9 ms·

Why Americans Are So Awful to One Another

helsinkiandrew 3y ago
https://archive.ph/9thla https://archive.ph/9thla
- jvdvegt 3y ago
  Unfortunately, all archive.* domains seem to end in endless captcha's today for me (Even when not using Cloudflare's DNS) :(
  - Simulacra 3y ago
    It could be a VPN that you're using
  - brightsize 3y ago
    Same for me, and I'm not using a VPN.
mschuster91 3y ago
> Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein. This, this right here - and it's not just the US where this shows up (although it's definitely the most extreme). At the core, I think, it's all about "free speech": when you have a constitutional right to say whatever you want, without any limitations, you will first get a bunch of contrarians yelling all sorts of offensive stuff around "for the lulz"/"because they can", and eventually that sort of stuff gets normalized, and then societal cohesion (especially when the offensive stuff is directed towards minorities) and eventually society itself gets poisoned.
- _Microft 3y ago
  This feels like the right time to remind people of the paradox of tolerance [0]. Here's the summary of the article: "The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - tremon 3y ago
    If you're going to post that, then let's also remind people that it's only a paradox if you treat tolerance itself as a moral imperative: "Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats [..] the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms." - https://medium.com/extra-extra/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376 https://medium.com/extra-extra/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-prec...
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - jfengel 3y ago
      People don't want a peace treaty. They want a moral precept, a rule by which they can distinguish good behavior from bad. At first blush, "tolerance" seems like a decent precept. You don't bug me, I don't bug you. But it takes only a moment's thought to realize that it doesn't work. And that effectively makes it pointless. The peace treaty is routinely broken, and might as well not exist. The precept works perfectly well for the situations where it's not needed -- most of the time tolerance is also in your own immediate best interests. But as soon as you try to extend it to cover anything else, it fails. Too bad. Back to the moral drawing board. Meantime, we can describe ourselves as "tolerant", if it makes us happy, and pretend it's the reason we're doing what we do. But it won't help us make any hard choices.
      - deleted 3y ago
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- finnjohnsen2 3y ago
  >it's not just the US where this shows up where else do you meen?
  - prawn 3y ago
    It's grown in Australia slightly in recent years.
    - bestouff 3y ago
      No offense but Australia, UK very much tend to have the same mentality as the US, from an exterior point of view.
      - mschuster91 3y ago
        Not surprising, given the influence of people like Murdoch and his media which is just the same crap that's being fed to Americans.
  - FractalParadigm 3y ago
    It's become wildly prevalent the past few years in Canada, to the point where co-workers whom I've thought were decent people for the past ~10 years are actually inhuman pieces of shit, they've just never felt 'free' to air their grievances in public. But you don't only see this ignorance in the way people talk, it's extended to everything, from the way they drive, to the way they navigate a store, it's almost like nobody exists in their world except themselves, you're simply an obstacle in their day-to-day, IME, COVID was a real turning point that pushed a *lot* of people into a more selfish mindset, and the "trucker" convoy/occupation of Ottawa really seemed to shed any remaining social decency that still existed in many of these people. Now that cost of living is spiraling way out of control (housing is a prime example, my $100k income virtually assures I will never be a homeowner), it's really galvanizing that selfishness in many while fosting in many more.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      I'm not sure free speech is really causative. It might be a catalyst, but people have to be self absorbed and hold those beliefs before voicing them. They might just feel emboldened to voice them since others are too. Is it that you can't afford a house anywhere, or that you can't afford one in the area you currently are? If relocating (remote work) is an option, my understanding is there are more affordable areas of Canada that have lower average home prices that someone making $100k could potentially afford one on the cheaper end.
- deleted 3y ago
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Dalewyn 3y ago
As far as I'm concerned, America is divided because of two reasons: * The media wants sensationalism, because sensationalism gets them peoples' attentions and thus money. There is nothing more sensational than riling up and pleading to peoples' emotions. * The political powers that be want to keep the people divided. A divided people is easier to control and manipulate, whether it's smear campaigns during elections or undermining the safety mechanisms of our governmental institutions or straight up cancel culture. How do we solve all this? Beats me, I'm in my mid 30s now and already tired of all this bullshit. I'll spend the rest of my days by myself in the countryside just enjoying the simplicities of life while y'all go and club each other silly.
- deleted 3y ago
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- CalRobert 3y ago
  Funny enough I moved to the countryside and ended up leaving after four years because of the people...
- tremon 3y ago
  The US has been polarised to its core. I don't know if it's because of the two-party/first-past-the-post political system, or if that's a consequence as well, but everything about the US just oozes binary thinking (even on the international stage: remember Bush's "if you're not with us, you're against us" war rhetoric). There's no room for nuance, everything must be black&white. The typical HN visitor should have the mental bandwidth for nuance, but more often than not that same mentality is showing even here.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  To expand on your second point, if the other side is an unthinkable evil, then the leaders of your side can be as corrupt as they want and betray as many party ideals as they like, because at least they aren't the unthinkable evil. Because in the US you don't get to vote for anyone, you only get to pick who you vote against. Otherwise you are throwing away your vote and letting the unthinkable win. And in the vast majority of voting districts even that doesn't really matter because they aren't swing states. Ranked voting would solve this issue. I have never read any critique of it that I found convincing. It exists at state and municipal levels. But until the big states switch it won't change the problem. If swing states adopted it, along with proportional allocation of electoral votes (a couple states do this now) it would definitely change strategies for the better. The effect is that you can't be the most extreme version of your party and ignore moderates in the hope there are more people that hate the other corrupt extremist, because the moderate candidates will get ranked higher than you by both sides of the artificial duopoly. In that world, the sensational nature of the media works to uncover sneaky extremists so you can rank all the boring candidates higher, or least higher than the extremist you don't secretly agree with. Either way the boring candidates win. Someone once wrote that the best kings produce the fewest pages in history books.
