11 ms·

> it's turtles all the way down with nostalgia. And yet golden eras do occur, or so it would seem. I’m sure it’s hard to tell when you’re in or near one, whic

by maegul 3y ago

> it's turtles all the way down with nostalgia. And yet golden eras do occur, or so it would seem. I’m sure it’s hard to tell when you’re in or near one, which is an interesting topic in its own right, but it doesn’t mean we should dismiss outright the possibility that a passing era might just be taking something truly valuable with it.

eru 3y ago
Even a non-golden era can have something truly valuable. Btw, we are living in a golden age. The vast majority of humanity has never had it better.
- chx 3y ago
  > we are living in a golden age I would've agreed pre-covid.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Less than 130 years ago 47% of all children in the USA died before reaching age 5. I think that we are doing just fine even with covid.
    - dopidopHN 3y ago
      A lot of folks are hungry in my state. As in : not enough nutrient a day. https://www.cpex.org/blog/stateofhunger https://www.cpex.org/blog/stateofhunger
      - bear141 3y ago
        [dead]
      - pmarreck 3y ago
        Other states (that are probably run better): Exist
        dopidopHN 3y ago
        Sorry, what is your point? Mine was that a level of poverties implying calories deficit exist in the US.
  - jannes 3y ago
    Does COVID still exist meaningfully in your part of the world? In my country the first few waves were very strong, but after a successful vaccination campaign (among other things) COVID has completely disappeared in everybody’s daily lives.
    - BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
      I think they are referring less to the actual virus and more to the rapid deterioration of our discourse and politics that accompanied it. Or at least this is what I might mean when using "COVID" as an epoch.
      - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
        > rapid deterioration of our discourse and politics that accompanied it That has been happening way before Covid. IMHO it started with the internet. Pre-internet the flow of information is gatekept by traditional media - newspapers, radio, TV, … etc. Everyone watched, listened to, read more or less the same things. This resulted in a more uniform set of opinions and more common ground between people. The internet broke all that. People could choose what they watch/listen/read and different people picked different things, coming to very different conclusions. In the past you could ask someone if they watched X last night and there is a decent probability they did. Today it’s much harder to find common ground - you could both be on YouTube but watching completely different things. Edit: Don’t just downvote. You got a problem with this post, say something.
        2devnull 3y ago
        I agree it was happening before COVID. I think the internet could be part of the problem. But it wasn’t freedom of choice that caused the problem, which is what you claim. There’s much less freedom on the internet now, and if anything it’s much worse. If we’re going to blame internet then blame ads and big tech. Don’t blame people for watching cat videos, that’s absurd.
        TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    COVID is what saved us from four more years of Trump (and perhaps many more after that of his family and Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and Steven Miller and Steve Bannon and the list goes on and on...).
- junofan 3y ago
  Maybe you’re thinking of a “gilded age” in the sense of Twain. The Golden Age of Hesiod and Ovid was defined by peace and justice amongst a golden race. It’s about ideals and peace rather than material prosperity. The metals debase from gold to silver to bronze to iron as conflict increases and the social contract breaks.
  - Emma_Goldman 3y ago
    'Golden age' is typically used to mean a historic age of comparative greatness from which society has since fallen. See the idiomatic vs. the mythological meaning on Wiktionary: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/golden_age https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/golden_age
- Emma_Goldman 3y ago
