6 ms·

> Many modern political problems stem from people needing something to struggle for and other people fighting against it. Reminds me of the lines in Fight Club

> Many modern political problems stem from people needing something to struggle for and other people fighting against it. Reminds me of the lines in Fight Club: "We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives." I'm not sure if that precise quote is in the book, but it's certainly in the movie and it echoes your sentiment and those above.

refurb 4y ago
And the saying “Good times create weak men”. And it’s true. You often see a growing discontent among wealthy societies where everything is taken care of. People need purpose in what they do and “my purpose is to fight for the survival of my country” is a pretty compelling one to many people.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  > wealthy societies where everything is taken care of. Which ones would they be? The one that I live most of my time in, Norway, does not seem to have growing discontent, yet it is quite definitely closer to "everything is taken care of" than others, such as the UK, where "growing discontent" seems to be a thing. So unless you can name those that "You often see" I don't think the idea can be taken seriously.
  - alex_sf 4y ago
    > The one that I live most of my time in, Norway, does not seem to have growing discontent The mass shooting and terrorism rate there increasing seems like a reasonable counter to that idea. Along with steady suicide rates despite massively increasing spending on it.
    - magicalist 4y ago
      > The mass shooting singular > and terrorism rate there increasing er, no? > Along with steady suicide rates So not growing, then. I don't think anyone's going to argue Norway has solved society but let's not twist things to try to fit someone's off the cuff head canon.
      - gjm11 4y ago
        Pretty sure it's meant to be parsed as "(mass shooting and terrorism) rate": that is, he's claiming that the rate of mass-shootings and the rate of terrorist atrocities are both increasing. I don't know whether either part of that is true, but if it's wrong what's wrong isn't that "mass shooting" is singular. (And if, as grandparent claims, suicide rates are "steady [] despite massively increasing spending on it", that does seem like evidence of something getting worse. Again, I don't know whether it's actually true and I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't, but the criticism here doesn't seem fair.)
      - alex_sf 4y ago
        While I do love the quote line-by-line format, you are splitting up sentences and completely changing my post, which is, at least, in bad faith. > singular ... er, no? Mass shooting and terrorism _rate_. Are you familiar with the concept of a rate? Also, 'mass shooting' is very much not singular, unless you have an exceptionally short memory. > So not growing, then. You are, again, changing what I wrote. Here, let me fix that for you: > Along with steady suicide rates despite massively increasing spending on it.
        nl 4y ago
        > The mass shooting and terrorism rate there increasing There have been 4 "mass shootings" in Norway[1] One in 1988 (4 deaths) - perpetrator was insane, with no motive One in 2011 (77 killed) - perpetrator was a Neo-Nazi terrorist One in 2021 (5 killed) - perpetrator was insane, with no motive One in 2022 (2 killed) - perpetrator was an Islamic terrorist The rate per year there is so low that any real attempt to measure the rate is lost in random variations. I think it's fair to say the rate is higher over the last 20 years than the previous 20 but beyond that is difficult. And I don't think you can draw any substantive conclusions from that. > Along with steady suicide rates despite massively increasing spending on it. Suicide rates have declined substantially since the 1990s. "From 1990 to 2000 the suicide rate declined and stabilized at the levels that we have today. In 2020, the suicide rate was 12.3 per 100 000 inhabitants. This is 25 per cent lower than in 1990 when the rate was 16.4 per 100,000 inhabitants" It is now roughly the same as most Western countries, and much lower than Finland or in Eastern Europe, Russia, China or Japan. One could argue that shows Norway has been successful in reducing suicide and that ~10/100,000 people is a floor. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_in_Nor... [2] https://www.fhi.no/en/op/hin/mental-health/suicide/ https://www.fhi.no/en/op/hin/mental-health/suicide/
- linspace 4y ago
  > Good times create weak men They give you strong science, economy and as a byproduct strong military. > You often see a growing discontent among wealthy societies where everything is taken care of. Like in Sri-Lanka, what a decadent society.