novolunt 3y ago
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h2odragon 3y ago
Is all this "awfulness" something you see in the real world, or is it something the media assures you is happening?
- deleted 3y ago
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- finnjohnsen2 3y ago
  You may wanna read it. Some things are simply numbers, like increased gun stuff and decreased charity stuff.
  - h2odragon 3y ago
    The question of "how much do you trust the reporting" is valid there too.
bell-cot 3y ago
In a true capitalist meritocracy, all the "social bonds", "caring", "kindness", "ethics", and other crap is, at best, inefficiency. Often it's a barrier to optimizing your own career. Or worse - an obstacle to maximizing the profits of the 0.0001%. Good thing we're finally getting rid of it! /s?
- deleted 3y ago
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- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  No /s, I wouldn't be surprised if half the people here genuinely believe it.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    Few people would read "/bs" as "bitter sarcasm". Is there a better tag that you could suggest?
    - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
      /dhcvs = desperate hustle-culture virtue-signaler :)
boeingUH60 3y ago
Why are people online mean to each other? It's because of immoral journalists writing outrage bait and playing with people's emotions...The Atlantic is part of the problem. Go to the real world, and people are much nicer to each other.
- deleted 3y ago
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- krapp 3y ago
  People were mean to each other long before online journalism was a thing. Despite popular belief, not all of society's ills were born from the fiendish machinations of social media and journalists. And in the real world, people are even meaner, because in the real world, people can get you with more than just words.
partiallypro 3y ago
If you remove politics from it, Americans are pretty good to each other. Also, if you remove the internet...Americans are pretty good to each other in real life situation. It's as soon as any politics is injected that a divide starts. From people saying the people in Ohio didn't deserve aid because they were a Trump heavy district, to people saying Hawaii never did anything for anyone (aka Republicans), so why care about their wildfire? I've seen that type of thing become increasingly more common. Politics has completely broken people's brains. I wish people would just turn off the news. They sensationalize everything, from "Red state" poverty to "Blue state" crime. They know it gets clicks, so they play it up. The modern media model is broken and doesn't serve democracy or society. Couple that will grifters online hocking nonsense to rile people up and you end up with a lot of angry people that aren't really even sure what they are angry about.
MightyBuzzard 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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jatins 3y ago
I have spent < an year in US (mostly in California) and found the America behaviour to be very polite in speech but indifferent/mean in actions. The passive aggressive behavior seemed quite common. As an outsider sometimes you are not aware of cultural norms, but I always felt the margin for error for what Americans considered "acceptable" was too narrow. There was no benefit of doubt, and sometimes an explicit dislike for someone who did not immediately fit in.
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  I visited the US many times (probably 40+, a week to month long stays) mostly in Chicago and Phoenix. I always clearly explained that I am a foreigner and do not know how to do this or that and I was given ample information. The one time it did not work is when I had breakfast in a diner in Arizona and left my table after paying. A lady (also a customer) dropped le and time me how come I can leave without bringing my plate back. I was so surprised that I asked "this is what you do here in restaurants? Cleaning after yourselves?". She got mad and told me how I was misbehaved and everything. She was clearly a weirdo, though.
- thraxil 3y ago
  > I have spent < an year in US (mostly in California) and found the America behaviour to be very polite in speech but indifferent/mean in actions. The passive aggressive behavior seemed quite common It's worth noting that in the US, that's a stereotype of the west coast and California in particular. The contrast with NYC is particularly frequently cited. New Yorkers have a reputation for being very direct and coming across as rude but will actually be very nice and helpful once you get past that. New Yorkers will call you names that would make a sailor blush, and then immediately rush to help a woman carry her stroller up the subway steps.
- jelliclesfarm 3y ago
  This is why immigrants jive and fit well with other immigrants. I am in hell right now..dealing with harassment(in the legal sense of the word)from a CA public agency, no less. Everyday I fantasize about quitting something I love because the psychological impact is too much to bear. The only thing that keeps me going is that one day I hope karma will kick in… I have become a lot meaner at heart. I wonder if I will turn into a tyrant if I ever acquire power. In California, the worst racism I have faced is in Berkeley where they wear their progressiveness on the sleeve.
_shadi 3y ago
I don't live in America, but I think this is related to the unprecedented mass communication that has been made possible by the internet, and as cliche as it sounds it truly made borders disappear between different countries, contents and cultures, which is making this generation exposed to things previous generations didn't even think they exist or have people believe in it, the only countries that seem a bit isolated from this are the ones who have their own internet circles because of language or laws. But I'm a little optimistic that this would eventually pass with time, If we apply `Tuckman's stages of group development` to the whole world and communication between its parts I think we are in storming phase.
wunderland 3y ago
> Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein. Americans reaping what they sow. What do you expect? The US is one of the most capitalist societies on earth. American propaganda over more than a century has built a culture which venerates the super wealthy and teaches deep hatred for the poor. This worked to keep a small but important middle strata of workers in line but access to that class is harder and harder. If the system starts to fail for the majority of people, of course people are going to be angry! And American propaganda prevents little class solidarity or basic awareness of the exploitative system, so Americans channel that anger into hatred for one another.
tomohawk 3y ago
