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Comment by jonny_eh | Hacker News Reader

I don't think our society is broken, at least not more-so compared to any other generation.

'Broken' should be read as people not having great relationships and mental health as once people used to have; families falling apart, couples divorcing, more single-parent families, less people marrying, much higher depression rates, high suicide rates, people reporting not having any friends, lots more people shutting in. Note that I am talking about several modern societies at once, Asian and Western societies.

Modern humans have to deal with a lot of stuff that was not part of our ancestral environment. It's not too surprising that this causes stress.

There is also a lot of stress we don't have to deal with - at least here in the west, like keeping food stocked for winter, worrying about bears and wolves, worrying about various crippling or deadly diseases that used to be commonplace etc etc.

Ironically the lack of these stressors may also contribute to people strengthening family bonds because they cannot survive without them.

Those are some things we don't have to deal with, but what's the connection with "stress"? Did people actively worry about getting leprosy or polio? Was that really a cause of "stress"? Perhaps it was; I don't know. For me, driving in bad traffic, when I'm late for an appointment, can be stressful, but thinking that I might get Alzheimer's, so perhaps I should sort out wills and power of attorney... not so much. And if we didn't have today's complex legal system, they'd be nothing to worry about at all, because what could I possibly do about it, except perhaps attend mass and say my prayers?

Well, people can vote to opt out- and they do.

Opt out is not a real option. The world is not set up for that anymore. What are you going to do -- go squat illegally somewhere until someone chases you away? Eat pigeons? It's not as easy as you make it sound to escape the framework of our society. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Agreed. I would summarize modern society the same way. In some ways life is vastly improved over prior generations, but I think that masks an alarming amount of b societal decay.

Ironically the "society is broken" narrative, aside from being unsupported by the evidence, is often used to sell mindfulness products & services.

I'd argue that the broken society narrative is a subjective opinion and not objectively quantfiable. One man's broken society is another man's utopia, it's all dependent on your personal beliefs.

Its probably as dependent on your position in such a society.

I think there are some measures you can use to say some aspects of society are more broken than in the past, for instance suicide[1].

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-su...

Steven Pinker's latest book, "Enlightenment Now", has a pretty good treatment on suicide rates and other "broken-ness" indicators. The data-driven conclusion is that on almost every metric civilization is less broken than before, if it could indeed be called broken at all.

Where's the irony?

You're spot on. Anyone who thinks our society is broken now compared to the past is being ignorant of how downright terrible life was for most of humanity throughout history.

This society has given me, a female individual, full autonomy over my body, my education, and my career prospects (for most anything short of being a catholic priest!) and protects my right to that autonomy via law. My grandmother didn't even have that. This society has produced and distributed vaccines that protect my entire generation from devastating illness. This society has seen the harm that inhumane treatment towards people of color and homosexual people has and legislated protections for both (cultural norms are still behind in some places, but vastly improved over previous generations).

You may think that too many facebook notifications is stressful, but how stressed do you think Alan Turing felt when he was tried for indecency and medically castrated for being gay? Heck, compared to many generations before that (and some deeply conservative societies that still exist in theocracies today), he was lucky to not be murdered by the government.

I freaking love modern western society and refuse to shrug off all the progress we've made and cast it aside as "broken".

I wrote another post with my own negative perspective on the current state of affairs in North America, but I agree with you as well that we shouldn't forget all the progress we have made in other domains. Good post.

I agree with you, except that mostly everything you say seems to be applicable to individuals and not the society they live it.

You are far more better off than in the past, but maybe because of that you (and everyone else) sometimes (unknowingly) are performing actions that are degrading their society as a whole.

Maybe you're having children later, having them raised by a nanny because you're wealthy and/or are working more, maybe you're not allowing them outside to play/grow. Maybe because you're using Facebook you're connecting far more superficially with your friend circle. Your grandmother had the support of all her family, community and neighbors, whereas in the modern world we're going to be going through a lot of things by ourselves.

I think ultimately we can't really know if society is broken, we can only compare it what we had before and what we imagine it can be like. That maybe casts a very negative light on it, when in reality we're doing relatively decently.

Megan McArdle neatly summarizes the tension between liberalism and society you're talking about:

https://twitter.com/asymmetricinfo/status/992463509534453760...

Its fairly easy to go to a less developed country today and see that people often appear much happier here than in the West. But as other people have pointed out its very subjective.

> how stressed do you think Alan Turing felt

Cherry picking.

