In Europe this was actually done in most countries because of the absurdly incredible damage the (even very limited) information governments had during WW2 did to millions of people. That illustrated that even extremely basic information, including merely a list of all citizens, was abused by governments. And not just for racist reasons, equally to force people into occupying forces (like Russia is doing now in Ukraine)
Today we're back to pointing to governments abusing data to target minority children or immigrants to show this. And of course, governments oppose any limiting of the scope of their data collection by pointing out "security issues" (we can't have CHILDREN communicate privately! Look! 3 out of 5 million children got seduced with drugs to go into prostitution!).
Of course, governments' collection of data is not even effective, the government GOT it's data collection wishes from 10 years ago that it said was going to use for prevention (police can now access both comments from teachers AND medical reports on any kid) ... and yet the number of children ... went up, not down.
And of course, nobody wants to point out that 3 out of 3 of those children ran away from government help first chance they got. Nobody seems to feel this might indicate that perhaps something is wrong with the government, and the government's reputation, that needs to be fixed first. They are of course arguing the solution to their reputation problem is to collect more information on EVERYONE, and use more violence against children for less and less reasons, where any small excuse can be found (because 3 children were actually confirmed to have this happen to them ... the government locked up over 300 children, generally against both their own and their parents wishes. Somehow this didn't make any difference in the numbers at all, and frankly I find it very, very hard to believe the number would have risen 100 TIMES without them doing this)
my ideal is to bring my complete, unadulterated self everywhere i may go. pursue authenticity, lower the barrier between myself and others. if i hide my intimate thoughts behind a wall of privacy then i may never experience intimacy. i may never feel at home among my friends or neighbors.
i put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else, anyone who wants to look through my window in the morning can verify that for themselves. shame is defeated by coming out of your shell, not hiding inside it. i draw the shades and recede to my private world only when i want to remove stimuli for the sake of deep focus. or when i'm fearful of this abstract mass of power hanging always above me at every moment and threatening to destroy me if i'm honest about how i enjoy the "wrong" drugs, or about how i embrace a moral compass which guides me to not fund the machine that takes my brothers away from me and pits them in armed conflict against my sisters, come tax season.
!
as far as i can tell that's the only "good" reason to embrace privacy: that in this crazy contradiction it's impossible to be authentic if the wrong people know you as you are. i don't think it's good to use that as a basis on which to idealize privacy in the abstract. i think it's deeply disturbing and we should use it as a basis to fight all these real things which make one fear authenticity. privacy is a necessary stopgap: negating power imbalances is the most proximate thing to a solution.
kudos to the young and bold who seek to find themselves among others. praise to the old and scarred who fight to make that possible.
If this little bit of so-called wisdom were true, one would expect Russia to be going through some good times now given the state of the Soviet Union in the late 70s until its dissolution. It seems about as realistic as one should expect such a simplistic reduction of an insanely complex world to be: not at all.
While the above is overly simplistic, the basic concept has historical precedent under the general umbrella Social Cycle Theory which is likely why it persists. The same basic idea is described in Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah as "Asabiyyah", for example. There is also the Greek kyklos, or the more recent Cyclical Theory[1], Strauss-Howe generational theory or Secular cycles theory,[2] which roughly maps on to the meme's cycles.
The meme is a bad interpretation of "Asabiyyah" which covers something else, entirely. It's also not clear whether it's still valid today with the globalized world-order created by the US and its allies.
Something like "Ibn Khaldun cycles" might be a more accurate descriptor with Asabiyyah being the identified driving force. I think the two are pretty close, though the meme is vague enough to allow for a fair bit of projection.
Asabiyyah is strongest in the nomadic phase, and decreases as the civilization advances as the ruling class begins to focus more on maintaining their wealth/power individually at the expense of the group, which covers the Strong Men and Good Times phase. As decadence increases group solidarity decreases Weak men and bad times occurs, which readies the cycle to start anew with additional strong men, which matches with Khaldun's period of 3 generations per cycle.
It's a pretty bare bones social cycle theory by modern standards but the core idea common to both seems to be that history is a cycle of barbarians conquering decadent civilizations, only to eventually become fragmented, self serving and vulnerable themselves at some point. The applicability to the modern world seems to depend on whether the underlying causes have been eliminated, in a "The End of History and the Last Man" sort of sense.
Certain locales like Japan are dealing with the reality that newer generations forget history. Specifically for this example the history of WW2, and Japan's desire to not take a part in instigating WW3.
As the saying goes, those who forget history (read: weak men) are doomed to repeat it (read: create bad times).
Hell, we're seeing it in our own little techie corner of the world: People have forgotten (read: weak men) the consequences of a browser monopoly (read: IE6), and have ushered in the age of a Chrome monopoly (read: doomed to repeat history).
