."
Kids my daughter's age, 24, graduated from Vassar two years ago, can be filled with a smugly immature snark over this very issue. She does not fall completely within this group description, but shares a sort of "generational loyalty", as I, and perhaps you, did in the 60s to the emerging Boomer generation.
So what we all "knew" and "thought" was the truth, as we saw it...
But these currently emerging Zoomers, secure in their self-assessed sophistication, feel a certainly level of damning guilt-or at least obligation--about it, where as I feel that a human is an animal very much like a dog, but more socially sophisticated by a couple orders of magnitude, at least.
I came to see humans as basically driven by instinct, but because of sophistication in verbal expression, have come to convince each other that we're something more. But basically, we're not, and to think otherwise is a sort of "human exceptionalism" that is mostly misplaced when applied to ideas of moral and spiritual goals.
In short, we can conceive that it would be "good" to be nice to each other--and it certainly is a pleasant and warm feeling of comaraderie--
but we can only do this consistently so long as we have access to adequate physical resourced. As resources become scarcer, the impetus toward adhering to ideas of moral and spiritual "goodness" deteriorate, almosst in direct correlation, until at the end it's basically dog-eat-dog...every man for himself and God against all.
Once you see existence in this light, and recognize that you prefer the ambience of living in a kinder, gentler society, you can see the value in aggregate societal wealth.
Now this aggregate wealth itself creates its own problems in distribution because its very existence stimulates a *very* powerful instictive human response: envy.
And so it goes...
But in point of fact, at least so far as I can see it, the phenomenal collective wealth of the US allows the society to entertain as public policy such bizarre and obvious fallacies as complete equality between individuals--a noble idea demolished by the fact that you and I will have never been able to play in the NBA, even though we are of course equal in every way to those who *do* play.
Right?
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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