  That's a bit simplistic. If you haven't noticed, advanced economies are experiencing secularly stagnating growth, a crisis of democratic representation and its populist backlash, the return of oligarchic inequality to levels not seen since the gilded age, and extreme social atomisation and mental health breakdown. We are also all hurtling towards catastrophic climate change, an AI revolution that could lead to generalised technological unemployment, and some indeterminate level of conflict between the US and China. Unsurprisingly, therefore, most people in advanced economies look back on the post-war decades as a golden age - obviously there were problems, but there was high growth, full employment, good public services, strong unions, and comparatively cheap housing. Others look back to the 1990s as a time of untroubled horizons. Also, the global 'we' is unhelpful. Have native Americans, Syrians or Greeks never had it so good?
  - vasco 3y ago
    > Also, the global 'we' is unhelpful. Have native Americans, Syrians or Greeks never had it so good? Syrians are starving and in war, so they've been better. The other two examples, undoubtedly yes they are better than ever. For anyone to think it was better in any other time in history for most of the global population than now, shows such a lack of knowledge of history and the human condition that its hard to take serious. For someone so concerned with the future of humanity to create a problem with referring to all humans as "we" is a bit rich. Scrolling instagram and fake depressions aren't worse than having 7 miscarriages, half your kids dying as babies or children, being enslaved, starving to death and a million other nice things most humans had to deal with that they don't have to deal with now. Basic access to medicine, food stability etc, on a large scale is so much better. We have the fewest people living in poverty there ever was. Wanting to better ourselves and being aware the Maslow hierarchy continues to create infinite steps should not blind you to the amount of work millions of humans over generations have done to create such an easy mode version of the world for us. To not at least acknowledge it and just say it all sucks is myopic at the minimum.
    - Emma_Goldman 3y ago
      Read the first sentence with which I began. I said it was simplistic, not that it was categorically and completely wrong, and certainly not that its opposite was true. What I object to is the extraordinarily simplistic, one-dimensional view of progress peddled by the likes of Hans Rosling and Steven Pinker. True, lot's of material and medical indicators of progress have consistently increased. That's to be celebrated. Certainly, if asked, the vast majority of people in the West would want to be born in the post-war years, and the average would probably slant towards the end of that period. Though I do think a good slice of people would choose against the post-2008 years in particular. But that binary - better or worse? - is a crude measure of societal health. It lacks any dialectical sense of modernity, of that fact the same socio-technological expansion which brought about that progress, has gone hand-in-hand with extreme oligarchy, world war, nuclear weapons, climate change, the anthropocene. Certainly, the risks of catastrophic global breakdown are greater today than ever before. I also think it has a superficial and philistine grasp of politics and the common good. Besides utilitarians, few political philosophers would so easily equate the good with material abundance. Hence why I pointed, by way of counterpoint, to today's secular stagnation, crisis of democracy, inequality, and withering of public life. These are not small problems, but speak to fundamental pathologies in our body politic. > "The other two examples, undoubtedly yes they are better than ever." Many native Americans and Greeks would viscerally disagree with you. Perhaps you're missing something? > "For anyone to think it was better in any other time in history for most of the global population than now, shows such a lack of knowledge of history and the human condition that its hard to take serious." As above, you have misread what I said, and I think trying to understand and evaluate society solely from the binary standard of 'better or worse' is extremely crude. I have a PhD in history btw. >"Scrolling instagram and fake depressions aren't worse than having 7 miscarriages, half your kids dying as babies or children, being enslaved, starving to death." True, but I think virtually no one would say otherwise. This is an unhelpful caricature of the argument I was making.
- concordDance 3y ago
  True, but the rates of depression and general unhappiness in the West are definitely up from 30 years ago.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    No, there is more awareness and they are more vocal now.
    - theclansman 3y ago
      That's an extremely simplistic way to dismiss the problem. Depression wasn't something that was invented or discovered in the last decade.
      - WilTimSon 3y ago
