Gerald Celente loses it on his own show!!!

[Evildweeb Profile]

I think "lifting the veil" isn't that an unusual occurrence actually...look at all the members here, for example, and consider that, like the mighty iceberg, only a small portion of any social group is readily visible on casual inspection.

Writing people off (no matter how discouraging things may be) is condemning them to what you honestly believe to be ignorance, I think that's reason enough to repeat ourselves and talk slowly sometimes. ;]

Ignorance is easily remedied with facts, no one is a lost cause.

At both of you:

No one is saying anything about writing anyone off, cheese and crackers got all muddy.

No, never write anyone off.

Just know what yer up against, that's all. Uphill all the way, a tough road but just give it some effort.

[Ademu Profile]

I think "lifting the veil" isn't that an unusual occurrence actually...look at all the members here, for example, and consider that, like the mighty iceberg, only a small portion of any social group is readily visible on casual inspection.

Writing people off (no matter how discouraging things may be) is condemning them to what you honestly believe to be ignorance, I think that's reason enough to repeat ourselves and talk slowly sometimes. ;]

Ignorance is easily remedied with facts, no one is a lost cause.

At both of you:

No one is saying anything about writing anyone off, cheese and crackers got all muddy.

No, never write anyone off.

Just know what yer up against, that's all. Uphill all the way, a tough road but just give it some effort.

Its all good my friend

[Nihilgeist Profile]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199702/welcome-the-millennium

Welcome to the millennium

Presents excerpts from the book 'Trends 2000: How to Prepare for and Profit from the Changes of the 21st Century,' by Gerald Celente. Forecasts for the year 2000; Trends. INSETS: 7 top trends for 1997; Millennium Q & A; 20/20 foresight?

By Gerald Celente, published on February 01, 1997

It's January 1, 2000. The world has just celebrated the greatest New Year'sEve party in recorded history. Even cultures that follow different calendars are revelling in the streets. But unlike New Year's parties past, nobody has waited until December 31 to hit the streets. The children has bee going full blast since Christmas; the world has been psyching itself up for this blowout since 1995, when the symptoms of Millennium Fever were first evident.

For several years religious fanatics and prophets of doom have been preaching the end of the world. And when you look at the events going on around you on New Year's Day, 2000--civil war in Russia, student revolts in the United States, the threat of nuclear terrorism--there's good reason for fear. But Armageddon hasn't happened. The world hasn't gone up in flames.

In fact, there's a strange elation threading through the chaos and disruption. Though the United States and the rest of the world will be going through increasingly troubled times in the immediate future, the first signs of the scientific, artistic, and spiritual renaissance that will shape this new millennium are unmistakable. Those who anticipate and act on the changes taking place will be able to prosper both materially and spiritually. Here are a few trends that will dramatically alter our lives in the coming millennium.

Living the Simple Life

Voluntary simplicity, once merely a counterculture ideal, will finally become a reality in the twenty-first century. Simplicity doesn't mean deprivation. Rather, it's old-fashioned Yankee frugality, rediscovered and redesigned for the modern age. Moderation, self-discipline, and spiritual growth will be the personal goals of the future, not material accumulation. As the old saying goes: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without. If you don't really need it, it's a luxury. Not that there's anything wrong with luxuries; it's just that we won't confuse them with necessities.

In the 1960s, these ideas and goals seemed quaint and cute. In the new century, however, as cost-cutting corporations continue to lay off vast numbers of workers, many people will have to drastically scale back their lifestyles to survive. Call it involuntary simplicity. But downsizing--currently perceived by the government and the media as a grave problem, and by the downsized as a catastrophe--will prove to be a blessing in disguise in the new millennium. Forced into freedom, millions of us will find ways to take control of our lives and do what we've always wanted to do: change careers, start companies of our own, or become work-at-home freelancers. In 1996, 12 percent of downsized workers started their own businesses, double the rate of 1993.

One major outgrowth of the voluntary simplicity movement will be our desire to grow as much of our own food as possible. But how many people will be able to do this when relatively few Americans live in rural areas where there's room for the type of extensive garden needed to produce a substantial portion of the year's food?

Somewhere around the year 2000, the revelation--and revolution--will come. The lawn! Lawns are everywhere: millions of costly, intensively cared for suburban lawns have been doing nothing but growing grass. But a lawn that's turned into a vegetable patch can produce fresh food.

The trend to convert lawns into gardens will have a significant impact not only on the way we eat but also on how we live and feel. It will be one of the keys to living better for less. Billions of dollars formerly spent on lawn care will either be saved or re-deployed into producing fresh food. The American lawn won't disappear entirely, of course. Kids will always romp on them, barbecues will still be held on them. But a significant portion of the nation's arable lawn will be revamped for food production. Just two mature standard fruit trees produce 250 pounds of fruit a year. With millions of downsized or underemployed people struggling to make ends meet, a thousand saved here and a thousand saved there will make a real difference. Even university and corporate campus lawns will be transformed into edible landscapes, providing students and employees with practical, enjoyable, and therapeutic respite from study or work.

