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The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

• bserge 6y ago
  Eh, I grew up with the faces on TV constantly blabbering about the "decadent West" and yet my country and most of the ex-USSR has deteriorated worse than any western one. My eyes kind of roll every time someone says decadent society as it reminds me of communist propaganda. Not seeing much of those four horsemen, either.
  • bluetomcat 6y ago
    It's an ongoing rhetoric in Russia and much of Eastern Europe. Western issues like gay marriage, feminism, overconsumption, politically-correct language and identity politics are skillfully used by nationalistically-oriented populists to paint a decadent image of the West.
    • sokoloff 6y ago
      It’s also used daily here (in the US), just perhaps not quite as skillfully.
    • implements 6y ago
      Feminism is a western issue? Do Russians not believe in things like equal pay, all jobs being open to women, fair divorce settlements, protection from physical abuse, access to family planning? (Honest question).
      • bluetomcat 6y ago
        Women rights are equally respected especially in the workplace and in education (a lasting legacy from communism), but the whole Western narrative about socially-constructed gender roles and men oppressing women are just not there. Women are encouraged to act and look like women, little girls are encouraged to play with dolls only. The general policy is to strengthen the family unit and reduce divorces in the first place.
      • watwut 6y ago
        Yes and no. Theoretically domestic violence is bad. Practically, it is more prevalent then in west and often seen as dirty familly issue. Local preacher and familly will focus on forgiving, make familly together and that kids need dad. Likewise, equal pay sure, but dont you dare to point out when it is not. Naturally woman is the one expected to primart focus on kids and home, guy is more likely to be promoted of course. It is not seen as "not a woman place" to be leader - but it is happening less then incapable guy being promoted. Basically, there is more sexism but less hostility. Jobs are not closed to women, but people perceive you weird putside of proper gender bounds and talk about it openly. The different expectations of boys and girls are in the open too. You wont find male teachers much, super rare. Divorces seem fair money wise, except really guy will get less access to kids. But no alimony, she is expected to work. Access to familly planning is good.
  • tremon 6y ago
    Not seeing much of those four horsemen, either It doesn't take much effort to find current instances of sword, famine, and plague. Only thing missing is the beasts, but maybe that's because we've already hunted them to extinction. Then again, we've been seeing all four them regularly for over centuries...
    • learc83 6y ago
      >It doesn't take much effort to find current instances of sword, famine, and plague. And yet those things are affecting fewer people proportionally than at any time in recorded history.
  • 082349872349872 6y ago
    So all the propaganda was true: the decadent West was heading for a cliff, and the USSR not only caught up to it, but indeed even surpassed it. I suppose any one unhappy with decadence, preferring spectacular instability to stability, a good fight against misfortune to contentment, and struggles with temptation or fatal overthrows by passion is free to become whatever flavour of jihadi they find congenial: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24373042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24373042 David Crosby on how becoming a millionaire changed his life: "you know those pistachios that are hard to open? I don't bother with those anymore."
  • jeffbee 6y ago
    Just because they were wrong about themselves doesn't mean they were also wrong about us.
  • Nasrudith 6y ago
    Decadence is a dumb and useless concept really - every damn time the society in decline considered something else irrelevant or actually helpful "decadence" while ignoring the actual cause of their downfall which they call "virtue". The infamous gladiatorial games which lead to multiple large scale insurrections were to "fight decadence" by trying to instill the military values they thought were important when really their expansionism and campaigns were a root of their downfall. Decadence as a concept makes a good polemic but it isn't a good source of judging problems let alone solving them. It really just means "I the self-proclaimed moral authority dislike this direction of society!". The closest to an "objective decadence-like concept" is an expectation of a way of life that cannot be sustained without significant damage. Cottage industry after the dawn of industrializarion would be "decadent" as factory volume beats them out and can no longer sustain the middle class lifestyle. Not exactly what comes to mix when one thinks decadence but it is a lifestyle made unsustainable. There is no "sin" to it but it just doesn't work anymore and trying to force it wouldn't work out well. Notably even that is subjective and depends upon means. Having less than 10% of the population involved in food production would be stupidly unsustainable before agricultural advances but is the first world norm today.
• pjc50 6y ago
  Well, there's something you don't see very often these days: conservative intellectuals. The old stalwarts of Ross Douthat and the AEI. The problem is though, if you skip ahead to the conclusion: > [T]he only thing more frightening than the possibility of annihilation is the possibility that our society could coast on forever as it is—like a Rome without an Attila to sack its palaces, or a Nineveh without Yahweh to pass judgment on its crimes - arguing, effectively, that America is too comfortable and therefore must be destroyed? In some ways this feels like a quaint thing to worry about as a pandemic sweeps the US and police and demonstrators fight in the streets, but perhaps it explains the blase approach that has been taken to those events.
