Many people from Western countries notice something intangibly alluring when they excurse to the ‘third world’. Something they can’t quite put their finger on, a quality of life that isn’t “better” on the surface—in the classical sense—but increasingly tugs at the hem, like an unruly child who may seem annoying at first, but quickly turns quaintly adorable.
An interesting reflection….something to urgently think about…..”Tolerable inefficiencies might cost money but they make an atmosphere feel way less pressured. I feel like in the US we have the worst of both worlds. A focus on squeezing every penny out of everything, total efficiency minmaxxing, and heavy regulatory capture. Maybe we don't enjoy things, we just consume them. ”
A woman friend complains about how food prices constantly go up. Well, prices are usually going up so what's the surprise? I shop Aldi's, Walmart, Costco, Trader Joes and a local grocer with high quality produce, at sobering prices. Most of the basics like TP and the like I get at Walmart. I don't sweat the last penny and figure prices are not going to get much better than those at Walmart so why sweat the predictable price increases? My wife and I are in our 70s and almost NEVER eat at restaurants. By eating at home we save a lot of money and I can find some creativity making meals in our kitchen. I don't clip coupons and always go into a store with a list which I stick to. The money NOT spent in eating out gives me a nice value reward that I can enjoy by NOT sweating the prices at the grocery.
In the western world, supposedly we are free, except for where there are rules or laws. Turns out, there are rules/regulations/laws for EVERYTHING. This is what happens when societies get a bit bored and comfortable.
In the developing world, they are too busy keeping "danger" at the door. And so you look around wondering where all the structure and order is, but then realize you've forgotten what freedom actually is.
I do charity work for the Salvation Army and help out in one of their food kitchens for poor people and we have a small sink in the kitchen for washing hands and another far larger sink for washing dishes etc. Of course everyone uses the large sink for washing their hands and all the small sink is used for is bashing and bruising people's legs as it had to be jammed into the kitchen to meet health and safety rules otherwise the kitchen couldn't remain open. We have a temperature book for all the cooked food that has to be filled in but as everything is either frazzled in the oven or boiled to death on the stove top filling in that book is a waste of time and so it isn't done but the book exists and so once in a while someione will sit down and make up some food and temperatures and bung them in the book the local council is supposed to check but never does. All these silly rules are put in place to prevent people helping one another they are not put there to make things better. It has been seen in every experiment of its kind ever done that by switching off traffic lights and getting rid of one way roads etc that traffic flows far more smoothly in a city so why aren't all traffic lights around the world switched off and why aren't all one way roads made two way as the vast majority used to be? To cause inconvenience that is all. We have far too many people, mostly women, in non-jobs preventing people, mostly men, in real jobs doing their work hence the decline of the West.
This sort of thing is reflected in the corporate world too. Manic obsessions with policies and procedures in the name of "quality" are turning even basic simple tasks into paperwork nightmares, as well as purging any kind of humanity or personal initiative. There is a perceived virtue or positive in turning every conceivable situation into a policy and the response into a documented procedure, and to eliminate any other behavior thereon. This is absolutely pervasive across all major corporates and getting worse every year. Unsurprisingly, the people I deal with appear to get dumber and dumber.
Yup. My sister was a senior nurse for nearly 40 years and has just retired but in that period the paperwork required to do anything in the NHS in the UK has been multipled by at least a factor of 5 and the system is in the process of slow collapse as a result. She also noted the absolute explosion of non-jobs in the management sphere, jobs that have titles, very good salary and retirement packages but are chock full of people, again mainly women, who as she says refuse to actually perform the tasks they are supposed to be doing so that all the NHS sees is a very much larger salary and pensions bill coupled with growing confusion as managers simply will not manage. Her experience, which was typical of her friend's also, was that her women managers wanted to befriend staff instead of manage them and men managers had to be pulled in every few months to sort out the back biting and intrigues that resulted from these policies of promoting their perceived friends over other more competent staff etc Of course we are not supposed to notice this and never ever under any circumstances comment on it.
I run a SME but work with corporate clients. I meet their supply chain teams - something like a dozen people - doing a job that my business does with 1 person. Am comparing apples to apples - similar tonnage, expenditure, etc. I literally don't even know how they do it, I couldn't invent that much make-work even if I wanted to
Excel spreadsheets are a Godsend for those who want to create non-jobs out of nothing. Simply list the five things involved in the non-job then assign a manager to each box and then break each box down into greater and greater detail of things that must be done even though it has only been done once in the last 30 years and for one client and hey presto you have a huge list of non-tasks within your non-jobsphere that MUST be completed for each and every client even though they never asked for it.
I contracted for a major engineering compliance/certification house for many years I was the head of one of the engineering disciplines and the project managers there used to follow the above procedure to create more and more "work" but the problem was they kept having to backtrack as the client would pushback and say the work wasn't necessary. This happened so often that I told everyone that reported to me that from now on we would ignore the ever growing demands of the project managers until I was sure the client was happy to go down this route. Our discipline thereby saved a huge amount of time in not having to do reworks etc whist all the other disciplines were stupidly just going along with these silly demands. The result is my discipline had contented engineers who felt they weren't wasting their time and consequently a lot less stress for us all. The other discipline leads simply weren't doing their jobs properly which was to protect their engineers from all that management "noise".
I'm a professional freight forwarder, and the larger firms in the sector are chock full of bloated middle management. Usually a highly talented and successful operations/sales/product manager who ran a high performing import or brokerage or air/ocean team. They've earned their stripes and deserve promotion, but the firm is growing too slowly to slot them into a useful position. The firm doesn't want to lose them to a competitor, or have their development stagnate. So a new position is invented just to have somewhere to promote these people. The new positions are almost always "optimizing processes" to some degree. They go from value-added roles to internal-process-optimization roles (ie from day to day bottom-line impactful to purely internal paper pushers and meeting havers. I've seen it happen more than a few times.
They don't appear to get dumber, they are dumber. People are not allowed to think. They must slavishly Walk around the perimeter when the hypotenuse is available. The last place I worked before retirement was a nuclear power plant and I quit a management job at significant cost because I couldn't do the BS methods. Because of the BS and corruption, of course, the US nuclear costs FIVE X the Korean. This cannot stand.
I'm 58 and when I was in my twenties you could drive streets that had synchronized stop lights, if you did the speed limit or less the lights rewarded you by getting to your time quicker, now it's about thwarting traffic to justify the high salaries of traffic planning analysts. Everything is done to inconvenience us
Some of it is pure grift by the municipalities. IE rapidly changing speed limits in close proximity to each other just to generate revenue from people who don't spot the changes from 55 to 25 to 45 to 25 on the same stretch of road. Or traffic light camera systems that do nothing whatsoever for safety but sure are good at generating ticket revenue.