  - refurb 4y ago
    When the wheels fall off (Sri Lanka does have a history of stability long ago) it’s hard to get them back on. Sri Lanka’s problems go back decades.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      The fallen off wheels create bad times, which create all these stong men, ready to slap the wheels right back on, right?
      - refurb 4y ago
        Exactly. It’s not always the right strong men, but strong men certainly come out of adversity.
    - kergonath 4y ago
      So, the problems in Sri Lanka now are due to its former prosperity? And at the same time the problems have been there for decades? This sounds like trying too hard to see a pattern. In reality, the situation in Sri Lanka has been awful for quite a while, as you note, and the current discontent has nothing to do with life there being too cushy. Bad times necessarily follow good times at some point, if only because of regression to the mean. No need to read too much into this.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > “Good times create weak men” Convert it to any form of observable, measurable phenomena, and you will see it doesn't make any sence. How do we measure 'strength' of a man - perhaps military success? Then best fighters should come from background of poverty and deprivation - is that true? Medieval knights and samurai were the best of their time, did they recruit recruit starving peasans? No, they were a social class and were offered the best training and considerable social cloud. Commanders and officers where basically a nobility. Well, perhaps those social institutions didn't recruit the best, what about sports - if this statement was actually true, we should find best MMA fighters in places where they encounter tought times, like Russia or Somalia. Does that match observation - do they win all the MMA championships or something? It doesn't. Maybe 'strong men' means being morally upstanding and doing what's right, even when it is going to cost you? If this were true, we'd expect to see less corruption and fewer crimes in communities that are poorer, right? Does that sound like the world we live in? Bad times only create bad things - they create uneducated, malnurished, and psycologically damanged people, and they lead to violence. Anything good that ever happens, happens in spite of them, not because of them.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    > Medieval knights and samurai were the best of their time, did they recruit recruit starving peasans? The best fighters of the Medieval period were probably the Mongols. But even Medieval knights and Samurai were often leading lives that were so rough that it's hard for most modern people to realize it. And they knew that if they failed to train properly, that in the next war (which was probably coming soon), they were likely to die first. > No, they were a social class and were offered the best training and considerable social cloud. Commanders and officers where basically a nobility. During times of war, capable warriors tend(ed) to increase their rank. Capable yeomen can become men-at-arms, men-at-arms can be knighted, knights can become commanders and maybe given a barony, on so on. Such soldiers might certainly provide good training to their sons, making this multi-generational. > we should find best MMA fighters in places where they encounter tought times If you look at the backgrounds of a large set of MMA fighters, you would find that a LOT of them come from rough working-class conditions. (Or at least they did when I stopped following MMA about 10 years ago). For practitioners of golf, tennis or polo, you will find more upper class people, of course. > Maybe 'strong men' means being morally upstanding and doing what's right, even when it is going to cost you? 'Strong' men tend to develop strong codes of honor, that may be considered un-empathetic or even brutal in civilized societies. Look at present day Afghanistan. 50 years of almost constant conflict has hammered the Taliban fighters into such a group. Their sense of morality is quite different from the western sense, but they seem to feel it very strongly. Currently, opium production is being shut down at a high rate, for instance. Whether or not their sense of honor will lead to prosperity over the longer term remains to be seen. > If this were true, we'd expect to see less corruption and fewer crimes in communities that are poorer, right? Maybe that will be the outcome 500 years from now. But short term, corruption and crimes lead to poverty faster than poverty leads to a strengthening of moral character, so such cycles may take a long time. > Bad times only create bad things - they create uneducated, malnurished, and psycologically damanged people, and they lead to violence. Anything good that ever happens, happens in spite of them, not because of them. Really bad times also remove the damaged people from the population, either by death or inability to have offspring, partly because of that violence you mentioned. Over Darwinian time that is an absolute necessity to keep random genetic drift (random mutations) from destroying the gene pool. Over shorter periods, the same MAY be the same for the "meme pool", to use the Dawkins original use of "meme". Cultural shifts that accumulate randomly over time are likely to result in a reduction of social and economical robustness in an area. Only when a society is under some survivial pressure, will cultural elements that reduce the "fitness" of the culture be weeded out. External pressure can lead to increased group cohesion, while economic downturns CAN lead to improvement of economic organization. Or, if a culture is not able to build robustness against such preassures, it can collapse and be replaced by a new culture. Now, I'm looking at these things like a biologist would when describing animal populations. I'm not making the claim that the societies created by "strong men" are morally superior to older civilizations where men have become "soft" or "weak". My point is rather that if a civilization makes life very easy for the inhabitants, if will over time lead to the same outcome that you will get if you start feeding wild animals. Eventually, those "wild" animals will come to depend on beeing fed, and may face extinction if the food stops arriving. If what you want is a pet, that's ok. If you want to ensure a sustainable species, you really have to limit the amount of food and other help you provide to wild animals.
