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The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

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Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#111

Post by seneca »

moksly wrote: post #7

> But there is also the possibility of a worst case that he describes in a chapter titled “Catastrophe.” Suppose that climate change has created an uninhabitable equator. The aging advanced nations cannot sustain their deficit-financed prosperity. The population of Africa continues its rapid growth, resulting in a mass migration into Europe that meets increasing resistance. Reading this reminded me a bit of reading t…

> ... we’ve always moved in a progressive direction. Sure it sometimes takes a few life times, but we’ve never moved permanently backwards before, so it would be rather strange if we started doing that now.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "we" here. There are plenty of societies that moved permanently backwards, and are currently quite far behind where they previously were. Iran is a regressive theocracy and used to be a very modern country. China had a beautiful intellectual culture that contributed immensely to the world and is currently a genocidal despotocracy. Egypt was the intellectual capitol of the known world. In the middle east, there were generations of people who thought that the ruins of the civilizations that came before them must have been made by gods because they couldn't fathom them being created by humans.

Civilizations backslide, and die, regularly throughout history.

Now, if you mean "we" as in humanity as a whole, it's a tougher question. I do agree that humanity as a whole makes progress forward on a long enough timelines, but there were still many stumbling blocks along the way.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#112

Post by watwut »

api wrote: post #95
bluetomcat wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music became largely teen-oriented by the late 90s and onwards. Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears... fast forward to the 2010s and nothing has dramatically changed - Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande etc. Maybe it's a very profitable spot exploited by producers and songwriters.

When I was a teen in the early 90s I listened to Tool, Nirvana, emerging Techno/Rave, Rap, as well as older rock like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix, and King Crimson. I could keep going but that's a sampling. In college I got more into electronic and obscure hip hop, both of which were quite new and innovative at the time. I lost all interest in pop because that was the late 90s when all pop went to crap. Al…

> What I see is that many teens today (those who really like music) are listening to old music from the 60s-90s and very little new music.

Teens after 1990 who fancied themselves liking music and being intellectual listened to older music too. I know, because I had friends like that. They considered Nirvana and grunge repetitive crap. Emerging techno and rap too. They would listen Pink Floyd or Beatles, but those were old at that point.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#113

Post by pjc50 »

purple-again wrote: post #4
pjc50 wrote: post #3

Well, there's something you don't see very often these days: conservative intellectuals. The old stalwarts of Ross Douthat and the AEI. The problem is though, if you skip ahead to the conclusion: > [T]he only thing more frightening than the possibility of annihilation is the possibility that our society could coast on forever as it is—like a Rome without an Attila to sack its palaces, or a Nineveh without Yahweh to p…

This comment would make sense on Reddit or twitter “maybe” due to how easy it is to fall into a bubble but on HN? This website regularly features content from conservative intellectuals.

Not really, or to anything like the extent that conservative intellectualism circulated on (and argued on) the blogosphere prior to 2016. It's just not published so much any more. See https://crookedtimber.org/2018/04/05/who-has-any-use-for-con... and previously https://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/12/richard-posner-on-the-c...

Trump has destroyed conservative intellectualism because he has no use for nor respect for them.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#114

Post by arethuza »

pjc50 wrote: post #3

Well, there's something you don't see very often these days: conservative intellectuals. The old stalwarts of Ross Douthat and the AEI. The problem is though, if you skip ahead to the conclusion: > [T]he only thing more frightening than the possibility of annihilation is the possibility that our society could coast on forever as it is—like a Rome without an Attila to sack its palaces, or a Nineveh without Yahweh to p…

Amid all this discussion of Rome, perhaps worth noting that the largest Empire in history was busy dissolving itself exactly at the same time it was taking huge measures to improve the quality of life of its own home citizens.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#115

Post by Bukhmanizer »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #104
serjester wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll agree with your point but his 4 other examples were "steamship, railroad, assembly line, and commercial aviation" which are comparable. With that said it felt like everyone I knew watched it (I associate with mostly non-techies) so to each his own. But yes the moon landing was on another level.

> steamship, railroad, assembly line, and commercial aviation" which are comparable Also pretty dubious. Regardless of what you and your friends did, you have to admit that there’s a whole wider world that didn’t watch it. Just looking at the numbers, the SpaceX launch got about 10.3 million viewers ( https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.space.com/amp/nasa-spacex-as... ) That’s good, but about as many as an important cric…

Cont.

I think that cultural bubbles are mostly harmless, but I’m surprised at how so many people seem to not realize they’re even in a bubble. Who seem to think that 95% of the world, or even America, lives like the average SV tech worker.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#116

Post by manifestsilence »

api wrote: post #86
caleb-allen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was especially unconvinced at the arguments for "repetition", for example that today's music is separated from the 90s only by "nuance". What? Sure, from up close it may seem that way, but given 30 years I'm sure we can look back and very clearly see the style developments just as we can for the 70s and the 80s. It sounded to me like a case of "back in my day" but with incoherent arguments.

That's the part I completely agree with. Music is absolutely stuck. There have only been micro-genres, such as the many micro-genres of techno/EDM or hip hop. There has been nothing approaching the birth of hip hop, techno/rave, grunge, "alternative" rock, and so on. Those all came of age in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. For some reason after 2000 music died. My personal explanation is the collapse of the record industry. I…

The only part of this I really agree with is that the music industry is harming artists more than usual. It is a meme at least as old as jazz or even older (Baroque music was so-named because it was said to be lopsided, like a misshapen pearl) that music ain't what it used to be.