        But openness about mental health issues and lower stigma around it is definitely a more modern thing, actually. I don't doubt that some subsets of the population got more depressed while others feel better, but it's very possible that rates would have been the same 30 years ago, had people felt okay with talking about suicidal thoughts, depression or a variety of other things that are at least a bit less stigmatised now. I'm not that old (or at least I like to think I'm not) but I can say with confidence nobody in my circle of friends 25 years ago would even think of saying they're depressed or suicidal. That would get you labelled a weirdo.
    - codebolt 3y ago
      Wrong. The rates are higher and the main reason is obvious. Fewer families being formed => more lonely adults => more people depressed.
      - pmarreck 3y ago
        You know what would instantly greatly help online debates like this? Actual data.
- pdntspa 3y ago
  That "golden age" is a huge cop-out for any topic that doesn't span hundreds of years
- nicky0 3y ago
  Materially, we've never had it better. Spiritually, we are in a deep crisis.
  - eru 3y ago
    Where we ever less in a spiritual crisis? How do you measure these things? And who is 'we'?
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    Depends on your definition of "we" There are regions where the opposite happened. E.g. native tribes who were expelled for resources
    - nicky0 3y ago
      Missing the point.
- virtualritz 3y ago
  The issue is the definition of 'better'. If you think access to food, medication, education, higher life expectancy, then yes. IMHO though, a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness you experience while being alife (i.e. decoupled from life expectancy). I would then conclude (and I am really happy to be proved wrong) that the developed world being/becoming better is considerably more difficult to argue for. Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs not experienced since WWII. [1] is just from a quick googling and US-only. You won't have trouble finding much more evidence to support this though, for many other 1st world countries. I would bet there is a direct link to this; between making GPD the driving factor for a country's governance vs. e.g. happiness of its citizens. Look no further than Scandinavian countries (Norway is the exeption, not declining but at least also not increasing)[2]. [1] https://time.com/5609124/us-suicide-rate-increase/ https://time.com/5609124/us-suicide-rate-increase/ [2] https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2019/08/kronikk/why-suicide-rate-not-declining-norway https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2019/08/kronikk/why-suicide-rate-...
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness So, instead of measuring the objective/empirical things that: 1. Keep people alive 2. Keep them from going hungry 3. Make them healthy and pain-free 4. Keep them warm (or cool, where appropriate) 5. Etc etc etc You instead are suggesting that we measure some subjective mood that no one can define well, test for, or detect with instrumentation? That would be the better measure? > Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs I would not argue that these are insignificant, but there are methodological problems with both. Suicide may have been traditionally undercounted for religious reasons. If you're investigating a suicide in the 1950s, it might just have been a gun-cleaning accident instead. Saves the family grief, means the deceased can be buried in the cemetery the family wants, etc. Depression, while real, might still be subject to the sort of contagious hypochondriac panics that describe the late 20th century and early 21st so well. Or, alternatively... it might have been undercounted until recently. We're not seeing an increase so much as that people are merely aware of it.
  - 3y ago
- tim333 3y ago
  >The vast majority of humanity has never had it better There has been a general upswing since 1600 or so, so you could say that about most years since then, at least in economic terms. In terms of happiness it seems kind of flat though.
gcanyon 3y ago
"I wish there was a way to know you're in 'the good old days' before you've actually left them." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJQyhB0dws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJQyhB0dws
- MarkusWandel 3y ago
  That is actually a really useful, affirming thought exercise that I've done before. Simply take a nice present-day experience and run it through the "20 year ago nostalgia filter". Where all the boring/frustrating crap that surrounds the experience is forgotten, and just the good thing remains surrounded by the golden halo of nostalgia. It makes me appreciate the present experience more and dulls the "oh, life was so much nicer 10/20 years ago" nostalgia thing (it wasn't, it just seems that way).
