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Ben Page, the boss of Ipsos, a global research firm, points to what he terms the “loss of the future”, common across the West but acute in Britain. In 2008, as

Ben Page, the boss of Ipsos, a global research firm, points to what he terms the “loss of the future”, common across the West but acute in Britain. In 2008, as the financial crisis struck, only 12% of Britons thought youngsters would have a worse quality of life than their parents, Mr Page notes. Now that figure is 41%. As elsewhere, people worry about immigration and feel threatened by globalisation. All this makes Britain’s predicament seem less an inside job than part of a wider takedown of democracy. It is remarkable, such a wordy article, could really begin and end with the above paragraph. We are in uncharted territory, new problems require new ideas but even now public discourse is entirely retrograde and focused on squabbling between two incompetent parties, personalities, scandals and self flagellation. Like lemmings off a cliff. I think I've never heard anybody in recent years even attempt to discuss the future of UK without simply falling back on whinging about Thatcher or Corbin or the sins of empire or god knows what. None of it relevant. Imagine instead you are playing Civilization or Factorio, and this is day 0. Only looking forwards, how do you thrive economically in the 21st century under these current conditions with the cards you have to play?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
BMc2020 4y ago
Thank you for reading that meandering near stream-of-consciousness bit of fluff so the rest of us don't have to.
- rawgabbit 4y ago
  I got dumber after reading the article.
grog454 4y ago
> this is day 0. Only looking forwards, how do you thrive economically in the 21st century under these current conditions with the cards you have to play Counterpoint: how do you avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and learning from them by pretending they never happened?
- mistermann 4y ago
  Not pretending/perceiving that the memetic/reductive/imprecise/misinformative/incorrect way we describe them is accurate would be a good start. Human communication in 2022 is a train wreck, and there are plentiful artifacts of that in this very thread, in this much more intelligent than average community.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    It seems to me that Human communication declines the more it becomes divorced from the threat of physical violence. The peak decline will be when the possibility of consequences (social, physical, legal, financial…) for communicating anything reaches absolute zero. Human communication is a great tool but must be kept in check, the goal of communication is to produce useful outcomes, not merely deliver messages and opinions.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      Your comment seems especially prescient if read in the context of the insane asylum going on in the "Twitter suspends pg's account" thread - what a time to be alive. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34044047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34044047
amanaplanacanal 4y ago
The end of the fossil fuel era is going to hit everybody. Making sure you are ready for that seems like a good start.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  It will only hit those nations in the West that succumb to it. Eurasia is doing fine with stable and reliable power, continuing to both increase fossil fuel usage and build out nuclear power at the same time. Africa is ramping up. Latin America is the wild card. Most of the world is going to keep on using fossil fuels, looking at what happened to Europe as an object lesson of becoming so rich that you forget what is foundational, indulge in religious fantasies -- and commit economic suicide. In this sense the energy sanctions, while destroying the British and German economies, are a blessing to the rest of the world, because it provides a very clear picture of what happens when you go down this road. This is why China, India, and Japan are rushing to secure long term oil and gas contracts, and many nations in Africa and Asia are joining them in prioritizing secure fossil fuel providers even as they seek to build out more nuclear in order to reduce dependence on foreign inputs. See https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/ https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/ for detailed projections out to 2050 of different regions. Britain and Germany are the main object lessons in this regard, but it's certainly not "the world".
  - namdnay 4y ago
    I don’t see what religion has got to do with it? Europe is hardly the most religious part of the world Maybe Europe is just rich enough to be willing to sacrifice some of that to help others by reducing their emissions (or at least not harm them as much). Maybe Europe feels a certain responsibility, having started emitting carbon in the first place
    - tjpnz 4y ago
      They're strongly suggesting that climate change is a religious fantasy.
matkoniecz 4y ago
> Like lemmings off a cliff. I just want to mention that actual lemmings are not doing this. This was faked by Disney employees throwing lemmings out off a cliff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)#Contro...
- recuter 4y ago
  Meanwhile, actual lemmings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2-vPg1_nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2-vPg1_nw
  - gpderetta 4y ago
    What an absolute masterpiece!
- Lio 4y ago
  I once went to a very posh Disney themed fancy dress party dressed as a lemming. When explained why the host’s family were not amused. :P Never. Trust. Disney.
  - phist_mcgee 4y ago
    As an aside, it makes me very uneasy to see grown adults be so infatuated with Disney IPs. The quote from Alec Guinness about Star Wars in his autobiography: “A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having. The first bad penny dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode. 'I would love you to do something for me,' I said. 'Anything! Anything!' the boy said rapturously. 'You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,' I said. 'Anything, sir, anything!' 'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.” I think about that a lot when seeing the lengths many adults go to immersing themselves into these "cinematic universes" `
xhevahir 4y ago
This isn't a new phenomenon, and, as the author mentions, is not peculiar to the UK. When I was a 13-year-old in 1992 an eccentric science teacher would remind my class nearly every week that ours was the first American generation that was expected to enjoy a worse standard of living than our parents had. (Going back even farther you could point to popular expressions like the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen;" people have been talking like this for a long time.) I remember reading for the first time about the loss of the future as a frame of reference in this article, which I thought was very interesting but it now unfortunately seems to be only available behind a paywall: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/110330889900700102 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/110330889900700102 . Anyway, I think this sort of thing happens independently of the specific vagaries of politics and economics in any country: change is taking place quickly, on a grand scale, in societies where ordinary people are enjoined to think about the course of events over which they, individually, have little control.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

