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keehah | 08-31-2007 04:36 PM
The Possessed. Too Far Gone? The Boomer Wail: But We Deserve a Lifetime Bull Market! (August 16, 2007) http://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug07/boomers1.html Longtime correspondent Chuck D. penned a response to my "Fourth Turning" critique of the Baby Boomer generation which I reprint below. Since many of us are keenly interested in the financial unraveling currently underway around the world, I think it is relevant to note that the screaming, frantic, please-cut-interest-rates-and-save-us financial pundits are typically in their 40s and 50s--Boomers who feel entitled to a never-ending Bull Market--or at least one that lasts their lifetime. Note to entitlement-obsessed speculating Boomers: though you feel entitled to another 25 years of Bull Market, what you deserve is 25 years of crushing Bear Market. That's what's called "reversion to the mean" and "the Kondratieff cycle." Here's Chuck D.'s commentary: I found your critique of us Baby Boomers spot on. But it�s not surprising it has turned out this way. Someone, I forget whom, once observed that men become the image of the thing they hate. Your list certainly seems to bear that out. But it's not inconsistent. There is a common idea running through the contradictions. It's all about me, my self gratification, and the "me bubble" that I live in. First we found it gratifying to rail against our parent�s generation and how they messed things up. How much better we could do! And then there was that part about free love and getting stoned. While it maybe didn't make the world better place, boy, it sure was fun to do it! Then as we got enmeshed in the real world of making a living and having kids, we decided that, gosh, maybe the old folks did know something after all and the conveniences of modern life actually were pretty nice to have around. And since I've got the money (or can get it with a credit card or loan), and I would enjoy life more if I had what ever it is I think I want or need, hey, go for it! A few examples will suffice. Like you, I could go on but you will get the point. I have arbitrarily picked your first bullet about religion to start with because my first two examples where the initial ones I thought of. If I remember correctly, a book whose author and title I can't recall came out a couple of years ago arguing that God wants us to be rich and enjoy the trappings of our modern lifestyle. We don't need to feel guilty about it. I am involved with an local organization that recently brought to town a national caliber Christian a cappella singing group. As part of the fundraising the organization approached a number of churches in the community. I contacted one of them which happens to be the current Baby-Boomer-hot-church-to-go-to about helping to sponsor this event. They seemed to be a natural choice since they are a by-the-book 'modern' church with the rapidly growing Boomer membership to prove it. The requested sponsorship was $250. A phone call, a follow-up letter and a copy of a CD produced following response. When I made the phone call, the lady I spoke with grilled me with the justification that �I used to be in marketing and I want to make sure I know what we're going to get for our money.� The follow-up letter and CD was an attempt to answer that question. I never got the courtesy of a response even though I asked for one. I also decided they weren't worth chasing for $250. When confronted with this sort of stuff, I guess I would ask the question that a lot of these folks currently seem to like to ask: "What would Jesus do?� Throw them out of the temple, I wonder? I haven't seen this anywhere, but I would be really curious to know how the performers and the audience got to the recent Live Earth concerts. I have a hunch that most of the performers didn't forgo their private jets and most of the audience didn't forgo their automobiles to get there. And then there's the fuel that was burned to produce the electricity to have the Internet and cell phone capability standing by to handle all the communications that had to be made to make the events happen. But at least everybody could feel good about themselves because they made a statement about their concern. And gee, it sure was fun to go to it. And I can always talk about it with my friends without having to do anything more and I can still feel good about myself and how concerned I am. I'm amazed that people and popular culture somehow think that this was a significant and possibly watershed event. Call me a curmudgeon, but I think it's been a while since I have seen such unmitigated, self-righteous claptrap and bullshit. I am therefore not as optimistic as you seem to be that the Baby Boomers will lead us through The Great Unraveling and tough times we both believe will soon be upon us. Yes, I agree that the Baby Boomers will be called upon to lead. I'm just skeptical that this group who so far has been able to live their entire lives in such self-absorption and self-centeredness because of the extraordinary time they happen to have been born into will suddenly be able to turn outward while everything they took for granted collapses around them. The survivors among them will; that's what survivors do and why they survive. I think it more likely we will end up this time in the same situation as you suggest history teaches: dictatorship, revolution, or economic collapse. The other issue here is that we are right now clearly a country in economic, political, social, moral and ethical decline. While there are exceptions and anything can happen, history teaches us that nations, cultures, and civilizations that face adversity in that predicament often do not rise to the occasion but instead are consigned to history's dustbin. The reason for this is that all nations, cultures and civilizations come into being with certain assumptions that shape their economic, political, social, moral and ethical beliefs and structures. When circumstances change and those assumptions are no longer true, those entities who can adapt those assumptions, beliefs and structures to the new reality have a better chance of surviving in a new, changed form. Those whose beliefs and structures are too corrupt, sclerotic, or possessed by vested interests to change do not. Granted this sounds a lot like Social Darwinism, and in a certain sense it is. But looked at on a large enough scale, the human structures of nations, cultures and civilizations that appear to be "unnatural" because they exist outside of nature as human inventions to shield us from the natural world still seem to follow a "natural" cycle of birth, life, and death. When I look at our present situation, while I hope we will get through it and believe we can with Providence and good fortune, I also deeply fear that this time we will not because we are simply too far gone to do it.