> For a large part of its history, America was awash in morally formative institutions. Its Founding Fathers had a low view of human nature, and designed the Constitution to mitigate it (even while validating that low view of human nature by producing a document rife with racism and sexism). And there's the problem right there. The Constitution is a ground breaking document. Just because it did not hit a grand slam home run in terms of fixing all social ills in one fell swoop doesn't mean it's "rife with racism and sexism". It established the fundamental mechanisms that would enable us to progress as a society despite individual shortcomings and faults. And we have - often at great cost. It is those same fundamental mechanisms (freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, ...) that are under attack by power mad elites. Without these mechanisms in play, of course everything becomes much more contentious.
- robviren 3y ago
  Completely agree. The way I like to think about it is they designed the document to involve as much grand standing, yelling, horse trading, politicking, conniving, and debate as possible because that is what human beings will do with government. You might as well embrace the fact they do it and give everyone just enough power to make it extremely hard to change.
roenxi 3y ago
This a article cites an N=2 anecdote, conflates a couple of trends at random, then draws a conclusion that we live in an age of moral decay (ie, a perennial no-signal communication favourite). We should consider the likely alternative - Americans are actually pretty nice to each other, all things considered. It is really quite impressive what American grass roots organisations can do if people let them. Trust in institutions is low because the institutions are being exposed to the harsh light of Very Good Communication and it turns out that bodies that rule by decree are kinda corrupt. That should shock people, but it doesn't represent a radical change in the status quo. There are serious economic headwinds that someone needs to do something about.
- jemmyw 3y ago
  It's an article putting forward an opinion, not a scientific paper. Though they do cite plenty of interesting statistics. I enjoyed reading it and it provides an alternative view to the other hypotheses for the stats, which they list. I assume you're coming from the direction that economy first fixes the social issues. That's a valid view but I'm not sure it tackles inequality. No point in a bigger economy if only a few at the top benefit.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    > That's a valid view but I'm not sure it tackles inequality. "Tackling inequality" comes from reading too many say-nothing articles by Mr. Brooks and not enough time spent reflecting on what we should be trying to do to get the best result for people. We should not care how much money a neighbour has. In fact, the more the better. I don't want to have to offer them charity if there is an option for them to stand on their own. They could be billionaires next door for all I care and that doesn't harm me or anyone else in the city. Inequality is one of a number of fake issues that are major unhelpful distractions. The focus should be on median and low living standards.
    - jemmyw 3y ago
      I both disagree and agree. We should be able to live happily without trying to keep up with the neighbours or covet their good fortune. But that's a macro level thing. Inequality is a real issue where too much wealth gets funneled to the folks who already have the most wealth and in such a way that it gets worse over time. What you describe doesn't seem to be at odds with what I think of as the inequality problem - a larger proportion of economic value going to folks doing the work rather than the capital investors. It might not even be that drastic a change for that to have real effects over time, and the rich would still be rich.
Simulacra 3y ago
I think a lot of Americans hold a very self righteous indignation viewpoint of the world. Anything that disagrees with them is not just met with simple, mutual disagreement, but self righteous indignation, and a bit of vengeance. Parking spaces, what to teach in the classroom, just sitting on an airplane, it's very much an attitude of "how dare you disagreed with me."
deleted 3y ago
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badpun 3y ago
If the author thought americans are awful to one another, he should try one of the many other countries on Earth. Americans are actually pretty nice, polite and helpful in comparison with many of the other places. Compared to many other nations, I believe Americans rarely try to say jump the line, lie to you for tiny advantages, do you harm out sheer spite etc.
- ashwagary 3y ago
  >I believe Americans rarely try to say jump the line, lie to you for tiny advantages, do you harm out sheer spite etc. I have a feeling minorities in the US would disagree.
memset 3y ago
This article is riveting. I’d never appreciated that there was such a history of society, in so many ways, teaching and training each other to be members of a society. The article argues that this rapidly fell alert after WW II as people tried to reconcile what happened. I found myself nodding along to the section on politics - “ If you are asking politics to be the reigning source of meaning in your life, you are asking more of politics than it can bear.” And yet the question is never answered “why now?” What has made this point in time so particularly bad? Yes, there were large changes starting in the 1950s to what we read and were taught, but what changed in 2008 (or 2016? See, I can’t even get away from politics to explain the way we treat each other!) that has made things feel so much worse?
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > “why now?” What has made this point in time so particularly bad? I can’t help but think that the pervasively available, ad-supported* nature of social media, enabled/amplified by smartphones, has had a more massive effect on the changes observed than the almost trivial-by-comparison elections in 2008 or 2016. There’s a good chance that much of the non-tech content on HN is tapped out on smartphones (including this comment). * Ad-supported is a higher-order problem. Ads are not inherently a problem, but optimization for ad revenue often leads to optimization for engagement, which drags along time-wasting and optimization for outrage engagement, dunking, like-farming, etc.
- throw0101c 3y ago
  > This article is riveting. I’d never appreciated that there was such a history of society, in so many ways, teaching and training each other to be members of a society. Are you familiar with the expression "It takes a village to raise a child."? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village
- jfengel 3y ago
  "Why now" is the steady increase of news in our lives. The timing tracks perfectly the shift from newspapers to TV to 24 hour news to the Internet. We're now more aware of politics as continuous, rather than as something that happens only during elections, plus brief updates that go one-way from authority figures to us. It has turned politics from the way we make national decisions into a national game. We treat it with the same seriousness as sports -- which we treat as if we were making each decision ourselves, despite having even less effect on the game than the pompoms. Our opinions on both are loud, under-informed, and irrelevant, but we enjoy having them. Enjoyment has become the primary goal.