  • purple-again 6y ago
    This comment would make sense on Reddit or twitter “maybe” due to how easy it is to fall into a bubble but on HN? This website regularly features content from conservative intellectuals.
    • greesil 6y ago
      I'm pretty far to the left, but I will say that one thing that's good about HN is that you can discuss an idea here without it getting down voted into the abyss, sometimes. Sometimes people even argue on good faith. Try finding that on Twitter.
    • pjc50 6y ago
      Not really, or to anything like the extent that conservative intellectualism circulated on (and argued on) the blogosphere prior to 2016. It's just not published so much any more. See https://crookedtimber.org/2018/04/05/who-has-any-use-for-conservative-intellectuals/ https://crookedtimber.org/2018/04/05/who-has-any-use-for-con... and previously https://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/12/richard-posner-on-the-conservative-intellectual-collapse/ https://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/12/richard-posner-on-the-c... Trump has destroyed conservative intellectualism because he has no use for nor respect for them.
  • pwned1 6y ago
    Those stupid conservatives!!
• moksly 6y ago
  > But there is also the possibility of a worst case that he describes in a chapter titled “Catastrophe.” Suppose that climate change has created an uninhabitable equator. The aging advanced nations cannot sustain their deficit-financed prosperity. The population of Africa continues its rapid growth, resulting in a mass migration into Europe that meets increasing resistance. Reading this reminded me a bit of reading the WHO and our own leaders (I’m Danish, we handled the pandemic decently) not to worry about Covid back in January. Heh. > In the past, each decadent civilization has eventually given way to a dynamic competitor. In our case, might it be Islam? China? Russia? An America led by a more capable populist president? This also reads a little weird. The author is obviously well versed in history and the progression of civilisation, and as such, must be aware that we’ve always moved in a progressive direction. Sure it sometimes takes a few life times, but we’ve never moved permanently backwards before, so it would be rather strange if we started doing that now.
  • abyssin 6y ago
    Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
  • non-entity 6y ago
    In the long run sure, but that doesn't mean there can't be set backs and temporary regressions.
  • i_haz_rabies 6y ago
    We've also never had access to the kind of world-changing power we have now. Rome couldn't cause nuclear winter or irreversible climate change.
    • moksly 6y ago
      Rome quite literally wiped entire civilisations off the map. Sure they didn’t use nukesc but what’s the difference when everyone in your culture dies?
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    > Sure it sometimes takes a few life times, but we’ve never moved permanently backwards before Playing devil's advocate here: perhaps that's because we always think of things that we're doing now as "right"? For instance there are societies in history that were open to some sexual relationships that we are not (mainly the ones involving minors or incest). At times in european history, animals were tried for crimes similarly to people. Are we more or less progressive than they are?
• camgunz 6y ago
  Ezra Klein had Ross Douthat (the author) on his podcast to discuss the book and it’s a great conversation. Highly recommend. It’s billed as a debate but it’s not at all contentious, at least I didn’t get that impression. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/6/17/21293202/ross-douthat-debate-american-decadence-the-ezra-klein-show https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/6/17/21293202/ross-douthat...
  • dominotw 6y ago
    came here to post this. > . It’s billed as a debate but it’s not at all contentious, Does Erza ever debate though?( not counting sam harris episode). He seem to invite ppl who already kind of agree with his worldview and amplifies their thoughts. He was on IQsuared debates but it wasn't a debate, he was just reading excerpts out of his book.
    • camgunz 6y ago
      Eh, I haven't run the numbers or anything but, he has a fair number of people he strongly disagrees w/ on (Grover Norquist, Yuval Levin) mostly just to talk. He definitely doesn't observe the fairness doctrine, but it's questionable whether that's even possible these days. But regardless I don't think he's under any obligation here. I would agree his podcast... well excepting Sam Harris I've never heard what I would call a debate on there. But I will say in listening to people on there I don't agree with, I've learned a lot and gained a lot of insight. I think it's been good bubble popping, if not like jumping totally into the pool. For more bubble popping I'd recommend The Flip Side [1]. You get an email every day or two with Red/Blue takes on issues. They do a good job being faithful to both sides (at least, IMO), plus it's free. [1]: https://www.theflipside.io/ https://www.theflipside.io/
• golergka 6y ago
  There's a lot of talk about how civilisation lifecycles lately, and articles, books coming out, and yet one of the best works in this space goes completely unnoticed and unread, it seems, at least in anglosphere: Lev Gumilyov's Ethnogenesis. May be it's because he worked in Soviet Union, where there were not much interaction between historians on different sides of the Iron Curtain, or may be there's still no good translation to English; anyway, if you're interested in these matters, I highly recommend his books and theories. I'm absolutely not saying that he's right in everything he says, of course — there's plenty of backwards or outright bigoted opinions in his works — but his theory is so unorthodox and interesting that it should at least be an important part of the conversation.
