The legacy of a generation

You don't happen to be a follower of the marxist economic doctrine?

Nope, the very point of labour not being (relatively) cheap forced the U.S. industry to adopt new technology enthusiastically. After all, South America had even more slaves and cheaper labour as well as natural resources to rival North America yet it didn't develop as fast. The institutions were the key.

As for Africa, yes, they were. European colonial practice was not to overrun local populations when it wasn't necessary but to sustain commercial colonies as in India, Japan, China and coast of Africa. After the Industrial Revolution it became profitable to annex larger colonies (and possible to avoid having half of the soldiers dying to malaria) so the policy was changed. African societies themselves resembled Ancient Mesopotamia with their city-based religious kingdoms.

edited 10th Feb '12 3:47:43 PM by Scando

And so, with joy in my heart, I hum this song.

(Addressed to Flyboy) What is your take on alienation? Does it fit in to your worldview? If so, how important is the theory as far as you're concerned?

That's a pretty good point. Still, it'd be pretty interesting if, now that 13 years have already gone by since then, another music festival like that (not necessarily in Woodstock, mind you) was attempted. I realize there's already plenty of music festivals these days but...I dunno, there's just something about them that feels different.

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I think Marx had the right starting concept of how society is (or at least, was at the time), but that he was too simplistic and short-sighted.

But South America also stayed under the thumb of the Spanish longer, and the Spanish were far more ruthless rulers than the English, who didn't even pay attention to the colonies until right before they rebelled. There wasn't anything left for South America when the Spanish jumped ship; in what would become the US, there was infrastructure and business in place, because the door was left open for flourishing, essentially unrestricted capitalistic development of the area.

Of course, this became the undoing of the British, as the new, American upper class rose up to kick the old British upper class out and keep all the wealth of the new colonies for themselves.

Most of the British colonies, to use an example, weren't even profitable. The majority of imperial holdings were merely status symbols, rather than practical, useful territories. At least, after slavery disappeared and all there was to be gleaned was natural resources.

When the Europeans began to invade Africa in detail, the African cultures were only technologically—and even then, only in the department of warfare—behind by a century or two. The Europeans, at the end of the day, had the double-blind luck of having had the Roman Empire—free infrastructure—and Renaissance—funded by cheap African gold—to make them the first to develop cheap, easy-to-manufacture gunpowder weapons. Had things gone differently, there may never have been worldwide European empires.

After all, Europe only got as far as it did because a Mongol ruler died at an inopportune time, halting the Mongol advance into Western Europe.

Unfortunately, I didn't pay much attention to alienation, so I'm not terribly familiar with it as a theory. I was more interested in sociological anomie, myself...

edited 10th Feb '12 3:54:08 PM by Flyboy

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

I see that there's a whole lot of off-topicness in this thread. My initial idea was to lock this and thump a dozen posts or so, but I think I'll let you guys off with a warning. Stop the off-topicness about the rise of the West and the evils of colonialism and so on; it's nothing to do with the heritage of this generation.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

This is turning into offtopic, albeit curious. A few short points: - the greatest problem of Marxian economics is the false belief in economic growth as a result of public enterprise contrasted to private enterprise; because the entire theory lies on this and the ridiculous simplification of history as a class struggle the whole theory is doomed to fail

- you are partly correct about the Spanish, though that doesn't counter my argument about institutions and labour

- most of the later British colonies weren't profitable, but the earlier ones along the trade routes were extremely so

- African societies were several centuries behind military strategy, tactics, technology and mobilization. A few centuries is utter rubbish

- Though in possession of the greatest war machine of their time, Mongol armies were ill suited for combat in Europe's forests, mountains and landscape cut by rivers. The mongols themselves were destroyed because of overextension and rebellions. The Western campaign was called off, in addition to Ögedei's death, because of the unexpectedly heavy resistance in Hungary alone - a terrain well suited for the Mongol Empire. A campaign further into Europe, perhaps to Austria, would have been possible under Subotai but with anyone else it would have been unlikely

EDIT: Note taken.

edited 10th Feb '12 4:19:48 PM by Scando

And so, with joy in my heart, I hum this song.

Yeah, there won't be another Woodstock. The 1999 festival was so bad that the people who own the rights to the name have said it won't see another revival.

The 1969 and 1999 festivals are special, I think, because the captured the zeitgeist, particularly since they took place at the end of their respective decades. That being said, one might argue that Woodstock 1994 was closer in tone to the original festival, and Woodstock 1999 was that decade's Altamont.

It is pretty something how that worked out like that, considering the original Woodstock was conceived initially as nothing more than a business venture. I guess, looking at it in a roundabout way, it just goes to show you that we could never truly predict what's gonna be remembered by the collective consciousness.

edited 10th Feb '12 5:11:49 PM by 0dd1

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

Speaking solely about the US:

Given increasingly bitter partisan divide that is growing between the two main segments of the American population (usually referred to as the left and right), I think that the legacy of this generation will be documented in a work similar to The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I may be a pessimist, but things these days feel like the beginning of the end...

EDIT: See, even that link isn't working like it should!

edited 10th Feb '12 5:45:06 PM by OscarWildecat

Please spay/neuter your pets. Also, defang your copperheads.

Do we have a signature Porn style?

