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Comment by 1270018080 | Hacker News Reader

As someone who likes looking at charts, I hate being in the "middle" of the story on the social recession. In addition to everything listed in the article, we also have ever increasing partisanship, declines in education, climate destruction etc. Instead of everything getting .5% worse every year, it would be nice to see something dramatically change, good or bad. Some shift that actually changes things just to get this current failing society out of the way.

Is this what life is always like in declining empires? Will it just get worse every year until we have a few wars and genocides until there's enough destruction to start rebuilding?

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It feels like things are a bit primed for something like that, in a way. Although it could easily not and just continue indefinitely if the public is pacified completely. Still, I think if this drip drip drip of a decline continues, then I think we might start seeing some weird fascination with war as an “outlet." A lot of fine de siecle 20th century writers talked about this same thing with regards to mass industrial society, as if they wanted WWI. When Wittgenstein was sent to the front, his response was basically, “I really needed that,” as if it was some kind of cleanse. People are built for narratives, they derive meaning from them, and a drift cannot persist indefinitely. Amid the collapse of traditional meta-narratives that once gave meaning, there are today many competing ones, none of which are truly for the now. It feels like we need a new way to live otherwise we will exhaust ourselves.

I'd recommend The Origins of War in Child Abuse by Lloyd DeMause [1] if you aren't already aware of it. The actual child abuse part is not apropos the technological aspects, but there's a deep (one of the most direct and powerfully written) account of perennial sacrificial cleansing rituals and the societal death-drive (Thanatos).

Wow, great suggestion. I will check it.

I'd really look into the validity of the book, a cursory google search reveals that's it's basically a load of shit. Also the book is narrated by Stefan Molyneux, which, I wouldn't say is a 'happy accident' when it comes to Molyneux oeuvre

Lol wtf? Jesus christ, nevermind then.

Someone you don't like read a book. Therefore the book is rubbish.

I suppose this is the logic we get from kids raised by algorithms.

My perspective is velenced by my own biases, just like yours. My function here was just to provide a countering force to your force, and let the OP atleast be presented with the opportunity to be skeptical (mirroring the discourse around this topic, no doubt). It's worth pointing out that psychohistory is not a serious field, and largely considered a pseudoscience.

Which empire are you imagining is in decline?

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