Today the subject of consumerism kept popping up. I keep thinking about how circular time is and it seems that throughout history there’s always the examples of great civilizations that meet their demise as soon as the society gets too decadent. Greece, Rome, Roaring Twenties. Good times make weak men etc
But why is that? Consumerism is what the DS uses to hypnotize people, to make them not care about the society they live in, not pay attention to the changes going on around them because they’re too busy caring about themselves.
The more you watch YouTube, the more you start consuming bc these YouTuber reviewers start helping you imagine situations you would be using said items and that’s the thought seed that gets you going and thinking “yea that would be a nice thing to have in case that happens”. Next thing you know you’re obsessed with the item. You’re thinking about it morning, noon and night. Consume consume consume. The average person who is susceptible to this hypnosis is spending his time either working to get the money to buy the thing he wants or spending his time finding the next thing to buy. Where is the time to give a shit about politics? As long as their life is not affected, they won’t unplug.
But a society must reach a certain level of prosperity before consumerism can take place. If society is at a level where you don’t even know if you’ll have a next meal, you wont care about much else and will be very involved in government to demand change.
Therefore the best point to maintain control of a society is to make sure the people have enough money to eat have a place to live and have some spending money. It’s much easier to distract people when they have some money to spend and we’re not talking a whole lot of money just needs to be slightly over “barely surviving”.
Now, you control the media/social media and you basically tell your stars what’s the next big thing for them to focus on.
The extreme preaning of men / feminization of men has happened prior to a civilizations down fall (Greek men and young boys as lovers, Men in drag in the Weimar Republic.
Narcissism also is high in a society before it’s downfall.
Sorry if it’s not very coherent. Just wanted to jot down some random thoughts. I’m sure this isn’t news to anyone but I guess I just never took the time to dissect out all these ideas.
I believe it's more the justice angle that causes the downfall. Everyone expects and accepts corruption from their fellow man because they understand people are imperfect.
A bad example is thou shall not steal. Who here can faithfully testify that they've never taken a pen from their workplace, even by accident? Negligence isn't a justification for theft - but based on the size of the theft, most people will disregard it. But the commandment is fairly straightforward - we shouldn't allow it.
That line between rule and reality is where we draw the "justice" line. We expect our political elites to enrich themselves at our expense. We don't like it, but it's not a surprise when we find out that aid money is funneled back to the personal bank accounts of our congress critters.
But as soon as they can't be held to account when they cross that "justice" line that society has drawn in the sand, our civilization starts to fall.
All of the debauchery and other sick things are used as distractions and become more and more flagrant as the elite need to distract from the line the cross. If you read on the cultures, the sources of claims of drag and young boys as consort and etc all come from the end of the civilization. These get bible-thumped as to why the new order is soo much better....but those new elites are partaking of all of them almost immediately. But they return the "just share" back to the populace while doing so, so it becomes okay again.
That definitely plays a part too. But it’s only acceptable or tolerated if there’s a certain level of comfort for the populace.
That's what the line in the sand is. The turn about to the corruption is that the people can toss off those that cross the line. As soon as they can't, the empire starts it's fall.