giantg2 3y ago
Wow, you really shouldn't be comparing prior years to 2021 due to the pandemic. No shit the numbers look worse in 2021. Most of the increases they are talking about happened in 20/21, even if a smaller trend was present prior to that.
sirsuki 3y ago
As a parent dealing with their midlife crisis and raising two children I can say this concept is high on my mind. What kind of world are they going to inherit when they can’t even run to their neighbors for help when something goes wrong? Who do they turn to when they want to help the community? Something the article talks about is how morality is engendered not found. That the community teaches morality and that we need this or there are gaps in our humanity. Considering how we treat others is a learned skill it is also a taught and reenforced skill. How do we as a society wish our youths to treat each other? We need our systems to engender that.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  > As a parent dealing with their midlife crisis and raising two children... Geezer reaction: If only this was ~1945 - ~1965 America, I'd say to find a nice little Protestant church* and start attending. An enormous number of such churches were either founded to meet such needs, or grew enormously during the baby boom. (Not to say that any such churches were perfect. 50% of 'em were below average! But if you lived in a good-sized town, you'd probably have at least a few to chose from.) *Assumpion - Roman Catholics, Jews, etc. would mentally translate this to "Catholic church", "synagogue", etc.
- tremon 3y ago
  I can't help but point to the rise of dual-income households as a leading cause of the lack of home communities. Who has the time to build a community when most adults are away for almost the entire day? Nobody ever put a price tag on the value of a healthy living community, so the market is optimizing against it.
bentt 3y ago
The Atlantic loves a good America is dying story, doesn’t it?
- throw0101c 3y ago
  From the same author in January, "Despite Everything You Think You Know, America Is on the Right Track": * https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/american-optimism-productivity-innovation-rise/672714/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/american-o... * https://archive.li/OZM29 https://archive.li/OZM29
k99x55 3y ago
Bad urban planning centered around the automobile and not the person is a big contributor. See "The Human Case For Fewer Cars In Our Lives with Melissa and Chris Bruntlett": http://www.modacitylife.com/ http://www.modacitylife.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlFflpcpAyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlFflpcpAyg.
lostdog 3y ago
Why have hospital billing departments become more mean? Why are credit card agencies and collections companies so cruel to the average person? Why do airlines not give a crap about your well being? I wonder if the author has it backwards. Americans are being kicked around by their corporations, and now they are being just as big assholes back. I know that I've learned to treat customer service people differently--not impolitely, but I am fine repeating the same request to them over and over again until they give in. Unfortunately, this treatment bleeds over to people and businesses that don't deserve it. There's nothing wrong with screaming at a medical collections biller to leave you the fuck alone, but if you're doing that in a family-owned restaurant, then you are the asshole.
- ashwagary 3y ago
  >Americans are being kicked around by their corporations, and now they are being just as big assholes back. It might be systemic. American style capitalism leads to individualism and an environment where most people cant afford to care for other people.
senectus1 3y ago
form the outside looking in... It looks like America treats its people like each and everyone one is a resources to be exploited and consumed. not just by those that are in power, but by everyone.. its like they are raised to think that its their right to exploit and consume anyone in their path. Quite frightening on a huge socioeconomic level. It worries me enough that the few times I've left Australia I made sure that any of my stops did not land in America.
academia_hack 3y ago
As an atheist, I've been thinking a lot about this in the context of the factors that made me atheist in a way that would've been not just repugnant, but downright unimaginable, to the previous 20+ generations of my family. I think the individual rational case for abandoning religious institutions is really compelling. Goodness without gods is obviously possible, and villainy with them as well. The religious machine consumes time and resources and the benefits it yields are ill-defined and diluted by its many harms. However, theology and religion represent the state-of-the-art of a millennia long effort to establish meaning in the human condition. Today, many academic disciplines look down upon theology when it was, until very recently, the core of what it meant to be a scientist or thinker - especially in Christian/Muslim/Jewish traditions. It's crazy how many in the social sciences, much less the physical sciences, have never engaged with the religious canons that underpin their disciplines. Not so much the bible stories, as the exegesis that gave birth to academia. Even for the average person, the Church served as inexpensive frontline mental health care (esp. for bereavement, anxiety, and guilt), a social safety net, a source of community, and a source of simple, generally reasonable, heuristics to evaluate daily decisions. These are all things my "enlightened" post-religious life struggles to provide me. It's totally fine for society to evolve away from religion. I think faith is in inevitable peril as our understanding of the world grows. However, we may be throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater by making the assumption that it is possible to simply skip out on something that sat at the core of most human lives for millennia with no ill effect.
- MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  You may be interested in the work of Alain de Botton who makes many similar points. https://www.alaindebotton.com/religion/ https://www.alaindebotton.com/religion/
- atchoo 3y ago
  [flagged]
glimshe 3y ago
Go spend time elsewhere in the world. You might find some places where people are nicer here and there, but I'd say the US ranks pretty high overall. Also this is very dependent on the city you live, there are major variations between parts of the US as in any large country.
tb_technical 3y ago
The only "mean" culture I'm aware of in modern America is the modern corporate culture in California. They're polite, but uninterested in the well-being of others. If you talk to someone while riding public transit in Southern California? "Stop talking to me.", "I have pepper spray." And in New York? New Yorkers are direct and sometimes rude, but every New Yorker I asked for directions stopped everything they were doing to help me. This is a far cry for behaviour compared to southern California. The Midwest? Stranger still - there's an enormous emphasis on manners (and they will never let you leave their home hungry), but if you're out of a job? Homeless? Good luck. America is very strange...