I'm a Christian but was surprised to find that virtually none of the other unpaid volunteers are. Most are spiritual of a more eastern religion type with reincarnation being much to the fore but I believe Jesus was very much into reincarnation and that was all removed from the gospels as the idea that you were reincarnated back here meant you would be more interested in sorting here out and not in some fantasy place called heaven and therefore you would be more likely to try to overthrow inhuman orders in charge here at present so that when you came back they would be gone. The fact he reincarnated Lazarus back to here sort of gives the game away about what he believed and that was just far too dangerous an idea for the time. I think the Sally Army prefer Christians in paid positions but it isn't an absolute requirement.
I'm so far in the hinterlands that I officially live in a country that doesn't exist :) And yes, it is superior in every way to the United States.
As for the rest, this is an interesting article, but it's more of a 1000-ft view thinkpiece than an effort to really dig into the deeper roots of what's at the foundation of this (genuine) experience that people are having that "woah, poor people over THERE seem to be living better lives than me."
Not my article to write, so all I can do is show you the pillars:
1) The term "Third World" is incredibly outdated and from a colonial era mindset. It automatically frames a given country as LESS THAN another one. Furthermore, it isn't even based on anything objective. Even the purchasing power parity indices (aka hard numbers) don't align with what people who use the framework of "First/Third World" think applies to a given country. Much more accurate is Global South/Global North.
2) The 1950s weren't when the USA resembled Mexico. More like the 1750s. Back when a guy like Daniel Boone could wrestle a bear and make moonshine in the cabin he built himself before becoming a lawyer and then serving in Congress.
3) What makes people of ALL countries and ALL regions happy is working with their hands. Not their finger(s), but their whole hands. Swiping, clicking, gesturing, and tapping = unhappy. Touch typing = happy, along with, of course, all the other thousands of occupations that require use of both hands, from sweeping floors to sculpting to machining precision parts to bushcrafting to camping to gardening to knitting, et al. If you want to suck the soul right out of a person's body, give them a job that doesn't require the use of their hands (very much). That may sound simplistic, but look at literally anyone you know who he is happy with their job/career/occupation and you'll see that I'm right.
3b) It just occurred to me that there's a way to prove this - some (mostly younger) surgeons now use robots (the most popular is called "DaVinci" for some reason) to assist/perform some procedures, while other (mostly older) surgeons go strictly with their hands and haptic feel to perform the exact same procedures. Guess which cohort has less career burnout/turnover and fewer post-surgical complications?
You've got a good instinct for what's going on in our reality. Just need to bury your nose deeper into the stratum, my friend, instead of getting lost in the clouds.
This. I gave a service that was my calling, given such a gift…I worked with my hands and preformed magic. Yup. The dredges of public health nursing, US, style. You know, the disdain, almost contempt from the “others ” in the profession. Like plastic surgery and cosmetic nurses, right🤪The greatest wounds, mine, were my best teachers. Anyway, the fellowship trained neurosurgeon who restored me after a catastrophic spinal cord injury did utilize the DaVinci pocket rocket. I so get what your saying. Thanks for sharing, ❤️🐈⬛
Living out of the West, it feels like the continued presence of the extended family system is just inherently relaxing. Hardly anyone in Istanbul had to live on the streets. Even though the cost of living is going crazy and people are raging everywhere, still there's this fundamental sense of a safety net.
Now, if there was a way to keep the extended family system but get rid of the accompanying bureaucratic and administrative nightmare, that would be cool.
My son sells the DaVinci robotic surgery system. I don't think that system has been in play long enough to generalize about "burn out". My son also reports that hospitals have a hard time attracting surgeons if there are no robots in their system. The one very important advantage the robot offers is that a robotic surgery is done at a "console" not unlike a "game console"...the advantage for the surgeon being that s/he doesn't have to bend over continuously to do surgery. IE, the robotic surgery is much kinder on the surgeon's body than the previous system. A woman doctor friend (OB-GYN) who is retired, complains of constant back pain because of her years of bending over to do surgery or deliver babies. That said, this same doc is NOT the biggest fan of robotic surgery, for reasons I won't get into.
I forget who noticed germs way back and was ridiculed for it, pasteur? I wonder if a height adjustable surgical table has ever been thought of or would be ridiculed because this is how it's done, I'm an aquarium hobbyist and I changed the height of my aquariums so that I can work at them without crouching leaning or peering and it changed everything. Hours of surgery crouched as opposed to comfortably suspended in a weightless suit perhaps, forgive my early morning babbles
"wonder if a height adjustable surgical table has ever been thought of "
Your suggestion is a nod to, ahem, Occam's Razor. That is, out of a range of possible solutions to a problem, the simplest solution is usually the best. It seems likely that the old surgical method, though punishing to the body, was "just how things work". Just how things are done. Medical people fit into a very hidebound, conservative profession. Straying from the established methodology (on anything) is a way to get whacked. There are probably more obvious reasons why surgical robots are coming on line, beside table height issues, but my son would be the one to speak to that point. Thanks for your comment!
Louis Pasteur, and many otherwise effective physicians went to their graves calling him a liar, fool or worse. The next generation then washed their hands religiously, boiled their instruments between uses & etc...
My wife and I live outside a town of 50k in Mexico.
The walls, fences, and private security that one sees in Mexico reflect reality. Mexicans don’t play “let’s pretend” that the police and insurance companies will protect them from loss. Security is proactive.
Most Mexicans accept their station in life. Social mobility is muy difícil over here. If your dad was a laborer, you’ll be a laborer. Likewise, if your father is a doctor, you’ll go to medical school.
Most importantly, local preference is what matters to law enforcement, not dictates from on high. For example, several years ago Mexico demanded that states pass mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists. Then it was found that hit men on stolen motorcycles LOVED the law because they could assassinate with impunity while wearing a helmet and C19 mask! So the result is that wearing a helmet is forbidden in some places—without a change in law. In 2023, Mexico passed a sweeping smoking ban. A year on, it’s selectively enforced—politically connected restaurants and bars don’t comply while opposition establishments are cited.
Mostly, Mexico is a place where non-violent acts aren’t illegal. One can text while riding a horse on the street. Villages don’t have stop signs. Ignore the yellow lines—pass when it’s safe. If you live outside of town, send a WhatsApp to the butcher and he’ll slaughter your hog on the edge of your property. Build with or without a permit.
Freedom begins in the mind. Americans are conditioned to ask, “May I? Which agency do I ask?” Mexicans think, “That which is not forbidden is permitted—what do I want to do?.”
Yes, I never regretted being a tradesman, Yes man, doing real work with satisfaction and pride in what I had built. Real people thinking and moving to make something a physical reality. I also had the "freedom" to leave if I chose without worrying about the pension as I carried my skills in my head and hands.
i think you are onto something... having traveled to mexico in the 70's, your post brings back memories of why i enjoyed it so much... although many of the people were poor, they seemed more content with life... same deal in turkey... of course traveling is liberating too, so that might be part of it.. going to different cultures is always mind expanding for different reasons and it lets you look at your own culture from a different vantage point, which is generally always helpful.. i am a canuck so some of your metaphors apply and some of them don't.. thanks for your insights..
