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"Let’s state the uncomfortable truth. The future for many Americans is bleak and their lives are going to be nasty, brutish and short." I find it funny how fir

by pcstl 6y ago

"Let’s state the uncomfortable truth. The future for many Americans is bleak and their lives are going to be nasty, brutish and short." I find it funny how first-worlders are horrified by the idea that they might have to live in mild discomfort. Maybe try looking at how most of the world that isn't the US and Western Europe lives before saying people's lives will be "nasty, brutish and short" because they won't be working some low-skill 9 to 5 for 40 to 50 years while making 6 figures and then retire with the rest of their lives pretty much planned out for them.

Qiu_Zhanxuan 6y ago
Is this sarcasm?
- pcstl 6y ago
  No, not really. More of a statement on how out of touch with reality it seems first world inhabitants are, to the point where they think not having a guaranteed well-paying job or not being as rich as their parents is comparable to the kind of life Hobbes was thinking of when he coined that idiom.
  - enraged_camel 6y ago
    Having your frame of reference defined by your own circumstances and the standards of the society you live in is not "out of touch." People in other parts of the world might have it worse — that is completely irrelevant when it comes to personal happiness.
    - pcstl 6y ago
      It is not irrelevant if you want to use an expression such as "nasty, brutish and short", coined by Hobbes to refer to the condition of man living by himself, without a social structure to support him. It implies that people in the first world - specifically, the US - are living in conditions somehow comparable in their uncertainty to people living in a pre-civilized state. If anyone is minimally realistic about the first world, they will know that it is an absurd statement. This kind of overly dramatic phrase is not accurate nor conducive to productive debate. Its only reason for existing is to make people indignant and unaware of their own privilege in order to make them support your cause of choice - or, more frequently, in order to make them fight the people who you designate as the "cause" of their "suffering". There's also a personal aspect to my comment, in that I live in a country where, even if the USA's living standard keeps falling for the next 50 years, it will probably be just about comparable to here. Watching the most privileged people in the world be all "woe is me, I might not be as rich as my dad!" is not something I'm very able to take seriously.
      - Flozzin 6y ago
        I'm getting the impression that since the author overstates his case, by using a quote by Hobbes, his entire point is invalid. Therefor, millennials must accept their fate. And the fact that their lives will be worse than previous generations doesn't matter. Because the Hobbes quote is misused, and because other people have way worse lives. I disagree. So what if he misused the quote. His overall point is valid. And other people have it worse, that's unfair, we should do everything in our power to improve everyones lives. And all backsliding should be protested.
        enraged_camel 6y ago
        Pretty much. Just because the quote may have been somewhat misused — or used out of context — doesn't invalidate his main point.
        pcstl 6y ago
        My point isn't that people should "accept their fate", just that they should be more realistic about how bad things really are. If you start treating minor setbacks as gigantic issues, you start having overreactions that might just make things even worse.
albntomat0 6y ago
I have a somewhat modified view, in that articles like this (and ones regarding income inequality) need to be specific in exactly what they mean by comments like "nasty, brutish, and short", or inequal wealth distribution. Do they mean decreases in life expectancy? Student debt? Homeownership? Disease prevalence? Violent crime? It's continually stated as an axiom, but poor writing such as that really weakens their argument.
- pcstl 6y ago
  That's pretty much the same view I hold, I just couldn't stop myself being a bit less polite about it. When Hobbes coined the idiom "nasty, brutish and short" he was thinking of a lifestyle with next to no guarantees. You might be dead at any moment. Compared to that, I can't really see how first worlders being a bit less comfortable than previous generations is a valid use of the phrase.
  - filoeleven 6y ago
    I agree with your opinion of the phrase’s use here. Hobbes was talking about more than “no guarantees” though; he was referring to a life outside of society. The rest of this comment is about that, and tangential to the topic at hand. He was working from the axiom that laws are what create societies, that “nature” without laws makes the life of man “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” It’s interesting how the first two are almost always dropped, isn’t it? Anyway, this is a false premise. Nature abounds with examples of cooperation at the same rate as those of competition, from communal species banding together to mutualistic interspecies relationships. We keep finding more and more of them. My own suspicion is that what we find in nature broadly reflects our own ideals, because those are simply what we are most likely to look for, and so Hobbes’ society reflected more nastiness than ours does today.
    - pcstl 6y ago
      Even if nature has about as much cooperation as competition, society seems to put a damper on the nastier effects of competition. While we can find amazing examples of cooperation in the record of human history and prehistory, we also find a lot of brutal behavior which seems to have become almost monotonically less frequent ever since we started organizing into complex societies. (Also, as predicted by complex systems theory, when brutal behavior does erupt, it is much more catastrophic - the 2 world wars are good examples)
jancsika 6y ago
Let me tell you, we used to dream of living in the non-US/Western European world! What I did there-- and what you are doing-- is referred to as "one-downmanship." Essentially, attempting to ignore or downplay suffering by talking about a case of worse suffering that you have experience with. When not part of comedy sketches[1], it's usually considered disruptive. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE
- albntomat0 6y ago
  Do you allow literally anyone, regardless of situation, to claim "woe is me"? I understand that "one-downmanship" can be used to dismiss legitimate claims, but the existence of such tactics does not automatically validate anyone who claims their lives are hard. The original article used a line from Hobbes regarding existence pre-society, which does not apply. The author could have used many valid other things in the US (homeownership and marriage rates, opiod addiction, savings rate) that would have made that part of their argument valid, but decided to go to the rhetorical extreme.
  - jancsika 6y ago
    > Do you allow literally anyone, regardless of situation, to claim "woe is me"? As far as one-downmanship-- it can make sense in personal situations where trust is high and someone opens up about suffering. Perhaps in other high-trust instances, where it's likely to be interpreted as bonding/guidance and not muscle-flexing. But even in those cases it can quickly become unhelpful, hence the Python sketch getting lots of laughs. In the case of political rhetoric, do you know an example of one-downmanship that isn't mere muscle-flexing? Just look at the example here-- OP said they find it "funny" that a generation of people are frightened by decreasing opportunities and the dangers of climate change. Perhaps pre-internet this was a way to at least get a dissident message out before one got cut off in a live interview. A kind of "sign of life" to sentient beings in the audience. But on HN-- where those constraints don't exist-- it looks to me like the kind of low-effort disruption on par with asking, "What about Visa/Mastercard monopoly, or the telcos," on the next thread that discusses the Google monopoly case. Edit: clarification
akra 6y ago
While this may be true, there's no point comparing yourself to other countries if you did achieve success, and are slowly losing it. The article makes the point that previous generations did have that success and slowly for newer generations it is being lost. That's a failure that needs to be highlighted - in the end against previous generations livings standards if you agree with this article we do not currently measure up to those standards. IMHO I think globalization is to blame for this; it has transferred equity/ownership from Western countries over time. It has given us cheaper electronics, cheap aviation/holidays, and other discretionaries but in return has denied people of the essentials (cheap houses, job security, etc) and has transferred existing wealth away. The rich have the means to protect themselves and even profit from this redistribution of wealth; it's the middle class instead where much of the wealth was has slowly been drained. Instead of wealth they now substituted it with debt to keep the system running. In the country I live in house prices are highly proportional to debt growth, much accrued to foreign debt. Our exchange rate stays high since issuing debt in the local currency despite increasing the CAD and draining wealth bids up the currency on the FX market. As long as houses don't crash (which is where most debt is issued) the dollar's worth doesn't deteriorate and we don't see the drain of wealth. As long as debt growth keeps growing we always create positive pressure on our exchange rate. The sad part about this of course is while young people can't afford houses, the goods they may substitute for this (cars, holidays, gadgets) are all underpinned by the debt used to bid those houses higher via a higher than otherwise FX rate.