Millennium Family Values

Practicing voluntary simplicity, of course, will require a redistribution of our priorities, a rethinking of how we spend our days. Most of us will no longer make the false distinction we used to between "quality" time and the rest of the day All time will be quality time (except for filling out tax forms and that sort of thing). After all, it takes time to cook a good meal, to play with the kids, to sew a ripped skirt that you once would have thrown away

With more of us working and spending our free time at home, it's easy to imagine the model twenty-first-century family as Ozzie and Harriet with laptops. But the Nelson family and their real-life counterparts were the products of the 1950s, a time when unparalleled American prosperity allowed the traditional extended family to fragment. In the new millennium, the multigenerational extended family will come together.

Instead of being banished to nursing homes or retirement communities, large numbers of retirees--aging, often ailing, unable to care for themselves or to afford quality care--will move in with their adult children. We'll also see perfectly healthy widowed and divorced parents setting up house alongside their kids--ideally with separate entrances and kitchens to preserve some of the privacy to which we've become accustomed. Family households will sometimes extend to four generations when married or unmarried Generation Xers move back home with their young kids.

Whatever the drawbacks of multigenerational families living together, there will be substantial benefits, too. Healthy grandparents will pull their weight as baby-sitters. This trend is already strong: In 1994, 44 percent of grandparents spent an average of 650 hours--the equivalent of 81 eight-hour days--taking care of their grandchildren. But more than babysitters, grandparents will also function as home educators. They'll be the modern equivalent of tribal elders who were valued and revered in traditional hunter-gatherer societies for their wisdom and experience.

Back to the Boardinghouse

The meaning of the word "family" will also broaden beyond that of blood relationships during the twenty-first century. It will come to mean groups of interdependent people--relatives, friends, and neighbors--who share values, goals, responsibilities, and a long-term commitment to one another and their communities. A number of creative (and sometimes desperate) solutions will be found for a wide spectrum of new economic and social challenges.

For example, the 1930s boardinghouse will return in an upgraded version that's designed to meet the needs of modern-day low-income single people. By the year 2010, 31 million people will be living alone. But as disposable incomes continue to fall and the job market tightens, workers of every age will be unable to afford the rents on even studio apartments. While two can live more cheaply than one, ten can live substantially cheaper than two, so boardinghouses will reemerge. They'll provide home-cooked communal meals and a congenial familylike atmosphere, becoming social oases in an increasingly impersonal world.

If the revival of boardinghouses represents an effective defensive tactic against economic changes, "cohousing" will be an offensive long-term strategy. First developed in Denmark in 1976, cohousing combines upscale condomimum-style accommodations and privacy with the shared responsibilities and amenities of communes.

The main difference between cohousing and the twentieth century's standard apartment complex or condo is the sharing, which will be tailored to suit the needs of the individuals involved. Most labor-intensive family duties, including meals, child care, elder care, and even education, will be handled communally to some extent. The result will be considerable savings in time and effort, along with pleasant and productive socializing--at least when the personality mix is right. For example, a typical communal dinner arrangement might find residents cooking and serving about once every two weeks, in exchange for having the remaining 13 dinners cooked and served to them.

WHAT YOU HEAR IS WHAT YOU SEE

The videophone, meanwhile, will keep us in touch with faraway relatives. Today when we use the phone, we are still communicating by radio. With the addition of the videophone's visual dimension, long-distance communication will be more like television.

The psychological and social connections fostered by the videophone will transform human interaction. People experience intensely personal, intimate feelings when they can see the person they're talking to; body language comes into play and a person becomes something more than just a disembodied voice. As self-employment, downsizing, and work decentralization keep more and more people in their homes, face-to-face communication will become increasingly uncommon--and therefore increasingly important.

Currently communication industry experts are resisting the videophone idea, pointing to market research that suggests people would rather preserve the comparative anonymity of talking on the telephone. Yet there were similar objections when the telephone answering machine was introduced in the late 1970s. Analysts said that people felt intimidated by the new devices and would not leave messages. In the beginning that was often the case, but today if you call someone and don't get an answering machine to pick up your call, you're probably annoyed. You'll have to call back--an inconvenience. As for the privacy problem, just as a mute button turns off a televisions sound, a "blind" button will protect us from Peeping Toms.

MILLENNIUM HEALTH KIT

If you read magazines or watched television in the 1980s and 1990s, it looked as if the whole country was running, pumping iron, and doing aerobics. Sales of running and training shoes soared, and millions bought rowing machines or signed up at gyms. A fitness trend had swept the nation.

