r-selection

https://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/the-theory-2/

It's not the only thing you need to understand what's going on—and has been for many, many years—in politics of Western Civilization, but it's a nice chunk of the puzzle. Once you understand the psychological dysfunction of the Left, and what causes that particular rot to ebb and flow over time and through history, then suddenly all kinds of things that otherwise wouldn't make sense.

It explains, among other things, the rise and fall of Empires from Rome to Austria-Hungary to the Soviets to the Americans—meaning that our near term future is pretty clear unless there's some kind of renewal project in the works, which clearly there is not. It explains the cycle of renewal and wickedness seen throughout the Old Testament. It even explains the so-called "pride cycle" that LDS teachers like to talk about; pride cycle being perhaps not the most nitpickety accurate label for it. Pride, vanity, ego and foolishness just being a natural consequence of r-selection and an environment that allows it to prosper and grow. Maybe pride cycle works in the sense that in encourages better behavior than what comes naturally to r-strategists in an r-selected environment, at least, but the titular pride is a reaction rather than a cause. 

It also implies a kind of disheartening inevitability to the cyclical nature of these things. There's a meme I see going around based on a quote from a somewhat esoteric post-apoc fiction novel called Those Who Remain which runs as follows: "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times." Kind of the r-selection K-selection cycle laid out in bumper sticker fashion, really. 

Anyway, I'm thinking of this because I recently listened to Kick by INXS all the way through recently, something that I haven't done in quite a few years. Oh, sure—I've digitally spun a few of their notable songs from the album here and there, without really paying too much attention to what they're saying. "Devil Inside", "I Need You Tonight", "New Sensation" and "Never Tear Us Apart", of course, are all great pop songs, but maybe tracks like "Guns in the Sky" are a bit less memorable, and it's been a good 20-30 years since I've heard that one. 

Listening/watching/reading of pop culture from that era, especially if its full of liberal messaging, makes the r-selection so incredibly obvious. The messaging was much heavier in Kick than I remembered. It almost saturates it, really. Hearing the whole thing back to back, especially starting with "Guns in the Sky" which is probably one of the most overt of all of them on the track, made it much clearer than it had been when I was a teenager. It came out in, what October 87, right? And the singles releases, which still mattered back then when people listened to the radio for the music and watched MTV for the videos, straggled out for about a year from September 87 to August 88 or so. (Technically the last single from the album was in Spring 89, but by then nobody was paying attention anymore. I have no memory of "Mystify" being a single at all, although apparently it hit No. 17 in the US. Where was I? Probably having kicked the radio habit by then and listening to my Depeche Mode CDs.) 

Anyway, the idea that because they're scared of a strong Soviet Union, and therefore, they're even more scared that the USA was also strong as a defense against them is really kind of shocking, and their demands that we put that all aside, become super submissive, and somehow everything will turn into a John Lennon "Imagine" utopia (which to a normal person is actually, of course, a dystopian nightmare) seems so bizarre to me, and out of touch. How can anyone who knows anything at all about 1) history, 2) psychology, 3) human nature, etc. ever think that this was a good idea? 

Of course, the following link explains a lot about it: https://thosewhocansee.blogspot.com/2020/06/fall-of-empire-thy-name-is-woman_30.html

It makes me curious, if there really is any renewal possible when the toxicity of these terrible, delusional r-strategist ideas have so thoroughly infiltrated and soaked into multiple generations now of the American people. Without a major crash, hard reset, and the growth of a new post-American society built on different values by the remnants of the K-strategist population that hopefully remains afterwards, it certainly seems impossible now. Renewal projects in past empires that had similar cultural rot were, at best, time buyers for a few more good years or decades if you were lucky. Either that or the Second Coming of Christ and the onset of the Millennial period is imminent. However, I think its kind of hubristic to think that because of problems in my society that the entire world must be imminently ready for the hard reset. Maybe it's true, but then again, it's not like Christians haven't thought that for centuries and, of course, been wrong. 

In any case, the political messaging of The Joshua Tree from the same year was very obvious (although to be fair, I didn't really love that album, and for the most part, I'd play just the first three tracks, and then rewind the cassette back to the beginning. The rest of the album, despite multiple attempts, never grew on me.) But the reality is that Kick is probably more political than even that consumately political album.