4 ms·

Fears of War, Population Explosion, American Decline, and Japanese Ascension with some anti-Reagan sentiment mixed in. Pretty much a lesson in what pop-culture

by cjensen 14y ago

Fears of War, Population Explosion, American Decline, and Japanese Ascension with some anti-Reagan sentiment mixed in. Pretty much a lesson in what pop-culture fear look like in 1987, and every one of them turned out to be a non-issue. This ought to give one pause and great skepticism when evaluating today's pop-culture fears. Of course, just because an idiot picks (c) on an SAT question doesn't mean it's wrong.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
Group-think and reality tunnels apparent throughout. If someone thinks we aren't doing the same thing, they're insane.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  Precisely. Pop culture is made to be vacuous, ephemeral, and cyclic. Unfortunately, there are scores of people who eat it up because it's pushed to them. Worse, there are lots of institutions who make a killing off of giving people exactly what they say they want. The success doesn't bother me; the pandering does.
- Gormo 14y ago
  > If someone thinks we aren't doing the same thing, they're insane. For varying values of we, anyway. Every generation seems to have its crisis/moral panic du jour. Only a minority ever seems to take a moderate, pragmatic view, and expect neither utopia nor dystopia.
  - anabis 14y ago
    > expect neither utopia nor dystopia. Maybe the old utopia is the new mundane? Infant mortality near zero, lifespan 80 years, global communication and travel, almost no hunger or war. Wouldn't that be considered utopia 100 years ago? Those are for the West, but the rest of the world is rapidly catching up, too.
eevilspock 14y ago
Yeah, but whose to say that the prevalence of those fears didn't have a hand in making them a non-issue? What else but a fear of war motivates us to avoid it? Would China have instituted its one-child policy without a fear of population explosion, a policy which arguably is one of the most important factors in its rapid rise (as compared to India, for instance)? Perhaps the seeming inevitability of Japan's dominance made them complacent while simultaneously stripping American's of theirs?
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  Instead of investing in building family Chinese invest in building career + retirement fund?
  - smsm42 14y ago
    Now the only thing they need is to institute western-like welfare state system where people have very low private savings rate and rely almost completely on pay-as-you-go defined benefits global pension funds - and they'd be left very surprised and wondering what hit them so hard when everything was going so good just so short time ago.
- learc83 14y ago
  >which arguably is one of the most important factors in its rapid rise There is debate over the actual effectiveness of the policy. The really optimistic numbers seem to come straight fromt the Chinese government, and there are a lot of people who disagree with them. Additionally they are going to have a huge demographic problem as the one child generation ages. I was just reading an economist article that said estimates are that over 1/3 of Shanghai will be over 60 by 2020, and by 2050 the median age in China will be 49.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

by cjensen 14y ago

waterlesscloud 14y ago

Group-think and reality tunnels apparent throughout. If someone thinks we aren't doing the same thing, they're insane.

mattgreenrocks 14y ago
Precisely. Pop culture is made to be vacuous, ephemeral, and cyclic. Unfortunately, there are scores of people who eat it up because it's pushed to them. Worse, there are lots of institutions who make a killing off of giving people exactly what they say they want. The success doesn't bother me; the pandering does.
Gormo 14y ago
> If someone thinks we aren't doing the same thing, they're insane. For varying values of we, anyway. Every generation seems to have its crisis/moral panic du jour. Only a minority ever seems to take a moderate, pragmatic view, and expect neither utopia nor dystopia.
- anabis 14y ago
  > expect neither utopia nor dystopia. Maybe the old utopia is the new mundane? Infant mortality near zero, lifespan 80 years, global communication and travel, almost no hunger or war. Wouldn't that be considered utopia 100 years ago? Those are for the West, but the rest of the world is rapidly catching up, too.

eevilspock 14y ago

Yeah, but whose to say that the prevalence of those fears didn't have a hand in making them a non-issue? What else but a fear of war motivates us to avoid it? Would China have instituted its one-child policy without a fear of population explosion, a policy which arguably is one of the most important factors in its rapid rise (as compared to India, for instance)? Perhaps the seeming inevitability of Japan's dominance made them complacent while simultaneously stripping American's of theirs?

dennisgorelik 14y ago
Instead of investing in building family Chinese invest in building career + retirement fund?
- smsm42 14y ago
  Now the only thing they need is to institute western-like welfare state system where people have very low private savings rate and rely almost completely on pay-as-you-go defined benefits global pension funds - and they'd be left very surprised and wondering what hit them so hard when everything was going so good just so short time ago.
learc83 14y ago
>which arguably is one of the most important factors in its rapid rise There is debate over the actual effectiveness of the policy. The really optimistic numbers seem to come straight fromt the Chinese government, and there are a lot of people who disagree with them. Additionally they are going to have a huge demographic problem as the one child generation ages. I was just reading an economist article that said estimates are that over 1/3 of Shanghai will be over 60 by 2020, and by 2050 the median age in China will be 49.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]