I went South to Mexico in 2022, to finish my permanent residency there. I found the changes of the past 20 years had sped the culture up, depending. I stayed rural, much more relaxed. How 40 years prior, in my 20’s I hitched-hiked thru the country is still a mystery. Solo, no less. The pace in the country side is to my liking; similar to where I reside North of the Boarder. ❤️🐈⬛
Yes, we have 7k here, down the road is a city/town of 20k. I grew up rurally in a place with a few hundred peeps; farmers, ranchers. All that is “hand work”; salt of the earth type folks. For the love of money, nope, I stay rural. Hard tho, age in place. Downsizing and such.❤️🐈⬛
I’m English and regularly go to the little Greek island of Rhodes. I get the feeling expressed in the article there. They have real community and one other thing; much, much less road markings. They have a higher accident rate, but you feel much more “present” on the roads as you have to think.
Also, a lot of the accidents are caused by drunk tourists.
Sadly, this is vanishing. The authorities will not look the other way, like they did years ago. And they have the same rules like Germany or The Netherlands.
I would highly recommend you and others interested in this phenomenon to check out Zimbabwean author Peter Godwin's books, such as Mukiwa, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, and The Fear. He grew up in the late years of Southern Rhodesia, and despite deciding several times after leaving there never to return, always ends up drawn back to the place he grew up through one crisis and collapse after another. Very insightful and gripping reads (IMO), they're superficially "autobiographies" of his life, but really contain the kind of history and cultural insight you will almost never find in an actual history book.
I think most of it relates to culture, which may sound like a simplification, but rather the cultural element is so complicated it'd take an essay to try to fully explain what I mean by that. Most people see intuitively the "top-down" effect on culture these days from the ruling class and whatnot, but what's harder to see is all the other kinds of interactions, which ultimately in a population form the society and the way it functions as a whole. Probably, I'd say, they all matter a lot more. And there are all kinds of things that affect culture, such as prosperity, which I think has a negative effect really.
People from the third world such as places like Africa have a toughness and resilience not well understood by people elsewhere, who try to find ways to explain it as if it's some sort of illness or insanity on their part, or a pretend bravado. I assume it's insecurity to try to make up for their own shortcomings in "explaining" it. Prosperity, financiers, Western billionaires and whatnot moving into places like Zimbabwe risk destroying a lot of the authenticity and character they've got. It's a hard balance to strike, between a good place to live and one that's too good.
Another thought provoking piece - thank you so much for all the excellent writing! I am enjoying your posts immensely and very much look forward to them.
You've manifested an alluring oasis of wisdom and thought in an evermore bleak and purile desert of media!
"By decimating its woodlands, Finland has created the grounds for prosperity. We can now thank prosperity for bringing us—among other things—two million cars, millions of glowing, electronic entertainment boxes, and many unneeded buildings to cover the green earth. Surplus wealth has led to gambling in the marketplace and rampant social injustice, whereby 'the common people' end up contributing to the construction of golf courses, five-star hotels, and holiday resorts, while fattening Swiss bank accounts. Besides, the people of wealthy countries are the most frustrated, unemployed, unhappy, suicidal, sedentary, worthless and aimless people in history. What a miserable exchange."—Pentti Linkola, Finnish fisherman, writer, and environmentalist
And Finland is one of the best "Western" countries. Get rid of all these moral-soaked discussions on everything funny and well-tasting! Personally, I enjoy working with workers from Finland (and Portugal!); they are always well educated and strong at work but relaxed after work.
Thanks for the interesting observation. Coming from Brazil myself and living in Europe for more than 20 years I can relate to how you feel in "third world" countries.
Nevertheless, I think you might have missed two points: 1) the apparent contentment on low tier jobs might be be traced back to their own background. In Brazil these are the ones who left even poorer areas to find work opportunities. Their can't go back, so they might be content. They have fulfilled their dream. They have so to say "optimized" their lives by leaving a situation of no work at all to an existence of being able to earn a (simple) living from their work.
2) there is also fear. The work conditions where you have a huge offer of young unqualified workers are not even comparable to those in Western countries. And we know how fear changes one's behaviour.
3) Resignation can also provide a sense of quietness that might be confused with contentment.
4) Violence potential, especially among the younger ones, can become an expression where contentment and resignation don't suffice.
I left the shithole consumerist Zionist controlled "west" at 40 years old. Along the way a daughter appeared and unfortunately moved back for her education.
Now planning to leave again. But to do so without our daughter is unthinkable. She is young and has just started a career after finishing university, so we have to wait until she also realises the "west" is fucked, and then we go.
Could you have managed her education from abroad? Man, this ZOG shit is out of hand now. It's just right there in your face. "We own you, motherfuckers. STFU and serve us." Point that out and you're an antisemite.
Well articulated as always, Simplicius, thank you. As an American living in a small town in Belarus, I can wholeheartedly relate. Life is infinitely better here for my family and I. Building a life in the United States is unthinkable at this point.
"And I don’t mean that in the Marxist dialectical sense—we know the elites do not subscribe to true capitalism or Marxism, and I myself am not a proponent of either. "
You know in Marx you won't find idpol, but there is the concept of an alienation produced by Capitalism, you might find interesting. You could say the capitalism in the US is the most pure and thus a pleasure for the ruling class, but unendurable for the vast majority.
You're essay is a sign of good health. I felt this way and a young man returning to the US after several years in the "third world. This feeling is the beginning of an important process. It comes from losing ones illusions about the US and ultimately, Capitalism. I hope that's true in your case, S.
You may want to read the young Hegelians. Marx was one, but their were others. They felt that man naturally desires freedom, but society was everywhere unfree and so an alienation ensued. The society of man, left the individual man in a trap. So they set about solutions, primarily in the form on an attack om state Christianity. Bruno Bauer was very good on this pointing to the fact that despite collective man's godlike power most men were so alienated from society that when they had time to rest, there pleasures we're no more than those of an animal. Marx saw this extreme focus on religion to be idealistic and instead focused on the economic system finding it produced this alienation of man from the world of man.
Don't dismiss Marx or Hegel too easily. They have to be read. On the former , I recommend Socialism Utopian and Scientific. On the latter The Philosophy of History.
We have a ruling class. More precisely a Bourgeoisie. McKinsey are just their paid servants. You see they only care about their profits and those are produced by our increasing misery. That's Capitalism.
Anyway, keep studying. You're moving in the right direction.
Many of us see obesity, drug overdose and homelessness. All that you describe is true but less worrisome when crime, pure evil, and mental illness or some toxic combination, such as actual criminals who lack a moral center, is front and center of what we see or pay attention to. I am in real danger on the highways of large dense suburban areas, in some danger from the dirty city air and plans to escape are momentary relief.
Yes, I think with sorrowful nostalgia about Paris long ago and the Manhattan Island and even Vermont of early childhood in the 1950's. But I keep hope alive to see something new and authentic or old and beatiful with tradition - somewhere one day always one day.
