Rethinking Cultural Marxism

[DrYouth]

Back to the OP - Rethinking Cultural Marxism

Before Cultural Marxism the status quo was naturally Ethnocentric or Nation-centric History.

This was the Grand Narrative of the Culture.
Essentially a mythology of cultural greatness.

Romulus and Remus and all the great Roman Caesars...

The Founding Fathers and all the Great American Heroes...

From a psychology perspective we can look at this as "benign" idealization of the parents.
For children it adaptively forgives parents all their shortcomings so that we can remain attached to imperfect human beings and continue to hold them up as role models.

But developmentally this has it's shortcomings when parents have severe limitations.
In our culture we have come to accept the next stage of development.

Teenage rebellion.

And that is what Cultural Marxism is. Developmentally arrested at the stage of the know it all teenager.
Parents suck. Don't trust anyone over 30.
History sucks. Our heroes are villains. Our villains are heroes.

Although perhaps this was a necessary stage.... we can and should move beyond it.

Which is not an argument for moving back.

[Speaker to Animals]

I think the problem is in your analogy which assumes positive "growth".

What actually seems to be happening is that people are becoming *more* disillusioned with the parents, as you described them, and looking back to before the Enlightenment (or trying to figure out something completely new with which to replace the Enlightenment). You could rewind this thing to any point between now and the Enlightenment, and it's like pressing the rewind button on a bad YouTube video: You are still just going to repeat the video.

Cultural marxism is better compared to a cancer than to a legitimate stage of growth, in my opinion.

[DBTrek]

Back to the OP - Rethinking Cultural Marxism

Before Cultural Marxism the status quo was naturally Ethnocentric or Nation-centric History.

This was the Grand Narrative of the Culture.
Essentially a mythology of cultural greatness.

Romulus and Remus and all the great Roman Caesars...

The Founding Fathers and all the Great American Heroes...

From a psychology perspective we can look at this as "benign" idealization of the parents.
For children it adaptively forgives parents all their shortcomings so that we can remain attached to imperfect human beings and continue to hold them up as role models.

But developmentally this has it's shortcomings when parents have severe limitations.
In our culture we have come to accept the next stage of development.

Teenage rebellion.

And that is what Cultural Marxism is. Developmentally arrested at the stage of the know it all teenager.
Parents suck. Don't trust anyone over 30.
History sucks. Our heroes are villains. Our villains are heroes.

Although perhaps this was a necessary stage.... we can and should move beyond it.

Which is not an argument for moving back.

Weird, but I get it.
I think there’s some hidden truth and wisdom in your observations.

But I also wonder how deeply your profession has colored that wisdom. Makes for a great, understandable allegory. Not sure that it actually models what we’re witnessing. Like one of those early models of the heavens with the Earth at the center ... it’s close enough to truth to be a useful starting place, but too far from the truth to explain everything.

[Martin Hash]

This has happened before. Every Communist revolution was this. These people are on the wrong side of status quo. Given the rules of the game (aristocracy), their best bet is to reverse the rules: from liberty, where you make your own decisions and reap the rewards thereof, to collectivism, where someone else makes the decisions and everybody gets their "fair" share.

[Speaker to Animals]

Maybe a better analogy: Enlightenment was like a smoking habit and Cultural Marxism is the resulting lung cancer.

[K@th]

This has happened before. Every Communist revolution was this. These people are on the wrong side of status quo. Given the rules of the game (aristocracy), their best bet is to reverse the rules: from liberty, where you make your own decisions and reap the rewards thereof, to collectivism, where someone else makes the decisions and everybody gets their "fair" share.

There's a middle step that gets you from A to B, though. If A stayed true, and the rules were the same for everyone, we'd never go to B. When the aristocracy rigs the system so the proles have less and less liberty, guillotines.

[Martin Hash]

This has happened before. Every Communist revolution was this. These people are on the wrong side of status quo. Given the rules of the game (aristocracy), their best bet is to reverse the rules: from liberty, where you make your own decisions and reap the rewards thereof, to collectivism, where someone else makes the decisions and everybody gets their "fair" share.

There's a middle step that gets you from A to B, though. If A stayed true, and the rules were the same for everyone, we'd never go to B. When the aristocracy rigs the system so the proles have less and less liberty, guillotines.

You mean like changing the tax code to let families pass on their fortunes unmolested forever?

[K@th]

This has happened before. Every Communist revolution was this. These people are on the wrong side of status quo. Given the rules of the game (aristocracy), their best bet is to reverse the rules: from liberty, where you make your own decisions and reap the rewards thereof, to collectivism, where someone else makes the decisions and everybody gets their "fair" share.

There's a middle step that gets you from A to B, though. If A stayed true, and the rules were the same for everyone, we'd never go to B. When the aristocracy rigs the system so the proles have less and less liberty, guillotines.

You mean like changing the tax code to let families pass on their fortunes unmolested forever?

That's a piece of it. I'm thinking more about how the wealthy have a way to earn money that gives them a lower tax rate. The wealthy can afford fancy lawyers and accountants who can help them hide their money. The wealthy can afford Senators and Congressmen. The wealthy can pony up cash in lieu of prison stays. It's all rigged.

[Martin Hash]

We even have formal titles of royalty.

Billionaire
Son of Billionaire
Multi-Millionaire
Son of Multi-Millionaire
Millionaire

[DBTrek]

Dr. Y’s analogy seems to put the cart before the horse. It paints cultural marxists as teens “reacting” to their environment. What then of nature vs. nurture? I doubt human nature has changed much in one or two generations, so it would seem their reaction should rest on the shoulders of “nurture”, right?
But the teen analogy paints the problem as a generation’s reaction to the environment, which completely ignores the role society played in nurturing the views that triggered the backlash.

Martin’s pendulum theory of the disenfranchised constantly swinging against the status quo seems to better represent what I see going on around me.

In which case, the answer is we need to enfranchise more motherfuckers up in this place - which is hard when they reap far more rewards from bitching than they do from working.