BMc2020 4y ago

Thank you for reading that meandering near stream-of-consciousness bit of fluff so the rest of us don't have to.

rawgabbit 4y ago
I got dumber after reading the article.

grog454 4y ago

> this is day 0. Only looking forwards, how do you thrive economically in the 21st century under these current conditions with the cards you have to play Counterpoint: how do you avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and learning from them by pretending they never happened?

mistermann 4y ago
Not pretending/perceiving that the memetic/reductive/imprecise/misinformative/incorrect way we describe them is accurate would be a good start. Human communication in 2022 is a train wreck, and there are plentiful artifacts of that in this very thread, in this much more intelligent than average community.
- xwdv 4y ago
  It seems to me that Human communication declines the more it becomes divorced from the threat of physical violence. The peak decline will be when the possibility of consequences (social, physical, legal, financial…) for communicating anything reaches absolute zero. Human communication is a great tool but must be kept in check, the goal of communication is to produce useful outcomes, not merely deliver messages and opinions.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    Your comment seems especially prescient if read in the context of the insane asylum going on in the "Twitter suspends pg's account" thread - what a time to be alive. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34044047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34044047

amanaplanacanal 4y ago

The end of the fossil fuel era is going to hit everybody. Making sure you are ready for that seems like a good start.

rsj_hn 4y ago
It will only hit those nations in the West that succumb to it. Eurasia is doing fine with stable and reliable power, continuing to both increase fossil fuel usage and build out nuclear power at the same time. Africa is ramping up. Latin America is the wild card. Most of the world is going to keep on using fossil fuels, looking at what happened to Europe as an object lesson of becoming so rich that you forget what is foundational, indulge in religious fantasies -- and commit economic suicide. In this sense the energy sanctions, while destroying the British and German economies, are a blessing to the rest of the world, because it provides a very clear picture of what happens when you go down this road. This is why China, India, and Japan are rushing to secure long term oil and gas contracts, and many nations in Africa and Asia are joining them in prioritizing secure fossil fuel providers even as they seek to build out more nuclear in order to reduce dependence on foreign inputs. See https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/ https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/ for detailed projections out to 2050 of different regions. Britain and Germany are the main object lessons in this regard, but it's certainly not "the world".
- namdnay 4y ago
  I don’t see what religion has got to do with it? Europe is hardly the most religious part of the world Maybe Europe is just rich enough to be willing to sacrifice some of that to help others by reducing their emissions (or at least not harm them as much). Maybe Europe feels a certain responsibility, having started emitting carbon in the first place
  - tjpnz 4y ago
    They're strongly suggesting that climate change is a religious fantasy.

matkoniecz 4y ago

> Like lemmings off a cliff. I just want to mention that actual lemmings are not doing this. This was faked by Disney employees throwing lemmings out off a cliff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming#Misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)#Contro...

recuter 4y ago
Meanwhile, actual lemmings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2-vPg1_nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2-vPg1_nw
- gpderetta 4y ago
  What an absolute masterpiece!
Lio 4y ago
I once went to a very posh Disney themed fancy dress party dressed as a lemming. When explained why the host’s family were not amused. :P Never. Trust. Disney.
- phist_mcgee 4y ago
  As an aside, it makes me very uneasy to see grown adults be so infatuated with Disney IPs. The quote from Alec Guinness about Star Wars in his autobiography: “A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having. The first bad penny dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode. 'I would love you to do something for me,' I said. 'Anything! Anything!' the boy said rapturously. 'You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,' I said. 'Anything, sir, anything!' 'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.” I think about that a lot when seeing the lengths many adults go to immersing themselves into these "cinematic universes" `

xhevahir 4y ago

This isn't a new phenomenon, and, as the author mentions, is not peculiar to the UK. When I was a 13-year-old in 1992 an eccentric science teacher would remind my class nearly every week that ours was the first American generation that was expected to enjoy a worse standard of living than our parents had. (Going back even farther you could point to popular expressions like the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen;" people have been talking like this for a long time.) I remember reading for the first time about the loss of the future as a frame of reference in this article, which I thought was very interesting but it now unfortunately seems to be only available behind a paywall: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/110330889900700102 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/110330889900700102 . Anyway, I think this sort of thing happens independently of the specific vagaries of politics and economics in any country: change is taking place quickly, on a grand scale, in societies where ordinary people are enjoined to think about the course of events over which they, individually, have little control.