6 ms·

I'm not familiar with the context of the quote but I've never taken the "strong men" part to mean "powerful armies". Rather, hard times (economic depression, w

I'm not familiar with the context of the quote but I've never taken the "strong men" part to mean "powerful armies". Rather, hard times (economic depression, warfare, disease, etc.) creating strong men meant creating toughness, resilience, patience and conservatism in society. The endurance of these events would eventually (somehow) allow the next generation to have its progress and luxuries; peace, economic prosperity, education. But easy times create comfort, arrogance, impatience, over-leverage; spoiled people don't know how good they have it, and so they think it'll last forever. It gets taken away from them, and they fight amongst each other about whose fault it is that everything is slipping away (blame immigrants, blame opposing parties, blame foreign powers, general polarization and divisiveness; them vs us). Everything goes to shit, and the cycle is renewed.

watwut 4y ago
The background of the quote is fictional books. In reality, generations that grew in tough times have more issues in general. They drink more, commit more crimes, more violence, have more mental health issues, you name it. Wars dont make people better. They make people desperate, resentful, hateful due to all the suffering and inability to get help. Notably, WWII was started by generation that went though WWI. Generation after WWI had more terrorist acts. Oh, and war in Ukraine was started by Russia - country that average person is far from living in luxury or economic prosperity.
SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
We know statistically that economic depression, warfare, and disease don’t create toughness, resilience, etc. in society. The most economically depressed, war-torn, disease-ravaged countries are not known for being particularly resilient nor are they known for producing particularly wealthy subsequent generations.
- brutusborn 4y ago
  Can you clarify? I don't think you can say "we know statistically" about economic history. I'd call that epistemological arrogance.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    I mean, empirical evidence exists as it is now. We can look at the most wealthy countries and determine if they were the most impoverished ones a generation ago. We can look at the most impoverished nations and look if they were the wealthiest ones a generation ago.
    - brutusborn 4y ago
      Ah I see our point of difference, you are thinking of intergenerational change whereas I interpret the quote as multigenerational, societal change.
      - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
        If we look multigenerationally, the longest-living nations are still the nations that can maintain a high quality of life the longest. It is frankly nonsensical to say that nations fall because they reached a high point; of course they can only fall if they have someplace to fall from.
- scottiebarnes 4y ago
  How do we measure toughness, resilience, etc.? Is wealth the only metric of success? Anecdotally, in my experience through athletics, I would describe groups of athletes from certain countries to be certainly tougher. They train harder, they endure more, they have less access to quality nutrition, medicine, equipment, etc. And yet they accomplish more despite having less. You can't phase or intimidate them because they've already endured far worse. Ex: Dagestani wrestlers, Thai kick boxers. So while this is a hyper-granular examination, the rewards are going to those "strong men" who endured "hard times". Of course there's a lot of selection bias going on here as well.
simiones 4y ago
I'm not sure what the original meaning is supposed to be either. Still, even taking it the way you say, the quote is false. Poor and weakened societies tend to get lost in vicious cycles, and tend to create damaged people who struggle for the rest of their lives with the effects of the shock - ill, relying on vices, corrupt etc. It takes huge luck and hard work to transition back to a successful, prosperous and healthy society. Conversely, societies that become wealthy and successful tend to continue that way for a very long time, and they create healthy and ethical people much more readily. This can be easily seen in recent history by looking at post-USSR states vs Western Europe & the USA. By any measure, people living in Western Europe for example in 1989 were living much easier times than those behind the Iron Curtain. Still, even today, 33 years later, Western Europe is vastly more wealthy, culturally active, healthy, more powerful militarily and in every conceivable way than former Soviet bloc countries - especially the former USSR ones. One of the most important wounds that hard times leave in a society is an extreme form of screw-you-got-mine individualism. This leads to people who are willing to do anything to succeed and grow above others - especially manifested as corruption and nepotism at every level. When you have lived through times you either take what you can or die of hunger, you can't afford to care for rules or others' well-being (except your own family).
- brutusborn 4y ago
  I agree with your idea, that society has an inertia so it is hard to make progress once in a rut, but I don't think it is mutually exclusive with the quote. Just think on longer timescales; with your example of the US and Western Europe, I would argue that they are in the process of weak men making hard times. The soviet countries are the opposite, strong men are now improving things. It's only been 30 years since the USSR collapsed. It took Rome centuries to fall from it's peak, why would the west be any different? Another issue is that in modern times the richest people in poor countries tend to move to rich countries eventually. Immigrants are often the hardest workers and the most entrepreneurial.
  - ChadNauseam 4y ago
    In that case, you might just be getting confused by regression to the mean. Over a long enough timescale, it's inevitable that outlier societies will regress back to being average. That would look like especially prosperous societies and especially poor societies becoming average, which you could mistakenly interpret as "they became average because they were weak from decadence/strong from adversity".