  • 082349872349872 6y ago
    Could you please summarise "passionarnost, ethnos, and phases of ethnogenesis" for those of us who might be willing to read more if we were convinced there was a there, there?
    • golergka 6y ago
      I'll try, although I don't think I'm qualified enough. First of all, what he's talking about is usually described as different stages of _civilisations_ in english literature. However, he goes into much length to explain why he talks about ethnoses instead: in sub sense, it's a different definition, and a group which is smaller than what you usually call a "civilisation", so this distinction is important. It's derived from the word "ethnic", but again, he's very particular that it's not exactly the same as ethnical group in a genetical sense, although one usually correlates to another. In general, it's very hard to summarise his work, because he goes into a lot of details that are really important to understand his ideas correctly. Unfortunately, it's very easy to misunderstand them, and sometimes in some very awful ways, if you just assume that the words he uses have meanings that you usually ascribe to them. Then, he describes different stages of lifecycle of ethnos. Once again, there are stages that you would expect, from birth to death, but he adds a lot of detail, describing how an ethnos can be both in a dynamic arc going from beginning to an end, but also in a static, balanced state that can continue, without outside interference, for an eternity. He's a historian with a deep knowledge of very wide array of different human eras and places, and draws a lot of examples to make his point from all over the human history. After that, he tries to describe the underlying forces that influence this process. He goes through all possible theories and finally arrives at his concept of "passionarnost" (derived from passion) to describe the cultural energy that drives these transformations. After reading other contemporary books on the matter, such as Guns, Germs and Steel, and Neil Ferguson's Civilization, as well as dozens of articles and blog posts discussing these things, I think that his analysis and thoughts are one of the most interesting and engaging ideas about it.
• beamatronic 6y ago
  Life is a lot easier these days, thanks in no small part to advances in cars. As an American, cars are a central feature of your life. I feel like a large part of my “character building” years was spent struggling with unreliable, old, leaky, carbureted cars. All the energies I spent keeping that thing running could have better spent working or socializing. And yet I have a deep appreciation for what it takes to make a car go and keep it going.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    > As an American, cars are a central feature of your life. Unfortunately true and frankly one of my least favorite features of American life.
    • francisofascii 6y ago
      I may take a century to realized it, but I think you are right. Historians will look back and see America's car-centric culture as its height of extreme decadence and the pivotal point to its eventual decline. When you think about the trucks and SUVs that people drive around everywhere, the entire infrastructure dedicated to it, the health outcomes, etc.
      • pdonis 6y ago
        I disagree. Cars are freedom. Freedom has upsides as well as downsides. Technological advances will continue to reduce the downsides, but the upsides are genuine and should not be thrown away. There's a reason why electric cars are a thing, as opposed to Americans just giving up cars and everyone using public transportation.
        • francisofascii 6y ago
          America should not give entirely up on cars, but reduce to a more balanced level where cars are not a necessity to live. Americans engineered many places to be car dependent when it didn't have to. Once something changes from a nice to have to a requirement, it becomes more like a drug, and the freedom is lost.
• DanielBMarkham 6y ago
  This is a fascinating discussion because it hits directly at a topic that civilization-after-civilization has faced throughout history: are we able to reasonably assess whether we are continuing towards growth and progress or stagnation and extinction? Frankly, the historical record is not encouraging. Usually, when this topic comes up people chime in with easy takeaways like "people have always complained about this, and it rarely amounted to anything", "look at this thing that happened recently that's never happened before. It's proof that we're doing better than any other civilization ever has", or "things have not been going according to my value system, therefore doom is approaching!" It's possible to cite example-after-example of these phrases coming up when the conversation happens in the historical record. And yet. And yet at times civilizations do die, and there was plenty of warning while it was happening. The problem is that denial and complaceny is tough to fight. When the Emperors took over Rome, it kept the Senate around. They gradually stopped having power, but by keeping them around, it was possible for the illusion of things staying the same to remain. People, with the very smallest prodding, are more than happy to believe that everything is as good as it used to be, plus there's all this new cool stuff we've never seen before! Hell, ask a few people when the Western Roman Empire ended. Good luck with that. There are folks who will tell you it never did end. If you're that far in denial, how could you ever reason from your current historical position to the long run? Many times I think conversations like this are much more interesting by the types of responses you get than the actual merits of the case presented. If our civilization is entering the great 1984/Brave New World Fizzle, I can tell you with certainty that there will be fierce denial that such a thing is occurring. Just like always.