https://archive.ph/9thla https://archive.ph/9thla

jvdvegt 3y ago
Unfortunately, all archive.* domains seem to end in endless captcha's today for me (Even when not using Cloudflare's DNS) :(
- Simulacra 3y ago
  It could be a VPN that you're using
- brightsize 3y ago
  Same for me, and I'm not using a VPN.

> Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein. This, this right here - and it's not just the US where this shows up (although it's definitely the most extreme). At the core, I think, it's all about "free speech": when you have a constitutional right to say whatever you want, without any limitations, you will first get a bunch of contrarians yelling all sorts of offensive stuff around "for the lulz"/"because they can", and eventually that sort of stuff gets normalized, and then societal cohesion (especially when the offensive stuff is directed towards minorities) and eventually society itself gets poisoned.

_Microft 3y ago
This feels like the right time to remind people of the paradox of tolerance [0]. Here's the summary of the article: "The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tremon 3y ago
  If you're going to post that, then let's also remind people that it's only a paradox if you treat tolerance itself as a moral imperative: "Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats [..] the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms." - https://medium.com/extra-extra/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376 https://medium.com/extra-extra/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-prec...
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - jfengel 3y ago
    People don't want a peace treaty. They want a moral precept, a rule by which they can distinguish good behavior from bad. At first blush, "tolerance" seems like a decent precept. You don't bug me, I don't bug you. But it takes only a moment's thought to realize that it doesn't work. And that effectively makes it pointless. The peace treaty is routinely broken, and might as well not exist. The precept works perfectly well for the situations where it's not needed -- most of the time tolerance is also in your own immediate best interests. But as soon as you try to extend it to cover anything else, it fails. Too bad. Back to the moral drawing board. Meantime, we can describe ourselves as "tolerant", if it makes us happy, and pretend it's the reason we're doing what we do. But it won't help us make any hard choices.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
finnjohnsen2 3y ago
>it's not just the US where this shows up where else do you meen?
- prawn 3y ago
  It's grown in Australia slightly in recent years.
  - bestouff 3y ago
    No offense but Australia, UK very much tend to have the same mentality as the US, from an exterior point of view.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      Not surprising, given the influence of people like Murdoch and his media which is just the same crap that's being fed to Americans.
- FractalParadigm 3y ago
  It's become wildly prevalent the past few years in Canada, to the point where co-workers whom I've thought were decent people for the past ~10 years are actually inhuman pieces of shit, they've just never felt 'free' to air their grievances in public. But you don't only see this ignorance in the way people talk, it's extended to everything, from the way they drive, to the way they navigate a store, it's almost like nobody exists in their world except themselves, you're simply an obstacle in their day-to-day, IME, COVID was a real turning point that pushed a *lot* of people into a more selfish mindset, and the "trucker" convoy/occupation of Ottawa really seemed to shed any remaining social decency that still existed in many of these people. Now that cost of living is spiraling way out of control (housing is a prime example, my $100k income virtually assures I will never be a homeowner), it's really galvanizing that selfishness in many while fosting in many more.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    I'm not sure free speech is really causative. It might be a catalyst, but people have to be self absorbed and hold those beliefs before voicing them. They might just feel emboldened to voice them since others are too. Is it that you can't afford a house anywhere, or that you can't afford one in the area you currently are? If relocating (remote work) is an option, my understanding is there are more affordable areas of Canada that have lower average home prices that someone making $100k could potentially afford one on the cheaper end.
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Dalewyn 3y ago

As far as I'm concerned, America is divided because of two reasons: * The media wants sensationalism, because sensationalism gets them peoples' attentions and thus money. There is nothing more sensational than riling up and pleading to peoples' emotions. * The political powers that be want to keep the people divided. A divided people is easier to control and manipulate, whether it's smear campaigns during elections or undermining the safety mechanisms of our governmental institutions or straight up cancel culture. How do we solve all this? Beats me, I'm in my mid 30s now and already tired of all this bullshit. I'll spend the rest of my days by myself in the countryside just enjoying the simplicities of life while y'all go and club each other silly.

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CalRobert 3y ago
Funny enough I moved to the countryside and ended up leaving after four years because of the people...
tremon 3y ago
The US has been polarised to its core. I don't know if it's because of the two-party/first-past-the-post political system, or if that's a consequence as well, but everything about the US just oozes binary thinking (even on the international stage: remember Bush's "if you're not with us, you're against us" war rhetoric). There's no room for nuance, everything must be black&white. The typical HN visitor should have the mental bandwidth for nuance, but more often than not that same mentality is showing even here.
galangalalgol 3y ago
To expand on your second point, if the other side is an unthinkable evil, then the leaders of your side can be as corrupt as they want and betray as many party ideals as they like, because at least they aren't the unthinkable evil. Because in the US you don't get to vote for anyone, you only get to pick who you vote against. Otherwise you are throwing away your vote and letting the unthinkable win. And in the vast majority of voting districts even that doesn't really matter because they aren't swing states. Ranked voting would solve this issue. I have never read any critique of it that I found convincing. It exists at state and municipal levels. But until the big states switch it won't change the problem. If swing states adopted it, along with proportional allocation of electoral votes (a couple states do this now) it would definitely change strategies for the better. The effect is that you can't be the most extreme version of your party and ignore moderates in the hope there are more people that hate the other corrupt extremist, because the moderate candidates will get ranked higher than you by both sides of the artificial duopoly. In that world, the sensational nature of the media works to uncover sneaky extremists so you can rank all the boring candidates higher, or least higher than the extremist you don't secretly agree with. Either way the boring candidates win. Someone once wrote that the best kings produce the fewest pages in history books.

novolunt 3y ago

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h2odragon 3y ago

Is all this "awfulness" something you see in the real world, or is it something the media assures you is happening?

