The West needs to grow up | Hacker News Reader

The West needs to grow up

unherd.com

25 pointspaulpauper25 comments

These types of articles on how the youth of today are somehow spoiled, immature, etc compared to their predecessors have been published since at least the time of the ancient Greeks.

Any actual numbers or evidence except the feelings of some old guy that things were better when he was 20?

That is my feeling as well. I am not sure how this is more than someone rambling and yelling at the cloud.

So....your feeling negates his feeling?

So many pretentious words strung together in this article and not a single one of them explaining exactly what the "need" is that he's referencing in the title "The West needs to grow up". It's one gigantic exercise in begging the question, that clearly the attitudes and values of the past were better and everything modern is "wrong".

This sort of stuff only seems profound if you already agree with the premise and are searching for validation of those beliefs. Otherwise it just sounds like your standard "Old Man Yells at Cloud Using Flowery Language".

"This sort of stuff only seems profound if you already agree with the premise and are searching for validation of those beliefs..."

This kind of statement applies equally to anything relating to woke ideology and pretty much anything else really too.

I would disagree. The mark of truly profound writing is the ability to portray an idea in such a way that it forces the reader to question their pre-existing beliefs and potentially change their mind.

Agreed. And that's going to depend on your pre-existing beliefs etc.

I'm not sure how your comment changes anything.

The infantilization of western society is something to be marveled at. 20 years ago if you had suggested grown adults would be seeking a “safe space” you would’ve been laughed at.

This is what gives me pause about western culture prevailing. There is no such infantilization in Eastern systems of values. Victimhood is ridiculed, not promoted.

The beauty of a lot of Western societies is that you have an individual voice and you are free to be as stupid as you want.

In most of the Eastern societies you don’t really have an individual voice. They have “cancel culture” embedded as a feature and not a bug. You wouldn’t dare speak against whatever norm is at the time.

My first boss 45 years ago at HP (a petite Japanese lady) had a saying she learned as a child, "出る釘は打たれる" --- “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”

Needless to say many of her American workers had no conception of this cultural ideal, much to her great consternation!

Janteloven (Jante's law) of Denmark is rather similar. [0]

Also, doesn't English have the expression "Tall poppy syndrome"?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

Yeah, the premise that the concept of societal consequences for acting out or against the status quo is so alien to Western culture that Americans literally can't comprehend it is absurd.

Also see "don't stick your neck out," "the squeaky wheel gets replaced," "don't rock the boat," "speech is silver, silence is golden", "shit rolls downhill", several Biblical proverbs and some Shakespeare.

It’s funny because in Canada/US the saying is: “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”

I’ve never ever seen “replaced” being used instead of “grease”.

There was a time where there was a huge advantage to individualistic societies over collectivist. Rule-breakers built the companies, invented the technologies that super-charged their economies.

Now in a modern, globalized world any new technologies are immediately imported(stolen?) and produced more cheaply and exported back undercutting/crippling the benefits that would otherwise have been had.

You can only go so far as a society copying work of others. You can’t progress without innovation and if innovation is happening in other parts of the world then your are highly dependent on them. The society that produces innovation is never crippled because others are copying them.

Yes they are if they if the competitors are able to produce goods much more cheaply due to not having to sustain the cost of environmental/labour regulations. And for the most part, its winner takes all.

What's your objection to people needing spaces where they feel safe?

I'm currently healing from PTSD and I can get triggered by a wide range of different situations and have flashbacks which last hours. I attend a community centre at a local mental health charity which is a space I feel safe in, and I'm not really able socialise in many other spaces at present. Am I correct in inferring from your comment that you think I would be better off in a culture where I was ridiculed for needing a space like this? Or did I misunderstand what you're saying?

No. In particular, the issue is that PTSD is a (mental) illness and deserves our understanding and help. However, it is not helpful to shape all of society around this.

What would be an example of someone who claims that they need a safe space, but does not deserve understanding and help? I'm not sure about shaping all of society, but it seems reasonable to me that there would be many other people with different circumstances to me who also need safe spaces

While current events do rhyme a bit with the English Civil War, the French Revolution seems more like it.

Once the radicals took over and were able to otherise any opposition, the reign of terror started, and didn't abate for a long time. A lot of people died in the name of reason.

If you're interested in the history of either revolution, the Revolutions Podcast covers both of them in a fairly entertaining way.

Does anyone have sources to cite on the negative impact of “wokeness”? Hard numbers. Could find any quantifiable impact. Perhaps I am not looking properly.

I would think "wokeness" is too vague to study scientifically. That term has been used as a catch-all for many different things.

Soft mental concepts such as wokeness are hard to study and quantify. That does not necessarily mean that they are meaningless. It is equally hard to study and quantify effects of societal trust, religiousness or nationalism, but most people would agree that all of those tend to shape societies quite radically.

Also you could argue a lot of the problem with wokeness is putting on the focus on less important things (empty displays of virtue about things that happened a century ago etc) whilst more important things get overlooked.

For example, big tech is very happy to posture endlessly over fashionable issues that cost nothing (put up a few posters, have a hashtag) but not so much on something like wage inequality (where they import people from OS and pay x times the national average).

My assumption is that your comment about things that happened a century ago is referring to slavery. This is something that has impacted numerous generations of people and the racist ideology that sprung from that period has put into place numerous legislative systems to prevent people in poverty from gaining ground. We exist as part of a system, so yes it absolutely is relevant.

Mobility is at an all time low, so examples of "but I made it" are irrelevant

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