jakderrida 3y ago
>it doesn’t mean we should dismiss outright the possibility that a passing era might just be taking something truly valuable with it. Our youth is usually the part we're nostalgic for and nothing else. You ever hear the nostalgists crying out to go back to a "simpler time"? It's because they were children and the world is simpler for a child that lacks obligations. Fortunately, my childhood was crappy enough and my adulthood fun enough that I can more than let go of the 80s and 90s without any reservations.
- riffraff 3y ago
  It's also whatever is removed in time because people simply forgot about it. It's a constant discourse in my country to think of today as "dangerous" and idealize some earlier decades where you'd "leave the door open" while by all metrics crime was actually higher. We just collectively forgot about it. That's one of the reasons every age and culture has a golden age/arcadia/Eden mythology.
  - jakderrida 3y ago
    >It's a constant discourse in my country to think of today as "dangerous" and idealize some earlier decades where you'd "leave the door open" while by all metrics crime was actually higher. This highlights a great point about past media. Films like The Warriors, Class of 1999, and even A Clockwork Orange play into this notion that juveniles have become worse and worse and we can expect a hellscape from future generations of young people. Truth, though, is that Gen Zs are so laughably well behaved compared to those my age were that we finally have a period where this genre simply has no place. I hear things from my nephews and nieces about "staying home for the weekend" and think of all the money my sister wasted on a home security system to make sure they don't sneak out and get arrested all the time like we did. Leave that door wide open with soundproofing and they still have no desire to sneak out, especially because nobody else their age is out anyway.
    - closewith 3y ago
      I don't think your experience generalises. Kids are still sneaking out.
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
I think we're in a golden age of computer gaming right now. I remember what it was like when I was young: paying $30+ per game (many of which were flash-game quality, and I only learned how good the game was after I bought it), or endlessly scouring the internet for something free. Nowadays I can pay $5 on Steam, GoG, etc. for a game that will engross me for 100+ hours
- rootsudo 3y ago
  On the flipside, is it the golden age of computing gaming or golden age of addiction? Paying $5 to be engrossed in a game for 100+ hours?
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
    Point taken, but depending on the game it could be a better way to relax than e.g. browsing social media. I'm actually curious what people think a legitimate, cheap way to relax on a weekend or while sick is, if not gaming.
    - rootsudo 3y ago
      Personally, I like reading (books, magazine, foreign langauge, physical and online - library is free! Bookstores are free if you don't buy!), learning new things - going outside, cycling, sports, etc. Many of those things can be as cheap or as expensive as you want, the last two do have some cost of entry but, it entirely depends how deep you want to go. I enjoyed gaming as a kid, but the older I become, the less tolerant of it I am. I was the sort of kid/teen that would dive deep into JRPG's and spend time on gamefaqs.com and other forums - so don't discount me as someone that never understood gaming - but now that I'm an adult I just don't enjoy it. Maybe it's because I understand how games are made, and what meetings/background context goes into publishing a game, maybe it's just that I have less and less freetime so I don't want to be involved in a computer-esque realted software type deal. There's also the whome gamification of society and microtransactions that really draw developers into extracting money every chance, and theres also marketplaces like Xbox Game Pass that offer unlimited gaming for a set fee. I very much think we are in a true golden age of information exchange - letters - phone calls - instant transmisison via Internet to the point where we're conversing ways to relax with the time we have. And I don't mean to be negative of your hobby. As long as you enjoy the time you spend on it - that's excellent. :) And don't think I don't game now, I have a switch that I never use with a library of games that keeps piling up - heh.