  • mrmonkeyman 6y ago
    Few people deny the Western empire ended. The East however..
  • mothsonasloth 6y ago
    I for one look forward to our new techno-barbarian conquerers pouring out from Steppe.
    • 082349872349872 6y ago
• ChomskyNormal4m 6y ago
  > little or no growth in working-class wages, lower social mobility Murray, and the AEI he works for, have fought against higher wages for workers and social mobility for decades. I don't take seriously him bemoaning the results of what he has helped do.
  • BobbyJo 6y ago
    Fighting against a policy is not the same as fighting against it's intended outcome. Me fighting for 2nd amendment rights is not the same as me fighting against lowering the murder rate.
  • 0134340 6y ago
    How does he reconcile his form of degeneracy in fighting to keep people at the top of society rich and decadent while pushing the poor down? When people are pushed down too much they can also grow degenerate and decadent as the very rich and develop mental and physical issues which may devolve into drinking and other forms of drug use. To me, this represents the paradox of morality. That in a closed (somewhat in this case) ecosystem the extremes can horseshoe around, which reminds of horseshoe theory in politics as well as this phenomenon of society seemingly rubberbanding when forcefully pushed to one extreme throughout history. I could go on about my pet theory of how it may relate to thermodynamic regulation on Earth's ecosystem, a self-sustaining form of gradient moderation, but it's too unsubstantiated.
• matthewmcg 6y ago
  To me, the decadence observed seems like the result of a decline in regard for and contributions to the welfare of others. Conservative activists have successfully enshrined shareholder primacy in corporate decision making and hostility to public goods and social programs in our politics.
  • eanzenberg 6y ago
    Conversely, the rise of entitlement, decrease of attention span and work ethic, and the explosion of dependence on the state successfully enshrined by liberal elites has led to perceived stagnation and continued social frustration between the classes.
  • seneca 6y ago
    > To me, the decadence observed seems like the result of a decline in regard for and contributions to the welfare of others. When did the peak in regard for, and contribution to the welfare of, others occur, in your opinion? Looking back through history, I struggle to find a time where it was greater other than perhaps in hunter-gather societies.
• seibelj 6y ago
  I disagree with criticisms of current art or “pop” art like pop music, popular fiction books, etc. To become broadly popular you must appeal to as many people as possible. This is a balancing act between mediocrity and edginess that pushes just the right amount of boundaries to feel “new” and “fresh” without turning off a lot of people. So by definition the most popular song in the world is going to usually be fairly non-offensive. If you get very into a genre of art, like for me is horror movies and metal music, you quickly realize there is a super deep well of amazingly high quality content that pushes the boundaries of the art form. There are passionate community members and creators that are using all the latest and greatest technology to produce ever higher quality art at less cost, expanding the amount of art and the number of people with the funds to create it. If you look at the top-40 music charts and cringe just find music you actually like because there is tons of it being made and a community behind it. All the criticism about “modern art sucks” is such snobbish and flippant bullshit.
  • bluetomcat 6y ago
    The quality and sophistication of mainstream pop art is an important indicator, though. It is consumed by the majority of the population and gives sense to the "wisdom" of an era. Nowadays you simply don't find any mainstream music approaching the levels of sophistication of, say, 1980s mainstream music. Where's the Dire Straits, the Gary Moore and the David Bowie of the 2010s?
    • eanzenberg 6y ago
      Wasn’t 80’s pop music disco?
      • bluetomcat 6y ago
        Probably disco was still important, but the mentioned artists were hugely popular and influential, despite not being strictly in the "pop" category.
        • N1H1L 6y ago
• waynenilsen 6y ago
  Unfortunately this site has received the hug of death however anyone that finds such a headline interesting may also find this interesting: "Industrial Society and Its Future" https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab... An excerpt from the introduction: > The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.
