Jerry Cycles
August 7, 2019
By AHNZ
New Zealand Slave Culture Cycles take their turn in the mainstream just as the other Moral Cultures.
Cultural Colony of the USA and Britain that we are, our culture is informed by imported television. So, a useful data point for charting the expression of SC is the Jerry Cycle.
Think of a Jerry as a demigod who appears in various forms on Earth in times of Slave Culture, or just think of him as a meme.
His changing face and the differing ways he is received can teach us a great deal about our culture.
Jerry Leadbetter
Name: Jerry Leadbetter
Show: The Good Life
Time Period: 1975-8
Moral Culture Period: Bill Rowling Victimhood Culture
Strauss Howe Cohort: Silent Generation
Jerry has little real-world talent and admits his success at work is down to cunning and self-promotion. He sucks up to his boss at work and is hen-pecked by his wife at home. Jerry’s integrity has been traded in for the better pay he requires to satisfy his demanding and social-climbing wife. He keeps a good friend and neighbour, Tom, who quits the Rat Race for the titular Good Life. Tom has the productive talent but his career has suffered because of his refusal to be inauthentic. Jerry is existentially threatened by Tom’s quitting The Matrix to go off-grid but though he grumbles he supports his friend and lends a hand. Tom loves his friend Jerry, treating him with respect and shows intimacy through raillery that almost makes Jerry blush.
Jerry Seinfeld
Name: Jerry Seinfeld
Show: Seinfeld
Time Period: 1989-98
Moral Culture Period: Satanic Pannic Victimhood Culture
Strauss Howe Cohort: Baby Boom
Like other Jerrys, Jerry Seinfeld displays an utter lack of healthy inter-personal boundaries. Time and again cringy and awkward attempts to repress and avoid rather than confront make for the entire plot of every episode. Unlike other Jerrys, Jerry Seinfeld is the lead cast member and title character.
“If Jerry had the testosterone to say “No” he would never have to wear the puffy shirt on television, never have to put up with Newman the despised mailman, never put a cup of soup above his dignity, not get dragged into spending time with an old childhood friend whose company he does not enjoy least the man cry.”- 1989: Seinfeld
More than any other, this Jerry lights the way for 90s Slave Culture folk to follow in order to survive their vicious Victimhood Culture era. This Jerry did not have a dominating wife to fight his battles for him and had to rely on guile and wit to survive in this harsh era.
Name: Jerry Gergich
Show: Parks and Recreation
Time Period: 2009-2015
Moral Culture Period: Downton Dignity Culture
Strauss Howe Cohort: Baby Boom
This Jerry gets short shrift in a DC time period, basically he keeps his head down doing time until his pension. He says and does embarrassing things, his co-workers not only do not respect him but do not even care what his real name is. An object of ridicule, Jerry can never do anything right and is last to be remembered and first to be blamed. Jerry taught the people of our last Dignity Culture period what to think about Slave Culture: Let them tag along as one of the group but grudgingly and not as an equal. Perhaps as a result of this and the changing times, this Jerry lifted his game and shed some of his SC.
Name: Jerry Smith
Show: Rick and Morty
Time Period: 2013-
Moral Culture Period: Me Too Victimhood Culture
Strauss Howe Cohort: Generation X
Life as a Gen X in a Victimhood Culture is real tough. Boomers ran the world so long that Jerry’s generation missed its turn and now the Millennials have seized the wheel, unleashing VC of hitherto undrempt of proportions. Like his Generation Z son, Morty, Jerry is a bug on his Boomer Father-in-law Rick’s wind shield. Like Jerry Leadbetter he is hen-pecked at home but unlike the other Jerrys can’t suck up hard enough to survive. He is fired from his job, divorced from his wife, middle-aged and living in poverty while still trying to be a Dad. No amount of keeping his head down, cunning, or comedic wit can allow this Jerry to thrive. The Victimhood Culture climate is overpowering. Patriarchy-detecting eyes hunt out the White Man and Seinfeld’s jokes don’t work anymore because they have been inoculated against by lowering intellectual standards.
The Coming Jerry
A Jerry is summoned into our popular culture when the population is asking the question: What becomes of the Slave Culture person in our era? The answer is short in days of Honour Culture: He is punched in the face, thrown out a window, kicked in the groin and thrown overboard along with a witty one-liner by the lead action hero.
Now for the first time in history a Jerry has shown us there is no place for him in our world. Jerry Smith is emotionally, professionally, relationally, and physically tortured to the point of breaking. He is disposed of and unable to compete with the titular Boomer of his TV show, Rick. How much more whipping will the showrunners put Jerry through and how much more will audiences tolerate?
Jerry Smith remains a main character, his story arc must play out. What I suspect is that Jerry will lay down his life to make sure the cultural initiative is wrested from the Boomers and Millennials to be handed to his son. His heroic and redemptive act will be to swallow his resentments and do what the other cohorts would not: Pass the torch.
First somebody needs to seize that torch from the mainstream Victimhood Culture in order for it to pass on. Jerry has a part to play but his reward for doing so will not be in this world. If everything goes well the next time a Jerry visits Earth he will be treated better.
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.”
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its Jerrys are treated.
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