My wife and I were talking about this this morning, and I commented that I don't think it's worth reasoning with them, anymore than it's worth reasoning with our toddler when she throws a tantrum.
She agreed, but suggested that babies throw tantrums because they have a need that's not being met, and that there are warning signs which appear before the tantrum itself.
So I started thinking about that. What do they need, and what were the warning signs that this was coming?
When a baby throws a tantrum, what they actually need usually is unrelated to what they think they need. They think they need to throw their food on the floor or their toys out of the crib-- what they actually need is a bottle and a nap. The depressed insomniac vegan thinks she needs to end white supremacy, get reparations for slavery and stop all the microaggressions against the people of color in her dorm. I think that what she actually needs-- and what they all need-- is meaning. And the two sources of meaning in life are religion and war.
Regarding religion-- well, that one's obvious. SJWism is Puritan Christianity minus any hope of redemption. I personally loathe Puritanism-- but it is in the foundational DNA of the United States, and there's not much that we can do about it at this point. This clicked for me one day when I saw a book at the store entitled "Sermon to White America," and I realized that I was looking at an updated version of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." They need religion, and not some light, fluffy, "Jesus [Gaia, Buddha] just wants you to be happy and never gets mad at you." That's nice, maybe it's even true, but it provides no challenge, no resistance-- and, therefore, no meaning.
Regarding war-- all young people need war. Or, to say it another way, young people need a 1. collective cause 2. to which they can give their lives. War is, traditionally, the best way to do this-- and it includes the men who fight the wars and the women who take care of the home while the men are away and who bear children, which is its own form of war and traditionally equally mortally dangerous. You need to give young people a war, and if you don't have one available you'd better give them a big damn pyramid to build.
If you don't do these things, they'll create their own religion, which will be unbalanced and insane; and they'll create their own war, which will tear your society apart. We are seeing these things now.
Another way of saying this is that young people need identity; identity needs to include collective identity (sorry, Randroids); and identity is only produced through conflict. It only can be-- identity means differentiation. This is why the differentiation of particular things is ruled by Mars, who is also the god of war-- down here on the material plane, differentiation feels like pain and looks like war.
Regarding warning signs...
JMG commented the other day that old-time psychiatrists used to pay close attention to dreams and slips of the tongue in order to figure out what was going on under the surface of the mind, which is often contrary to what the patient reports. Do you remember how, in the 1990s, all the news was about how wonderful the economy was, but all the popular culture was about how angsty and depressed everyone was? Set the glowing reports of the Clinton economy alongside Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Fight Club and The Matrix and you have the patient who can't stop talking about how happy they are, even though they can't sleep because of their nightmares and accidentally called their mother "my murder." The warning signs couldn't have been louder-- but no one wanted to hear them. Least of all the "conservatives" who cheerfully gave gigantic corporations the power to completely dismantle civil society at home and trample on sovereign nations abroad, and now act surprised when the same companies are promoting demonolatry at home and overturning the laws of sovereign American states.
So...
Yes, there is nothing to do with them but to block them. And at this point, the tantrum has reached level 12-- lock the kid in the room, get the belt out if you have to. And I think we also need to review the last few decades of history and look for the warning signs, to prevent this from happening again in another generation or two.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2021-04-02 01:45 pm (UTC)She agreed, but suggested that babies throw tantrums because they have a need that's not being met, and that there are warning signs which appear before the tantrum itself.
So I started thinking about that. What do they need, and what were the warning signs that this was coming?
When a baby throws a tantrum, what they actually need usually is unrelated to what they think they need. They think they need to throw their food on the floor or their toys out of the crib-- what they actually need is a bottle and a nap. The depressed insomniac vegan thinks she needs to end white supremacy, get reparations for slavery and stop all the microaggressions against the people of color in her dorm. I think that what she actually needs-- and what they all need-- is meaning. And the two sources of meaning in life are religion and war.
Regarding religion-- well, that one's obvious. SJWism is Puritan Christianity minus any hope of redemption. I personally loathe Puritanism-- but it is in the foundational DNA of the United States, and there's not much that we can do about it at this point. This clicked for me one day when I saw a book at the store entitled "Sermon to White America," and I realized that I was looking at an updated version of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." They need religion, and not some light, fluffy, "Jesus [Gaia, Buddha] just wants you to be happy and never gets mad at you." That's nice, maybe it's even true, but it provides no challenge, no resistance-- and, therefore, no meaning.
Regarding war-- all young people need war. Or, to say it another way, young people need a 1. collective cause 2. to which they can give their lives. War is, traditionally, the best way to do this-- and it includes the men who fight the wars and the women who take care of the home while the men are away and who bear children, which is its own form of war and traditionally equally mortally dangerous. You need to give young people a war, and if you don't have one available you'd better give them a big damn pyramid to build.
If you don't do these things, they'll create their own religion, which will be unbalanced and insane; and they'll create their own war, which will tear your society apart. We are seeing these things now.
Another way of saying this is that young people need identity; identity needs to include collective identity (sorry, Randroids); and identity is only produced through conflict. It only can be-- identity means differentiation. This is why the differentiation of particular things is ruled by Mars, who is also the god of war-- down here on the material plane, differentiation feels like pain and looks like war.
Regarding warning signs...
JMG commented the other day that old-time psychiatrists used to pay close attention to dreams and slips of the tongue in order to figure out what was going on under the surface of the mind, which is often contrary to what the patient reports. Do you remember how, in the 1990s, all the news was about how wonderful the economy was, but all the popular culture was about how angsty and depressed everyone was? Set the glowing reports of the Clinton economy alongside Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Fight Club and The Matrix and you have the patient who can't stop talking about how happy they are, even though they can't sleep because of their nightmares and accidentally called their mother "my murder." The warning signs couldn't have been louder-- but no one wanted to hear them. Least of all the "conservatives" who cheerfully gave gigantic corporations the power to completely dismantle civil society at home and trample on sovereign nations abroad, and now act surprised when the same companies are promoting demonolatry at home and overturning the laws of sovereign American states.
So...
Yes, there is nothing to do with them but to block them. And at this point, the tantrum has reached level 12-- lock the kid in the room, get the belt out if you have to. And I think we also need to review the last few decades of history and look for the warning signs, to prevent this from happening again in another generation or two.