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Comment by leashless | Hacker News Reader

Life being worse, year on year average, rather than better for most people in most of the richer countries.

It's been mostly going sideways since 2008, now it's trending down.

This changes everything. It's like a bear market for culture.

Economic downturns are often times of great cultural movements. The renaissance, hip hop, punk/ post punk all emerged from economies in decline

Politically, I'm a bit anarchistic, so I totally get this. It feels like sometimes you need shit to start flying before change happens. Look at the talk on M4A since the virus started and I think we've gotten more accomplished for civil rights in 3 weeks than 40 years after the George Floyd murder. (Still we're less than 10% of where we need to be though to wrap that up).

> Look at the talk on M4A since the virus started and I think we've gotten more accomplished for civil rights in 3 weeks than 40 years after the George Floyd murder.

All I see is a couple states passing some laws about police needing to use cameras and not choking people. In the last 40 years, civil rights has progressed to legalizing gay marriage and laws against discrimination for sexual orientation. I would also count marijuana legalization in some states as a civil rights matter since I believe it was used to target the black population.

Several of those weren't really great times.

The Renaissance, particularly, was particularly troubled, according to a source ... I cannot locate presently. (Podcast, history hasn't turned it up).

There’s a long essay about how terrible the renaissance was at https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-tel...

Ada Palmer's essay is remarkably close to what I had in mind, and she's talked on that topic on a few recent podcasts, that could well be it.

Thank you.

Economic downturns are also often times of great wars, social unrest and revolution.

Do you have a source that backs this claim up, or is it just anecdotal?

“Cancel culture” is making it worse for everyone. Say or do the wrong thing on social media at any point in time in history and you can lose everything.

Social media has become a groupthink bent toward disorder. I just pick up on a lot more hostility than I remember from even 10 years ago.

All the polls showing people expecting to wind up worse off than their parents and the consistent results for older generations views.

Maybe you shouldn't get to say everything out loud without backlash? Maybe being more considerate to others is something we should all strive for? I was like you, I hated this culture. I felt like someone was taking my liberties away. Then I decided to actually talk to be people with less privilege and I noticed that me talking shit on the internet isn't something that's necessary for me. I'd rather have everyone be respected and taken care of.

Part of respecting and taking care of one another is honoring that everyone’s not perfect and is capable of faults. Let people have their “worts” acknowledging that people aren’t always at their best.

Maybe you should first read your history (much of it still alive in “less privileged” countries), and then decide that your witch hunting is the new best religion. Full disclosure: I am living in middle east. I am disabled. I believe in equality of opportunity and even unfair taxation to help less fortunate people. I believe in universal healthcare and education. I believe that the world is full of discrimination. And I believe that the new woke religion is actually a product of excess privilege, combined with selfish manipulators, and it will not at all better the lives of most under-privileged people. Yes, the “activists” and politicians who rise from the underprivileged classes will reap a lot of benefits, but not the masses. The privileged people will also be better off, as they do nothing but marginalize others based on their beliefs, and then pat themselves on the back.

Are you aware that the Golden Age fallacy is thousands of years old?

Personally, this feels different. The Golden Age fallacy is where one person goes "hey I dislike this because it's different". This is speedily increasing amounts of young people suffering mental illness. https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html#:~:text=....

I agree. This is probably more akin to what the Japanese youth felt after the bubble burst in the 90s there. We didn't hear personal anecdotes about it then because no internet and language barriers.

Yep. For some metrics, we're killing it.

Others, we're really fucking up.

Genuine happiness/fulfilled-ness and creativity are some of those.

I think we need proof cause thats has pretty much been proven to be untrue by a few sources I've seen.

Lower birth rates, marriage rates, wage growth (negative even), home ownership comes later in life, education is more expensive, fewer areas with job markets with good wages, so housing is more expensive, etc.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/national-marriage-divorce-...

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNCBRTINUSA

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

I feel this; do you have any resources you can share regarding this phenomenon?

Interesting. Do you have links or papers that provide data or details?

My acquaintances (esp those who tend to be more 'pro-capitalism') cite Steven Pinker's 'Enlightenment Now' as a source that current economic systems aren't ripe for disruption because things are 'generally better than they were before.' While it's often vague responses when we're in conversations, I'd like to review information that articulates the opposite POV - especially in-light of higher cost of living, stagnating wages, and increasing income inequality.

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