by maegul 3y ago

eru 3y ago

Even a non-golden era can have something truly valuable. Btw, we are living in a golden age. The vast majority of humanity has never had it better.

chx 3y ago
> we are living in a golden age I would've agreed pre-covid.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  Less than 130 years ago 47% of all children in the USA died before reaching age 5. I think that we are doing just fine even with covid.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    A lot of folks are hungry in my state. As in : not enough nutrient a day. https://www.cpex.org/blog/stateofhunger https://www.cpex.org/blog/stateofhunger
    - bear141 3y ago
      [dead]
    - pmarreck 3y ago
      Other states (that are probably run better): Exist
      - dopidopHN 3y ago
        Sorry, what is your point? Mine was that a level of poverties implying calories deficit exist in the US.
- jannes 3y ago
  Does COVID still exist meaningfully in your part of the world? In my country the first few waves were very strong, but after a successful vaccination campaign (among other things) COVID has completely disappeared in everybody’s daily lives.
  - BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
    I think they are referring less to the actual virus and more to the rapid deterioration of our discourse and politics that accompanied it. Or at least this is what I might mean when using "COVID" as an epoch.
    - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
      > rapid deterioration of our discourse and politics that accompanied it That has been happening way before Covid. IMHO it started with the internet. Pre-internet the flow of information is gatekept by traditional media - newspapers, radio, TV, … etc. Everyone watched, listened to, read more or less the same things. This resulted in a more uniform set of opinions and more common ground between people. The internet broke all that. People could choose what they watch/listen/read and different people picked different things, coming to very different conclusions. In the past you could ask someone if they watched X last night and there is a decent probability they did. Today it’s much harder to find common ground - you could both be on YouTube but watching completely different things. Edit: Don’t just downvote. You got a problem with this post, say something.
      - 2devnull 3y ago
        I agree it was happening before COVID. I think the internet could be part of the problem. But it wasn’t freedom of choice that caused the problem, which is what you claim. There’s much less freedom on the internet now, and if anything it’s much worse. If we’re going to blame internet then blame ads and big tech. Don’t blame people for watching cat videos, that’s absurd.
        TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  COVID is what saved us from four more years of Trump (and perhaps many more after that of his family and Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and Steven Miller and Steve Bannon and the list goes on and on...).
junofan 3y ago
Maybe you’re thinking of a “gilded age” in the sense of Twain. The Golden Age of Hesiod and Ovid was defined by peace and justice amongst a golden race. It’s about ideals and peace rather than material prosperity. The metals debase from gold to silver to bronze to iron as conflict increases and the social contract breaks.
- Emma_Goldman 3y ago
  'Golden age' is typically used to mean a historic age of comparative greatness from which society has since fallen. See the idiomatic vs. the mythological meaning on Wiktionary: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/golden_age https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/golden_age
Emma_Goldman 3y ago
That's a bit simplistic. If you haven't noticed, advanced economies are experiencing secularly stagnating growth, a crisis of democratic representation and its populist backlash, the return of oligarchic inequality to levels not seen since the gilded age, and extreme social atomisation and mental health breakdown. We are also all hurtling towards catastrophic climate change, an AI revolution that could lead to generalised technological unemployment, and some indeterminate level of conflict between the US and China. Unsurprisingly, therefore, most people in advanced economies look back on the post-war decades as a golden age - obviously there were problems, but there was high growth, full employment, good public services, strong unions, and comparatively cheap housing. Others look back to the 1990s as a time of untroubled horizons. Also, the global 'we' is unhelpful. Have native Americans, Syrians or Greeks never had it so good?
- vasco 3y ago
  > Also, the global 'we' is unhelpful. Have native Americans, Syrians or Greeks never had it so good? Syrians are starving and in war, so they've been better. The other two examples, undoubtedly yes they are better than ever. For anyone to think it was better in any other time in history for most of the global population than now, shows such a lack of knowledge of history and the human condition that its hard to take serious. For someone so concerned with the future of humanity to create a problem with referring to all humans as "we" is a bit rich. Scrolling instagram and fake depressions aren't worse than having 7 miscarriages, half your kids dying as babies or children, being enslaved, starving to death and a million other nice things most humans had to deal with that they don't have to deal with now. Basic access to medicine, food stability etc, on a large scale is so much better. We have the fewest people living in poverty there ever was. Wanting to better ourselves and being aware the Maslow hierarchy continues to create infinite steps should not blind you to the amount of work millions of humans over generations have done to create such an easy mode version of the world for us. To not at least acknowledge it and just say it all sucks is myopic at the minimum.
  - Emma_Goldman 3y ago