  • nottorp 6y ago
    Do you think the starving medieval peasant had time to worry about "psychological suffering"?
    • waynenilsen 6y ago
      I think you would be very interested in the rest of the document. That is very similar to the point that the author makes throughout. He suggests that spending more time on fulfilling our primitive needs of food water and shelter would result in a much more satisfying lifestyle and much higher quality of life.
      • nottorp 6y ago
        Oh possibly, but it sounds too much like "keep the plebs busy so they don't have time to develop independent thinking".
        • AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
• kaycebasques 6y ago
  I've felt the "technological sublime" that the article mentions many times when contemplating the internet. Perhaps the only difference is that there wasn't a precise moment to focus attention (e.g. moon landing) and there aren't big fanfare events when new internet infrastructure is created (e.g. a politician nailing a golden spike to complete a railroad).
• serjester 6y ago
  While I don't necessarily disagree with his thesis, I think the author cherry picks points and creates a narrative where there isn't one. He mentions the last "shared cultural moment" was Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon. Personally after watching it live, I'd argue Space X launching humans into space is one of those "moments". This all comes down to your own interpretation of the events and there's so many other examples in the piece. Narrative fallacy at best, but mostly pseudoscience in my opinion - world progress can't be binned into a coherent storyline.
  • emteycz 6y ago
    The Space roadster, followed by three rocket landings, is also one of these moments. My mother still talks about it.
  • Bukhmanizer 6y ago
    I don’t disagree with: >world progress can’t be binned into a coherent storyline But if you think SpaceX has anywhere close to the cultural impact of the moon landing, you really need to get out of your bubble.
    • readarticle 6y ago
      Yeah, it’s obviously all anecdata here but I don’t run in tech circles outside of work, and genuinely can’t remember a single post, tweet, or meme about Space X that didn’t come from my coworkers or few tech friends. Tiger King though, whew. Even my grandmother tried out her new Netflix subscription with that.
      • Bukhmanizer 6y ago
        Yeah I think it’s pretty heavily a tech thing. Even in the (biomedical) sciences, I think people are only vaguely aware of what SpaceX is.
    • serjester 6y ago
      I'll agree with your point but his 4 other examples were "steamship, railroad, assembly line, and commercial aviation" which are comparable. With that said it felt like everyone I knew watched it (I associate with mostly non-techies) so to each his own. But yes the moon landing was on another level.
• keiferski 6y ago
  "A state that cannot attain its ultimate goal usually swells to an unnaturally large size. The world-wide empire of the Romans is nothing sublime compared to Athens. The strength that really should go into the flower here remains in the leaves and stem, which flourish." - Friedrich Nietzsche The root issue here seems to be the focus on material prosperity as indicative of success. That strikes me as a very 20th century idea, one from before the "Information Overload" age. The cultural-philosophical problem of the future is figuring out how to prioritize in a land of abundance.
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• marcus_holmes 6y ago
  I realise this is a review, not the actual text. But still. This is utter bollocks. It's typical of non-technical "intellectuals" to completely ignore the main areas of modern human progress, simply because they don't understand them. e.g. the whole discussion on Art completely ignores Video Games, which are undoubtedly Art, and also an area of rapid innovation and development. Yet they're usually dismissed out of hand because no-one who takes "Art" seriously plays them or understands them. The whole "we went to the moon and never went back" completely ignores the argument that the moon landing was, right from the start, an uneconomical publicity stunt. The exciting time is now, when space is starting to become economically viable and we have organisations making viable plans to colonise Mars. The Internet is taken for granted as a method of "chatting", and smartphones as a method of "taking selfies". Again, because the author doesn't understand what vast and wide-reaching achievements these are. Watching a Cambodian tuk-tuk driver watch a YouTube English lesson while parked up waiting for a fare is a modern marvel. Bringing communication and the spread of knowledge to anyone who wants it, wherever they are, is the most important thing to happen to humanity since the invention of agriculture. And yes, it's as disruptive to human societies as agriculture: we should expect our societies to be disturbed by it. The economic malaise is mostly a result of WW2. Europe was economically destroyed, and the US changed its entire economy to meet the demand (and the USSR moved its entire manufacturing base a thousand miles east in a year, an astounding thing to do). Recovering from that meant that growth was easy because it was coming from such a low base. We've hit the final point of that recovery, and growth isn't so easy any more. Not everything is perfect. There are some changes we need to make. But please let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. And to anyone writing about modern society: if you don't understand technology, please stop fucking writing about it.
