10 ms·

Things collapsing has been a predominant sentiment in every modern generation. It's unprecedented because of our collective amnesia, that regards the familiar a

by boh 4y ago

Things collapsing has been a predominant sentiment in every modern generation. It's unprecedented because of our collective amnesia, that regards the familiar as a stable starting point rather than a random moment in a volatile reality. Journalism was a tawdry, un-respectable business since its conception, but experienced a brief period of valor around the mid-twentieth century when industry concentration, Cold War ethics and regulation collectively reworked its incentives. The education system has always been in a position of scrutiny since universal education become the norm. Presidents have been the stuff of tabloid gossip since the founding fathers with the media mercilessly opting to promote scandal and controversy over respectability. Our conception of President as moral arbiter is a function of the reworking of journalism mentioned above. The difference in peoples attitudes reflects an increased diet of emotion inducing media that accelerates fears and expectations, rather than some great pivot in volatility. Yes there are things to worry about but there always are (let's remember the twentieth century had two world wars, the Great Depression, and an even worse pandemic).

b112 4y ago
Yes, the 60s was far, far, far more disillusioned than this.
- bsenftner 4y ago
  And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. They are the institutions and they do not trust themselves, as is clear via the leadership stalemate and both parties destroying their best hopes in favor of the crumbling and ever more distant wealthy status quo.
  - Clubber 4y ago
    >And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. Why do people think of an entire generation of people as a single minded entity? Might as well say, "women," or "men," or "humans." Did you know the majority of baby boomers weren't hippies? Looking at documentaries of the era, you'd think they were. Many boomers hated hippies. So which boomers are creating these divisions? The hippies or the non-hippies? >their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. This would be much more targeted (and accurate) if you said the current generation of politicians. Last time I checked, I've mostly only had two bad choices for president since I've been voting. The third choice was, "throwing away my vote." Guess who came up with that one? The politicians. When you blame a generation of people, you don't blame the people who actually have the power to make the decisions affecting our lives.
    - sleepdreamy 4y ago
      Is this sarcasm? It's truly laughable if you don't think boomers had a clear advantage in comparison to Millennials, Gen X, etc; I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did. I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my generation totally gave up and resort to 'UNFAIR MEH WON'T TRY NOW'. Am in that camp? No. I don't get upset when people generalize because it doesn't pertain to me as an individual. There is some truth to prejudice Boomers had an era of prosperity that we will never see again. My in-laws purchased their first home in 1971 for 60,000. That same home is worth 800,000+ The only reason I can even own a home or compete in my late 20's is because I wasn't naïve enough to think that any degree would pay the bills. You might not like it, but Boomers took their hoard and pulled the ladder up behind them. It is what it is.
      - ROTMetro 4y ago
        https://www.humanprogress.org/u-s-housing-became-much-more-affordable-over-the-last-40-years/ https://www.humanprogress.org/u-s-housing-became-much-more-a...
      - Clubber 4y ago
        >You might not like it, but Boomers took their hoard and pulled the ladder up behind them. It is what it is. And what mechanism did they use to do this exactly? >I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my generation totally gave up and resort to 'UNFAIR MEH WON'T TRY NOW'. Am in that camp? No. I don't get upset when people generalize because it doesn't pertain to me as an individual. There is some truth to prejudice Its an unwillingness to understand the predicament or situation and just blaming it on a group of people. It's pretty common throughout history; a weapon wielded by the powerful. >I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did. I'm not a Boomer.
        ryukafalz 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jjav 4y ago
    > And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge No, "they" are not. The few people in the inner political circles of that generation are in charge, same as every other time in history. The normal hardworking people are never in charge. I remember when in middle school (Gen X here) I thought when our youth generation grows up and gets to be in charge the world will be better, because everyone I knew in school and out was so reasonable and so nice. Surely none of these people will be the corrupt politicians of tomorrow? And turns out they(we)'re not the corrupt politicians of today. Because none of those regular kids of then are in charge. Who is? The children and grandchildren of the corrupt politicians of back then, groomed from childhood to be the corrupt politicians of today. They weren't in our middle class school of course, so never met any of them. How to break that cycle? Ideally by voting for people not affiliated with the dominant two parties, but the system is rigged against that succeeding, so I don't know.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      Introduce sortition or citizen's assemblies.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      As a gen-x-er I agree. I realized this year that in the last 30 years politically, NOT ONE STEP OF PROGRESS HAS HAPPENED. 30 years ago the big political issues were culture wars (Gingrich vs Clinton), row v wade, unaffordable healthcare. Guess what we have today? Culture wars, row v wade, unaffordable healthcare, unaffordable housing. Fuck, well, that's progress. If you try to support a third party things it splits the vote so much things are too divided so nothing gets done. Support a mainstream party, surprisingly, also nothing gets done. For 30 years. Before my generation they stymied the hippies. Before that the Lost Generation was just made invisible by the Greatest Generation. And the Greatest Generation was made too exhausted by fighting WW2. It is not a generational issue. I promise, no generation says 'I don't want things to be better for my kids'. It's our political class. They are garbage.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Everything that happened to a Baby Boomer was the most extreme ever. All other generations before Baby Boomers and since the Baby Boomers have had an easier time than the Baby Boomers. Their experiences are the Alpha and the Omega of human experience. When they die, the universe probably will cease to exist.