- bobkazamakis 4y ago
  > And the saying “Good times create weak men”. Ah yes, the the folks partying around in the 1920s were sure weak and certainly had no other events to deal within their lifetime.
- kergonath 4y ago
  > And the saying “Good times create weak men”. And it’s true. It is not. This is utterly, completely, and demonstrably false. You can have a read here if you want to convince yourself: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/ https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
- nl 4y ago
  Ironically Orwell warned specifically against this kind of "strength worship" > The interconnexion between sadism, masochism, success-worship, power-worship, nationalism, and totalitarianism is a huge subject whose edges have barely been scratched, and even to mention it is considered somewhat indelicate. [snip] The truth is, of course, that the countless English intellectuals who kiss the arse of Stalin are not different from the minority who give their allegiance to Hitler or Mussolini, nor from the efficiency experts who preached 'punch', 'drive', 'personality' and 'learn to be a Tiger man' in the nineteen-twenties, nor from that older generation of intellectuals, Carlyle, Creasey and the rest of them, who bowed down before German militarism. All of them are worshipping power and successful cruelty.

refurb 4y ago

And the saying “Good times create weak men”. And it’s true. You often see a growing discontent among wealthy societies where everything is taken care of. People need purpose in what they do and “my purpose is to fight for the survival of my country” is a pretty compelling one to many people.

kwhitefoot 4y ago
> wealthy societies where everything is taken care of. Which ones would they be? The one that I live most of my time in, Norway, does not seem to have growing discontent, yet it is quite definitely closer to "everything is taken care of" than others, such as the UK, where "growing discontent" seems to be a thing. So unless you can name those that "You often see" I don't think the idea can be taken seriously.
- alex_sf 4y ago
  > The one that I live most of my time in, Norway, does not seem to have growing discontent The mass shooting and terrorism rate there increasing seems like a reasonable counter to that idea. Along with steady suicide rates despite massively increasing spending on it.
  - magicalist 4y ago
    > The mass shooting singular > and terrorism rate there increasing er, no? > Along with steady suicide rates So not growing, then. I don't think anyone's going to argue Norway has solved society but let's not twist things to try to fit someone's off the cuff head canon.
    - gjm11 4y ago
      Pretty sure it's meant to be parsed as "(mass shooting and terrorism) rate": that is, he's claiming that the rate of mass-shootings and the rate of terrorist atrocities are both increasing. I don't know whether either part of that is true, but if it's wrong what's wrong isn't that "mass shooting" is singular. (And if, as grandparent claims, suicide rates are "steady [] despite massively increasing spending on it", that does seem like evidence of something getting worse. Again, I don't know whether it's actually true and I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't, but the criticism here doesn't seem fair.)