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finnjohnsen2 3y ago
You may wanna read it. Some things are simply numbers, like increased gun stuff and decreased charity stuff.
- h2odragon 3y ago
  The question of "how much do you trust the reporting" is valid there too.

bell-cot 3y ago

In a true capitalist meritocracy, all the "social bonds", "caring", "kindness", "ethics", and other crap is, at best, inefficiency. Often it's a barrier to optimizing your own career. Or worse - an obstacle to maximizing the profits of the 0.0001%. Good thing we're finally getting rid of it! /s?

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CatWChainsaw 3y ago
No /s, I wouldn't be surprised if half the people here genuinely believe it.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  Few people would read "/bs" as "bitter sarcasm". Is there a better tag that you could suggest?
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    /dhcvs = desperate hustle-culture virtue-signaler :)

boeingUH60 3y ago

Why are people online mean to each other? It's because of immoral journalists writing outrage bait and playing with people's emotions...The Atlantic is part of the problem. Go to the real world, and people are much nicer to each other.

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krapp 3y ago
People were mean to each other long before online journalism was a thing. Despite popular belief, not all of society's ills were born from the fiendish machinations of social media and journalists. And in the real world, people are even meaner, because in the real world, people can get you with more than just words.

partiallypro 3y ago

If you remove politics from it, Americans are pretty good to each other. Also, if you remove the internet...Americans are pretty good to each other in real life situation. It's as soon as any politics is injected that a divide starts. From people saying the people in Ohio didn't deserve aid because they were a Trump heavy district, to people saying Hawaii never did anything for anyone (aka Republicans), so why care about their wildfire? I've seen that type of thing become increasingly more common. Politics has completely broken people's brains. I wish people would just turn off the news. They sensationalize everything, from "Red state" poverty to "Blue state" crime. They know it gets clicks, so they play it up. The modern media model is broken and doesn't serve democracy or society. Couple that will grifters online hocking nonsense to rile people up and you end up with a lot of angry people that aren't really even sure what they are angry about.

MightyBuzzard 3y ago

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jatins 3y ago

I have spent < an year in US (mostly in California) and found the America behaviour to be very polite in speech but indifferent/mean in actions. The passive aggressive behavior seemed quite common. As an outsider sometimes you are not aware of cultural norms, but I always felt the margin for error for what Americans considered "acceptable" was too narrow. There was no benefit of doubt, and sometimes an explicit dislike for someone who did not immediately fit in.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago
I visited the US many times (probably 40+, a week to month long stays) mostly in Chicago and Phoenix. I always clearly explained that I am a foreigner and do not know how to do this or that and I was given ample information. The one time it did not work is when I had breakfast in a diner in Arizona and left my table after paying. A lady (also a customer) dropped le and time me how come I can leave without bringing my plate back. I was so surprised that I asked "this is what you do here in restaurants? Cleaning after yourselves?". She got mad and told me how I was misbehaved and everything. She was clearly a weirdo, though.
thraxil 3y ago
> I have spent < an year in US (mostly in California) and found the America behaviour to be very polite in speech but indifferent/mean in actions. The passive aggressive behavior seemed quite common It's worth noting that in the US, that's a stereotype of the west coast and California in particular. The contrast with NYC is particularly frequently cited. New Yorkers have a reputation for being very direct and coming across as rude but will actually be very nice and helpful once you get past that. New Yorkers will call you names that would make a sailor blush, and then immediately rush to help a woman carry her stroller up the subway steps.
jelliclesfarm 3y ago
This is why immigrants jive and fit well with other immigrants. I am in hell right now..dealing with harassment(in the legal sense of the word)from a CA public agency, no less. Everyday I fantasize about quitting something I love because the psychological impact is too much to bear. The only thing that keeps me going is that one day I hope karma will kick in… I have become a lot meaner at heart. I wonder if I will turn into a tyrant if I ever acquire power. In California, the worst racism I have faced is in Berkeley where they wear their progressiveness on the sleeve.

_shadi 3y ago

I don't live in America, but I think this is related to the unprecedented mass communication that has been made possible by the internet, and as cliche as it sounds it truly made borders disappear between different countries, contents and cultures, which is making this generation exposed to things previous generations didn't even think they exist or have people believe in it, the only countries that seem a bit isolated from this are the ones who have their own internet circles because of language or laws. But I'm a little optimistic that this would eventually pass with time, If we apply `Tuckman's stages of group development` to the whole world and communication between its parts I think we are in storming phase.

wunderland 3y ago

> Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein. Americans reaping what they sow. What do you expect? The US is one of the most capitalist societies on earth. American propaganda over more than a century has built a culture which venerates the super wealthy and teaches deep hatred for the poor. This worked to keep a small but important middle strata of workers in line but access to that class is harder and harder. If the system starts to fail for the majority of people, of course people are going to be angry! And American propaganda prevents little class solidarity or basic awareness of the exploitative system, so Americans channel that anger into hatred for one another.