There is still great music being made, and the really deep stuff has always gotten ignored by most people most of the time. Heck, I majored in music and I don't listen to Bach or Coltrane every day. That stuff is too rich for every occasion.

I'd say that innovation within genres - just people making good songs - is every bit as important as creating new genres. New genres aren't automatically created at a certain rate. They're an event, triggered by major social changes or new cultural influences most of the time. For America to invent a new genre we might need to conquer or be conquered by someone else, or have a new wave of immigration.

Some good artists currently making popular music with depth and interest off the top of my head:

St. Vincent, Dessa, Chris Thile, SquarePusher, BJ Cole, Run the Jewels, Billy Joel (I list him here because rather than just repeating his same hits forever, he went and recently released a classical-style piano album that's quite good, so he's still growing and changing as an artist), Tori Amos (she's been making music a long time but has a new style every decade or so).

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#117

Post by navait »

voldacar wrote: post #100
marcus_holmes wrote: post #67

I realise this is a review, not the actual text. But still. This is utter bollocks. It's typical of non-technical "intellectuals" to completely ignore the main areas of modern human progress, simply because they don't understand them. e.g. the whole discussion on Art completely ignores Video Games, which are undoubtedly Art, and also an area of rapid innovation and development. Yet they're usually dismissed out of ha…

Video games are indeed a form of media, but I think it is misleading to say they are art in the same sense as this author intends. Art and mass entertainment are only superficially similar, and most video games are made to entertain. Video games are (generally) consumable goods created to provide an amount of temporary pleasure. Good art is recognized not just by beauty or the skill required to create it, but by its…

You were downvoted, but I think you're right.

I love video games. I spend a great deal of time playing them and I think they have a lot of oppurtunities other mediums can't match. But they don't move me the way even a mediocre novel or movie can.

Video games are terrible at interpersonal relationships, for example. I find the more "interactive" relationships with NPCs the more shallow the relationshop, while "railroad" games tend to be better at it.

Maybe it's that AAA titles mostly focus on the adolescent male demographic. But we've yet to find our Tolstoy.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#118

Post by pjc50 »

voldacar wrote: post #100
marcus_holmes wrote: post #67

I realise this is a review, not the actual text. But still. This is utter bollocks. It's typical of non-technical "intellectuals" to completely ignore the main areas of modern human progress, simply because they don't understand them. e.g. the whole discussion on Art completely ignores Video Games, which are undoubtedly Art, and also an area of rapid innovation and development. Yet they're usually dismissed out of ha…

Video games are indeed a form of media, but I think it is misleading to say they are art in the same sense as this author intends. Art and mass entertainment are only superficially similar, and most video games are made to entertain. Video games are (generally) consumable goods created to provide an amount of temporary pleasure. Good art is recognized not just by beauty or the skill required to create it, but by its…

Video games developers employ a huge number of artists, musicians, sculptors, cinematographers and architects. All of whom produce what would on a daily basis be called "art". It is a strange kind of alchemy to put all that art in a box at which point it becomes Not Art.

(also ignoring the whole 20th century modernist questioning of "what is art, anyway" involving all kinds of installations, found art, outsider art, signed soup cans, prints, International Klein Blue, and so on)

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#119

Post by marcus_holmes »

api wrote: post #97
marcus_holmes wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever heard of "classical" music? It's a single music genre covering about 500 years of music. Then, very briefly, the technology of recording music developed to the point where it was commercially viable to mass-market music. As happens with any technological revolution, that triggered a massive spike in innovation. That spike lasted ~50 years, we're just getting to the end of it. My point is that what happe…

The rate of change is approximately constant when you adjust for population growth: https://populationmatters.org/sites/default/files/styles/ful... Everything moves faster now because there are more people to move it. The rate/person is not that different. What we have seen since the late 90s is the collapse of musical creativity (at least in popular music... you can still find some creative music if you dig really h…

Interesting. But it's circular reasoning isn't it? "there were less people, so less innovation. Then there were more people, so more innovation. But now there's more people, but less innovation, so it must be a dark age" doesn't really work as a self-evident statement.

You could make an argument that innovation follows the money. The innovation boom of the late 20th century correlates with the music industry profit boom of the same priod. Now there's less money being made, there's less innovation.

Also, you could probably chart the risk-taking of the music industry. They started off not knowing what the hell anyone wanted, so produced weird shit. Then they got hit by waves of disruption. Then they got a grip on it all and stopped taking risks. Which is where we are: stuff that sounds different doesn't get published.

Except, of course, that we have people self-publishing now. There probably is completely freaky weird awesome shit being made, but we don't hear it because discovery is hard in such a huge sea of music.

Interesting stuff.

Re: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

#120

Post by treeman79 »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #107
voldacar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting to note that if you read Roman generals' letters from the fourth/fifth centuries AD, they seem like they have no idea that their civilization is in the late stages of decline, something totally easy for us to recognize millennia later. It's weird and uncanny, and kind of concerning given contemporary circumstances

Actually, that's reassuring. Virtually everyone agrees we are in a state of decline right now.

Covid aside, which is self inflicted, I highly disagree.
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