Spengler: "we're Boyled"
Do we, as Spengler suggests, love people like the latest singing phenom, Susan Boyle, because we like to validate our own mediocrity?
I fear so.
Do we enjoy Dr. Phil, Maury, Montel and the rest because seeing others who are worse off than us make us feel a little better? I would hope not but fail to understand the appeal other than that or for the "car wreck" interest.
Spengler continues in a thoughtful essay:
"[A]t some time during the 20th century, the people of the West elected to identify with what is like them, rather than emulate what is above them."
More:
"The aging Baby Boomers need to save for their retirement, or retire later, now that their home equity has vanished along with the contents of their 401(k) plans. The only way for everyone to save at the same time without crashing the economy is to export, just as China does.
That works well enough on paper: but what are Americans to export? Not electric cars, it would appear. Warren Buffett isn't buying General Motors these days, but he did put down over $200 million for a tenth of BYD, China's contender in the electric-car sweepstakes. China requires nuclear power plants - it will install three a year for the next quarter-century - but America shut down its nuclear industry some time ago. There's always Caterpillar, but the field of heavy earth-moving and construction equipment now is dominated by Japanese and German engineering, as a quick tour of the diggings for New York's Second Avenue Subway make clear. America can't even provide the capital equipment for its own infrastructure projects, let alone for China's."
I fear so.
Do we enjoy Dr. Phil, Maury, Montel and the rest because seeing others who are worse off than us make us feel a little better? I would hope not but fail to understand the appeal other than that or for the "car wreck" interest.
Spengler continues in a thoughtful essay:
"[A]t some time during the 20th century, the people of the West elected to identify with what is like them, rather than emulate what is above them."
More:
"The aging Baby Boomers need to save for their retirement, or retire later, now that their home equity has vanished along with the contents of their 401(k) plans. The only way for everyone to save at the same time without crashing the economy is to export, just as China does.
That works well enough on paper: but what are Americans to export? Not electric cars, it would appear. Warren Buffett isn't buying General Motors these days, but he did put down over $200 million for a tenth of BYD, China's contender in the electric-car sweepstakes. China requires nuclear power plants - it will install three a year for the next quarter-century - but America shut down its nuclear industry some time ago. There's always Caterpillar, but the field of heavy earth-moving and construction equipment now is dominated by Japanese and German engineering, as a quick tour of the diggings for New York's Second Avenue Subway make clear. America can't even provide the capital equipment for its own infrastructure projects, let alone for China's."
CO - this is what I refer to as 'superiority television.'
"I may be sitting here in a doublewide with no education and more children that I can afford ... but (yuk yuk) I'm still better off than those folks there!"
A British politician I don't have very much time for said one very interesting thing a few years back: "It is very difficult to govern a confident, healthy and educated nation."
Very true.
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Well said. To take liberties with an old piece of business advice: Dress like, act like (and watch) those who you would like to be. Play up rather than look down.
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A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires. --Joseph Conrad
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Methinks that there is sadly much truth in what Spengler says. Strange dichotomy isn't it? - Technology is getting smarter but the world is dumbing down. And television no doubt plays its part in erecting its own 'unfair' share of monuments to mediocrity.
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