  - groby_b 4y ago
    That, frankly, would be a small price to pay to stop hearing arguments about specialness of that generation.
    - elefanten 4y ago
      I’ve never heard an argument about the “specialness” of that generation? I’ve only heard the relentless shit all the younger generations started talking about Boomers at some point. Which always came as a surprise to me… If we’re going to generalize about people based on generation (bad idea, but…)— I conclude that every generation since the Boomers has been linearly weaker and less competent, in aggregate, than the generation before it. Definitely in the West, but I suspect everywhere. And no, I’m not a Boomer, I’m one of the younger ones.
      - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
        >I’ve only heard the relentless shit all the younger generations started talking about Boomers at some point. Counterreaction, a lot of voices claiming to speak for boomers, or boomers themselves, have done plenty to claim "it's just young people messing up". Despite the obvious that they have been the majority voter base for decades, have more wealth as a collective, and because of their age and wealth, tend to have different incentives and opinions than the younger generations having problems to do something as simple as getting a foothold in adult life. NB: the obvious problem isn't "boomer / old", but the nature of the social game as it is (relatively or perceived zero-sum) and the haves voting against the have nots. >I conclude that every generation since the Boomers has been linearly weaker and less competent Weaker and less competent how? I assure you, for every argument you'll find, you can find another argument which would flip the script.
- boh 4y ago
  The idea of mass disillusionment is pretty academic. If we just think about it for a moment, it's very hard to argue that there was some cohesive, clearly articulated illusion that was shared by everyone regardless of demographic, and it was somehow lost. The narrative of mass disillusionment is more based on the limits of a historical narrative that must broadly categorize a mass of people as having a unified reaction for the sake of a simplified historical account. Disillusionment is a persistent experience for people as they grow up. The idea that one period was "more" disillusioned than another isn't a real phenomenon.
  - entropicdrifter 4y ago
    I disagree with your core point entirely. Humanity is largely self-grouped by culture. Cultures fundamentally share mythologies, both about themselves and about other cultures, be they rival or friendly. What we experienced in the '60s and are experiencing right now is a dissolution of the predominant self-mythology in American culture, which was temporarily boosted to a high degree of uniformity first by the advent of mass media, then again by 9/11. That's what's causing the culture war we're all entrenched in, willing or not. American self-mythology is in a period of redefining itself. As cultural collapses go, mass media (the internet included) has caused these unprecedented waves of disillusionment happening at lightning speed compared to how they happened in the past. Historically it took massive famines to cause the degree of social unrest that modern war photos and videos can incite (as in the Vietnam era). The speed of communication is unprecedented; as a result, so is the severity of this age-old issue.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  That may have been the case among the young (coincidentally the boomers). But it would be difficult to make the case that a significant percentage of people over 30 were disillusioned in that era.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  80s checking in. It was way more disillusioned too. They created a whole genre of punk music where the lyrics were basically fuck Thatcher/Reagan for a reason.
jcranberry 4y ago
Sources/reading?
juanjmanfredi 4y ago
I agree with your first two paragraphs. To the extent that our present time is at all unique, I subscribe to Robert Putnam's thesis that much of what we see today can be explained by the drop in social capital in American life over the past several decades. Less socialization means less trust in other Americans or in the government, fewer norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness, and increased polarization. There are various reasons for this, television being a prominent example. Surprisingly, it seems as though these trends were firmly in place well before the internet or 24 hour news came along.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  > There are various reasons for this, television being a prominent example. I tend to agree with the Putnam thesis, but I don't think you can lay this all on television. Until the 80s there were really only 3 viable TV/radio networks (CBS, NBC and later, ABC). If you watched the nightly news on any of those networks you got pretty much the same vision of reality. There was more variation in newspapers, but people watched a lot of TV in that era and for the most part they shared a cohesive vision.
  - juanjmanfredi 4y ago
    Putnam ascribes ~25% of the drop in social capital over the past 70ish years to television's rise, but not because of fragmentation of visions of reality as you suggest. Rather, it is due to TV soaking up time that might be used to build community and social cohesion. See below for an example quote and corresponding link that goes into more detail. "Even though there are only 24 hours in everyone's day, most forms of social and media participation are positively correlated. People who listen to lots of classical music are more likely, not less likely, than others to attend Cubs games. Television is the principal exception to this generalization--the only leisure activity that seems to inhibit participation outside the home. TV watching comes at the expense of nearly every social activity outside the home, especially social gatherings and informal conversations. TV viewers are homebodies." https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/assoc/putnmtv4.html https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/assoc/putnmtv4.html