    Read the first sentence with which I began. I said it was simplistic, not that it was categorically and completely wrong, and certainly not that its opposite was true. What I object to is the extraordinarily simplistic, one-dimensional view of progress peddled by the likes of Hans Rosling and Steven Pinker. True, lot's of material and medical indicators of progress have consistently increased. That's to be celebrated. Certainly, if asked, the vast majority of people in the West would want to be born in the post-war years, and the average would probably slant towards the end of that period. Though I do think a good slice of people would choose against the post-2008 years in particular. But that binary - better or worse? - is a crude measure of societal health. It lacks any dialectical sense of modernity, of that fact the same socio-technological expansion which brought about that progress, has gone hand-in-hand with extreme oligarchy, world war, nuclear weapons, climate change, the anthropocene. Certainly, the risks of catastrophic global breakdown are greater today than ever before. I also think it has a superficial and philistine grasp of politics and the common good. Besides utilitarians, few political philosophers would so easily equate the good with material abundance. Hence why I pointed, by way of counterpoint, to today's secular stagnation, crisis of democracy, inequality, and withering of public life. These are not small problems, but speak to fundamental pathologies in our body politic. > "The other two examples, undoubtedly yes they are better than ever." Many native Americans and Greeks would viscerally disagree with you. Perhaps you're missing something? > "For anyone to think it was better in any other time in history for most of the global population than now, shows such a lack of knowledge of history and the human condition that its hard to take serious." As above, you have misread what I said, and I think trying to understand and evaluate society solely from the binary standard of 'better or worse' is extremely crude. I have a PhD in history btw. >"Scrolling instagram and fake depressions aren't worse than having 7 miscarriages, half your kids dying as babies or children, being enslaved, starving to death." True, but I think virtually no one would say otherwise. This is an unhelpful caricature of the argument I was making.
concordDance 3y ago
True, but the rates of depression and general unhappiness in the West are definitely up from 30 years ago.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  No, there is more awareness and they are more vocal now.
  - theclansman 3y ago
    That's an extremely simplistic way to dismiss the problem. Depression wasn't something that was invented or discovered in the last decade.
    - WilTimSon 3y ago
      But openness about mental health issues and lower stigma around it is definitely a more modern thing, actually. I don't doubt that some subsets of the population got more depressed while others feel better, but it's very possible that rates would have been the same 30 years ago, had people felt okay with talking about suicidal thoughts, depression or a variety of other things that are at least a bit less stigmatised now. I'm not that old (or at least I like to think I'm not) but I can say with confidence nobody in my circle of friends 25 years ago would even think of saying they're depressed or suicidal. That would get you labelled a weirdo.
  - codebolt 3y ago
    Wrong. The rates are higher and the main reason is obvious. Fewer families being formed => more lonely adults => more people depressed.
    - pmarreck 3y ago
      You know what would instantly greatly help online debates like this? Actual data.
pdntspa 3y ago
That "golden age" is a huge cop-out for any topic that doesn't span hundreds of years
nicky0 3y ago
Materially, we've never had it better. Spiritually, we are in a deep crisis.
- eru 3y ago
  Where we ever less in a spiritual crisis? How do you measure these things? And who is 'we'?
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  Depends on your definition of "we" There are regions where the opposite happened. E.g. native tribes who were expelled for resources
  - nicky0 3y ago
    Missing the point.
virtualritz 3y ago
The issue is the definition of 'better'. If you think access to food, medication, education, higher life expectancy, then yes. IMHO though, a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness you experience while being alife (i.e. decoupled from life expectancy). I would then conclude (and I am really happy to be proved wrong) that the developed world being/becoming better is considerably more difficult to argue for. Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs not experienced since WWII. [1] is just from a quick googling and US-only. You won't have trouble finding much more evidence to support this though, for many other 1st world countries. I would bet there is a direct link to this; between making GPD the driving factor for a country's governance vs. e.g. happiness of its citizens. Look no further than Scandinavian countries (Norway is the exeption, not declining but at least also not increasing)[2]. [1] https://time.com/5609124/us-suicide-rate-increase/ https://time.com/5609124/us-suicide-rate-increase/ [2] https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2019/08/kronikk/why-suicide-rate-not-declining-norway https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2019/08/kronikk/why-suicide-rate-...
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness So, instead of measuring the objective/empirical things that: 1. Keep people alive 2. Keep them from going hungry 3. Make them healthy and pain-free 4. Keep them warm (or cool, where appropriate) 5. Etc etc etc You instead are suggesting that we measure some subjective mood that no one can define well, test for, or detect with instrumentation? That would be the better measure? > Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs I would not argue that these are insignificant, but there are methodological problems with both. Suicide may have been traditionally undercounted for religious reasons. If you're investigating a suicide in the 1950s, it might just have been a gun-cleaning accident instead. Saves the family grief, means the deceased can be buried in the cemetery the family wants, etc. Depression, while real, might still be subject to the sort of contagious hypochondriac panics that describe the late 20th century and early 21st so well. Or, alternatively... it might have been undercounted until recently. We're not seeing an increase so much as that people are merely aware of it.
- 3y ago
tim333 3y ago
>The vast majority of humanity has never had it better There has been a general upswing since 1600 or so, so you could say that about most years since then, at least in economic terms. In terms of happiness it seems kind of flat though.