tomohawk 3y ago

> For a large part of its history, America was awash in morally formative institutions. Its Founding Fathers had a low view of human nature, and designed the Constitution to mitigate it (even while validating that low view of human nature by producing a document rife with racism and sexism). And there's the problem right there. The Constitution is a ground breaking document. Just because it did not hit a grand slam home run in terms of fixing all social ills in one fell swoop doesn't mean it's "rife with racism and sexism". It established the fundamental mechanisms that would enable us to progress as a society despite individual shortcomings and faults. And we have - often at great cost. It is those same fundamental mechanisms (freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, ...) that are under attack by power mad elites. Without these mechanisms in play, of course everything becomes much more contentious.

robviren 3y ago
Completely agree. The way I like to think about it is they designed the document to involve as much grand standing, yelling, horse trading, politicking, conniving, and debate as possible because that is what human beings will do with government. You might as well embrace the fact they do it and give everyone just enough power to make it extremely hard to change.

roenxi 3y ago

This a article cites an N=2 anecdote, conflates a couple of trends at random, then draws a conclusion that we live in an age of moral decay (ie, a perennial no-signal communication favourite). We should consider the likely alternative - Americans are actually pretty nice to each other, all things considered. It is really quite impressive what American grass roots organisations can do if people let them. Trust in institutions is low because the institutions are being exposed to the harsh light of Very Good Communication and it turns out that bodies that rule by decree are kinda corrupt. That should shock people, but it doesn't represent a radical change in the status quo. There are serious economic headwinds that someone needs to do something about.

jemmyw 3y ago
It's an article putting forward an opinion, not a scientific paper. Though they do cite plenty of interesting statistics. I enjoyed reading it and it provides an alternative view to the other hypotheses for the stats, which they list. I assume you're coming from the direction that economy first fixes the social issues. That's a valid view but I'm not sure it tackles inequality. No point in a bigger economy if only a few at the top benefit.
- roenxi 3y ago
  > That's a valid view but I'm not sure it tackles inequality. "Tackling inequality" comes from reading too many say-nothing articles by Mr. Brooks and not enough time spent reflecting on what we should be trying to do to get the best result for people. We should not care how much money a neighbour has. In fact, the more the better. I don't want to have to offer them charity if there is an option for them to stand on their own. They could be billionaires next door for all I care and that doesn't harm me or anyone else in the city. Inequality is one of a number of fake issues that are major unhelpful distractions. The focus should be on median and low living standards.
  - jemmyw 3y ago
    I both disagree and agree. We should be able to live happily without trying to keep up with the neighbours or covet their good fortune. But that's a macro level thing. Inequality is a real issue where too much wealth gets funneled to the folks who already have the most wealth and in such a way that it gets worse over time. What you describe doesn't seem to be at odds with what I think of as the inequality problem - a larger proportion of economic value going to folks doing the work rather than the capital investors. It might not even be that drastic a change for that to have real effects over time, and the rich would still be rich.

Simulacra 3y ago

I think a lot of Americans hold a very self righteous indignation viewpoint of the world. Anything that disagrees with them is not just met with simple, mutual disagreement, but self righteous indignation, and a bit of vengeance. Parking spaces, what to teach in the classroom, just sitting on an airplane, it's very much an attitude of "how dare you disagreed with me."

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badpun 3y ago

If the author thought americans are awful to one another, he should try one of the many other countries on Earth. Americans are actually pretty nice, polite and helpful in comparison with many of the other places. Compared to many other nations, I believe Americans rarely try to say jump the line, lie to you for tiny advantages, do you harm out sheer spite etc.

ashwagary 3y ago
>I believe Americans rarely try to say jump the line, lie to you for tiny advantages, do you harm out sheer spite etc. I have a feeling minorities in the US would disagree.

memset 3y ago

This article is riveting. I’d never appreciated that there was such a history of society, in so many ways, teaching and training each other to be members of a society. The article argues that this rapidly fell alert after WW II as people tried to reconcile what happened. I found myself nodding along to the section on politics - “ If you are asking politics to be the reigning source of meaning in your life, you are asking more of politics than it can bear.” And yet the question is never answered “why now?” What has made this point in time so particularly bad? Yes, there were large changes starting in the 1950s to what we read and were taught, but what changed in 2008 (or 2016? See, I can’t even get away from politics to explain the way we treat each other!) that has made things feel so much worse?

sokoloff 3y ago
> “why now?” What has made this point in time so particularly bad? I can’t help but think that the pervasively available, ad-supported* nature of social media, enabled/amplified by smartphones, has had a more massive effect on the changes observed than the almost trivial-by-comparison elections in 2008 or 2016. There’s a good chance that much of the non-tech content on HN is tapped out on smartphones (including this comment). * Ad-supported is a higher-order problem. Ads are not inherently a problem, but optimization for ad revenue often leads to optimization for engagement, which drags along time-wasting and optimization for outrage engagement, dunking, like-farming, etc.
throw0101c 3y ago
> This article is riveting. I’d never appreciated that there was such a history of society, in so many ways, teaching and training each other to be members of a society. Are you familiar with the expression "It takes a village to raise a child."? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village
jfengel 3y ago
"Why now" is the steady increase of news in our lives. The timing tracks perfectly the shift from newspapers to TV to 24 hour news to the Internet. We're now more aware of politics as continuous, rather than as something that happens only during elections, plus brief updates that go one-way from authority figures to us. It has turned politics from the way we make national decisions into a national game. We treat it with the same seriousness as sports -- which we treat as if we were making each decision ourselves, despite having even less effect on the game than the pompoms. Our opinions on both are loud, under-informed, and irrelevant, but we enjoy having them. Enjoyment has become the primary goal.