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
I think there is a real danger in just arguing basically "things have always been a shit show, empires collapse, pandemics rage, etc. etc." for a couple reasons: 1. While true, lets not ignore the fact that things get really, really, really bad during those periods where empires do collapse, or environmental damage causes ecosystem collapse, etc. etc. I mean, yes, you could argue "Hey, the Black Death killed a 3rd of Europe" and be correct, but I'm not sure what comfort that's supposed to give. Even if you want to argue that the post-war era up until, say, the 80s was an extremely unique period of progress and broad-based social advancement, that still doesn't make me feel any better if we're now in a "reversion to the mean." 2. Advanced technology does make "things collapsing" potentially much more catastrophic than in generations past. I'm not just talking about things like nuclear war, but things like the speed with which modern social media (and regular media) can pit people against each other is very different than, say, the yellow journalism periods of decades past.
- newbamboo 4y ago
  Why not talk about nuclear war? It’s one of several elephants in the room. The full collapse of a nuclear super power is unprecedented. Who gets the weapons?
  - buscoquadnary 4y ago
    Well the USSR isn't around anymore and they had quite a few nukes so....
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - formerkrogemp 4y ago
      But the nukes are still around. Except Ukraine gave theirs up. It's not like they had a choice.
    - cjbgkagh 4y ago
      I think we got lucky with that one. A special set of circumstances that are unlikely to repeat.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
> Journalism was a tawdry, un-respectable business since its conception, but experienced a brief period of valor around the mid-twentieth century And it wasn't just journalism. After WWII many veterans took advantage of the free education offered by the GI Bill. That gave us a lot of highly educated people (with no student loan debt to worry about!) who then went on to use that education to improve things. Couple this with the recent memory of fascism in Europe and The Civil Rights movement and we had sort of a golden era. We were able to live off the fumes of that era until right around the end of the 20th century. You could say that in a sense things are just returning back to a more normal state of affairs and this seems painful because many of us lived through an era that was unusually good.
- treis 4y ago
  I always wonder about people that post things so divorced from reality. We have five times as many college grads today as we did in 1960: https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attai...
  - relaxing 4y ago
    But the claim wasnt that there aren’t more college grads now, and there’s no need for the ad hominem first sentence.
  - UncleOxidant 4y ago
    I added the clause: "With no student loan debt to worry about!" above. That's an important aspect, I think. They could afford to get degrees in subjects that may not have paid all that well (teaching, for example) where as now people have to consider how they're going to pay back that debt and choose degrees in fields that will enable them to do so.
    - techsupporter 4y ago
      > They could afford to get degrees in subjects that may not have paid all that well (teaching, for example) I also wonder how much of that growth is from high school students being told to go to college above all else, and how this graduation increase corresponds to enrollment and graduation from vocational schools. I do think your point is the big one: people could go into college and come out with knowledge in the so-called soft skills, like philosophy or literature (areas that don't pay well but are vital for a society to understand itself, if nothing else). Why society doesn't value teaching and similar jobs as much as it does other industries is left as a debate for another time.
deltarholamda 4y ago
All fair points. The change, as I see it, is the speed at which information flows. The old saying about how a lie can circle the world before the truth gets its trousers on applies. Only now, the lie can travel at the speed of light. Narratives have a very strong early-mover bias. The OPs point about things starting to crack in the Obama years rings true. For all of his positive points, there is nothing in Obama's resume that suggests he was qualified to be President. He was the first President to be memed into office. The press loved to talk about how adept the campaign was in utilizing the Internet to mobilize and motivate supporters. Everybody took notice, and now the narrative battle happens online, at Internet speeds. This is a terrible, terrible idea. Unless you're some kind of otherworldly genius, taking in all of the input and coming to a rational opinion weighing all the pros and cons is impossible. So, like a black-box AI algorithm, people come up with opinions based on odd things like who has a more insulting neologism for their opponent, or whatever. The "collective amnesia" you mention also occurs at Internet speeds. What was major news on Tuesday is fishwrap by Thursday, replaced with something else. There's no value in revisiting it, so whatever narrative gets entrenched is it. I don't think there's a solution for any of this, short of a CME wiping out everything more technological than a shovel.
papito 4y ago
With all due respect, this is not some in-the-moment emotionally-colored thing. Months after America has almost lost its democracy for good, we are just now finding out that we were extremely lucky that it all worked out this time. So, no, it's not just an old man opening a paper in the morning and claiming that "this country is going to hell". That's not new. THIS is. I am genuinely surprised by this take on HN, which is very common. Any serious historian will tell you that this is not normal.