watwut 4y ago

The background of the quote is fictional books. In reality, generations that grew in tough times have more issues in general. They drink more, commit more crimes, more violence, have more mental health issues, you name it. Wars dont make people better. They make people desperate, resentful, hateful due to all the suffering and inability to get help. Notably, WWII was started by generation that went though WWI. Generation after WWI had more terrorist acts. Oh, and war in Ukraine was started by Russia - country that average person is far from living in luxury or economic prosperity.

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago

We know statistically that economic depression, warfare, and disease don’t create toughness, resilience, etc. in society. The most economically depressed, war-torn, disease-ravaged countries are not known for being particularly resilient nor are they known for producing particularly wealthy subsequent generations.

brutusborn 4y ago
Can you clarify? I don't think you can say "we know statistically" about economic history. I'd call that epistemological arrogance.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  I mean, empirical evidence exists as it is now. We can look at the most wealthy countries and determine if they were the most impoverished ones a generation ago. We can look at the most impoverished nations and look if they were the wealthiest ones a generation ago.
  - brutusborn 4y ago
    Ah I see our point of difference, you are thinking of intergenerational change whereas I interpret the quote as multigenerational, societal change.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      If we look multigenerationally, the longest-living nations are still the nations that can maintain a high quality of life the longest. It is frankly nonsensical to say that nations fall because they reached a high point; of course they can only fall if they have someplace to fall from.
scottiebarnes 4y ago
How do we measure toughness, resilience, etc.? Is wealth the only metric of success? Anecdotally, in my experience through athletics, I would describe groups of athletes from certain countries to be certainly tougher. They train harder, they endure more, they have less access to quality nutrition, medicine, equipment, etc. And yet they accomplish more despite having less. You can't phase or intimidate them because they've already endured far worse. Ex: Dagestani wrestlers, Thai kick boxers. So while this is a hyper-granular examination, the rewards are going to those "strong men" who endured "hard times". Of course there's a lot of selection bias going on here as well.

simiones 4y ago

I'm not sure what the original meaning is supposed to be either. Still, even taking it the way you say, the quote is false. Poor and weakened societies tend to get lost in vicious cycles, and tend to create damaged people who struggle for the rest of their lives with the effects of the shock - ill, relying on vices, corrupt etc. It takes huge luck and hard work to transition back to a successful, prosperous and healthy society. Conversely, societies that become wealthy and successful tend to continue that way for a very long time, and they create healthy and ethical people much more readily. This can be easily seen in recent history by looking at post-USSR states vs Western Europe & the USA. By any measure, people living in Western Europe for example in 1989 were living much easier times than those behind the Iron Curtain. Still, even today, 33 years later, Western Europe is vastly more wealthy, culturally active, healthy, more powerful militarily and in every conceivable way than former Soviet bloc countries - especially the former USSR ones. One of the most important wounds that hard times leave in a society is an extreme form of screw-you-got-mine individualism. This leads to people who are willing to do anything to succeed and grow above others - especially manifested as corruption and nepotism at every level. When you have lived through times you either take what you can or die of hunger, you can't afford to care for rules or others' well-being (except your own family).

brutusborn 4y ago
I agree with your idea, that society has an inertia so it is hard to make progress once in a rut, but I don't think it is mutually exclusive with the quote. Just think on longer timescales; with your example of the US and Western Europe, I would argue that they are in the process of weak men making hard times. The soviet countries are the opposite, strong men are now improving things. It's only been 30 years since the USSR collapsed. It took Rome centuries to fall from it's peak, why would the west be any different? Another issue is that in modern times the richest people in poor countries tend to move to rich countries eventually. Immigrants are often the hardest workers and the most entrepreneurial.
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  In that case, you might just be getting confused by regression to the mean. Over a long enough timescale, it's inevitable that outlier societies will regress back to being average. That would look like especially prosperous societies and especially poor societies becoming average, which you could mistakenly interpret as "they became average because they were weak from decadence/strong from adversity".