gcanyon 3y ago

"I wish there was a way to know you're in 'the good old days' before you've actually left them." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJQyhB0dws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJQyhB0dws

MarkusWandel 3y ago
That is actually a really useful, affirming thought exercise that I've done before. Simply take a nice present-day experience and run it through the "20 year ago nostalgia filter". Where all the boring/frustrating crap that surrounds the experience is forgotten, and just the good thing remains surrounded by the golden halo of nostalgia. It makes me appreciate the present experience more and dulls the "oh, life was so much nicer 10/20 years ago" nostalgia thing (it wasn't, it just seems that way).

jakderrida 3y ago

>it doesn’t mean we should dismiss outright the possibility that a passing era might just be taking something truly valuable with it. Our youth is usually the part we're nostalgic for and nothing else. You ever hear the nostalgists crying out to go back to a "simpler time"? It's because they were children and the world is simpler for a child that lacks obligations. Fortunately, my childhood was crappy enough and my adulthood fun enough that I can more than let go of the 80s and 90s without any reservations.

riffraff 3y ago
It's also whatever is removed in time because people simply forgot about it. It's a constant discourse in my country to think of today as "dangerous" and idealize some earlier decades where you'd "leave the door open" while by all metrics crime was actually higher. We just collectively forgot about it. That's one of the reasons every age and culture has a golden age/arcadia/Eden mythology.
- jakderrida 3y ago
  >It's a constant discourse in my country to think of today as "dangerous" and idealize some earlier decades where you'd "leave the door open" while by all metrics crime was actually higher. This highlights a great point about past media. Films like The Warriors, Class of 1999, and even A Clockwork Orange play into this notion that juveniles have become worse and worse and we can expect a hellscape from future generations of young people. Truth, though, is that Gen Zs are so laughably well behaved compared to those my age were that we finally have a period where this genre simply has no place. I hear things from my nephews and nieces about "staying home for the weekend" and think of all the money my sister wasted on a home security system to make sure they don't sneak out and get arrested all the time like we did. Leave that door wide open with soundproofing and they still have no desire to sneak out, especially because nobody else their age is out anyway.
  - closewith 3y ago
    I don't think your experience generalises. Kids are still sneaking out.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

I think we're in a golden age of computer gaming right now. I remember what it was like when I was young: paying $30+ per game (many of which were flash-game quality, and I only learned how good the game was after I bought it), or endlessly scouring the internet for something free. Nowadays I can pay $5 on Steam, GoG, etc. for a game that will engross me for 100+ hours

rootsudo 3y ago
On the flipside, is it the golden age of computing gaming or golden age of addiction? Paying $5 to be engrossed in a game for 100+ hours?
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  Point taken, but depending on the game it could be a better way to relax than e.g. browsing social media. I'm actually curious what people think a legitimate, cheap way to relax on a weekend or while sick is, if not gaming.
  - rootsudo 3y ago
    Personally, I like reading (books, magazine, foreign langauge, physical and online - library is free! Bookstores are free if you don't buy!), learning new things - going outside, cycling, sports, etc. Many of those things can be as cheap or as expensive as you want, the last two do have some cost of entry but, it entirely depends how deep you want to go. I enjoyed gaming as a kid, but the older I become, the less tolerant of it I am. I was the sort of kid/teen that would dive deep into JRPG's and spend time on gamefaqs.com and other forums - so don't discount me as someone that never understood gaming - but now that I'm an adult I just don't enjoy it. Maybe it's because I understand how games are made, and what meetings/background context goes into publishing a game, maybe it's just that I have less and less freetime so I don't want to be involved in a computer-esque realted software type deal. There's also the whome gamification of society and microtransactions that really draw developers into extracting money every chance, and theres also marketplaces like Xbox Game Pass that offer unlimited gaming for a set fee. I very much think we are in a true golden age of information exchange - letters - phone calls - instant transmisison via Internet to the point where we're conversing ways to relax with the time we have. And I don't mean to be negative of your hobby. As long as you enjoy the time you spend on it - that's excellent. :) And don't think I don't game now, I have a switch that I never use with a library of games that keeps piling up - heh.