by boh 4y ago

b112 4y ago

Yes, the 60s was far, far, far more disillusioned than this.

bsenftner 4y ago
And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. They are the institutions and they do not trust themselves, as is clear via the leadership stalemate and both parties destroying their best hopes in favor of the crumbling and ever more distant wealthy status quo.
- Clubber 4y ago
  >And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. Why do people think of an entire generation of people as a single minded entity? Might as well say, "women," or "men," or "humans." Did you know the majority of baby boomers weren't hippies? Looking at documentaries of the era, you'd think they were. Many boomers hated hippies. So which boomers are creating these divisions? The hippies or the non-hippies? >their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. This would be much more targeted (and accurate) if you said the current generation of politicians. Last time I checked, I've mostly only had two bad choices for president since I've been voting. The third choice was, "throwing away my vote." Guess who came up with that one? The politicians. When you blame a generation of people, you don't blame the people who actually have the power to make the decisions affecting our lives.
  - sleepdreamy 4y ago
    Is this sarcasm? It's truly laughable if you don't think boomers had a clear advantage in comparison to Millennials, Gen X, etc; I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did. I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my generation totally gave up and resort to 'UNFAIR MEH WON'T TRY NOW'. Am in that camp? No. I don't get upset when people generalize because it doesn't pertain to me as an individual. There is some truth to prejudice Boomers had an era of prosperity that we will never see again. My in-laws purchased their first home in 1971 for 60,000. That same home is worth 800,000+ The only reason I can even own a home or compete in my late 20's is because I wasn't naïve enough to think that any degree would pay the bills. You might not like it, but Boomers took their hoard and pulled the ladder up behind them. It is what it is.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      https://www.humanprogress.org/u-s-housing-became-much-more-affordable-over-the-last-40-years/ https://www.humanprogress.org/u-s-housing-became-much-more-a...
    - Clubber 4y ago
      >You might not like it, but Boomers took their hoard and pulled the ladder up behind them. It is what it is. And what mechanism did they use to do this exactly? >I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my generation totally gave up and resort to 'UNFAIR MEH WON'T TRY NOW'. Am in that camp? No. I don't get upset when people generalize because it doesn't pertain to me as an individual. There is some truth to prejudice Its an unwillingness to understand the predicament or situation and just blaming it on a group of people. It's pretty common throughout history; a weapon wielded by the powerful. >I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did. I'm not a Boomer.
      - ryukafalz 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jjav 4y ago
  > And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge No, "they" are not. The few people in the inner political circles of that generation are in charge, same as every other time in history. The normal hardworking people are never in charge. I remember when in middle school (Gen X here) I thought when our youth generation grows up and gets to be in charge the world will be better, because everyone I knew in school and out was so reasonable and so nice. Surely none of these people will be the corrupt politicians of tomorrow? And turns out they(we)'re not the corrupt politicians of today. Because none of those regular kids of then are in charge. Who is? The children and grandchildren of the corrupt politicians of back then, groomed from childhood to be the corrupt politicians of today. They weren't in our middle class school of course, so never met any of them. How to break that cycle? Ideally by voting for people not affiliated with the dominant two parties, but the system is rigged against that succeeding, so I don't know.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Introduce sortition or citizen's assemblies.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    As a gen-x-er I agree. I realized this year that in the last 30 years politically, NOT ONE STEP OF PROGRESS HAS HAPPENED. 