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A friend and I were at the WW2 museum in New Orleans a couple years ago and he said something that really stuck with me. Amazed at an exhibit on wartime manufac
by jaqalopes 1y ago
A friend and I were at the WW2 museum in New Orleans a couple years ago and he said something that really stuck with me. Amazed at an exhibit on wartime manufacturing, he turned to me and said, "This is so unbelievable to me. To think what we accomplished when everyone in the country was pulling in the same direction. There's no way that could happen anymore." I hardly want to glorify warfare, but he has a point. As a young person in our chaotic and ambiguous present day looking back into the haze of the past, there really is something incredibly romantic about the era of war mobilization. Ordinary people had a purpose simply assigned to them, and if nothing else I think it's still the case that people in all eras crave purpose.
- cadamsdotcom 1y agoYep, purpose. Societies today have immense latent potential. So many people are doing bullshit jobs that tick things over, sitting there wishing to be put to use for some intrinsically motivating purpose. An existential threat - war - is a well known way to bring that out. But war is too destructive for modern tastes. We've seen developing countries get great results by government directing private industry in stronger ways than we're used to in the West. For example China's regularly published national development priorities for the next 5 years. If you hew to these you'll be helped in various ways. Singapore's and South Korea's rises to global powers were helped along by government getting everyone to row in the same direction - among other things, I'm greatly simplifying. But to focus on this one idea, I hope you can agree that providing purpose through top-down leadership is a great way to harness societies' latent potential and mobilize in a given direction.. Rudderless, laissez-faire governance got the US a surprisingly long way. But we are seeing the resultant directionlessness leave leaders unable to agree on whether to tear up what's been built, leave it in place, or go some completely random direction. It's not the ships that were built, it's what they represented. That was what got them built.
- southernplaces7 1y agoThe latent authoritarianism in in opinions like yours makes it easier to understand why authoritarians keep rising to the top of different societies, so they can destroy lives, squander wealth and crush individual peoples' own perfectly productive capacities for finding their own cooperative purposes in life.
- vkou 1y agoPretty sure the current crop of politicians that are destroying lives, squandering wealth, and crushing individual people are doing it as banner-bearers, not of any kind of Eastern collectivism, but of the uniquely American brand of 'fuck you, fuck everyone, fuck any responsibilities I may have, don't tread on me, I've got mine'.
- refulgentis 1y agoIn their personal lives. When they have to deign to consider the impact of decisions on other people. In their professional lives, they are Patriots Advancing American Independence. The unquestioned Purpose is what enables the lack of care for others (that blossom in oh-so-many dangerous ways)
- vkou 1y agoYou're assuming the agents behind all of this actually believe in anything but power and wealth, and aren't just cynically rolling out the authoritarian playbook to justify why they have to seize it.
- int_19h 1y agoThe ones that were just cynically using this popular sentiment for their own benefit were the previous wave. But the problem with that kind of thing is that eventually it results in a wave of true believers. It doesn't mean that they stop padding their pockets, mind you - why would they, when they're obviously entitled to their fair share as the Champions of Something Great. But it vastly increases their capacity for damage because now they are going to do it even in situations where it doesn't benefit them in any way, and may even harm them, for the sake of their beliefs.
- southernplaces7 1y agoI'd suggest you fixate just a bit less on just the media frenzy around the American example of Trump and his grab bag of incompetent nodding clowns in congress and cabinet for examples of authoritarianism in action. My comment was intended more broadly, because the problem is indeed broader. There's no shortage of authoritarian governments all over the world, many of which use exactly the guise of collective purpose or some other similar nonsense to justify their destructive, repressive activities..
- refulgentis 1y ago> So many people are doing bullshit jobs that tick things over, sitting there wishing to be put to use for some intrinsically motivating purpose We're a generation of men raised by Fight Club—I'm wondering if a self-induced mass-culling event is really the answer we need.
- dredmorbius 1y agoBefore Fight Club was the Hitchhiker's Guide "B-Ark". Before the B-Ark was Robads 1000 Clowns. Before 1000 Clowns was Chaplin's Modern Times. Before Modern Times was ... pretty much all of Dickens's ouvre. And that potted list omits much. Laughing at the futility of present-day enterprise, whatever the present or the enterprise, is a long-standing tradition. And really no need to call for culls, directly or otherwise.
- refulgentis 1y agoDickens ~= Fight Club is a tough sell. :) Most obvious reason: Dickens characters would be quite bemused by the idea we need to Retvrn from "email jobs" because something something we need meaning. :)
- dredmorbius 1y agoBoth are criticisms of the established economic order. I'm not trying to draw much further relation. Again: there's a great deal other work. Erewhon, Looking Backwards, The Dispossessed come to mind. Arguably much of Neal Stephenson's work. Earlier, Gulliver's Travels and More's Utopia, though pre-industrial satire has a different vibe to it. This turned up in search: Dystopian books on economy and work culture: <https://bookriot.com/dystopian-books-about-the-economy/ https://bookriot.com/dystopian-books-about-the-economy/>
- southernplaces7 1y agoI don't see anything romantic about this. The mass mobilization of a society so well over 400,000 members of its youngest and brightest can die grotesquely overseas while industry, society and culture are forcefully synchronized to a single government issued purpose is not usually something to desire. I do understand the needs of that particular war, The Nazis and Imperial Japan were truly invasive evils, big and globally dangerous enough to be worth fighting, even if it meant mass mobilization, but generally, there's no nostalgic beauty to such vast butchery, destruction and creation for the sake of destruction. I prefer finding my own purpose in life, and knowing that my children won't be ripped apart by artillery in some blood-soaked field of mud due to government decree.
