Now comes no less an elite thinker than Francis Fukuyama of "End of History" fame to advocate for that duty explicitly.
Among the cognitive debilities that occur over time is rigidity in one’s fundamental outlook and assumptions about life. One’s outlook is usually set relatively early in life; usually by early adulthood you are either a liberal or a conservative; a nationalist or an internationalist; a risk-taker or someone habitually fearful and cautious. There is a lot of happy talk among gerontologists about how people can remain open to new ideas and able to reinvent their lives late in life, and that certainly happens with some individuals. But the truth of the matter is that fundamental change in mental outlooks becomes much less likely with age.The slowing of generational turnover is thus very likely to slow the rate of social evolution and adaptation, in line with the old joke that the field of economics advances one funeral at a time.
He does have some positive words for increasing immigration as an alternative source of social change.
We talk about natural rights, but the right to die is the only one that nature itself will not merely defend but resolutely enforce. There's no reason to get in a rush about it: everyone will get his turn.
7 comments:
" But the truth of the matter is that fundamental change in mental outlooks becomes much less likely with age. The slowing of generational turnover is thus very likely to slow the rate of social evolution and adaptation."
Yeah, no shit Sherlock- the fact is if you have a brain, you tend to learn, and the young do not have an established data base of experience to weigh the "new" against, hence any idea can be as good as any other idea.
The thing to remember is yes, old people can be locked into a way of thinking- (of course, it is rare to find one who is more locked in than a Marxist-they seem to have brains in a welded steel box.) But the point is, what is one persons "slow social evolution" or refusal to change, can with equal validity be described as "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I had this discussion with a friend a while ago, about how when we were young, we would engage in activities with no worry about consequences- not just physical ones, but mechanical ones- now, before I will pull something apart, I think long and hard about it- because I have learned shit can go sideways and it is good to keep that in mind. Closely related to Chesterton's fence.
Let me slide on the ice, here, some drift..
They used the 'vid, both disease and cure, to speed it up the "social evolution" AKA eliminating the old....and the spectacle certainly sped up this old mans social evolution, but most likely it was in a direction 180 degrees opposed to the "correct" one.
The thing I liked most about covid was how clearly it revealed peoples internal character. An iconic image is Lloyd Austin, leader of the free worlds strongest army, inspecting the troops behind a face shield and a mask, looking like nothing more or less than a incarnation of Idi Amin in a Ugandan backwater.
Some day a interesting psychological paper will be written on the folks who saw through the BS - they were left, right, man, woman, old and young- dropouts and Phd's. and all in a new class of minority. I say new, but they have always been here, just not so visible. I have never seen an issue that sifted people in such a way. Usually the divisions are vertical, one side of the line or the other- this one cut through all those old labels. What an example of manipulating the power of fear, and showing how few are really thinking rather than reacting.
I'm surprised people are still talking so much about COVID. I expected us to move on and forget about it like the Spanish Flu. There's an awful lot of resentment left, though, and on both sides.
You're the second person I've seen bring up the elderly who were doomed to death early in the process by nursing homes etc.
I expected us to move on and forget about it like the Spanish Flu.
One thing impacting that is that in the era of Spanish Flu, there were only print and radio sources, and their national reach was limited.
Today, we have instantaneous social media 24/7/365 that gives everybody and his brother a platform on which to sound off. And to sound off back at. And....
On right to die vs obligation to die, I'm not sure Nature has taken a position on that. All of us die, and the universality of that seems to eliminate the concept of having taken a position--that implies choice, even for Nature.
Eric Hines
Most people just want to "move along".
The resisters talk about it, mostly among themselves. The entire evolution of the pandemic was a set of lies- the only thing true was that there was a virus, and people did get sick.
Everything else was a lie. The origin, the funding, the lethality, the vax efficacy and the adverse effects, the mask efficacy, the social distancing BS, the stupidity of vaxxing into an ongoing epidemic, it goes on and on-
it was an orchestrated fear campaign, and any opposing opinion was suppressed by the media WITH GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE. Word is slowly trickling out, here and there, about the totality of what occurred. Like the study out of Yale that showed a definite reduction in immune system response among the vaxxed. (study used a vaxxed and never infected group and a non vaxxed and never infected group as a control. Ig4 functions were depressed among the vaxxed. ) These studies are all over, always preceded by verbiage like "although the vax is credited with saving millions, yada yada, there are some things...
What got destroyed was trust- and it is very hard to go back to trusting those who explicitly called for the "science deniers" AKA anyone who had reservations to be placed in camps, children removed, forcibly injected, health care refused, etc.
I am sure you figured out that was me, above..:>)
Fukuyama's "End of History" screwed the pooch on 9/11 and I think he's been desperately trying to be relevant ever since. Rather than figuring out why he was wrong he's just been surfing the latest Leftist fads
He's evidently forgotten that new ideas are not always good ideas--eugenics was a new idea when it was in fashion.
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