  • caleb-allen 6y ago
    Agreed. I was especially unconvinced at the arguments for "repetition", for example that today's music is separated from the 90s only by "nuance". What? Sure, from up close it may seem that way, but given 30 years I'm sure we can look back and very clearly see the style developments just as we can for the 70s and the 80s. It sounded to me like a case of "back in my day" but with incoherent arguments.
• C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Isn't this the narrative that MAGA/ Proud boys and the KKK (I wont mention NAZIS) before them have always used
  • iron0013 6y ago
    Well, yes, of course, it’s Charles Murray. He shares many of the beliefs of those groups.
• watwut 6y ago
  > What’s the difference, really, between the music of the 1990s and the 2010s—between the music of Madonna and Lady Gaga, of Mariah Carey and Adele? Between the heavy metal or rock or rap of the 1980s and those genres now? Nuances distinguish them. You don’t need to resort to nuances to tell the difference between the music of the 1970s and 1950s or the 1950s and 1930s. I find this comparison completely ridiculous. It is not just that I can tell difference between Madonna and Lady Gaga or 1980 metal against todays one. It is also that the actual difference between 1970s and 1950s music is that they changed genre. Metal must be metal, if it was different then metal if would not be metal. It just so happens that new genres did appeared between 1980 and now. Contemporary techno progressive music is incomparable to anything in 1980. Also, 1980 music is ridiculously easy to distinguish as 1980 music. And not just that new genres appeared, the music in 1980 was not consumed the way it is consumed now - all the time for free huge selection by own personal choice. Back then, you had either to pay or listen to one of radio stations. So the people moved more in lockstep. > Renaissance linear perspective for the visual arts ... By mid-century, with a few admirable exceptions, the modern art world seemed determined to make itself the butt of jokes, as Tom Wolfe memorably described in The Painted Word (1975). I personally like modern art more then renaissance, but that is personal taste - what I find fun. The big reason for abstraction being the thing in art is that realism is largely figured out. People can do hyper realistic drawings today, the ones that are hard to distinguish from photography. They are stunning pieces of craft. But, at this point, it is craft that you can learn if you study enough and have talent. You are not discovering something new when you do it - but if they are your thing there are artists focusing on this particular thing. There are books you can read that teach you how to render, analyze and draw.
• Ericson2314 6y ago
  The problem with this "conversation intellectualism" it's all 30,000 feat drab cultural analysis of symptoms and no rigor to actually dissect causes. A good materialist approach might not charm at the moody cocktail party, but actually has explanatory power and proposes remedies. If Ross Douthat thinks we've slowed technologically and modern technological gimmicks are trivial, well hahahaha, I agree, and he's just betrayed every conservative tenant. - Space race was classic post-war consensus big goverment spending, and planning. - Modern technologies, whether it's startups focusing on trains not plains, small powerplants not big ones, phones satellites and not wires in the ground, is entirely tech hacking around coordination failure. We've lost the ability to collaborate on the big stuff, and a lot of that is due precisely to conservationism weaponizing exiting structural failures in our governance model. Art stagnation: well actually the popular art has been getting a lot better. Look at old music videos vs new ones, for example. Also R&B triumphing over rock as the foundation of pop means we get better rhythm and harmony, the twin pillars of syncretic music. But if high art is stagnent, well, that's clearly got to do with a the stagnation of the people on the top of the economic period with the leisure time. Nothing promotes changing tastes like changing audiences. Or blame underfunded schools and increasing in working hours for the non-rich. Economic stagnation. Obviously wage growth decline is a proximate cause, not just a symptom (i.e. other factors might cause it or make it hard to fix, but if we could fix it it would help with the rest). I could go on, but basically Douthat is just talking about symptoms to get along with the more literary coastal elites. It's shambolic. I'll take it more serious if he learns macroeconomics and becomes some sort of libertarian UBI-er.
• bartleby_ 6y ago
  About the author of the piece: "Charles Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has become one of the most influential social scientists in America, using racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor." - Southern Poverty Law Center Every now and then the stench of Ross's writing wafts up unexpectedly into your day. At this point it's a pleasure because Ross gets it so wrong you remain in awe of how warped his mind has become. Even a fool can tell you America is in decline, but only a special fool--"doofus" is really the best word--will try to sell it to you the way Ross does: “The sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration.” Of course there's a perfectly reasonable materialist explanation for the miseries Ross and his ilk enumerate upon, but it's for their total mischaracterization of the obvious that institutions like the New York Times pay them handsomely.