keehah | 08-31-2007 04:39 PM
Re: The Possessed. Too Far Gone? The Possessed http://inlinethumb17.webshots.com/11...600x600Q85.jpg By Adam Engel 8/28/07 cyrano2 http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=242 The Possessed Man is not a bad man, nor a good one. He is terrified. Alone among friends and family, he “works” to support his family, but is not exactly sure of what he does. He “administrates creative product strategies,” according to the Job Description on file at Human Resources. The Health Insurance covers his wife and two kids, both under seven years of age and subject to all manner of illness and disease. Then there were the pregnancies themselves, and the drugs he must take daily to function at his job without drinking, or veering into violence, or bursting into tears. He’s covered by the company plan, but loopholes open and money falls through. Deductibles. Co-payments. He is no longer interested in his friends, the few that he still has, or in having friends at all. What good are they, except to drink with, and he’s not supposed to drink while on his pills — though he does anyway. And don’t think this is all confidential, that they don’t know, the ‘they’ at the company, whoever they might be, that he sees a head-drugger to stay on top of things. He’s thirty-five and still paying student loans. Graduate program at the University. MBA. Had to do it. Or else how would he have climbed to even his middling position on the ladder? He’s reached his final rung. He knows he hasn’t the energy to kill, the will that would enable him to climb further. In fact, the remaining energies of his life will be directed toward hanging on to the rung he’s reached. To remaining at his place on the limitless ladder to the sky. He can barely see the people at the bottom, but he would need quite a powerful telescope indeed to even glimpse the stars at the top. The kids will want to go to college. His wife, also a mediocrity, but in a different capacity at a different firm, a different profession, will grow stronger, as women tend to after fifty, after the sex and procreation, after the body, just when he is starting to collapse. Rapid rise from twenty to forty, slow descent, then at fifty the cascading tumble. Unless you’re at the top of the ladder, in which case fifty is not fifty, due to special treatments, physical training, private cooks, drugs, vitamins and surgeries…He’s reached the end of something, he knows, but he has the responsibility to see things through, at least until the kids are out of school. But of course college won’t be enough. It wasn’t for him. He needed a Masters. His kids will need Ph.D.s. He worries that somehow the system will fail him. It has not failed him to this point, merely placed him at his rightful place in the hierarchy. But he fears that the system, based on protocols, laws, unwritten rules, tacit agreements and technologies that he can never hope to understand, will collapse of its own weight and intricacy. He does not understand how the Network works, or how food gets to the supermarkets, or how the parent company trickles his paycheck down the many holding companies and through his department and into his bank account. He does not understand the high level of partnership between the bank and the corporation that owns it, which is the parent of the company he works for, and where he will spend his days before being traded or shuffled off in some arcane corporate deal or merger or is fired outright. Laid off. And then what? Sending out resumes as he’d done as a kid fresh out of college and as a young married man with his expensive MBA? He fears limited resources, so he does not read the hard copy of the City News, but browses the paper’s site on the Network. But when does he have time to read this, working nine to five as he does, which is not nine to five at all, but eight to six, seven, sometimes ten o’clock? By which point he is exhausted, despite his clockwork consumption of caffeine and nicotine. And when he does call up the news from the Network sites he realizes how small he and his life are, even in the context of the corporation, not to mention the role of the parent company in international affairs. Good god. The corporation is everywhere, in every country. Many of these countries are at war with each other, and if the corporation’s interests are seriously threatened, might go to war with the Nation. But the Nation is already at war. He is glad that the Nation possesses the most well-trained, technologically advanced military force on the planet. He had not gone to the last war, for he was in graduate school. But the current war terrifies him, the destruction the Nation wreaks upon its challenger with missiles paid for with his tax money. He has been extremely nervous since the current war began. But he does not doubt that after the slaughter the Citizens will be treated to parades and celebrations on television and he will watch flag-waving marchers outside his office window. He is neither angry nor satisfied with the affairs of the Nation any more than he is or could be with the machinations of the parent company. It is all beyond his grasp. He is, if not happy, grateful to be able to rise each morning, take his pills, and begin the commute to his job and arrive at his job, no matter how demanding. No matter how trivial. No matter how wasteful of his