by pcstl 6y ago

Qiu_Zhanxuan 6y ago

Is this sarcasm?

pcstl 6y ago
No, not really. More of a statement on how out of touch with reality it seems first world inhabitants are, to the point where they think not having a guaranteed well-paying job or not being as rich as their parents is comparable to the kind of life Hobbes was thinking of when he coined that idiom.
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  Having your frame of reference defined by your own circumstances and the standards of the society you live in is not "out of touch." People in other parts of the world might have it worse — that is completely irrelevant when it comes to personal happiness.
  - pcstl 6y ago
    It is not irrelevant if you want to use an expression such as "nasty, brutish and short", coined by Hobbes to refer to the condition of man living by himself, without a social structure to support him. It implies that people in the first world - specifically, the US - are living in conditions somehow comparable in their uncertainty to people living in a pre-civilized state. If anyone is minimally realistic about the first world, they will know that it is an absurd statement. This kind of overly dramatic phrase is not accurate nor conducive to productive debate. Its only reason for existing is to make people indignant and unaware of their own privilege in order to make them support your cause of choice - or, more frequently, in order to make them fight the people who you designate as the "cause" of their "suffering". There's also a personal aspect to my comment, in that I live in a country where, even if the USA's living standard keeps falling for the next 50 years, it will probably be just about comparable to here. Watching the most privileged people in the world be all "woe is me, I might not be as rich as my dad!" is not something I'm very able to take seriously.
    - Flozzin 6y ago
      I'm getting the impression that since the author overstates his case, by using a quote by Hobbes, his entire point is invalid. Therefor, millennials must accept their fate. And the fact that their lives will be worse than previous generations doesn't matter. Because the Hobbes quote is misused, and because other people have way worse lives. I disagree. So what if he misused the quote. His overall point is valid. And other people have it worse, that's unfair, we should do everything in our power to improve everyones lives. And all backsliding should be protested.
      - enraged_camel 6y ago
        Pretty much. Just because the quote may have been somewhat misused — or used out of context — doesn't invalidate his main point.
      - pcstl 6y ago
        My point isn't that people should "accept their fate", just that they should be more realistic about how bad things really are. If you start treating minor setbacks as gigantic issues, you start having overreactions that might just make things even worse.