giantg2 3y ago

Wow, you really shouldn't be comparing prior years to 2021 due to the pandemic. No shit the numbers look worse in 2021. Most of the increases they are talking about happened in 20/21, even if a smaller trend was present prior to that.

sirsuki 3y ago

As a parent dealing with their midlife crisis and raising two children I can say this concept is high on my mind. What kind of world are they going to inherit when they can’t even run to their neighbors for help when something goes wrong? Who do they turn to when they want to help the community? Something the article talks about is how morality is engendered not found. That the community teaches morality and that we need this or there are gaps in our humanity. Considering how we treat others is a learned skill it is also a taught and reenforced skill. How do we as a society wish our youths to treat each other? We need our systems to engender that.

bell-cot 3y ago
> As a parent dealing with their midlife crisis and raising two children... Geezer reaction: If only this was ~1945 - ~1965 America, I'd say to find a nice little Protestant church* and start attending. An enormous number of such churches were either founded to meet such needs, or grew enormously during the baby boom. (Not to say that any such churches were perfect. 50% of 'em were below average! But if you lived in a good-sized town, you'd probably have at least a few to chose from.) *Assumpion - Roman Catholics, Jews, etc. would mentally translate this to "Catholic church", "synagogue", etc.
tremon 3y ago
I can't help but point to the rise of dual-income households as a leading cause of the lack of home communities. Who has the time to build a community when most adults are away for almost the entire day? Nobody ever put a price tag on the value of a healthy living community, so the market is optimizing against it.

bentt 3y ago

The Atlantic loves a good America is dying story, doesn’t it?

throw0101c 3y ago
From the same author in January, "Despite Everything You Think You Know, America Is on the Right Track": * https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/american-optimism-productivity-innovation-rise/672714/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/american-o... * https://archive.li/OZM29 https://archive.li/OZM29

k99x55 3y ago

Bad urban planning centered around the automobile and not the person is a big contributor. See "The Human Case For Fewer Cars In Our Lives with Melissa and Chris Bruntlett": http://www.modacitylife.com/ http://www.modacitylife.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlFflpcpAyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlFflpcpAyg.

lostdog 3y ago

Why have hospital billing departments become more mean? Why are credit card agencies and collections companies so cruel to the average person? Why do airlines not give a crap about your well being? I wonder if the author has it backwards. Americans are being kicked around by their corporations, and now they are being just as big assholes back. I know that I've learned to treat customer service people differently--not impolitely, but I am fine repeating the same request to them over and over again until they give in. Unfortunately, this treatment bleeds over to people and businesses that don't deserve it. There's nothing wrong with screaming at a medical collections biller to leave you the fuck alone, but if you're doing that in a family-owned restaurant, then you are the asshole.

ashwagary 3y ago
>Americans are being kicked around by their corporations, and now they are being just as big assholes back. It might be systemic. American style capitalism leads to individualism and an environment where most people cant afford to care for other people.

senectus1 3y ago

form the outside looking in... It looks like America treats its people like each and everyone one is a resources to be exploited and consumed. not just by those that are in power, but by everyone.. its like they are raised to think that its their right to exploit and consume anyone in their path. Quite frightening on a huge socioeconomic level. It worries me enough that the few times I've left Australia I made sure that any of my stops did not land in America.

academia_hack 3y ago

As an atheist, I've been thinking a lot about this in the context of the factors that made me atheist in a way that would've been not just repugnant, but downright unimaginable, to the previous 20+ generations of my family. I think the individual rational case for abandoning religious institutions is really compelling. Goodness without gods is obviously possible, and villainy with them as well. The religious machine consumes time and resources and the benefits it yields are ill-defined and diluted by its many harms. However, theology and religion represent the state-of-the-art of a millennia long effort to establish meaning in the human condition. Today, many academic disciplines look down upon theology when it was, until very recently, the core of what it meant to be a scientist or thinker - especially in Christian/Muslim/Jewish traditions. It's crazy how many in the social sciences, much less the physical sciences, have never engaged with the religious canons that underpin their disciplines. Not so much the bible stories, as the exegesis that gave birth to academia. Even for the average person, the Church served as inexpensive frontline mental health care (esp. for bereavement, anxiety, and guilt), a social safety net, a source of community, and a source of simple, generally reasonable, heuristics to evaluate daily decisions. These are all things my "enlightened" post-religious life struggles to provide me. It's totally fine for society to evolve away from religion. I think faith is in inevitable peril as our understanding of the world grows. However, we may be throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater by making the assumption that it is possible to simply skip out on something that sat at the core of most human lives for millennia with no ill effect.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago
You may be interested in the work of Alain de Botton who makes many similar points. https://www.alaindebotton.com/religion/ https://www.alaindebotton.com/religion/
atchoo 3y ago
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glimshe 3y ago

Go spend time elsewhere in the world. You might find some places where people are nicer here and there, but I'd say the US ranks pretty high overall. Also this is very dependent on the city you live, there are major variations between parts of the US as in any large country.

tb_technical 3y ago

The only "mean" culture I'm aware of in modern America is the modern corporate culture in California. They're polite, but uninterested in the well-being of others. If you talk to someone while riding public transit in Southern California? "Stop talking to me.", "I have pepper spray." And in New York? New Yorkers are direct and sometimes rude, but every New Yorker I asked for directions stopped everything they were doing to help me. This is a far cry for behaviour compared to southern California. The Midwest? Stranger still - there's an enormous emphasis on manners (and they will never let you leave their home hungry), but if you're out of a job? Homeless? Good luck. America is very strange...