If you think nothing is wrong with society and everything is great, that's interesting to me. It makes me wonder how much luck you've experienced in your life. I have certainly experienced a ton.

For most Americans, their reality is massive income inequality, insane healthcare expenses, working shitty jobs for 40+ hours a week, suffering from some kind chronic or preventable illness, and numbing the pain with 5 hours of TV per day. It's total shit.

Granted, it's less shit than it was 50 years ago in terms of social progress, medical advances, etc. But fundamentally, I believe it's still broken for the vast majority of people, if you were to somehow measure the NPS of being a human. ("Would you recommend being a human to a friend or colleague?")

Very good points. The frequency of mental illness has been growing in rich countries (beyond any reasonable doubt around under/overdiagnosis).

An interesting video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO0v_JqxFmQ

I never said nothing is wrong. I said that compared to every point in time before now it is fundamentally much better, especially for people who were invisible or oppressed due to sex, race or disability. Because it is so improved calling it broken is meaningless, because it has always been broken.

Working your life away for a substandard living is not a new thing. Not by a mile. It's the norm for history. Someone is always getting exploited. The 40 hour work week was a right that we fought for. The fact that we even have treatments and preventions for illnesses (and get new ones every day, that hep C cure for example) means we are improving, and ensuring people have access is a problem many people are invested in fixing (millenials are big supporters of universal healthcare, it will be a thing one day).

I do think I'm lucky though. I was the first person in my family to grow up middle class. I never had to rely on food banks or welfare, I didn't have to spend all my free time caring for my siblings while my parents worked. My mom had to do those things growing up, but she escaped it because she earned a scholarship to a state university and could get by with that and a part time job. Society is the one who built that college and gave her that chance, even when her family would not or could not. I am thankful for that, because at least I now have the knowledge and opportunity to fix things that do need fixing. And there are plenty. But I don't think for a second that I would have had more opportunity to do that if I had been born at any point in time before.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. You're completely right about life being fundamentally better for the invisible/oppressed. I take your point -- it was always broken for them.

> I freaking love modern western society and refuse to shrug off all the progress we've made and cast it aside as "broken".

You are confusing identifying, debating and solving serious social problems with "shrugging off all the progress".

Ah, I dunno. I can only speak for North America, but I personally feel like between the rise of identity politics, our youngest generation reporting record high levels of depression and anxiety, a massive divide between left wing and right wing and the rise of the far left and alt right.. it feels like a lot of people have lost their mind over here.

Edit: Not really sure what HN dislikes about this post. My goal here was to offer some actual aspects of North American society which many would agree to be worse than they were in recent history as opposed to simply saying "society is broken". I was expecting some actual discussion here.

Why do you think that any of this is new?

The concepts aren't new, the fact that they're now mainstream is new. Do you think Trump would have been elected 20 years ago? Do you think comedians would actually be scared to perform on college campuses 20 years ago?

The insanity was always there, but has become mainstream.

These things come in waves and it happened in the early 90 late 80's also. We get ultra PC it goes to far we over correct and the start inching back to it.

I don't know, did we actually over correct from the "ultra PC" movements of the 80s and 90s? I don't think we've seen anything like what's happened lately.

You would disagree that American politics has become more polarized in the last two decades?

What is the special significance of the 20-year time frame? It's not more polarized now that it was in 1860. Or 1760. Or 1960.

Sure... but do you think it really makes sense to compare today to 1760 or 1860?

When you are saying some social phenomena is "new", yes.

I never said it was new. I don't see why this makes it matter more or less anyway? It's sort of irrelevant whether we have seen this social phenomenon before. What is relevant is the impact it is having on society now.

> You would disagree that American politics has become more polarized in the last two decades?

Yes. American politics is not notably more polarized now than in the time immediately preceding the Clinton impeachment. (Now, had you said either 10 or 30 instead of 20, the answer would be different.)

They did not lose their minds. They had them stolen.

Have you read much history?

Sure, do you disagree with any of my statements on a timescale of the past 2 decades? My point is, there are some aspects of North American society that have gotten notably worse. To be sure, other aspects have gotten notably better in the same time period. But the fact that a lot of the craziness I mentioned is now mainstream I personally find to be troublesome.

Just look at imgurs dog-mania. All those people uncapable of relationships placeboing them with those poor animals.

Naked, dancing in the moonlight insane as it gets.

also an over-hyped narrative. It's effective tho. People want some explanation for why they're dissatisfied.

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