Or so it seemed. In reality, two-thirds of Americans were overweight as the twentieth century came to a close. If you'd conducted supermarket research, you would have seen battalions of out-of-shape people pushing shopping carts filled with Twinkles, soft drinks, salty snacks, cigarettes, candy, and processed frozen entrees. As for those brisk sales of athletic shoes, 90 percent of the people who bought them did so for comfort and fashion rather than for exercise.

Nevertheless, the health movement, hyped by fitness-gear manufacturers and ballyhooed by the media, is real. And the fitness trend will gather steam as more and more baby boomers begin "previewing": seeing in their parents' aging what lies in store for them.

By the year 2000, getting and staying healthy will no longer be a hobby but a necessity for survival. The health information people need will be available; the difficulty will be distinguishing the gold from the dross. Those who are serious about their millennium resolutions to take better care of themselves will begin by checking into one of the new longevity centers springing up around the country. Longevity centers will be to health what colleges are to education--equal parts spa, health club, hospital, detoxification center, fat farm, and resort. They will be staffed with medical doctors well versed in both state-of-the-art medicine and alternative therapies, as well as nutritionists, acupuncturists, herbalists, chiropractors, and a diverse group of physical, emotional, and spiritual therapists and healers.

Another key player will be the vitamin counselor. While vitamins have been available in supermarkets and health food stores for decades, it was only in the early 1990s that it became apparent that no two people have the same nutritional needs. Effective vitamin counseling must be individualized, just like effective medical advice; a person's age, lifestyle, profession, and eating habits must be taken into account. But most mainstream physicians have had little training in nutrition, and we can't expect knowledgeable advice from minimum-wage clerks at health food stores. Vitamin counselors, on the other hand, will be multidisciplinary practitioners; they'll have a solid grounding of medical knowledge but won't need four years of medical school. By the year 2000 they will be on their way to becoming as professionalized and as respected as pharmacists.

An age of intense health awareness, most people will give up their StairMasters and stop training for marathons. Hyperactive workouts, while better than nothing, won't be the answer to stress-filled but sedentary lifestyles. Instead, we will integrate our workout routines into our lives. If we haven't given up our lawns altogether, we'll replace our power mowers with high-tech lightweight push mowers. And if we're using our lawns to grow food, as most people will be, the physical work of gardening will build bone and muscle.

We'll still use our local gym during the winter and in rainy weather. But instead of doing the usual aerobics, we'll consider becoming "aerobic warriors"-learning an aerobic workout that teaches us self-defense techniques. Since we're putting in the physical effort anyway why' not learn something with a practical application?

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Today, against the dark and violent backdrop of late-twentieth-century life, many of the trends that will soon reshape our lives are not yet apparent. But since writers, musicians, painters, and filmmakers are by nature more sensitive than others to shifts in the tempo of the times, these changes will be quickly reflected in the art of the new century Just as rock and roll replaced swing and ragtime music, a new genre of millennium music will emerge. It will be upbeat without the anger and despair of today's cutting-edge rock and rap. Painting and sculpture will be revolutionized by the incorporation of virtual reality and computer technology New, friendly styles of architecture will replace the impersonal cookie-cutter tract housing that has been the norm since the 1950s.

The return of individuality will spell an end to the multibillion-dollar fashion industry The bulk of day-to-day apparel will consist of durable mass-produced casual wear. Where appearance matters, the combination of computerization and declining wages will bring custom tailoring back to an affordable price range. The result--personally designed "smartwear"--will bridge the gap between casual and formal: appearance-enhancing but comfortable.

Together, these and numerous other trends will help usher in a new renaissance in thought. It will be an era of intense individuality directed toward common goals. And like the European Renaissance of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, the global renaissance ahead will be a time of rich intellectual, philosophical, and artistic achievement--a period of genius in the world's history.

From Trends 2000: How to Prepare for and Profit from the Changes of the 21st Century, copyright (C) 1997 by Gerald Celente. Published by Warner Books, Inc. Printed by permission.

