5 ms·
I've noticed the same shift. Drivers are worse now than 10-15 years ago. Drivers are more aggressive (tailgating, rolling stops, speeding, ...), more sociopath
by trgn 3y ago
I've noticed the same shift.
Drivers are worse now than 10-15 years ago. Drivers are more aggressive (tailgating, rolling stops, speeding, ...), more sociopathic (tinted windows, louder pipes, larger vehicles, fake license plates,...), more negligent (bald tires, texting-and-driving, bumpers ripped off jagged metal sticking out, ...).
Another data point. Dashcams are on the rise, and they are truly the indicator technology of a low-trust society (remember the early car carnage internet videos, those were nearly always from russia or eastern europe, good times!). Wherever dashcams flourish, social contract is fraying.
It does not have to be like this. Many countries in Europe are making quite the opposite shift. Just recently was in London. Unreal! That place is so much more airy and welcoming than just 10-15 years ago. Covent Garden was positively quiet; so many electric cars and utility vehicles, much slower travel speeds, fewer streets, ... phenomenal. Once you experience it, and especially if you have a memory of the dark times, nobody in their right mind will want to turn back.
And wrt:
> People suck.
Do allow me a short digression and light hyperbole.
Maybe it's time to start pointing fingers, something americans, especially on the progressive-side, are too squeamish to do. In City of God, St Augustine blames the fall of Rome on the christians in the city ignoring the depravity of the pagans. Maybe we should take heed his advice, and it's time for the righteous to start calling out the wicked. Some people truly are crap, exhibit trash behaviors, and are making the world, quite simply, _worse_. We need to be confident in our judgements, and have the courage to clearly delineate right from wrong. As americans, live-and-let-live is ingrained in our DNA, but d*mn somethings gotta give here, drivers are really out of control.
- watwut 3y agoWhy are tinted windows sign of sociopaths?
- midoridensha 3y ago>In City of God, St Augustine blames the fall of Rome on the christians in the city ignoring the depravity of the pagans. Christians for centuries were the people that burned people at the stake for believing the wrong religion, or even the wrong version of Christianity. They're far from "righteous". What did the pagans do wrong? They seemed to be pretty decent overall, by the standards of the time: they even had a holiday, Saturnalia (that the Christians co-opted), where the masters served the slaves and people shared gifts. Slaves could even save money and buy their freedom in Roman society. Under Christianity, slaves were brutally beaten and murdered on plantations and could never be free; Christians even happily fought a brutal war to keep slavery intact when the Europeans had long since banned the practice.
- trgn 3y agoMy comment was not about christians=good, pagans=bad. It's that St Augustine, somewhat counter-intuitively puts the blame of the collapse of the roman empire, not on the barbarian hordes, but on the upstanding romans being too timid to confront the moral decay amongst their neighbors.
- midoridensha 3y agoRome was at its peak during the pagan times; after they adopted Christianity things went downhill. Of course, correlation does not equal causation, but I don't see how Christians have any valid claim to moral righteousness. If any one thing could be pointed to for Rome's collapse, it's probably just corruption, which can happen to any society, and is not at all the same as "moral decay".