I want to travel into libraries and archives abroad, researching a writing capstone as a celebration of my life as defined by the best qualities of extended family as well as the challenges and life changing losses such as exile. I don't expect to relax and enjoy Paris as I experienced it when 12 and 17 years of age but I do hope to find a cabin with running water somewhere in the Austrian or Italian Alps where I can hide.
As a "Third worlder" with personal experience of living in the Empire, I can only attest to the veracity of your thoughts, Simplicius. I have spent many hours pondering on the same issues and have come to the conclusion that the "west's" problems mainly stem from the complete evisceration of spirituality from its society. Everything is seen through "Euclidean" eyes of materialism and success is measured through digits on a bank account and the size and worth of one's leased vehicle.
In such a world of spiritual nihilism it is a given that the "rat race" boils down to a constant competition against one's peers, and the spirit of cooperation is practically non-existent. Everyone is on a constant chase for "bigger, better, faster", as led and advertised by corporate media to be the ultimate measure of happiness. The "lucky" ones who occasionally get to climb one of those propagated "hilltops of happiness" usually and unsurprisingly discover that their purchased McMansion or Tesla or whatever didn't really make them happy and fulfilled deep inside. As a matter of fact and as a rule of thumb the exact opposite happens, because suddenly they are a subject of envy and hatred by their own peers, so they end up feeling even lonelier and seeking new peers who've reached the same level of "success".
"Westerners" who spend some time in the "third world" feel that there's something present there that they've been missing in their own lives, but are generelly unable to point the finger at what it really is.
In essence, that is the reason for the evergrowing popularity of literary authors like the Beatniks (Kerouac, Bukowski), Hunter S. Thompson and Palahniuk, because they subtly reveal and decipher the lost ingredient of contemporary western life, as well as what it really takes to feel real "freedom" and a regained sense of wholeness - being content and feeling "one with the Universe".
"Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.” (Tao Te Ching, verse 44)
It's worth noting this has happened with past Empires whose people lost their religion, spirituality, and any beliefs or understanding of what made their people great in the first place, too, such as the Romans, who had managed to lose all that while still a "Republic."
By Augustus' time, he was giving separate speeches intended for the "good" and "bad" Romans to hear praising the best and scorning the rest, as the latter no longer had any interest in civil duties, starting families, or much of anything at all besides an idealistic hedonism. No wholeness or contentedness, but a fast-moving and always unsatisfied lot, they were, who Augustus thought of as striving to live like beasts rather than like the divine.
By AD 1st to 2nd centuries, historians like Tacitus had to look to the "barbarians" in search of the virtues and temperament that they themselves as Romans had come to lack, trying to remember who they were as a people, once. His own people were too busy corrupting themselves in every vice thinkable and unthinkable, confusing every part of their servitude for "civilisation," as he put it. No matter what they had, it was never enough. It should be no surprise words like "decadent" and "profligate" all come from Latin. They probably had even less taboos than Westerners do today in many respects (hard as that may sound to believe).
I visited one of the smaller scotch distilleries in Islay. Not the 3rd world but many processes are done by hand using methods from many past generations. Much of the distillery equipment is around 100 years old as is the distillery itself. Peat is handcut from the ground using hand tools. Stages of distillation is determined by smell and decades of experience. The master distiller tasted directly from the barrel using a long handled ladle of sorts.
My first thought as an American was how incredibly inefficient this all seemed to be. But that was also the beauty. Skilled men perfectly content to be involved in the craft of making whiskey without using the soulless automation of mass production.
My next thought was how that would all be ruined here in the States.
The lack of appreciation for craftsmanship seems to be pervasive in all areas, with almost everything. What is oft forgotten in the pursuit of efficiency is that what's of the highest quality can rarely be made efficiently, and is inefficient by its nature; the efficiency that results in such quantity very often comes at the price of quality.
Quality, however, can be a lot harder to measure and crunch numbers to prove, especially to people used to quantity but who have rarely if ever known a truly skilled master of any craft or understood the difference in their work. Not that there's never a value to efficiency or quantity, of course, but the value of quality is more easily forgotten, and once it has been, it can be that no one even remembers it to know the difference.
People talk about a shortage of doctors, engineers, or whatnot. But what society's shortest of is skilled crafters, I think. I wonder what the average age is of those master distillers?
Being a musician, the best luthiers (woodworkers of string instruments) in the world, which there is a single digit number of in many areas (e.g., Irish or Scandinavian folk music), are mostly very old men, and I worry what it will mean when they're gone if there are no apprentices to replace the masters, no one living to match the quality of their work anymore. What will become of human culture if all this continues?
Skilled crafters are those that built society. And as you have noted, they are fewer and fewer. Young people has only two solutions to a problem; a) Ask a friend for advice, b) Google it. Where are all these ”doers” now?. I share your concern about the future.
Excellent point regarding the loss of and appreciation for craftsmanship! I'd also incorporate the simple crafts girls used to learn, like cooking for the family, like sewing and needlework. I was lucky: I 'learned' this things from my grannies and great-aunts. One day I came across a post by a middle-aged lady which illustrates both what you wrote and what Simplifies wrote. She described how her Granny used to knit the most fantastic jumpers, cardigans, dresses - which the whole extended family loved to wear. But then, the first 'fashion' superstore with cheap fashion for the masses arrived ... and every girl went and bought this cheap, throw-away stuff in garish colours because it was 'fashionable', the lovely jumpers and dresses crafted by the grannies and aunts were forgotten, discarded and even ridiculed.
That is what we have lost: simple crafts anyone in the family could learn ... but then again: how can ye knit when ye need yer hands for yer smartphone ...
I'll note that the elite executive class of America hates quality and craftsmanship. Edward Deming, the man who made Japan's auto industry, showed you could measure and improve quality and efficiency through statistical methods. America laughed him out of the country and he was so blackballed he had to work in nuclear wasteland firebombed Japan. And yet the methods were so effective that in 4 years American executives were begging for tariffs against Japan. A Japan that had lost a war and been bombed to hell only one college term ago (4 yrs).
Deming returned to America with a proven track record and they STILL laughed at him and refused to do anything he recommended. His final book was a condemnation of the American elite class and how we would run into a massive manufacturing problem in the coming generation.
Quality is measurable, it's provable and it's already in books written by an american. They know, they just hate the idea because it includes human dignity. Goyim don't get dignity in the USA.
An interesting reflection….something to urgently think about…..”Tolerable inefficiencies might cost money but they make an atmosphere feel way less pressured. I feel like in the US we have the worst of both worlds. A focus on squeezing every penny out of everything, total efficiency minmaxxing, and heavy regulatory capture. Maybe we don't enjoy things, we just consume them. ”
A woman friend complains about how food prices constantly go up. Well, prices are usually going up so what's the surprise? I shop Aldi's, Walmart, Costco, Trader Joes and a local grocer with high quality produce, at sobering prices. Most of the basics like TP and the like I get at Walmart. I don't sweat the last penny and figure prices are not going to get much better than those at Walmart so why sweat the predictable price increases? My wife and I are in our 70s and almost NEVER eat at restaurants. By eating at home we save a lot of money and I can find some creativity making meals in our kitchen. I don't clip coupons and always go into a store with a list which I stick to. The money NOT spent in eating out gives me a nice value reward that I can enjoy by NOT sweating the prices at the grocery.