30 years ago the big political issues were culture wars (Gingrich vs Clinton), row v wade, unaffordable healthcare. Guess what we have today? Culture wars, row v wade, unaffordable healthcare, unaffordable housing. Fuck, well, that's progress. If you try to support a third party things it splits the vote so much things are too divided so nothing gets done. Support a mainstream party, surprisingly, also nothing gets done. For 30 years. Before my generation they stymied the hippies. Before that the Lost Generation was just made invisible by the Greatest Generation. And the Greatest Generation was made too exhausted by fighting WW2. It is not a generational issue. I promise, no generation says 'I don't want things to be better for my kids'. It's our political class. They are garbage.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Everything that happened to a Baby Boomer was the most extreme ever. All other generations before Baby Boomers and since the Baby Boomers have had an easier time than the Baby Boomers. Their experiences are the Alpha and the Omega of human experience. When they die, the universe probably will cease to exist.
- groby_b 4y ago
  That, frankly, would be a small price to pay to stop hearing arguments about specialness of that generation.
  - elefanten 4y ago
    I’ve never heard an argument about the “specialness” of that generation? I’ve only heard the relentless shit all the younger generations started talking about Boomers at some point. Which always came as a surprise to me… If we’re going to generalize about people based on generation (bad idea, but…)— I conclude that every generation since the Boomers has been linearly weaker and less competent, in aggregate, than the generation before it. Definitely in the West, but I suspect everywhere. And no, I’m not a Boomer, I’m one of the younger ones.
    - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      >I’ve only heard the relentless shit all the younger generations started talking about Boomers at some point. Counterreaction, a lot of voices claiming to speak for boomers, or boomers themselves, have done plenty to claim "it's just young people messing up". Despite the obvious that they have been the majority voter base for decades, have more wealth as a collective, and because of their age and wealth, tend to have different incentives and opinions than the younger generations having problems to do something as simple as getting a foothold in adult life. NB: the obvious problem isn't "boomer / old", but the nature of the social game as it is (relatively or perceived zero-sum) and the haves voting against the have nots. >I conclude that every generation since the Boomers has been linearly weaker and less competent Weaker and less competent how? I assure you, for every argument you'll find, you can find another argument which would flip the script.
boh 4y ago
The idea of mass disillusionment is pretty academic. If we just think about it for a moment, it's very hard to argue that there was some cohesive, clearly articulated illusion that was shared by everyone regardless of demographic, and it was somehow lost. The narrative of mass disillusionment is more based on the limits of a historical narrative that must broadly categorize a mass of people as having a unified reaction for the sake of a simplified historical account. Disillusionment is a persistent experience for people as they grow up. The idea that one period was "more" disillusioned than another isn't a real phenomenon.
- entropicdrifter 4y ago
  I disagree with your core point entirely. Humanity is largely self-grouped by culture. Cultures fundamentally share mythologies, both about themselves and about other cultures, be they rival or friendly. What we experienced in the '60s and are experiencing right now is a dissolution of the predominant self-mythology in American culture, which was temporarily boosted to a high degree of uniformity first by the advent of mass media, then again by 9/11. That's what's causing the culture war we're all entrenched in, willing or not. American self-mythology is in a period of redefining itself. As cultural collapses go, mass media (the internet included) has caused these unprecedented waves of disillusionment happening at lightning speed compared to how they happened in the past. Historically it took massive famines to cause the degree of social unrest that modern war photos and videos can incite (as in the Vietnam era). The speed of communication is unprecedented; as a result, so is the severity of this age-old issue.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
That may have been the case among the young (coincidentally the boomers). But it would be difficult to make the case that a significant percentage of people over 30 were disillusioned in that era.
ROTMetro 4y ago
80s checking in. It was way more disillusioned too. They created a whole genre of punk music where the lyrics were basically fuck Thatcher/Reagan for a reason.