- stevenwoo 1y agoStuds Terkel's collection of interviews with various populations of the USA in The Good War is a good antidote to overromanticization of World War 2 conditions.
- southernplaces7 1y agoVery much agreed, as are many other narratives, from both soldiers and civilians about the more cynical aspects and hardships of that purpose filled time. The people childishly downvoting my comment expressing a desire to not be forced into a vast government project of destruction and death would do well to read such texts.
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoYour comment is being downvoted not because they disagree with the noble opinion you express, but because you were misreading the comment you replied to, making yours a beautifully-written non-sequitur in context.
- dredmorbius 1y agoAnd if that's not enough for you, there's the Studs Terkel Radio Archive, which is an absolute treasure: <https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/ https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/> (There's a related podcast, though it appears on hiatus: <https://studs.show/ https://studs.show/>).
- roenxi 1y agoThe attitude is a dangerously rose-tinted view of war, the US was operating internment camps for US citizens of Japanese descent you know. In a war, dissent is quashed. That doesn't mean that it isn't there, just that there is a high tolerance for sub-optimal decisions because there isn't time to ruminate. The US isn't getting poor outcomes from their manufacturing sector because people are divided, but because the US has policies tending towards deindustrialisation and there is a broad political consensus to keep them. Ban the smokestacks, ban the smokestack economy and enjoy the clean air.
- divbzero 1y agoI only learned recently that several Japanese Americans were killed in those camps. [1]: https://www.history.com/articles/japanese-american-relocation#Violence-in-Prison-Camps https://www.history.com/articles/japanese-american-relocatio... [2]: https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Homicide_in_camp/ https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Homicide_in_camp/
- Duwensatzaj 1y agoDo you know about the Niihau Incident? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident
- rayiner 1y ago> the US was operating internment camps for US citizens of Japanese descent you know That is non-responsive to the point raised by OP. That had little effect on Americans unless they were the small minority of Japanese. The point OP raised is much more salient. If we end up in another World War, what lessons do you want to have from the past? “Don’t put racial minorities in internment camps” is well and good, but it won’t help you build a giant navy and win a war. I learned con law from a social studies PhD who had little interest in the constitution, and focused the entire class on this or that minoritized or oppressed group. It’s a terrible way to learn constitutional law—or anything else—because you over-focus on the 20% of the story while missing the big picture about how the country was actually designed to work.
- jonstewart 1y agoThere was a fair bit of this after 9/11–and much of the military/intelligence apparatus expanded and figured out how to disrupt terrorist organizations—but it was shortlived as the Iraq War was divisive (and rightfully so).
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoSame for very early on in COVID
- Spooky23 1y agoHonestly, I felt the same way during the pandemic. People moved mountains to help each other and everyone in different ways. Of course, the poison of social media took care of that in short order. FDR cracked down hard on misuse of the airwaves and the extremists for a reason.
- khuey 1y agoI don't know how young you are but I was around the last time the American society nearly universally agreed on what direction to pull and it led to invading two countries (one on a notorious lie), around 60,000 casualties and god only knows how many civilian casualties, and five trillion dollars spent. Be careful what you wish for.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoAnd then at the next election we re-elected the same people! It still boggles my mind.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- FpUser 1y ago>"there really is something incredibly romantic about the era of war mobilization. Ordinary people had a purpose simply assigned to them, and if nothing else I think it's still the case that people in all eras crave purpose." Sure. Food rationing, mass poverty, inability to do anything but prescribed work, mass hysteria. All things to look forward to.
- GuardianCaveman 1y agoYeah next time we can just sit it out and let the enemy bayonet babies and slaughter 20 million Chinese people. Ever read rape of nanking?
- FpUser 1y ago>"...just sit it out and let the enemy..." If enemy attacks you then you do not have to sit it out. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. But calling this "do" romantic is pure BS in my opinion, well unless somebody craves looking at mutilated corpses in "romantic" way.
- beAbU 1y agoThe Apollo programme is another example of this for me. You need an existential threat, or the threat of eternal embarrassment and suddenly everyone is pulling in the same direction. IMO most of the world's woes these days are persisting because of a lack of political will to fix them. I sometimes feel that China is able to achieve the things it's achieving because the government's near-absolute control over the population. The political power is absolute, and it's wielded in a very very effective way. If China decides tomorrow that they want to colonize Mars, they will probably get it done within a decade.
- mrguyorama 1y agoThat same near-absolute control is what drove the 4 pests campaign and cultural revolution so... Maybe don't emulate the cult of personality part? Too late.