Risk and Reward As Perceived in American Strategic Culture

“I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone”

DGAF

The plain and expected result of the neoliberal framework where every result is evaluated in money.

What about those who live in the present? How do they perceive time and more importantly how do they approach risk? This type inhabits what Zimbardo calls the present hedonistic mode, and as Maye elaborates, “[are] more likely to engage in risk-taking behavior.” Maye adds that “the present hedonistic person “lives in and for the moment” and demonstrates a “lack of regard for future consequences.”

Indeed, carpe diem is a zionist trap and Good Will Hunting (Robin Williams) was propaganda meant to ensnare unwitting, innocent, naive Americans in a “here and now” orgy of hedonistic delights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi0Lbjs5ECI

This is kind of interesting. I’d have liked to know what the five things are in this typology, because only three are obvious. On the matter of past orientation, the quote “whereas people who frequently reminisce about the past can be overly nostalgic or fearful.” raises the question of just how much nostalgia or fear is “overly”. There does seem to be a good deal to fear.

Meanwhile, some of the mentions of “left” are problematic to me. I have become very uncertain what the hell Sean Paul Kelley means when he says “left”; I’m not sure he understands what he means when he says “left”. In this case, the mentions themselves are sort of irrelevant to the topic and just seem to be a kind of mild drive-by smear . . . of whatever it is that Kelley means when he says the word. Certainly I’ve never heard a leftist refer to NPR as “left”, so again, I’m fairly mystified what that might be.

Sorry, I meant Dead Poet’s Society, not Good Will Hunting. I got my Robin Williams’ movies mixed up.

Hmmm . . . so, looking at Mr. Kelley’s link and then searching up another thing or two about the schema, I notice little is said in it of people with relatively balanced time orientations, although I would expect that to be a substantial portion. The median or norm or what have you is often less interesting than the outliers, but what I notice here is that the disadvantages of each extreme are significant, while the advantages would mostly still work reasonably well if less dominant. This may be a case where the ancient Greek ideals around being well-rounded and moderate might be the way to go.

The disadvantages of a too-strong present or even past orientation are fairly obvious. Our culture, while being actually really into the present, still in theory strongly valorizes the future orientation, so there’s a temptation to hold that up as an ideal. But while being able to plan and look forward is important, a lack of grounding in the present and past can lead to endless planning and work towards a future that will never happen, towards purposes that are not really what we want or wise things to desire, and which we will be unable to enjoy should we achieve them. Even in the military setting, whether tactical or strategic, working always towards future goals without putting them in perspective with the present and past can lead to a techbro military, full of unworkable gee-whiz ideas that fail to take experience into account.

I think the confusion over NPR is that while they are culturally “left” (Trans rights, LBTQ etc) they are economically hard right libertarian. You will never hear an article praising labor rights, for example.

In this way they suit their corporate masters, in a sheepdog fashion.

five time factors: future, past positive, past negative, present hedonism, and present fatalism. A separate scale was developed to measure transcendental future orientation, to keep the ZTPI to a manageable length.

ZTPI results indicate whether your time perspectives are weighed too heavily in any one or two time zones. This information gives you a good idea as to how to gain temporal balance. For instance, if past negative and present fatalism are the high scores, then boosting past positive, selected present hedonism and future time perspective orientations will help correct the imbalance.

positive = good; negative = bad; desideratum = balance

So, pretty standard generic pop psychology dreck, but maybe not without usefulness in generating useful insight

For the vast majority of Americans, politically, the experience they are trying to rationalize or make sense of is a high degree of learned helplessness. As a member of various nested political collectives each with some degree of presumed agency and desired direction for the whole society and whole political culture (imagined prospectively in detail as the experience of individual, family, community, locality), I think the universal sense — progressive, conservative or (with important qualifications attached) centrist — is of not being able to get what you want, indeed what you think everyone “should” want together as shareholders in a common democratic enterprise.

Americans are encouraged thru propaganda to believe the “other” group is preventing a good society from breaking out by their “bad think”. Someone has read an Ayn Rand novel and is forever immune to supporting effective aid to the homeless. Or, maybe the social paralysis is rooted in some college student having learned to say “settler-colonialism” correctly (grammatically) in a sentence.

I think the fatalism of individual psychology is a product of failed, collective political processes. Democracy, as social machinery, has seized up. The cultural vocabulary and expectations of democracy are still current, but the reality of collective choice is a completely non-responsive, irresponsible government.

The absence of a populist or socialist “left” from the American spectrum is a by-product of this learned helplessness. Actually solving an economic problem or changing a policy direction is by its very nature going to register as “left” but we cannot have that. There can be no alternative to the pointless controversies of the neoliberal right v the neoliberal left/center. For this state of affairs to continue, there must be no self-conscious responsibility or political memory. (False) hope and inertia are rooted in denial and amnesia about what came before, even if by your own hand (that is by the Party you aligned with).

@Jan Wiklund:

As long as some important remnant of the social welfare state remains intact, most Europeans are simply not that concerned about the democratic deficit in their own governance. The eastern half never thought voting should matter anyway, but for the rest it is shocking in a way how complacent people can be.