jcranberry 4y ago

Sources/reading?

juanjmanfredi 4y ago

I agree with your first two paragraphs. To the extent that our present time is at all unique, I subscribe to Robert Putnam's thesis that much of what we see today can be explained by the drop in social capital in American life over the past several decades. Less socialization means less trust in other Americans or in the government, fewer norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness, and increased polarization. There are various reasons for this, television being a prominent example. Surprisingly, it seems as though these trends were firmly in place well before the internet or 24 hour news came along.

UncleOxidant 4y ago
> There are various reasons for this, television being a prominent example. I tend to agree with the Putnam thesis, but I don't think you can lay this all on television. Until the 80s there were really only 3 viable TV/radio networks (CBS, NBC and later, ABC). If you watched the nightly news on any of those networks you got pretty much the same vision of reality. There was more variation in newspapers, but people watched a lot of TV in that era and for the most part they shared a cohesive vision.
- juanjmanfredi 4y ago
  Putnam ascribes ~25% of the drop in social capital over the past 70ish years to television's rise, but not because of fragmentation of visions of reality as you suggest. Rather, it is due to TV soaking up time that might be used to build community and social cohesion. See below for an example quote and corresponding link that goes into more detail. "Even though there are only 24 hours in everyone's day, most forms of social and media participation are positively correlated. People who listen to lots of classical music are more likely, not less likely, than others to attend Cubs games. Television is the principal exception to this generalization--the only leisure activity that seems to inhibit participation outside the home. TV watching comes at the expense of nearly every social activity outside the home, especially social gatherings and informal conversations. TV viewers are homebodies." https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/assoc/putnmtv4.html https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/assoc/putnmtv4.html

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

I think there is a real danger in just arguing basically "things have always been a shit show, empires collapse, pandemics rage, etc. etc." for a couple reasons: 1. While true, lets not ignore the fact that things get really, really, really bad during those periods where empires do collapse, or environmental damage causes ecosystem collapse, etc. etc. I mean, yes, you could argue "Hey, the Black Death killed a 3rd of Europe" and be correct, but I'm not sure what comfort that's supposed to give. Even if you want to argue that the post-war era up until, say, the 80s was an extremely unique period of progress and broad-based social advancement, that still doesn't make me feel any better if we're now in a "reversion to the mean." 2. Advanced technology does make "things collapsing" potentially much more catastrophic than in generations past. I'm not just talking about things like nuclear war, but things like the speed with which modern social media (and regular media) can pit people against each other is very different than, say, the yellow journalism periods of decades past.

