Pseudomorphosis

Guest Post by The Zman

The standard narrative to explain post-WW2 America is that the nation enjoyed the fruits of victory in the 1950’s, but then lurched into social upheaval in the 60’s, starting with the election of John Kennedy. As a result, the Boomers get all the blame for the social dysfunction that has been with us for more than 50 years. That is not entirely fair as much of what happened was done by their parents. The disaster of the Civil Rights Movement started in the 50’s. The Great Society was the early and mid-60’s.

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Now, to the people who lived through the 50’s and 60’s, it probably felt as if the youth simply went insane and tried to drag the nation with them. Just as we are seeing today, it was the ruling elite that went bonkers, abdicating their duties and letting their rotten kids go berserk in the streets. That’s the important part of it though. The late 60’s and early 70’s were a multi-generational war on decency. The youth rampaging through the streets, terrifying the white middle-class, did so at the behest of their parents.

In this regard, the the social upheaval we think of as “The 60’s” was a continuation of a moral evolution in the Yankee elite, that started in the prior century. In the 19th century, Yankee reformers had Christianity as a limiting principle. This was largely true into the early 20th century, but then following the Great War, the Yankee elite lost its Christianity. Politics became a religion for Yankee reformers and the nihilism of the 1960’s was the logical conclusion of it. The Boomers have always been a dead end, as a result.

That’s the thing that is increasingly clear as we see the death spasms of Progressivism in our age. There is no building on Boomer culture. The 60’s are sold as the great achievement of the Baby Boom generation, but in reality is was a memorial to the Yankee ruling class. It’s why there has been no second act to the 60’s. What we see today looks like a cargo cult, played out by a handful a mentally unstable youth, rounded up from local skateboard parks and heroin dens. It’s why the Millennials are just useless whiners.

It’s also why Generation Z is developing into something strangely different than anyone has expected. As Audacious Epigone pointed out the other day, this cohort is starting out far to the right of the rest of us. It is not the vapid “muh constitution” style conservatism either. It is a radical conservatism that has not been seen in a long time. They wildly supported the two most anti-establishment candidates on offer in 2016. It is not just a revolt against their parents rules either. It is a reaction to their pseudomorphosis.

The concept of pseudomorphosis is one that Oswald Spengler developed as a way of explaining partially manifested cultures. Specifically pseudomorphosis entails an older culture so deeply ingrained in a land that a young culture cannot find its own form and full expression of itself. This leads to the young energy and promise being channeled into the old dead cultural forms. Like the animated corpses of a zombie movie, this youth culture hates the body into which it has been forced and rages against it and what made it.

That’s what happened to the Baby Boom generation. They burst into the world full of energy, only to find themselves into a fully developed and completed American civilization. The old culture that built it was dying off, but it had been so successful that the civilization it had built was immune to modification by the post-war generations. As a result, all that youthful energy went into the exercise of the power in the existing institutions, but in a self-destructive rage against everything that defined and created those institutions.

What appears to be happening with Generation Z is something very different from the superficial posing of youth in opposition to their parents. This generation rejects the very core of what they inherited. It is why, like the punks of the late-70’s, they adopt what the existing civilization considers to be their antithesis. It’s also why they reject liberal politics and the institutions that spring from it. To the young generation, egalitarianism and the universal franchise are the problem, not a means to addressing the problem.

As is always the case with the young, there’s not a well developed culture at this stage, just the void that existing culture should have filled. Since the old Yankee culture has died, something new is evolving with the next generations. Out of necessity and convenience, it will borrow the language and structures of the old culture, but only as raw material for the new. The reason sites like Daily Stormer or The Right Stuff have huge audiences of young white males has little to do with ideology. It’s the lack of ideology.

That’s what is not so obvious about the so-called neo-Nazi and white supremacist stuff that is associated with the alt-right. These symbols and language clear the field of the old ideology and the old culture that created it. It creates a clearing into which the next generations can build their own culture and their own ideology. That may be why the dying Left has reacted so violently to these relatively tiny groups. They could have ignored the Unite The Right rally entirely and 99% of Americans would never have known about it.

No one likes to be replaced. This is true at the individual level where you see senile old geezers hang around Washington until death. It’s true of civilizations. The fire that animated them, the culture that built them, may have gone out long ago, but the people living in their accomplishments will fight to the bitter end. It’s why all great empires end in rubble. The old American culture, the one born after the Civil War, reaching its zenith 100 years later, will end in rubble too, a rubble of their making.

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TampaRed
TampaRed

jimbo,
i posted something for you yesterday on the “release the bannon” thread —

Tommy
Tommy

Like children of wealthy parents, the boomers couldn’t move the ball so they quit trying, focused on ‘the self’ and fucked it all away – but not before making damn sure they were going to get all they could. Now we’re left with a handful of quality boomers – many on sites like this, but the vast majority just virtue signal and take, take, and take some more. You’re on your own because the takings’ been took.

wholy1
wholy1

PDG – pretty damn good! As a 70+, first-year “Boomer” (46), “Nam vet”, ya summed it pretty good. From here on, “Boomers” not “hunkered down” RURALLY, “gathered/grouped up”, will be descending in to deeper “doo” with increasingly diminishing resources/capabilities and probably fucking-well deserve it.

rhs jr
rhs jr

So many specific generalizations about each generation Mr Z but so little meat actually on the society bones. Each generation has some common interests and a few activist but they were not the actual power changing things. The SDS were the Antifa of their day: led by paid street actors directed and promoted (in the Fake MSM); but behind the scenes, the ZOG Beast remained anonymous running the show with Fed printed currency and having huge successes in business and Politics. As for each generations street activist: Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.