What? Just think about all those aspiring actors and actresses that you are depriving of work and tips!
I know, I know...I'm being selfish! AGAIN!
In the western world, supposedly we are free, except for where there are rules or laws. Turns out, there are rules/regulations/laws for EVERYTHING. This is what happens when societies get a bit bored and comfortable.
In the developing world, they are too busy keeping "danger" at the door. And so you look around wondering where all the structure and order is, but then realize you've forgotten what freedom actually is.
I do charity work for the Salvation Army and help out in one of their food kitchens for poor people and we have a small sink in the kitchen for washing hands and another far larger sink for washing dishes etc. Of course everyone uses the large sink for washing their hands and all the small sink is used for is bashing and bruising people's legs as it had to be jammed into the kitchen to meet health and safety rules otherwise the kitchen couldn't remain open. We have a temperature book for all the cooked food that has to be filled in but as everything is either frazzled in the oven or boiled to death on the stove top filling in that book is a waste of time and so it isn't done but the book exists and so once in a while someione will sit down and make up some food and temperatures and bung them in the book the local council is supposed to check but never does. All these silly rules are put in place to prevent people helping one another they are not put there to make things better. It has been seen in every experiment of its kind ever done that by switching off traffic lights and getting rid of one way roads etc that traffic flows far more smoothly in a city so why aren't all traffic lights around the world switched off and why aren't all one way roads made two way as the vast majority used to be? To cause inconvenience that is all. We have far too many people, mostly women, in non-jobs preventing people, mostly men, in real jobs doing their work hence the decline of the West.
This sort of thing is reflected in the corporate world too. Manic obsessions with policies and procedures in the name of "quality" are turning even basic simple tasks into paperwork nightmares, as well as purging any kind of humanity or personal initiative. There is a perceived virtue or positive in turning every conceivable situation into a policy and the response into a documented procedure, and to eliminate any other behavior thereon. This is absolutely pervasive across all major corporates and getting worse every year. Unsurprisingly, the people I deal with appear to get dumber and dumber.
Yup. My sister was a senior nurse for nearly 40 years and has just retired but in that period the paperwork required to do anything in the NHS in the UK has been multipled by at least a factor of 5 and the system is in the process of slow collapse as a result. She also noted the absolute explosion of non-jobs in the management sphere, jobs that have titles, very good salary and retirement packages but are chock full of people, again mainly women, who as she says refuse to actually perform the tasks they are supposed to be doing so that all the NHS sees is a very much larger salary and pensions bill coupled with growing confusion as managers simply will not manage. Her experience, which was typical of her friend's also, was that her women managers wanted to befriend staff instead of manage them and men managers had to be pulled in every few months to sort out the back biting and intrigues that resulted from these policies of promoting their perceived friends over other more competent staff etc Of course we are not supposed to notice this and never ever under any circumstances comment on it.
I run a SME but work with corporate clients. I meet their supply chain teams - something like a dozen people - doing a job that my business does with 1 person. Am comparing apples to apples - similar tonnage, expenditure, etc. I literally don't even know how they do it, I couldn't invent that much make-work even if I wanted to
Excel spreadsheets are a Godsend for those who want to create non-jobs out of nothing. Simply list the five things involved in the non-job then assign a manager to each box and then break each box down into greater and greater detail of things that must be done even though it has only been done once in the last 30 years and for one client and hey presto you have a huge list of non-tasks within your non-jobsphere that MUST be completed for each and every client even though they never asked for it.
I contracted for a major engineering compliance/certification house for many years I was the head of one of the engineering disciplines and the project managers there used to follow the above procedure to create more and more "work" but the problem was they kept having to backtrack as the client would pushback and say the work wasn't necessary. This happened so often that I told everyone that reported to me that from now on we would ignore the ever growing demands of the project managers until I was sure the client was happy to go down this route. Our discipline thereby saved a huge amount of time in not having to do reworks etc whist all the other disciplines were stupidly just going along with these silly demands. The result is my discipline had contented engineers who felt they weren't wasting their time and consequently a lot less stress for us all. The other discipline leads simply weren't doing their jobs properly which was to protect their engineers from all that management "noise".
I'm a professional freight forwarder, and the larger firms in the sector are chock full of bloated middle management. Usually a highly talented and successful operations/sales/product manager who ran a high performing import or brokerage or air/ocean team. They've earned their stripes and deserve promotion, but the firm is growing too slowly to slot them into a useful position. The firm doesn't want to lose them to a competitor, or have their development stagnate. So a new position is invented just to have somewhere to promote these people. The new positions are almost always "optimizing processes" to some degree. They go from value-added roles to internal-process-optimization roles (ie from day to day bottom-line impactful to purely internal paper pushers and meeting havers. I've seen it happen more than a few times.
The UK builds the most expensive nukes in the world for the reasons you described.
They don't appear to get dumber, they are dumber. People are not allowed to think. They must slavishly Walk around the perimeter when the hypotenuse is available. The last place I worked before retirement was a nuclear power plant and I quit a management job at significant cost because I couldn't do the BS methods. Because of the BS and corruption, of course, the US nuclear costs FIVE X the Korean. This cannot stand.
The government protecting us against ourselves! It’s why I’m a conservative- we believe in People and not the government. Big gov’t IS our problem!
I'm 58 and when I was in my twenties you could drive streets that had synchronized stop lights, if you did the speed limit or less the lights rewarded you by getting to your time quicker, now it's about thwarting traffic to justify the high salaries of traffic planning analysts. Everything is done to inconvenience us
Some of it is pure grift by the municipalities. IE rapidly changing speed limits in close proximity to each other just to generate revenue from people who don't spot the changes from 55 to 25 to 45 to 25 on the same stretch of road. Or traffic light camera systems that do nothing whatsoever for safety but sure are good at generating ticket revenue.
I love the Sally. I'm an atheist but I always support a religion that lives it's human values.
I'm a Christian but was surprised to find that virtually none of the other unpaid volunteers are. Most are spiritual of a more eastern religion type with reincarnation being much to the fore but I believe Jesus was very much into reincarnation and that was all removed from the gospels as the idea that you were reincarnated back here meant you would be more interested in sorting here out and not in some fantasy place called heaven and therefore you would be more likely to try to overthrow inhuman orders in charge here at present so that when you came back they would be gone. The fact he reincarnated Lazarus back to here sort of gives the game away about what he believed and that was just far too dangerous an idea for the time. I think the Sally Army prefer Christians in paid positions but it isn't an absolute requirement.
The death of a society and a culture is in the hands of a low I.Q. bored bureaucrat looking to justify their existance and gain fame.
Yup. Got it in one.
Not all countries who are poorer are fighting 'danger.' I would think there is more danger in the US than countries I have been.
I did not mean literal, physical danger
I'm so far in the hinterlands that I officially live in a country that doesn't exist :) And yes, it is superior in every way to the United States.