time on earth. The countless meetings, the talk talk talk. The assignments from his superiors that he organizes and delegates to his subordinates. Often he finds himself with nothing to do, no actual work, but virtual work, deadlines planned for the future, the possibility of truckloads of data hanging over his head. So he spends many hours — those not spent attending meetings — creating plans and memos and scenarios for the monstrous jobs, the impossible tasks to come. He finds his wife attractive. They go to the gym. He forces himself to “pump iron,” not to postpone the inevitable descent, but to make the landing smoother. He’s seen many a man crash. But he doesn’t have the energy for his wife that he once had. Maybe once a week, if that. And of course she has her career too, and they are both busy with the children. He feels, given the uncertainty of the world, that he should own a gun, at least a rifle. The Police exist to protect his property, not his family — anyway, they are always there when you need them, but seldom here where they could save your life, if so inclined. But he is confused by the City’s Byzantine gun laws, and he is not comfortable letting the Government know he has a weapon. Should the Government turn for the worse, the gun owners in the Database will be the first ones visited by the police. But he fears being caught with an illegal weapon, a mandatory jail term, and the end of his career and all he’d strived for. Only those outside the system can flourish unregistered weapons with impunity. Truly, he would rather be dead. He might live another forty years. Forty years of this. Maybe fifty. Another reason to own a gun. He can think of no better way to exit. Effective drugs are as illegal as guns, and the medications the head-drugger prescribes won’t kill him. Worse, they might put him to sleep, and he’d be caught holding the bag — or pill bottle — trying to escape, a Federal crime. He worked too hard for too long to lose it that way. If he must exit this earth, he will buy a gun. On the black market. What and wherever that is. If he makes the decision, it will not matter that his corpse is found holding an illegal weapon. Then again, if he gets caught in the act, before pulling the trigger, or chickens out, they will send him to an institution. Again, that would ruin him. Of course, this is all hypothetical. Daydream talk. He has a deep responsibility to his family. His children. His is the kind of ethic that was instilled in his subconscious forcefully, frequently, and early on. It is so part of his psyche that he cannot even attempt to fathom it. Just accept it, passively, silently, albeit reluctantly. Nevertheless, he does think critically about his children. He wonders aloud — to himself, of course — if he actually loves his children. His own childhood seems both distant and parallel. That is, he often feels mired in his own childhood and resents the adult, paternal role he must play. Also, he feels sorry for his children and fears for them. He does not understand the structure of the world outside his home and office cubicle, but he believes it is heading for a fall, collapse, chaos. What then? What of his children? What right had he and his wife to yank them from the peace of Cosmic Nothingness and thrust them into Time and consciousness against their will? Adam Engel is a Contributing Editor for Cyrano’s Journal. Adam has published poetry, fiction, articles, and reviews in several web sites and magazines such as CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Online Journal, Hudson Review, Accent, The Concord Journal, Beacon, Art World, Ward6 Review, CounterCurrents, LewRockwell.com, Literal Latte, Lummux, POESY, Chronogram, Press Action,and many others. Adam was a featured reader, along with Robert Creeley, Suzanne Pomme Vega, Robert Bly and others at the Woodstock Poetry Festival, August, 2001, where he read from his first book of poetry, “Oil & Water. He can be reached at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net, or at his partially completed (very partially) website at www.adamengel.com. 34 Responses to “The Possessed”

Kahlil Gibran | 08-31-2007 05:09 PM
Re: The Possessed. Too Far Gone? 1 Attachment(s) Quote:
Originally Posted by gasilat (Post 718522) i don't know anybody like the "the possessed man" in the article...
Attachment 32736 A lot of mask wearing in our society. :smile: :bawling:

UFM | 08-31-2007 05:44 PM
Re: The Possessed. Too Far Gone? Quote:
Originally Posted by gasilat (Post 718522) i don't know anybody like the "the posessed man" in the article... what i see in real life here is people that sorta drop out of society. typically its a divorce that does them in. productive, working, normal folks that after the divorce quit working, become bums and hermits in little rundown cabins. money or women no longer seem to interest them. they have no drive left...they just grow old.. i've seen this happen with people i grew up with...it still amazes me to see the transformation because i knew them when they were still young and full of dreams and grand plans...
And then some realized it was time to stop being just another mule for the system. As long as someone wants to exit the madness I've got no problem with that - just as long as I don't become the mule for their life long vacation. ufm

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