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> Strong men create good times. Or sometimes they just kill each other in cycles of violence spanning generations. > Good times create weak men. Or they enab
by Tronno 5y ago
> Strong men create good times.
Or sometimes they just kill each other in cycles of violence spanning generations.
> Good times create weak men.
Or they enable amazing things like the internet, modern medicine, and empires that last 1000 years.
Sorry, but I've seen this pithy quote before and I wish it would go away - it's simply not true.
- systemvoltage 5y agoI think you’re misunderstanding the quote. You’re right but so is the quote. Strong men fought for our rights, fought for the allies and which led to long lasting peace and security. These are the times that breed weak generations who have no moral compass and have been squandering basic rights and civil liberties.
- throw_nbvc1234 5y agoThe foundations of the internet and computing were built by people from the cold war when modern civilization was a technical glitch away from ending at any given time. Half the stuff in networking is decades old, written by people who are decades older then that and raised by the generation before them. Implying the internet is a byproduct of the recent "good times" seems a bit disingenuous. The internet (FAANG if you want a concrete definition) and modern medicine are both multi-trillion dollar industries; for very fundamental reasons. I'd argue their relative success would probably occur in both good and bad times.
- mr_toad 5y agoThe foundations of the internet were laid during the post war boom era. It was considered by some a golden age. The modern internet is a product of successive booms in the 90’s and 2000’s.
- robbedpeter 5y agoThe internet came about because of the cold war and the attendant arms race. Empires that last were all born in blood and fire and terror, and universally spend more blood to maintain cohesion against the outside. What type of la la fantasy histories have you been reading? Fat happy people maintain the status quo. Hungry desperate people innovate. Anyway. The world wide web is probably what you meant. And yes, universities and science and medicine makes progress during peaceful times, and ultimately the quote is facile and glib. There is a nugget of truth there, however. Establishing a frontier in human well being has historically required limiting the power of the state in ways that support the relative liberalizing of its culture. States historically require blood sacrifice before any power is ceded. It takes strong people to achieve and hold progress., and the quote encapsulates the notion that there is a place in the natural order of things for strong individuals to shake things up. For principles to be held to at great cost, however inconvenient or even fatal it may be for others who just want to perpetuate "good enough". The fallacy is that good times can't produce good and strong people, which is wrong. It's just a simple matter of conviction being stronger when provoked by trauma than abstract rationalization.
- api 5y ago> Hungry desperate people innovate. Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Robert Goddard, Werner von Braun, William Shockley, John von Neumann, ... those just come off the top of my head, I could keep going for pages. Yeah, a bunch of hungry desperate people there. I mean sure, some were deeply flawed or had tragic lives, but that wasn't from being hungry and desperate. They were not poor, and they were supplied with ample resources to pursue their visions by governments or private companies. That quote is just too much of an oversimplification. The real situation is far more complex and nuanced, and like I said in the other reply it matters a lot how you define strength and how you define good times.
- api 5y agoDepends a lot on your definition of strong and your definition of good times... which kind of makes it a meaningless bit of cornpone so I agree.