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Difference between revisions of "The Big Nap"
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The period beginning on September 2, 1945, and ending 75 years later on February 19, 2020—which signaled the end of World War II and the beginning of the slide from the peak of the stock market when the world began to accept that the Coronavirus was indeed a serious pandemic, respectively. The Big Nap, in this theory, is itself divided into three sections. First, the “power sleep” between 1945 and 1970, when economic growth was extraordinary, and the memory of World War II was still fresh. This was followed by the “mysterious transition” (for three years between 1971 and 1973, when the post-war magic suddenly evaporated) and the “deep sleep” (from 1974 up until the present day in 2020 at the time of this recording, characterized by what I've termed elsewhere, the “new gimmick economy” in which leaders at first look to restart growth but, sometime in the 1980s, actually gave up and began selling claims against the future so that a small leadership class could continue to pretend the growth was indeed continuing by transferring wealth from their descendants' futures, and from workers who could not politically protect themselves from predation. The Big Nap—at least in the developed free world—was essentially characterized as a run of extraordinary relative good luck and serenity (at least by the historical standards set by previous world wars, pandemics, depressions and depressions), where the new gathering storm clouds of the Cold War threatened and menaced in the distance, but the skies directly above remained unprecedentedly clear. This created a bizarre developmental environment where the serenity of the Big Nap led to a worldwide epidemic of magical thinking among the expert and leadership classes that were raised during this time. | The period beginning on September 2, 1945, and ending 75 years later on February 19, 2020—which signaled the end of World War II and the beginning of the slide from the peak of the stock market when the world began to accept that the Coronavirus was indeed a serious pandemic, respectively. | ||
The Big Nap, in this theory, is itself divided into three sections. First, the “power sleep” between 1945 and 1970, when economic growth was extraordinary, and the memory of World War II was still fresh. This was followed by the “mysterious transition” (for three years between 1971 and 1973, when the post-war magic suddenly evaporated) and the “deep sleep” (from 1974 up until the present day in 2020 at the time of this recording, characterized by what I've termed elsewhere, the “new gimmick economy” in which leaders at first look to restart growth but, sometime in the 1980s, actually gave up and began selling claims against the future so that a small leadership class could continue to pretend the growth was indeed continuing by transferring wealth from their descendants' futures, and from workers who could not politically protect themselves from predation. | |||
The Big Nap—at least in the developed free world—was essentially characterized as a run of extraordinary relative good luck and serenity (at least by the historical standards set by previous world wars, pandemics, depressions and depressions), where the new gathering storm clouds of the Cold War threatened and menaced in the distance, but the skies directly above remained unprecedentedly clear. This created a bizarre developmental environment where the serenity of the Big Nap led to a worldwide epidemic of magical thinking among the expert and leadership classes that were raised during this time. | |||
As I understand it, we are in fact stuck with the mystery of a leadership class that cannot leave the stage nor let go of its illusions and whom I will refer to as the Big Nappers. In the United States, the final five major presidential candidates were all miraculously born between 1941 and 1949 within four years of the beginning of the Big Nap. Now that is indeed quite a mystery considering the original diversity of the field of hopeful contenders—for to be qualified for the final field you needed to be well past retirement age so that any of the five finalists would be the oldest president ever to take the oath of office. Said differently, to be a true Big Napper you needed to have a full life’s sleep. | As I understand it, we are in fact stuck with the mystery of a leadership class that cannot leave the stage nor let go of its illusions and whom I will refer to as the Big Nappers. In the United States, the final five major presidential candidates were all miraculously born between 1941 and 1949 within four years of the beginning of the Big Nap. Now that is indeed quite a mystery considering the original diversity of the field of hopeful contenders—for to be qualified for the final field you needed to be well past retirement age so that any of the five finalists would be the oldest president ever to take the oath of office. Said differently, to be a true Big Napper you needed to have a full life’s sleep. | ||
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The problem that this now leaves us with in the United States (and which I believe is echoed abroad) is that this class is all that is left of our national coherence, and they are continuing to hold on to power well past their retirement dates—because in a democracy, any shared group beliefs in nonsense, and particularly self-serving nonsense, will still beat an incoherent haystack of noise that nevertheless contains the missing needles of truth. | The problem that this now leaves us with in the United States (and which I believe is echoed abroad) is that this class is all that is left of our national coherence, and they are continuing to hold on to power well past their retirement dates—because in a democracy, any shared group beliefs in nonsense, and particularly self-serving nonsense, will still beat an incoherent haystack of noise that nevertheless contains the missing needles of truth. | ||
And that's where I think we are. Our seniors believe in self-serving nonsense supported by legacy sense-making structures that | And that's where I think we are. Our seniors believe in self-serving nonsense supported by legacy sense-making structures that have a measure of coherence is its major value. And this is weirdly a bipartisan coherence. President Trump, the CDC, the Surgeon General, the Speaker of the House, the Mayor of New York, the Washington Post, have all agreed to various obviously wrong statements about this virus, designed to shield our economy and our institutions from having to look at their abject failure to deal with the crisis in the face. The younger generations are habituated to the chaos of the internet, where the truth is regularly found sitting next to kitten memes shitposting and chaos. | ||
Yet it was from these dark alleys and corners that the consensus was first challenged. And our younger and more alienated adults are paying attention to the fact that the establishment center was obviously lying in matters of life and death about the efficacy of face masks, the meaning of small numbers of deaths in the face of the law of exponential growth, and the very real possibility that this worldwide pandemic originated in a high-security Chinese bio lab. | Yet it was from these dark alleys and corners that the consensus was first challenged. And our younger and more alienated adults are paying attention to the fact that the establishment center was obviously lying in matters of life and death about the efficacy of face masks, the meaning of small numbers of deaths in the face of the law of exponential growth, and the very real possibility that this worldwide pandemic originated in a high-security Chinese bio lab. | ||