One word that explains why the world feels 'deeply off' for so many people
upworthy.com
upworthy.com
A lot of people are not on board, and it's now obvious it includes a lot of citizens of western countries who don't believe the deal is favorable to their interests.
Same is true for the US. If the elected officials and their hired civil servants actually went around reinforcing the US then we're fine. If they continue to neglect the decaying roads, neglect the growing trusts, and etc then the bridge will collapse.
There are a lot of contingencies that need to be satisfied to be able to do that, some about the bridge, some about the environment (people, resources, conviction, interest, etc) around the bridge.
And among those environmental contingencies, because they're so numerous and imprecise, the failing bridge increasingly invites people advocating to just accelerate retirement of the bridge on their preferred terms, towards their preferred replacement.
Ultimately, there is some point of no return, where you can no longer reasonably expect anybody to be able to gather enough resources to repair the bridge as it stands, even though it still hasn't spontaneously collapsed just yet.
It's very hard to know where you are on this progression though, and for many people, they don't have much effective potency in doing anything about it anyway. Hence, they just kinda get by and hope that they still have some way to cross the river tomorrow, with the inkling sense that they very well may not.
So either those capitalists are very stupidly short-sighted, or blaming all this on the capitalists is mistaken.
I find the explanation of foreign agitprop to be more believable. At least with that explanation, you're dealing with an actor who actually benefits from the collapse.
2. They don't care if the systems collapse, as long as they wind up with more than everyone else.
I'm not sure it's accurate to continue calling them capitalists, though they certainly benefited from capitalism.
If you consider, for example, the current AI push and its goal to essentially eliminate the need for human labor, you find that such a result would not be a form of capitalism that we recognize.
In fact, those pushing this outcome have talked of the need for UBI, which would seem the ultimate socialist scenario. But, even socialism doesn't quite fit, because it wouldn't be society that owns the means of production and distributes resources, but those who own the technology.
All of this to say, I'm not sure our current economic frame still applies to what may be happening, and this is one more example of the dramatic change the article talks about that we appear to be dealing with via normalization.
Keeping with this metaphor, “they” have taken to knocking down the bridge supports, as many as they can.
There is a real cognitive cost to knowing everything is invalid but being disallowed to say it is this because then one is contributing to “a morale problem.” The weight of all the emotional labor is why most people can’t climb the corporate ladder, as the intellectual demands of office work are basically zero. Normally it is only autistic people who struggle with this cognitive dissonance on a daily basis, but since 2020 it has been basically everyone. The fact that our world is run by terrible people who will probably not go away until removed violently is one of those things no one can talk about, but everyone knows.
I'm getting strong Ignatius J. Reilly vibes here. Most people can't climb the corporate ladder because there is no room for everybody to be promoted like that. Getting promoted is an inherently hard problem.
>The fact that our world is run by terrible people who will probably not go away until removed violently is one of those things no one can talk about, but everyone knows.
Be careful what you wish for. The people doing any kind of violent removal probably won't be benevolent either, and are likely to be less competent than the people they're replacing.
By chance (or the algo realizing I read HN) I watched an interesting edit of Adam Curtis explaining the term on Youtube too.
Depending on the topic, expressing concerns can result in being labeled as “racist,” “transphobic,” or “woke,” which discourages open and honest discussion.
The article is not really about people feeling constrained in their speech on specific topics. That implies that people know what's wrong.
It's more about the idea that things feel "off" for a lot of people in ways they can't quite describe. And, it's saying that the reason is that there really are dramatic changes happening in the world, but the powers-that-be are acting as if everything's normal.
"when everyone knew the system was failing, but since no one could imagine a possible alternative to the status quo, politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning society"