    - alex_sf 4y ago
      While I do love the quote line-by-line format, you are splitting up sentences and completely changing my post, which is, at least, in bad faith. > singular ... er, no? Mass shooting and terrorism _rate_. Are you familiar with the concept of a rate? Also, 'mass shooting' is very much not singular, unless you have an exceptionally short memory. > So not growing, then. You are, again, changing what I wrote. Here, let me fix that for you: > Along with steady suicide rates despite massively increasing spending on it.
      - nl 4y ago
        > The mass shooting and terrorism rate there increasing There have been 4 "mass shootings" in Norway[1] One in 1988 (4 deaths) - perpetrator was insane, with no motive One in 2011 (77 killed) - perpetrator was a Neo-Nazi terrorist One in 2021 (5 killed) - perpetrator was insane, with no motive One in 2022 (2 killed) - perpetrator was an Islamic terrorist The rate per year there is so low that any real attempt to measure the rate is lost in random variations. I think it's fair to say the rate is higher over the last 20 years than the previous 20 but beyond that is difficult. And I don't think you can draw any substantive conclusions from that. > Along with steady suicide rates despite massively increasing spending on it. Suicide rates have declined substantially since the 1990s. "From 1990 to 2000 the suicide rate declined and stabilized at the levels that we have today. In 2020, the suicide rate was 12.3 per 100 000 inhabitants. This is 25 per cent lower than in 1990 when the rate was 16.4 per 100,000 inhabitants" It is now roughly the same as most Western countries, and much lower than Finland or in Eastern Europe, Russia, China or Japan. One could argue that shows Norway has been successful in reducing suicide and that ~10/100,000 people is a floor. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_in_Nor... [2] https://www.fhi.no/en/op/hin/mental-health/suicide/ https://www.fhi.no/en/op/hin/mental-health/suicide/
linspace 4y ago
> Good times create weak men They give you strong science, economy and as a byproduct strong military. > You often see a growing discontent among wealthy societies where everything is taken care of. Like in Sri-Lanka, what a decadent society.
- refurb 4y ago
  When the wheels fall off (Sri Lanka does have a history of stability long ago) it’s hard to get them back on. Sri Lanka’s problems go back decades.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    The fallen off wheels create bad times, which create all these stong men, ready to slap the wheels right back on, right?
    - refurb 4y ago
      Exactly. It’s not always the right strong men, but strong men certainly come out of adversity.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    So, the problems in Sri Lanka now are due to its former prosperity? And at the same time the problems have been there for decades? This sounds like trying too hard to see a pattern. In reality, the situation in Sri Lanka has been awful for quite a while, as you note, and the current discontent has nothing to do with life there being too cushy. Bad times necessarily follow good times at some point, if only because of regression to the mean. No need to read too much into this.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> “Good times create weak men” Convert it to any form of observable, measurable phenomena, and you will see it doesn't make any sence. How do we measure 'strength' of a man - perhaps military success? Then best fighters should come from background of poverty and deprivation - is that true? Medieval knights and samurai were the best of their time, did they recruit recruit starving peasans? No, they were a social class and were offered the best training and considerable social cloud. Commanders and officers where basically a nobility. Well, perhaps those social institutions didn't recruit the best, what about sports - if this statement was actually true, we should find best MMA fighters in places where they encounter tought times, like Russia or Somalia. Does that match observation - do they win all the MMA championships or something? It doesn't. Maybe 'strong men' means being morally upstanding and doing what's right, even when it is going to cost you? If this were true, we'd expect to see less corruption and fewer crimes in communities that are poorer, right? Does that sound like the world we live in? Bad times only create bad things - they create uneducated, malnurished, and psycologically damanged people, and they lead to violence. Anything good that ever happens, happens in spite of them, not because of them.
