This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time

[athelind]

Last year, I posted an LJ entry that said that the defining moment for our generation wasn't when man set foot on the Moon, but when we turned away.

Most of my commentators, bless their literal souls, thought I was just talking about the space program, and at that stage in my recovery, I wasn't quite up to clarifying the symbolic and metaphorical

Comments

[notthebuddha]

Dude, did you guys fall asleep before the end? Tyler's rant is literally only half the truth, and completely subverted as self-destructive (again, literally).

[athelind]

I really do appear to only be able to communicate half of what's going on in my brain at any one point.

I said it was "the quintessential movie of my generation". I didn't say "Tyler Durden is a Divine Prophet."

You're close -- it's HALF the truth. Pahulnik, in this speech, succinctly describes the malaise afflicting Generation X. We came into a world of progress and potential-we were literally promised the Moon-only to have it ripped away from us.

"Ah, never mind that. Here, have a crappy job and an apartment full of cheap furniture. Oh, wait. We're shipping the crappy jobs overseas. Why aren't you paying for your cheap furniture anymore?"

Fight Club is, in many ways, a cautionary tale. Sometimes, we all find ourselves in Tyler Durden's headspace, entertaining fantasies of just randomly beating the crap out of someone, or blackmailing your pissant boss, or taking your hands off the wheel as you ram the accelerator into the floorboards just to see what happens

[kores_rabbit]

Now, I have the music from that movie in my head. Where is my mind, after all?

[paka]

I do think the effective end of the space program is a valid point for metaphor;

1. The newly-minted Ming China launched a huge number of voyages overseas with its new found prosperity. There were Chinese ships anchored off what's now Kenya. And then boom, nothing. The Ming government decided that it was too expensive to do this stuff. China became a rural, backwards backwater instead of the world spanning power she had no reason not to become. Fast forward a few centuries and China paid for that mistake, big time. Even Portugal, the big loser in Europe's race to explore, wasn't subject to being invaded and divvied up by foreign powers while her people languished in poverty with a backwards looking government. With space, we are now repeating that mistake

[athelind]

Bingeaux.

[leonard_arlotte]

I fully expect to be shouted down for making this statement, but I really don't see what the Wall Street protesting is supposed to accomplish. It's a bunch of grubby twenty-somethings yelling that they aren't happy about the way things are being run.

Very similar to the grubby twenty-somethings of the 60s... and now they're the ones running things.

I will point something else out... these grubby twenty-somethings aren't your generation anymore. They're the next one. Your generation (and mine) had its cutoff at 1980. That was 31 years ago. These protesters are solidly in the 'millenial' generation.

Mind you, our grubby twenty-somethings tore down the Berlin Wall. Something to be said for that. But that goes along with what paka said about violence.

[athelind]

Oh, I'm well aware that it's not MY generation at the vanguard of Occupy Wall Street. As the movement snowballs, though, those "grubby 20-somethings" are being joined by increasing waves of "The (Disenfranchised) Establishment", who include the cynical, bedraggled stragglers from Generation X -- unions, veterans, even active duty military. I'll try to give a rundown on who's involved when I get home tonight.

The "grubby twenty-somethings" of the '60s accomplished a hell of a lot, especially in the arena of civil rights. Beyond that, Boomers weren't the only TwenCenGen to protest social injustice.

[paka]

The grubby 20 somethings in question are directly affected by this. They're coming into maturity having had very little of their lives outside of a recession, during which the wealthy made out like gangbusters and got concessions. This really is about whether they get a chance to be middle class or whether they're going to be poor when they're my age, or Athelind's - and by "poor" I mean "one step away from homelessness."

To some extent the only vaguely focused but definitely peeved are always a vital part of changing things. "Gaaaah fix it now" is a valid sentiment. I also want to point out that other Americans, and in fact the world, is watching; it is important that people like Europeans see that not all Americans don't give a crap about our slide into third world autocracy as long as we have easy access to "Dexter," "American Idol," and iPhones.

[archteryx]

Some of us are now *40 somethings* have have never known anything but recession, except for that very brief bit in the late 1990s. And as a virologist, I can tell you: unless you had something to do with IT, or just the right pedigree. the high-end job market in the late 1990s rather sucked, too.

[kymri]

The oligarchy is in full effect and democracy doesn't help; you just vote for the guy who you hope is going to use a little bit of lube