As for the rest, this is an interesting article, but it's more of a 1000-ft view thinkpiece than an effort to really dig into the deeper roots of what's at the foundation of this (genuine) experience that people are having that "woah, poor people over THERE seem to be living better lives than me."
Not my article to write, so all I can do is show you the pillars:
1) The term "Third World" is incredibly outdated and from a colonial era mindset. It automatically frames a given country as LESS THAN another one. Furthermore, it isn't even based on anything objective. Even the purchasing power parity indices (aka hard numbers) don't align with what people who use the framework of "First/Third World" think applies to a given country. Much more accurate is Global South/Global North.
2) The 1950s weren't when the USA resembled Mexico. More like the 1750s. Back when a guy like Daniel Boone could wrestle a bear and make moonshine in the cabin he built himself before becoming a lawyer and then serving in Congress.
3) What makes people of ALL countries and ALL regions happy is working with their hands. Not their finger(s), but their whole hands. Swiping, clicking, gesturing, and tapping = unhappy. Touch typing = happy, along with, of course, all the other thousands of occupations that require use of both hands, from sweeping floors to sculpting to machining precision parts to bushcrafting to camping to gardening to knitting, et al. If you want to suck the soul right out of a person's body, give them a job that doesn't require the use of their hands (very much). That may sound simplistic, but look at literally anyone you know who he is happy with their job/career/occupation and you'll see that I'm right.
3b) It just occurred to me that there's a way to prove this - some (mostly younger) surgeons now use robots (the most popular is called "DaVinci" for some reason) to assist/perform some procedures, while other (mostly older) surgeons go strictly with their hands and haptic feel to perform the exact same procedures. Guess which cohort has less career burnout/turnover and fewer post-surgical complications?
You've got a good instinct for what's going on in our reality. Just need to bury your nose deeper into the stratum, my friend, instead of getting lost in the clouds.
This. I gave a service that was my calling, given such a gift…I worked with my hands and preformed magic. Yup. The dredges of public health nursing, US, style. You know, the disdain, almost contempt from the “others ” in the profession. Like plastic surgery and cosmetic nurses, right🤪The greatest wounds, mine, were my best teachers. Anyway, the fellowship trained neurosurgeon who restored me after a catastrophic spinal cord injury did utilize the DaVinci pocket rocket. I so get what your saying. Thanks for sharing, ❤️🐈⬛
Living out of the West, it feels like the continued presence of the extended family system is just inherently relaxing. Hardly anyone in Istanbul had to live on the streets. Even though the cost of living is going crazy and people are raging everywhere, still there's this fundamental sense of a safety net.
Now, if there was a way to keep the extended family system but get rid of the accompanying bureaucratic and administrative nightmare, that would be cool.
My son sells the DaVinci robotic surgery system. I don't think that system has been in play long enough to generalize about "burn out". My son also reports that hospitals have a hard time attracting surgeons if there are no robots in their system. The one very important advantage the robot offers is that a robotic surgery is done at a "console" not unlike a "game console"...the advantage for the surgeon being that s/he doesn't have to bend over continuously to do surgery. IE, the robotic surgery is much kinder on the surgeon's body than the previous system. A woman doctor friend (OB-GYN) who is retired, complains of constant back pain because of her years of bending over to do surgery or deliver babies. That said, this same doc is NOT the biggest fan of robotic surgery, for reasons I won't get into.
I forget who noticed germs way back and was ridiculed for it, pasteur? I wonder if a height adjustable surgical table has ever been thought of or would be ridiculed because this is how it's done, I'm an aquarium hobbyist and I changed the height of my aquariums so that I can work at them without crouching leaning or peering and it changed everything. Hours of surgery crouched as opposed to comfortably suspended in a weightless suit perhaps, forgive my early morning babbles
"wonder if a height adjustable surgical table has ever been thought of "
Your suggestion is a nod to, ahem, Occam's Razor. That is, out of a range of possible solutions to a problem, the simplest solution is usually the best. It seems likely that the old surgical method, though punishing to the body, was "just how things work". Just how things are done. Medical people fit into a very hidebound, conservative profession. Straying from the established methodology (on anything) is a way to get whacked. There are probably more obvious reasons why surgical robots are coming on line, beside table height issues, but my son would be the one to speak to that point. Thanks for your comment!
Is Semmelweis the name you're after?
Louis Pasteur, and many otherwise effective physicians went to their graves calling him a liar, fool or worse. The next generation then washed their hands religiously, boiled their instruments between uses & etc...
My wife and I live outside a town of 50k in Mexico.
The walls, fences, and private security that one sees in Mexico reflect reality. Mexicans don’t play “let’s pretend” that the police and insurance companies will protect them from loss. Security is proactive.
Most Mexicans accept their station in life. Social mobility is muy difícil over here. If your dad was a laborer, you’ll be a laborer. Likewise, if your father is a doctor, you’ll go to medical school.
Most importantly, local preference is what matters to law enforcement, not dictates from on high. For example, several years ago Mexico demanded that states pass mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists. Then it was found that hit men on stolen motorcycles LOVED the law because they could assassinate with impunity while wearing a helmet and C19 mask! So the result is that wearing a helmet is forbidden in some places—without a change in law. In 2023, Mexico passed a sweeping smoking ban. A year on, it’s selectively enforced—politically connected restaurants and bars don’t comply while opposition establishments are cited.
Mostly, Mexico is a place where non-violent acts aren’t illegal. One can text while riding a horse on the street. Villages don’t have stop signs. Ignore the yellow lines—pass when it’s safe. If you live outside of town, send a WhatsApp to the butcher and he’ll slaughter your hog on the edge of your property. Build with or without a permit.
Freedom begins in the mind. Americans are conditioned to ask, “May I? Which agency do I ask?” Mexicans think, “That which is not forbidden is permitted—what do I want to do?.”
Yes, I never regretted being a tradesman, Yes man, doing real work with satisfaction and pride in what I had built. Real people thinking and moving to make something a physical reality. I also had the "freedom" to leave if I chose without worrying about the pension as I carried my skills in my head and hands.
Why do I have this strange feeling that @Oldspeak (Sam) is referring to Republic of Somaliland when he talks of "a country that doesn't exist".
i think you are onto something... having traveled to mexico in the 70's, your post brings back memories of why i enjoyed it so much... although many of the people were poor, they seemed more content with life... same deal in turkey... of course traveling is liberating too, so that might be part of it.. going to different cultures is always mind expanding for different reasons and it lets you look at your own culture from a different vantage point, which is generally always helpful.. i am a canuck so some of your metaphors apply and some of them don't.. thanks for your insights..
I went South to Mexico in 2022, to finish my permanent residency there. I found the changes of the past 20 years had sped the culture up, depending. I stayed rural, much more relaxed. How 40 years prior, in my 20’s I hitched-hiked thru the country is still a mystery. Solo, no less. The pace in the country side is to my liking; similar to where I reside North of the Boarder. ❤️🐈⬛
it is almost like smaller communities are better.. the large urban areas are problematic - everywhere..