ILLUSTRATION

Illustration by Francisco Caceres

7 TOP TRENDS FOR 1997

The new millennium may be around the corner, but we have to get through 1997 first. Here are some of the trends that will make headlines this year.

o Decocooning. For the last decade or so, many of us have been "cocooning"--spending our free time holed up in our houses or apartments. But as the work-at-home trend takes hold, Americans will want to break out of their abodes at the end of the day. Already more people are biking, hiking, and enjoying the great outdoors than ever before.

o The Roaring 2000s. Similarly, former homebodies are going to demand new forms of entertainment, sparking an explosion in art, music, and theater--a modern-day equivalent of the Roaring Twenties.

o Worker Revolts. One of the underreported stories of 1996 was the massive street demonstrations in Indonesia, where people were tired of working for slave wages. We're going to see more workers fighting for higher pay, even in developed countries. It happened in Germany when the government tried cutting pensions and health benefits. In Canada, demonstrations almost shut down the Toronto Stock Exchange--and Canadians never protest anything.

o Dr. Death. This summer the Supreme Court will likely rule on physician-assisted suicide. Whatever the Court's decision, assisted suicide is becoming part of our culture. Growing numbers of terminally ill people simply don't want to live, and they will seek out euthanasia just as they sought abortions when they didn't want children. Also, as the population ages and medical costs rise, profit-hungry HMOS won't want to pay for medical care for people whose lives are nearly over.

o Latino Chic. The macarena was only the beginning. Look for Americans to embrace Latin culture--particularly its music--on a wide scale.

o The Monopoly Backlash. The public is going to demand that the government break up powerful corporate monopolies. One industry that will almost certainly suffer the wrath of trust busters is health care. There are insurance companies that also own HMOs, hospitals, and drug manufacturers--the entire spectrum of medical services.

o All in the Family. The flip side of the antimonopoly movement. Businesses that are family-owned and operated--or that at least give the impression of being mom-and-pop establishments--will thrive.

MILLENNIUM Q & A

We asked trend expert Gerald Celente to give a further glimpse of life in the twenty-first century.

PT: Some colleges now offer classes online. is the university as we know it going to be become extinct?

Gerald Celente: Why should 300 kids trudge to a classroom in order to hear a lecture? Soon they'll be able to listen to a professor from home via their computer or videophone. Just imagine being able to learn from an all-star cast of the world's greatest thinkers, no matter where you are. This is going to revolutionize education, and it will make higher learning affordable. So some colleges will disappear, the ones that are on the brink of bankruptcy now. But there will always be a Harvard.

PT: Unless there's a nuclear catastrophe of some sort, which you think is inevitable.

GC: Absolutely--it's like betting on a one-horse race. In addition to the likelihood of nuclear terrorism, there are now more than 400 nuclear power plants in operation worldwide, including many--especially within the former Soviet Union--that are dangerously dilapidated. In fact, Russia's chief nuclear scientist recently committed suicide in despair over the deteriorating condition of the country's nuclear infrastructure.

PT: Who will be the heroes of the new millennium?

GC: The word hero has lost its meaning. The new heroes are going to be people with a strong spiritual or moral message--people we can believe in, people who do things for the betterment of all living creatures and not for their personal agenda.

PT: Will buying a house remain the American dream?

GC: The house is once again becoming a home, rather than just a home base. The problem is that most households are losing economic ground. in the 1980s people would buy a "starter" home and then trade up to something better. Now they'll have to fix up and live with what they have. They'll make their house more like an entertainment center, and rather than spending their money on travel they'll spend it on things like swimming pools. PT: Swimming pools?

GC: Instead of thinking of pools as status symbols or as places to host pool parties, baby boomers will want them as a means of staying in shape. Swimming is the perfect exercise, particularly for an aging population prone to arthritis and other bone and joint diseases.

PT: What impact will Generation X have on American life in coming years?

GC: It's a myth that a great psychological gap exists between Generation Xers and baby boomers. There are more similarities between these generations than differences. Both are pro-environment. They listen to a lot of the same music. They share many political and economic values.

So the next social upheaval in America won't come from Generation X but from today's teens and preteens. They will be tomorrow's revolutionaries. And just as the boomers protested the Vietnam War, these kids are going to march against materialism and greed. They'll be driven to it for a number of reasons, one being economic. They are not going to have the same opportunities that the boomers or even Generation Xers have had. Conspicuous consumption simply won't be an option for them.

20/20 FORESIGHT?

Forecasting is by nature a risky business, but Gerald Celente has compiled an impressive track record. Among the events and trends he's anticipated:

o The 1987 stock market crash--11 months before it happened.

o Dressing down at work.

o 1960s music in 1990s ads. Today it seems as though every third TV commercial features a golden oldie by Aretha Franklin, the Kinks, or some other baby boom icon.

o Corporate downsizing--or "dumbsizing," as Celente later termed it.

o Gourmet coffee and microbrewed beer. Back when Sam Adams was just a revolutionary war hero and nobody outside of Seattle had heard of Starbucks, Celente predicted a boom in quality brews of both types of beverage.

While some of the nuances have changed, this guy's been spouting the same shit since '97. People getting back to basics, growing their own food, closer communities, non-materialistic new generation, tailored clothing, renaissances. He's definitely right on some things, if you bend it to the reality of what took place, but that can be said about Star Trek for crying out loud as well.