- trashtester 4y ago
  > Medieval knights and samurai were the best of their time, did they recruit recruit starving peasans? The best fighters of the Medieval period were probably the Mongols. But even Medieval knights and Samurai were often leading lives that were so rough that it's hard for most modern people to realize it. And they knew that if they failed to train properly, that in the next war (which was probably coming soon), they were likely to die first. > No, they were a social class and were offered the best training and considerable social cloud. Commanders and officers where basically a nobility. During times of war, capable warriors tend(ed) to increase their rank. Capable yeomen can become men-at-arms, men-at-arms can be knighted, knights can become commanders and maybe given a barony, on so on. Such soldiers might certainly provide good training to their sons, making this multi-generational. > we should find best MMA fighters in places where they encounter tought times If you look at the backgrounds of a large set of MMA fighters, you would find that a LOT of them come from rough working-class conditions. (Or at least they did when I stopped following MMA about 10 years ago). For practitioners of golf, tennis or polo, you will find more upper class people, of course. > Maybe 'strong men' means being morally upstanding and doing what's right, even when it is going to cost you? 'Strong' men tend to develop strong codes of honor, that may be considered un-empathetic or even brutal in civilized societies. Look at present day Afghanistan. 50 years of almost constant conflict has hammered the Taliban fighters into such a group. Their sense of morality is quite different from the western sense, but they seem to feel it very strongly. Currently, opium production is being shut down at a high rate, for instance. Whether or not their sense of honor will lead to prosperity over the longer term remains to be seen. > If this were true, we'd expect to see less corruption and fewer crimes in communities that are poorer, right? Maybe that will be the outcome 500 years from now. But short term, corruption and crimes lead to poverty faster than poverty leads to a strengthening of moral character, so such cycles may take a long time. > Bad times only create bad things - they create uneducated, malnurished, and psycologically damanged people, and they lead to violence. Anything good that ever happens, happens in spite of them, not because of them. Really bad times also remove the damaged people from the population, either by death or inability to have offspring, partly because of that violence you mentioned. Over Darwinian time that is an absolute necessity to keep random genetic drift (random mutations) from destroying the gene pool. Over shorter periods, the same MAY be the same for the "meme pool", to use the Dawkins original use of "meme". Cultural shifts that accumulate randomly over time are likely to result in a reduction of social and economical robustness in an area. Only when a society is under some survivial pressure, will cultural elements that reduce the "fitness" of the culture be weeded out. External pressure can lead to increased group cohesion, while economic downturns CAN lead to improvement of economic organization. Or, if a culture is not able to build robustness against such preassures, it can collapse and be replaced by a new culture. Now, I'm looking at these things like a biologist would when describing animal populations. I'm not making the claim that the societies created by "strong men" are morally superior to older civilizations where men have become "soft" or "weak". My point is rather that if a civilization makes life very easy for the inhabitants, if will over time lead to the same outcome that you will get if you start feeding wild animals. Eventually, those "wild" animals will come to depend on beeing fed, and may face extinction if the food stops arriving. If what you want is a pet, that's ok. If you want to ensure a sustainable species, you really have to limit the amount of food and other help you provide to wild animals.
bobkazamakis 4y ago
> And the saying “Good times create weak men”. Ah yes, the the folks partying around in the 1920s were sure weak and certainly had no other events to deal within their lifetime.
kergonath 4y ago
> And the saying “Good times create weak men”. And it’s true. It is not. This is utterly, completely, and demonstrably false. You can have a read here if you want to convince yourself: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/ https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
nl 4y ago
Ironically Orwell warned specifically against this kind of "strength worship" > The interconnexion between sadism, masochism, success-worship, power-worship, nationalism, and totalitarianism is a huge subject whose edges have barely been scratched, and even to mention it is considered somewhat indelicate. [snip] The truth is, of course, that the countless English intellectuals who kiss the arse of Stalin are not different from the minority who give their allegiance to Hitler or Mussolini, nor from the efficiency experts who preached 'punch', 'drive', 'personality' and 'learn to be a Tiger man' in the nineteen-twenties, nor from that older generation of intellectuals, Carlyle, Creasey and the rest of them, who bowed down before German militarism. All of them are worshipping power and successful cruelty.