"Goatse.cx"? (Of course, the ancient Romans would have like that as well...) Or, more seriously, the variety of free internet porn resulting in Rule 34.

Sure, why not?

edited 10th Feb '12 6:12:14 PM by OscarWildecat

Please spay/neuter your pets. Also, defang your copperheads.

Well, we have centuries of advances, resources, the POWER OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY!!!

Surely we've gotten better than Romans by now...

Could it be Interacial? Racism was a pretty big thing back in the day.

Well, if that's where this is heading, then it might be of note that the internet denizens of this generation are willing to pervert anything and everything, to the point where you can't even Google Image Search freakin' Sesame Street without SafeSearch on.

edited 10th Feb '12 6:25:57 PM by 0dd1

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Rule 34 kind of feeds into my feeling that we're heading for a Roman Empire style decline and fall. That, along with the mindless entertainment being pushed into every possible orifice, is something that we have in common with the late Roman Empire (if I understand correctly, and allowing for differences in technology).

Please spay/neuter your pets. Also, defang your copperheads.

Drats.

So pretty much Nothing New Under the Sun in the field of porn.

We'll have to wait and see if something trully revolutionary gets invented.

Or Humanoid Aliens drop by.

• Cue Alien Porn Music*

Our generation hasn't had enough time to create a legacy, yet; the oldest of us are barely past 30, and the older generations are pretty much still doing their thing. We'll probably make quite an impact, though, once we manage to find ourselves in the right positions to do so.

Question here; what was the generational makeup of the people who participated in the Arab Spring? From what I understood, it was made up of quite a few Gen-Ys, but I don't think that the leaders of the various revolutions were, obviously.

I think for the most part they were 20s-ish, but I don't know much beyond the actual things that have happened.

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

I think we're probably going to be the do-or-die generation, the generation that saves everything or screws everything up.

Every generation thinks that, though, and it is true to a point for every generation as well.

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

For the moment, we mostly are the generation who is making postcyberpunk a reality.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I read an article once (ah yes, the ever-apocryphal article) that basically suggested that the current generation was a new Greatest Generation, and I found that interesting. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, the Greatest Generation was the one that grew up during the Depression and fought WWII, so named because they stepped up to fight; not for fame and glory, but because it was the right thing to do, and they came back after the war to rebuild America into a superpower. Obviously it's a very US-centric term.

So I thought about it for awhile. Compared to back then, relatively few Americans have skin in the game, so to speak. Not everyone necessarily believes it was the right thing to do. People are allowed to come home when their time is up as opposed to the draftees who couldn't come back until it was Over Over There (at least that's what I remember from history class, correct me if I'm wrong). People who have contributed to the war effort have certainly gone on to do great things but at the same time there is a general perception that America has reached the end of its rope. Parallels with the Roman Empire are common, as we have seen.

I don't think that the comparison is accurate, given that 9/11 didn't affect everybody on the same level that a total war did. I also dispute the term Greatest Generation, because to me, it suggests that no generation that comes after can ever achieve things on the same level they did, which is untrue. It sounds nice though.

I wonder if, here in America, we'll be known as the Cringe Generation? Perhaps not on the same level as the Germans and their complex relationship with Hitler and the Nazis (sorry), but along a similar vein.

Wise Papa Smurf, corrupted by his own power. CAN NO LEADER GO UNTAINTED?!

Thread necro with a somewhat off-topic post? I wrote a nice reply about the prevalence of the idea of "the Greatest Generation" being the one that fought WWII before I noticed that the topic of this thread, actually, is the legacy that our generation will have.

So instead of joining the derail, as I far too often do, it is better if I remind eveyone that this is an OTC thread about the legacy of our generation. If this thread is to survive this necro, we must stick to the topic.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

This probably sound strange, even narcissistic. But I've honestly always been bothered a little by how we idolized the So called Great Generation for dutifulness and selflessness.

The war generation defeated fascism and brought American into it's golden era, but they didn't do it because personally wanted to or decided to, but because it was expected of them to do so. 

For theirs was the last generation to do as they were told. They married who they were expected to marry. Worked where ever their parents worked. Voted for who ever their parents voted for and -if need be- lied down they lives with out question or complain.

I admire that. I even envy it. But try as I mine I just can't respect it.

edited 14th Aug '12 1:49:17 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

The generation that fought WWII is not the topic of this thread. Any further posts about it will be thumped. If this thread doesn't focus on its topic, it'll be locked.

edited 14th Aug '12 2:09:58 AM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Personally, I have hopes that our generation will be remembered for its art, though I have this strange belief that our legacy will have a huge internet focus. I feel like civilization will start to become more online-based (as such it seems to be doing), and that our culture of arts will go through/is going through and will continue to go through a renaissance. Online, of course. Blogs will become the new books, webcomics will become the new comic books, and webseries will gain even more popularity. There'll, of course, be much of a Sturgeon's Law to it, but that's always been there; there's never been a generation that wasn't filled with terrible art. xD But our generation will be looked upon as the one that started this! John Dies At The End, Homestuck, and a lot of other online works I can't be bothered to think of.

I can't speak for politics, though. I have hopes that America will pull through and get a revolution, but there does seem to be a lot of.. hints of a decline.

edited 14th Aug '12 2:21:01 AM by DJay32

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