Rule by Common Sense

When I was in middle school and high school from the mid to late 1980s the predominant insult label you would throw at someone was "poseur". "Fag" was another one, which basically meant the same thing, that is the person was weak, incompetent, and a fraud.

The poseur term came from Punk Rock, which was a big thing at the time. In that world, "poseur" was a band who pretended to be a "punk" but was really just a commercial scammer. For example, the band "Blondie" reportedly disliked their big hit song "Heart of Glass" which was a disco tune, because they were a punk band, and didn't want to be revealed as greedy corporate money whores instead of authentic punk rockers.

There was a corresponding attempt to be "good at things" among my friends and peers at school. I don't think that 100% came from the concept of fear of being labeled a poseur. In fact, it was probably the opposite. That is, people who put an emphasis on competency would gravitate to use an insult like "poseur".

That emphasis on competency makes sense in the context of the US economy of the time. In the 1970s and 80s, the US still made stuff, so a widespread culture of competency sort of makes sense. However, at the same time, the US started to turn into the financialized, scam based shit show it is today. This was heralded by things like the "Savings and Loan" crime wave of the 80s.

The departure from "common sense" and the beliefs I grew up with goes hand in hand with the "elite overproduction" concept from Peter Turchin. There's an inverse statistical relationship between the "elites" and the "people", which is an age old story. We're in a period of peak parasite, and maximum social stress now. It's probably the maximum deviation from "common sense" as well.

The deviation from common sense is easy to understand. Government and corporations make novel claims to create new organizations and opportunities for wealth extraction. Trannies and pronouns are great current day examples. The "ruling class" can find fault with "common sense" and ordinary people and undertake social engineering quests. In the late 1800s it was the temperance movement. Today it's basically the opposite of things that happened then. Like in the 1800s around that time there was a "eugenics" movement. Today there's basically an opposite concept of racism and opposition to "white people" as a category. Both concepts are arbitrary inventions of the "ruling class" of the times.

The madness basically comes about through the financial system which extracts wealth from the population en masse and diverts it to the various causes of the ruling class people. It seems pretty likely the break between the ruling class and the common sense people will form around the financial system and associated institutions like the insurance industry or banks or the legal system, which is also a participant in the madness.