Yes, we have 7k here, down the road is a city/town of 20k. I grew up rurally in a place with a few hundred peeps; farmers, ranchers. All that is “hand work”; salt of the earth type folks. For the love of money, nope, I stay rural. Hard tho, age in place. Downsizing and such.❤️🐈⬛
I’m English and regularly go to the little Greek island of Rhodes. I get the feeling expressed in the article there. They have real community and one other thing; much, much less road markings. They have a higher accident rate, but you feel much more “present” on the roads as you have to think.
Also, a lot of the accidents are caused by drunk tourists.
Sadly, this is vanishing. The authorities will not look the other way, like they did years ago. And they have the same rules like Germany or The Netherlands.
I would highly recommend you and others interested in this phenomenon to check out Zimbabwean author Peter Godwin's books, such as Mukiwa, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, and The Fear. He grew up in the late years of Southern Rhodesia, and despite deciding several times after leaving there never to return, always ends up drawn back to the place he grew up through one crisis and collapse after another. Very insightful and gripping reads (IMO), they're superficially "autobiographies" of his life, but really contain the kind of history and cultural insight you will almost never find in an actual history book.
I think most of it relates to culture, which may sound like a simplification, but rather the cultural element is so complicated it'd take an essay to try to fully explain what I mean by that. Most people see intuitively the "top-down" effect on culture these days from the ruling class and whatnot, but what's harder to see is all the other kinds of interactions, which ultimately in a population form the society and the way it functions as a whole. Probably, I'd say, they all matter a lot more. And there are all kinds of things that affect culture, such as prosperity, which I think has a negative effect really.
People from the third world such as places like Africa have a toughness and resilience not well understood by people elsewhere, who try to find ways to explain it as if it's some sort of illness or insanity on their part, or a pretend bravado. I assume it's insecurity to try to make up for their own shortcomings in "explaining" it. Prosperity, financiers, Western billionaires and whatnot moving into places like Zimbabwe risk destroying a lot of the authenticity and character they've got. It's a hard balance to strike, between a good place to live and one that's too good.
Another thought provoking piece - thank you so much for all the excellent writing! I am enjoying your posts immensely and very much look forward to them.
You've manifested an alluring oasis of wisdom and thought in an evermore bleak and purile desert of media!
"By decimating its woodlands, Finland has created the grounds for prosperity. We can now thank prosperity for bringing us—among other things—two million cars, millions of glowing, electronic entertainment boxes, and many unneeded buildings to cover the green earth. Surplus wealth has led to gambling in the marketplace and rampant social injustice, whereby 'the common people' end up contributing to the construction of golf courses, five-star hotels, and holiday resorts, while fattening Swiss bank accounts. Besides, the people of wealthy countries are the most frustrated, unemployed, unhappy, suicidal, sedentary, worthless and aimless people in history. What a miserable exchange."—Pentti Linkola, Finnish fisherman, writer, and environmentalist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkmeYe3Uh5s
[edited to fix a typo I just noticed I made transcribing the above quote from the source]
And Finland is one of the best "Western" countries. Get rid of all these moral-soaked discussions on everything funny and well-tasting! Personally, I enjoy working with workers from Finland (and Portugal!); they are always well educated and strong at work but relaxed after work.
Don't worry NATO will soon be forcing nukes into your country courtesy of your strong empowered WEF owned women in government to "brighten things up".
Thanks for the interesting observation. Coming from Brazil myself and living in Europe for more than 20 years I can relate to how you feel in "third world" countries.
Nevertheless, I think you might have missed two points: 1) the apparent contentment on low tier jobs might be be traced back to their own background. In Brazil these are the ones who left even poorer areas to find work opportunities. Their can't go back, so they might be content. They have fulfilled their dream. They have so to say "optimized" their lives by leaving a situation of no work at all to an existence of being able to earn a (simple) living from their work.
2) there is also fear. The work conditions where you have a huge offer of young unqualified workers are not even comparable to those in Western countries. And we know how fear changes one's behaviour.
3) Resignation can also provide a sense of quietness that might be confused with contentment.
4) Violence potential, especially among the younger ones, can become an expression where contentment and resignation don't suffice.
Looking forward to reading more of your texts!
Finance rentier capitalism in a nutshell. Exactly why we're moving to Latin America in my 50s and wife's 40s ASAP.
I left the shithole consumerist Zionist controlled "west" at 40 years old. Along the way a daughter appeared and unfortunately moved back for her education.
Now planning to leave again. But to do so without our daughter is unthinkable. She is young and has just started a career after finishing university, so we have to wait until she also realises the "west" is fucked, and then we go.
Hope it won't take her 20 years. Well, considering the approaching calamities, the time-to-realization is probably capped at 5 to 10 years. :)
Could you have managed her education from abroad? Man, this ZOG shit is out of hand now. It's just right there in your face. "We own you, motherfuckers. STFU and serve us." Point that out and you're an antisemite.
If you think “zionists” are your problem, you won’t thrive or be happy anywhere. Sometimes the problem is not external.
oh do tell.....
Yeh fuck the corporate scum who are throwing away people's livelihoods for money
Well articulated as always, Simplicius, thank you. As an American living in a small town in Belarus, I can wholeheartedly relate. Life is infinitely better here for my family and I. Building a life in the United States is unthinkable at this point.
"And I don’t mean that in the Marxist dialectical sense—we know the elites do not subscribe to true capitalism or Marxism, and I myself am not a proponent of either. "
You know in Marx you won't find idpol, but there is the concept of an alienation produced by Capitalism, you might find interesting. You could say the capitalism in the US is the most pure and thus a pleasure for the ruling class, but unendurable for the vast majority.
You're essay is a sign of good health. I felt this way and a young man returning to the US after several years in the "third world. This feeling is the beginning of an important process. It comes from losing ones illusions about the US and ultimately, Capitalism. I hope that's true in your case, S.
You may want to read the young Hegelians. Marx was one, but their were others. They felt that man naturally desires freedom, but society was everywhere unfree and so an alienation ensued. The society of man, left the individual man in a trap. So they set about solutions, primarily in the form on an attack om state Christianity. Bruno Bauer was very good on this pointing to the fact that despite collective man's godlike power most men were so alienated from society that when they had time to rest, there pleasures we're no more than those of an animal. Marx saw this extreme focus on religion to be idealistic and instead focused on the economic system finding it produced this alienation of man from the world of man.
Don't dismiss Marx or Hegel too easily. They have to be read. On the former , I recommend Socialism Utopian and Scientific. On the latter The Philosophy of History.
We have a ruling class. More precisely a Bourgeoisie. McKinsey are just their paid servants. You see they only care about their profits and those are produced by our increasing misery. That's Capitalism.
Anyway, keep studying. You're moving in the right direction.