newbamboo 4y ago
Why not talk about nuclear war? It’s one of several elephants in the room. The full collapse of a nuclear super power is unprecedented. Who gets the weapons?
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  Well the USSR isn't around anymore and they had quite a few nukes so....
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    But the nukes are still around. Except Ukraine gave theirs up. It's not like they had a choice.
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    I think we got lucky with that one. A special set of circumstances that are unlikely to repeat.

UncleOxidant 4y ago

> Journalism was a tawdry, un-respectable business since its conception, but experienced a brief period of valor around the mid-twentieth century And it wasn't just journalism. After WWII many veterans took advantage of the free education offered by the GI Bill. That gave us a lot of highly educated people (with no student loan debt to worry about!) who then went on to use that education to improve things. Couple this with the recent memory of fascism in Europe and The Civil Rights movement and we had sort of a golden era. We were able to live off the fumes of that era until right around the end of the 20th century. You could say that in a sense things are just returning back to a more normal state of affairs and this seems painful because many of us lived through an era that was unusually good.

treis 4y ago
I always wonder about people that post things so divorced from reality. We have five times as many college grads today as we did in 1960: https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attai...
- relaxing 4y ago
  But the claim wasnt that there aren’t more college grads now, and there’s no need for the ad hominem first sentence.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  I added the clause: "With no student loan debt to worry about!" above. That's an important aspect, I think. They could afford to get degrees in subjects that may not have paid all that well (teaching, for example) where as now people have to consider how they're going to pay back that debt and choose degrees in fields that will enable them to do so.
  - techsupporter 4y ago
    > They could afford to get degrees in subjects that may not have paid all that well (teaching, for example) I also wonder how much of that growth is from high school students being told to go to college above all else, and how this graduation increase corresponds to enrollment and graduation from vocational schools. I do think your point is the big one: people could go into college and come out with knowledge in the so-called soft skills, like philosophy or literature (areas that don't pay well but are vital for a society to understand itself, if nothing else). Why society doesn't value teaching and similar jobs as much as it does other industries is left as a debate for another time.

deltarholamda 4y ago

All fair points. The change, as I see it, is the speed at which information flows. The old saying about how a lie can circle the world before the truth gets its trousers on applies. Only now, the lie can travel at the speed of light. Narratives have a very strong early-mover bias. The OPs point about things starting to crack in the Obama years rings true. For all of his positive points, there is nothing in Obama's resume that suggests he was qualified to be President. He was the first President to be memed into office. The press loved to talk about how adept the campaign was in utilizing the Internet to mobilize and motivate supporters. Everybody took notice, and now the narrative battle happens online, at Internet speeds. This is a terrible, terrible idea. Unless you're some kind of otherworldly genius, taking in all of the input and coming to a rational opinion weighing all the pros and cons is impossible. So, like a black-box AI algorithm, people come up with opinions based on odd things like who has a more insulting neologism for their opponent, or whatever. The "collective amnesia" you mention also occurs at Internet speeds. What was major news on Tuesday is fishwrap by Thursday, replaced with something else. There's no value in revisiting it, so whatever narrative gets entrenched is it. I don't think there's a solution for any of this, short of a CME wiping out everything more technological than a shovel.

papito 4y ago

With all due respect, this is not some in-the-moment emotionally-colored thing. Months after America has almost lost its democracy for good, we are just now finding out that we were extremely lucky that it all worked out this time. So, no, it's not just an old man opening a paper in the morning and claiming that "this country is going to hell". That's not new. THIS is. I am genuinely surprised by this take on HN, which is very common. Any serious historian will tell you that this is not normal.