The rationale for this piece of conventional wisdom was that the older you got, the more established you became in life, the more your estate grew, the more you owned your home, your car and whatnot. And of course, the more stuff you own, the more you want things to stay the same.
The reason it’s been broken is because that path to better old days has been broken too: younger generations can’t save, can’t own a home, have a hard time finding a job, and are pretty much guaranteed to be worse off than their parents.
This will be the conservative parties’ undoing ultimately. Unfortunately, it also fuels the rise of populism and the return of idiotic extremist ideas - both extreme left and extreme right.
Until the world blows up again, recovers, then people get rich again, conservatism goes on the rise again… Rinse, repeat.
I didn’t understand that as a white bloke, born in an English speaking country to parents who valued education, that I had already won life’s lottery. I’m ashamed to admit that I genuinely believed for a while that success was merely a matter of talent and work. I’m Gen-X, and I’m very grateful to have been lucky enough to have experienced what I genuinely think might have been society’s golden years when I was able to enjoy them
Then I saw more of the world and grew up a bit. I grew to understand that talent and work definitely help, but they don’t help equally, and that there were people with immense talent who could work their arses off, and they would just never get the chance to shine like an average person from the world I knew
I worked, and I shone, and I made some money, and now I have a modest life in a small place because it’s more important to me to do stuff that helps the world rather than to rapaciously accumulate more, purely for its own sake
I plan to die without a single thing to my name, but I hope that what I have done and what I’ve tried to give back have made the world slightly less shitty
Imagine a path to the top of a mountain, the trail you describe is on a slow ascent towards the top, clearly marked, has rope guides to hang on to, rest areas, people to carry your backpack as needed.
For many others there is no trail, no guides, steep climbing, few if any rest areas, little to no help
This makes me think of a passage from “The Brothers Karamazov” where one of them goes on an extended rant, rejecting god. It boils down to the idea that the price of heaven isn’t worth it. All the suffering and cruelty on earth cannot be overseen by any god worth worshipping, or accepting reward from. I realize from your comment that this line of thinking encapsulates how I feel about capitalism. “I reject the ticket”.
Conservative parties have already left behind the “two car garage and a white picket fence” classical conservatives. They’ve pivoted over to full on flip the table MAGA reactionary garbage. The path for young centrist/liberal kids to grow up into conservative boomers is indeed closed, but it’s naive to think the left is going to pick up all those disaffected youth.
And there os no more ‘conservative’ alignment in politics.
Theres the christofascist/HOI/CODnazi/epsteinist alliance
Theres the dissident epsteinists who want to seem nice and feel good about themselves while fixing nothing, along with the marks who support them.
Then theres the insurrectionists who dont think we should rape children end the world on purpose or regard some races as ‘lesser’; anarchists and tankies.
The rationale for this piece of conventional wisdom was that the older you got, the more established you became in life, the more your estate grew, the more you owned your home, your car and whatnot. And of course, the more stuff you own, the more you want things to stay the same.
The reason it’s been broken is because that path to better old days has been broken too: younger generations can’t save, can’t own a home, have a hard time finding a job, and are pretty much guaranteed to be worse off than their parents.
This will be the conservative parties’ undoing ultimately. Unfortunately, it also fuels the rise of populism and the return of idiotic extremist ideas - both extreme left and extreme right.
Until the world blows up again, recovers, then people get rich again, conservatism goes on the rise again… Rinse, repeat.
I didn’t understand that as a white bloke, born in an English speaking country to parents who valued education, that I had already won life’s lottery. I’m ashamed to admit that I genuinely believed for a while that success was merely a matter of talent and work. I’m Gen-X, and I’m very grateful to have been lucky enough to have experienced what I genuinely think might have been society’s golden years when I was able to enjoy them
Then I saw more of the world and grew up a bit. I grew to understand that talent and work definitely help, but they don’t help equally, and that there were people with immense talent who could work their arses off, and they would just never get the chance to shine like an average person from the world I knew
I worked, and I shone, and I made some money, and now I have a modest life in a small place because it’s more important to me to do stuff that helps the world rather than to rapaciously accumulate more, purely for its own sake
I plan to die without a single thing to my name, but I hope that what I have done and what I’ve tried to give back have made the world slightly less shitty
Someone put it to me like this once.
Imagine a path to the top of a mountain, the trail you describe is on a slow ascent towards the top, clearly marked, has rope guides to hang on to, rest areas, people to carry your backpack as needed.
For many others there is no trail, no guides, steep climbing, few if any rest areas, little to no help
I chose to help the latter up the mountain.
This makes me think of a passage from “The Brothers Karamazov” where one of them goes on an extended rant, rejecting god. It boils down to the idea that the price of heaven isn’t worth it. All the suffering and cruelty on earth cannot be overseen by any god worth worshipping, or accepting reward from. I realize from your comment that this line of thinking encapsulates how I feel about capitalism. “I reject the ticket”.
Conservative parties have already left behind the “two car garage and a white picket fence” classical conservatives. They’ve pivoted over to full on flip the table MAGA reactionary garbage. The path for young centrist/liberal kids to grow up into conservative boomers is indeed closed, but it’s naive to think the left is going to pick up all those disaffected youth.
And there os no more ‘conservative’ alignment in politics.
Theres the christofascist/HOI/CODnazi/epsteinist alliance
Theres the dissident epsteinists who want to seem nice and feel good about themselves while fixing nothing, along with the marks who support them.
Then theres the insurrectionists who dont think we should rape children end the world on purpose or regard some races as ‘lesser’; anarchists and tankies.