Many of us see obesity, drug overdose and homelessness. All that you describe is true but less worrisome when crime, pure evil, and mental illness or some toxic combination, such as actual criminals who lack a moral center, is front and center of what we see or pay attention to. I am in real danger on the highways of large dense suburban areas, in some danger from the dirty city air and plans to escape are momentary relief.
Yes, I think with sorrowful nostalgia about Paris long ago and the Manhattan Island and even Vermont of early childhood in the 1950's. But I keep hope alive to see something new and authentic or old and beatiful with tradition - somewhere one day always one day.
I want to travel into libraries and archives abroad, researching a writing capstone as a celebration of my life as defined by the best qualities of extended family as well as the challenges and life changing losses such as exile. I don't expect to relax and enjoy Paris as I experienced it when 12 and 17 years of age but I do hope to find a cabin with running water somewhere in the Austrian or Italian Alps where I can hide.
As a "Third worlder" with personal experience of living in the Empire, I can only attest to the veracity of your thoughts, Simplicius. I have spent many hours pondering on the same issues and have come to the conclusion that the "west's" problems mainly stem from the complete evisceration of spirituality from its society. Everything is seen through "Euclidean" eyes of materialism and success is measured through digits on a bank account and the size and worth of one's leased vehicle.
In such a world of spiritual nihilism it is a given that the "rat race" boils down to a constant competition against one's peers, and the spirit of cooperation is practically non-existent. Everyone is on a constant chase for "bigger, better, faster", as led and advertised by corporate media to be the ultimate measure of happiness. The "lucky" ones who occasionally get to climb one of those propagated "hilltops of happiness" usually and unsurprisingly discover that their purchased McMansion or Tesla or whatever didn't really make them happy and fulfilled deep inside. As a matter of fact and as a rule of thumb the exact opposite happens, because suddenly they are a subject of envy and hatred by their own peers, so they end up feeling even lonelier and seeking new peers who've reached the same level of "success".
"Westerners" who spend some time in the "third world" feel that there's something present there that they've been missing in their own lives, but are generelly unable to point the finger at what it really is.
In essence, that is the reason for the evergrowing popularity of literary authors like the Beatniks (Kerouac, Bukowski), Hunter S. Thompson and Palahniuk, because they subtly reveal and decipher the lost ingredient of contemporary western life, as well as what it really takes to feel real "freedom" and a regained sense of wholeness - being content and feeling "one with the Universe".
"Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.” (Tao Te Ching, verse 44)
It's worth noting this has happened with past Empires whose people lost their religion, spirituality, and any beliefs or understanding of what made their people great in the first place, too, such as the Romans, who had managed to lose all that while still a "Republic."
By Augustus' time, he was giving separate speeches intended for the "good" and "bad" Romans to hear praising the best and scorning the rest, as the latter no longer had any interest in civil duties, starting families, or much of anything at all besides an idealistic hedonism. No wholeness or contentedness, but a fast-moving and always unsatisfied lot, they were, who Augustus thought of as striving to live like beasts rather than like the divine.
By AD 1st to 2nd centuries, historians like Tacitus had to look to the "barbarians" in search of the virtues and temperament that they themselves as Romans had come to lack, trying to remember who they were as a people, once. His own people were too busy corrupting themselves in every vice thinkable and unthinkable, confusing every part of their servitude for "civilisation," as he put it. No matter what they had, it was never enough. It should be no surprise words like "decadent" and "profligate" all come from Latin. They probably had even less taboos than Westerners do today in many respects (hard as that may sound to believe).
Spot on!
THIS❤️🐈⬛
I visited one of the smaller scotch distilleries in Islay. Not the 3rd world but many processes are done by hand using methods from many past generations. Much of the distillery equipment is around 100 years old as is the distillery itself. Peat is handcut from the ground using hand tools. Stages of distillation is determined by smell and decades of experience. The master distiller tasted directly from the barrel using a long handled ladle of sorts.
My first thought as an American was how incredibly inefficient this all seemed to be. But that was also the beauty. Skilled men perfectly content to be involved in the craft of making whiskey without using the soulless automation of mass production.
My next thought was how that would all be ruined here in the States.
The lack of appreciation for craftsmanship seems to be pervasive in all areas, with almost everything. What is oft forgotten in the pursuit of efficiency is that what's of the highest quality can rarely be made efficiently, and is inefficient by its nature; the efficiency that results in such quantity very often comes at the price of quality.
Quality, however, can be a lot harder to measure and crunch numbers to prove, especially to people used to quantity but who have rarely if ever known a truly skilled master of any craft or understood the difference in their work. Not that there's never a value to efficiency or quantity, of course, but the value of quality is more easily forgotten, and once it has been, it can be that no one even remembers it to know the difference.
People talk about a shortage of doctors, engineers, or whatnot. But what society's shortest of is skilled crafters, I think. I wonder what the average age is of those master distillers?
Being a musician, the best luthiers (woodworkers of string instruments) in the world, which there is a single digit number of in many areas (e.g., Irish or Scandinavian folk music), are mostly very old men, and I worry what it will mean when they're gone if there are no apprentices to replace the masters, no one living to match the quality of their work anymore. What will become of human culture if all this continues?
Skilled crafters are those that built society. And as you have noted, they are fewer and fewer. Young people has only two solutions to a problem; a) Ask a friend for advice, b) Google it. Where are all these ”doers” now?. I share your concern about the future.
Excellent point regarding the loss of and appreciation for craftsmanship! I'd also incorporate the simple crafts girls used to learn, like cooking for the family, like sewing and needlework. I was lucky: I 'learned' this things from my grannies and great-aunts. One day I came across a post by a middle-aged lady which illustrates both what you wrote and what Simplifies wrote. She described how her Granny used to knit the most fantastic jumpers, cardigans, dresses - which the whole extended family loved to wear. But then, the first 'fashion' superstore with cheap fashion for the masses arrived ... and every girl went and bought this cheap, throw-away stuff in garish colours because it was 'fashionable', the lovely jumpers and dresses crafted by the grannies and aunts were forgotten, discarded and even ridiculed.
That is what we have lost: simple crafts anyone in the family could learn ... but then again: how can ye knit when ye need yer hands for yer smartphone ...
It probably is a factor, and perhaps a very impactful one, that at least 99% of people can't even dream of buying "real quality" goods.
This wasn't ever so — you could afford "humanly crafted" goods in past generations.
I'll note that the elite executive class of America hates quality and craftsmanship. Edward Deming, the man who made Japan's auto industry, showed you could measure and improve quality and efficiency through statistical methods. America laughed him out of the country and he was so blackballed he had to work in nuclear wasteland firebombed Japan. And yet the methods were so effective that in 4 years American executives were begging for tariffs against Japan. A Japan that had lost a war and been bombed to hell only one college term ago (4 yrs).
Deming returned to America with a proven track record and they STILL laughed at him and refused to do anything he recommended. His final book was a condemnation of the American elite class and how we would run into a massive manufacturing problem in the coming generation.
Quality is measurable, it's provable and it's already in books written by an american. They know, they just hate the idea because it includes human dignity. Goyim don't get dignity in the USA.