| ▲ | noir_lord a day ago |
| I think that's why historical education is so important (or just liking history as in my case), looked through the lens of history all of the current shit as bad as it is, is really nothing all that new either, the only constant is change after all. As the aphorism goes: History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme. |
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| ▲ | suttontom 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| If you're able to, find a random NPR broadcast from 20 to 30 years ago and marvel at how it could be replayed nearly verbatim today. "Inflation", "war in the Middle East", "Congress stalled on xyz." Even the "unprecedented" political correctness and racial reckonings in the US observed around 2020 were not uncommon in the 1970s and 1980s (see the Stanford Beethoven poster incident which also left students literally fainting and crying in hysterics). |
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| ▲ | pojzon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Funny analogy. “The only constant is change”. Thats why humans constantly repeat the same mistakes we covered and wrote about in last 3000 years. The pace of learning for our spieces is devastatingly slow. We rather regress faster than learn. We are closer to idiocracy, due to knowledge and skills atrophy (not only due to AI). |
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| ▲ | AlexB138 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You're absolutely correct that history helps you see that none of this is new. However, is it better to be the person who sees the waterfall their boat is inevitably going to go over, or the person completely ignorant of it until it happens? |
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| ▲ | mindwok a day ago | parent | next [-] | | If we look at history, humanity has been through some pretty crazy shit and we haven't gone over the waterfall yet. | | |
| ▲ | watwut 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I dont want to go through ANY of that crazy shit. And I dont want my kids to go through it either. And based on hostory, violent, cruel, oppressive shit can take looong time a hit huge amounts of people. | | |
| ▲ | mindwok 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nobody in history wanted to either. Unfortunately we don’t get a choice. |
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| ▲ | johnnyanmac 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | On the contrary: we've fall off waterfalls every few decades or so. Humanity simply survives and moves on, taking maybe 2% more caution for the next waterfalll |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > see that none of this is new But this is. This sort of violent partisanship that self ensconces around identity versus issues is exactly what tears apart democracies and republics. | | |
| ▲ | suttontom 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "B-b-but this really is new!" The USA did have a Civil War. It was so violent that it killed more Americans than all other wars combined. | | |
| ▲ | card_zero 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Message unclear. You're saying the USA is an old hand at civil wars now and could do another one any time, no problem? Or perhaps I shouldn't look for a message. | | |
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| ▲ | johnnyanmac 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This isn't new either. The tools and technology are new. The strategies and psychologies aren't. Even the identity part isn't new; even among Caucasian males only, see how many times society's woes will be blamed on whatever convinient immigrant there is in that period. |
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| ▲ | ChickeNES a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > However, is it better to be the person who sees the waterfall their boat is inevitably going to go over, or the person completely ignorant of it until it happens? Neither, it's better to be the person who realizes we're in for a bright future no matter what doomers think. | |
| ▲ | II2II a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's more like, is it better to be the person who: - sees a waterfall in every river, even when one is not there? - sees the waterfall, and is resigned about their fate? - sees the waterfall, then struggles for survival no matter how hopeless the situation seems to be? - is completely ignorant of the waterfall? | | |
| ▲ | rightbyte 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | "sees the waterfall, then struggles for survival no matter how hopeless the situation seems to be?" You could consider that a variant of the voter's dilemma. |
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| ▲ | s1artibartfast 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And I think history provides some prophylactic counterbalance to the cynical narrative. To hear some people talk, people are inherently evil, and the US has been a downhill project to oppress since the days of the founding. History shows that things can and do improve when people try. The overall trajectory has been positive, even if bumpy. |
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| ▲ | johnnyanmac 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | I've heard it described as a growing but fluctuating graph (think something like a logarithmic graph, with some noise added in). Progress is positive overall, but there are times of radical progress and decline. And people will feel both aspects. We're definitely in a decline as of now, where we arguably had progress from 80 to 50 years ago. | | |
| ▲ | senordevnyc 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Are you saying we’ve been in a decline for the last fifty years? If so, I would agree, but for fairly narrow definitions of “we”. Globally, the median human is wildly better off than 50 years ago. Even in the US, I see your point for straight white men (of which I’m one), but would the median woman be better off fifty years ago? What about if you’re gay, disabled, black, etc? That’s not even getting into things like medical conditions, life expectancy, violent crime rates, etc. Infant mortality was more than 3x higher fifty years ago than it is now. | | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | In terms of US macroeconomics, yes. End of the gold standard and the Vietnam War put the US in a position 9f slumping it's post WW2 command of the world, and the 80's accelerated the breakdown of all the structures that gave the US prosperous times. Socially speaking, it's been a much better curve, albeit not without its own share of slumps. Especially recent updates on Roe v.Wade. There's certainly a conversation for that as well, but economics makes sure those marginalized classes remain marginalized. | | |
| ▲ | senordevnyc 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I totally agree with your second paragraph. I don’t know enough about macroeconomics in the global sense to say about the first one though. My sense is that we’ve gotten much richer, more innovative, more technologically advanced, etc as a nation over the last half century. More so than basically anyone else. And no one is really catching up to us in those areas, with the possible exception of China. Is that wrong? I agree that we seem to have destroyed a lot of institutions and safeguards that might precipitate our decline, but those things seem very subjective and qualitative. If we look at it quantitatively and holistically, we see pockets of decline all over, but the overall picture of the metrics doesn’t look like decline, does it? But I suppose that depends on how you weigh the pockets of decline against the pockets of advancement. I guess maybe a better way to frame the question would be: what would you expect to see from the US economically over the last 50 years if we had not been in the decline you’re claiming? |
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| ▲ | watwut a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The knowledge that 1932 was kinda similar is not comforting at all. Or whatever run up to historical horrible events we talk about. I genuinely dont like what history sais follows after times like this. |
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| ▲ | queenkjuul a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I would kinda be with you, except, climate change. And like, we didn't have nukes when the last world war started. This time we will. |