Diogenes
Diogenes

Wow !!!! rhs jr. very pithy

Dutchman
Dutchman

I think things are being way over analyzed.

I’m 68, graduated from Penn State in 1971. Yeah, there were some ‘fucked up’ hippies / weathermen / losers – but all in all everyone pretty much got their act together.

As a self employed consultant, I saw the workplace become more and more hostile – I thank god that I didn’t have to work in that environment. Around 1995, corporations figured out how to marginalize their employees: outsourcing, temps, making teams – so no one person was valuable – which lead to no one was valuable, reducing benefits. Continual mergers / acquisitions – there was no credit for longevity on the job.

Then most employers moved recruiting to the internet. Which made for an even more hostile/impersonal situation between employee and management.

Previously, economic revolutions (industrial / tech) have driven a need for skills. Those revolutions are over. There is no new economic revolution on the horizon. I know for me there was an easy path – a degree in engineering and comp sci. There is no easy path today.

Then someone (the government schools?) drilled into kids heads that you have to go to college. This is the final nail in the coffin: A boat load of debt for a nonexistent job.

I see why today’s young people are aimless.

Capn Mike
Capn Mike

You got it, Dutchman. I think we had a shot back in the early PC days (computers) to take a path to more personal power and decentralization. But that path was closed by the “human resources” types. So we ended up with a depersonalized workforce as you said. They handed us a number and took away our names, as they say.

Dutchman
Dutchman

I can remember my first several job interviews. The first was 1971 at NASA Langley. A personnel manager spoke to me, and said their were several positions. Went to three different departments. After that they asked me which one did I like the best. I had the same experience later at Raytheon, and then Control Data. They were actually human beings.

This has been replaced with web sites that ask 100’s of questions, and sometimes when you go to submit – the goddamned thing crashes. Then there’s also automatic scanning of resumes for keywords.

Arnold Ziffel
Arnold Ziffel

I’m a 65 year old retired CPA and I concur with your assessment. I might add that senior leadership only interacts with employees through surveys. Of course no one can be frank on the anonymous surveys since they have your IP address. I worked for a company listed on NYSE and the SL peered into the identities of responses that were negative.

Zarathustra

We could ask the Persians. They’re the only ones who have ever tamed the Afghans. To this day they affectionately refer to the Afghans as “our hillbillies.”

TampaRed
TampaRed

the only way to tame a nation such as afgahnistan is absolute,ongoing brutality–
are we prepared for that?

Stucky

“As a result, the Boomers get all the blame for the social dysfunction that has been with us for more than 50 years. That is not entirely fair as much of what happened was done by their parents.”
——– from the article

Goddammit!!

I, a solid member of the despicable Boomer Clan have come to grips that I suck diseased donkey dick, having been responsible for everything bad in America ranging from white bread to da FED …. that I deserved a horrible death, followed by rotting and burning in hell forever. (Thanks SAH, and others, especially Millennial dweebs). Me and my ilk destroyed America! So be it. I capitulate.

Now I’m told it’s not necessarily MY fault?

Make up yer mind, Fer Chrissakes!!!!

Dutchman
Dutchman

No Stucky – we did too good of job.

Look at cars – see any rust buckets on the road? No. They last a lot longer, and perform better. The environment – air and water – never better. Electric power – never better. Electronics galore. Remember when a color TV weighed about 150 lbs? Communication – wireless, Ethernet. Miniaturization – makes possible PC’s, huge mass storage disk drives. Credit cards, drive up ATM’s. I could go on and on.

Us boomers have done all this.

Now the new generation doesn’t know what to do.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Deming was not a boomer. That cars are not rust buckets today is a result of his work with Japanese car makers. The American way was planned obsolescence; 50,000 and a Chevy was a junker. Of course the price went up from $2,000 to $40,000 today.

Hence, it wasn’t the boomers. Although they did give us legal weed and children born out of wedlock so, hey, it wasn’t a total loss.

https://www.bl.uk/people/w-edwards-deming

rhs jr
rhs jr

Sleep well Stuckey because the know it all SJW youts will now solve all the worlds problems you caused.

Overthecliff

TampaRed a simple but accurate analysis of Afghanistan. Correct as well. I don’t think we have the will to win.

Mary Christine

I had a pithy comment and managed to erase it. Now I don’t give a crap anymore.

However, I will say that I will not be made to feel guilty because of some accident of the year I was born.
Not going to be made to feel guilty because I happen to be white.

Whatever else this screwed up society wants to pile on me, I reject.
The Holy Spirit is the only one allowed to convict me.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Martha Charlie, I had gotten good at avoiding losing comments but since I lost a real doozy yesterday, I shall go back to copying my comment before hitting the send button.

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