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You know, there’s a striking parallel between the passive income mentality and the “personal is political” self-actualization ethos of the 60’s counterculture.

You know, there’s a striking parallel between the passive income mentality and the “personal is political” self-actualization ethos of the 60’s counterculture. The counterculture was never really a political movement; it was all about freedom to become ones true self by flaunting the rules of society and engaging in all sorts of impulsive behavior. It was all about the deification of the sacred self. That’s why it transitioned so smoothly into the ayn rand capitalism of the 80’s and 90’s. In that sense there’s not much open air separating Tim Ferris and Timothy Leary. Both were encouraging their followers to drop out of society in order to turn inward in search of their private, individual nirvana, separated from the real world around them, full of people doing the hard, boring work of keeping things going. Both are pied pipers though in that the vast majority of their followers will not achieve the self-liberation they crave.

fallingfrog 5y ago
I should say too that this whole attitude is older than the 60’s; the original Jeffersonian American vision was the self-supporting yeoman farmer. And right now today you have evangelical Christianity and new age spiritualism, which both promise self-actualization in one form or another. In evangelical Christianity you have a personal relationship with god- god talks to you individually and it’s up to you to interpret his wishes. There is no priest or community to tell you what god’s will is. That’s why the evangelicals and the new age people hate each other so much- they’re contesting the same turf. And the thing is- it worked, for a really long time. You can deny collective interests and make everything personal, if you can hand out free land like it’s candy. And then we had the period in the mid 20th century when all Europe was destroyed, and profits were so high that conflicts could be again papered over by crazy fast economic growth. It’s only now that cracks are finally starting to show, now that the economy has globalized and the free stuff is running out. If I’m right about this, then we will see the re-emergence of collective struggle in the next few decades and the decline of the self as the center of all effort and struggle.
SyzygistSix 5y ago
>In that sense there’s not much open air separating Tim Ferris and Timothy Leary. I think this is accurate but only in that sense. Leary and his friends, like Robert Anton Wilson, had a strong sense of social justice and saw a world in which everyone benefited, and were very much concerned with scaling their ideas so that everyone worked less and enjoyed the benefits of a wealthier world. They would be disappointed in a world where people are working longer hours for less pay while productivity and profits increase dramatically.

fallingfrog 5y ago

I should say too that this whole attitude is older than the 60’s; the original Jeffersonian American vision was the self-supporting yeoman farmer. And right now today you have evangelical Christianity and new age spiritualism, which both promise self-actualization in one form or another. In evangelical Christianity you have a personal relationship with god- god talks to you individually and it’s up to you to interpret his wishes. There is no priest or community to tell you what god’s will is. That’s why the evangelicals and the new age people hate each other so much- they’re contesting the same turf. And the thing is- it worked, for a really long time. You can deny collective interests and make everything personal, if you can hand out free land like it’s candy. And then we had the period in the mid 20th century when all Europe was destroyed, and profits were so high that conflicts could be again papered over by crazy fast economic growth. It’s only now that cracks are finally starting to show, now that the economy has globalized and the free stuff is running out. If I’m right about this, then we will see the re-emergence of collective struggle in the next few decades and the decline of the self as the center of all effort and struggle.

SyzygistSix 5y ago

>In that sense there’s not much open air separating Tim Ferris and Timothy Leary. I think this is accurate but only in that sense. Leary and his friends, like Robert Anton Wilson, had a strong sense of social justice and saw a world in which everyone benefited, and were very much concerned with scaling their ideas so that everyone worked less and enjoyed the benefits of a wealthier world. They would be disappointed in a world where people are working longer hours for less pay while productivity and profits increase dramatically.