albntomat0 6y ago

I have a somewhat modified view, in that articles like this (and ones regarding income inequality) need to be specific in exactly what they mean by comments like "nasty, brutish, and short", or inequal wealth distribution. Do they mean decreases in life expectancy? Student debt? Homeownership? Disease prevalence? Violent crime? It's continually stated as an axiom, but poor writing such as that really weakens their argument.

pcstl 6y ago
That's pretty much the same view I hold, I just couldn't stop myself being a bit less polite about it. When Hobbes coined the idiom "nasty, brutish and short" he was thinking of a lifestyle with next to no guarantees. You might be dead at any moment. Compared to that, I can't really see how first worlders being a bit less comfortable than previous generations is a valid use of the phrase.
- filoeleven 6y ago
  I agree with your opinion of the phrase’s use here. Hobbes was talking about more than “no guarantees” though; he was referring to a life outside of society. The rest of this comment is about that, and tangential to the topic at hand. He was working from the axiom that laws are what create societies, that “nature” without laws makes the life of man “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” It’s interesting how the first two are almost always dropped, isn’t it? Anyway, this is a false premise. Nature abounds with examples of cooperation at the same rate as those of competition, from communal species banding together to mutualistic interspecies relationships. We keep finding more and more of them. My own suspicion is that what we find in nature broadly reflects our own ideals, because those are simply what we are most likely to look for, and so Hobbes’ society reflected more nastiness than ours does today.
  - pcstl 6y ago
    Even if nature has about as much cooperation as competition, society seems to put a damper on the nastier effects of competition. While we can find amazing examples of cooperation in the record of human history and prehistory, we also find a lot of brutal behavior which seems to have become almost monotonically less frequent ever since we started organizing into complex societies. (Also, as predicted by complex systems theory, when brutal behavior does erupt, it is much more catastrophic - the 2 world wars are good examples)

jancsika 6y ago

Let me tell you, we used to dream of living in the non-US/Western European world! What I did there-- and what you are doing-- is referred to as "one-downmanship." Essentially, attempting to ignore or downplay suffering by talking about a case of worse suffering that you have experience with. When not part of comedy sketches[1], it's usually considered disruptive. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE

albntomat0 6y ago
Do you allow literally anyone, regardless of situation, to claim "woe is me"? I understand that "one-downmanship" can be used to dismiss legitimate claims, but the existence of such tactics does not automatically validate anyone who claims their lives are hard. The original article used a line from Hobbes regarding existence pre-society, which does not apply. The author could have used many valid other things in the US (homeownership and marriage rates, opiod addiction, savings rate) that would have made that part of their argument valid, but decided to go to the rhetorical extreme.
- jancsika 6y ago
  > Do you allow literally anyone, regardless of situation, to claim "woe is me"? As far as one-downmanship-- it can make sense in personal situations where trust is high and someone opens up about suffering. Perhaps in other high-trust instances, where it's likely to be interpreted as bonding/guidance and not muscle-flexing. But even in those cases it can quickly become unhelpful, hence the Python sketch getting lots of laughs. In the case of political rhetoric, do you know an example of one-downmanship that isn't mere muscle-flexing? Just look at the example here-- OP said they find it "funny" that a generation of people are frightened by decreasing opportunities and the dangers of climate change. Perhaps pre-internet this was a way to at least get a dissident message out before one got cut off in a live interview. A kind of "sign of life" to sentient beings in the audience. But on HN-- where those constraints don't exist-- it looks to me like the kind of low-effort disruption on par with asking, "What about Visa/Mastercard monopoly, or the telcos," on the next thread that discusses the Google monopoly case. Edit: clarification

akra 6y ago

While this may be true, there's no point comparing yourself to other countries if you did achieve success, and are slowly losing it. The article makes the point that previous generations did have that success and slowly for newer generations it is being lost. That's a failure that needs to be highlighted - in the end against previous generations livings standards if you agree with this article we do not currently measure up to those standards. IMHO I think globalization is to blame for this; it has transferred equity/ownership from Western countries over time. It has given us cheaper electronics, cheap aviation/holidays, and other discretionaries but in return has denied people of the essentials (cheap houses, job security, etc) and has transferred existing wealth away. The rich have the means to protect themselves and even profit from this redistribution of wealth; it's the middle class instead where much of the wealth was has slowly been drained. Instead of wealth they now substituted it with debt to keep the system running. In the country I live in house prices are highly proportional to debt growth, much accrued to foreign debt. Our exchange rate stays high since issuing debt in the local currency despite increasing the CAD and draining wealth bids up the currency on the FX market. As long as houses don't crash (which is where most debt is issued) the dollar's worth doesn't deteriorate and we don't see the drain of wealth. As long as debt growth keeps growing we always create positive pressure on our exchange rate. The sad part about this of course is while young people can't afford houses, the goods they may substitute for this (cars, holidays, gadgets) are all underpinned by the debt used to bid those houses higher via a higher than otherwise FX rate.