Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?

“Hegel's liberal critics are in the habit of saying that he does not believe in founding a social order on the conception of individual rights. The element of truth in this assertion is that Hegel thinks personal right, apart from a developed system of ethical life, is an empty abstraction; he believes that a social order founded (as in liberal political theory) on such abstractions will be unable even to protect individual rights, much less to actualize the whole of concrete freedom. In fact, Hegel thinks that the greatest enemy of personal and subjective freedom is a 'mechanistic' conception of the state, which views the state solely as an instrument for the enforcement of abstract rights; for this sets the state up as an abstraction in opposition to individuals. In Fichte's theory, for example, Hegel sees the state as a police power whose only function is to supervise and regulate the actions of individuals through coercive force. The only real guarantee of freedom is a well-constituted ethical life, which integrates the rights of persons and subjects into an organic system of customs and institutions providing individuals with concretely fulfil­ling lives.” (p. xvi)

That is, our bias tends to be towards supporting and reproducing the norms we're familiar with. Acknowledging a problem with the norms is much harder than ignoring and dismissing an actual problem that contradicts them, because it's often a challenge to faith to resolve conflicts between closely-held values.

It's the disruption to norms, not specific events, that leaves a pit in one's stomach.

Here's what I suggest you do instead of looking for specific evidence of decline. Go read "Joe vs Elan School"[0]. Get angry and upset at the story, and then note that this is really a story that, while covering mostly the last few decades, has threads from as early as the 1950's, a decade where things were "normal" relative to now. Except, if the story is to believed, they weren't. They couldn't have been!

And then...focus on virtue ethics rather than norms. Norms are exhausting, a perpetual "babies vs parents" game of shifting around boundaries and responsibilities such that some people(e.g. billionaires) can behave like children, while other groups must attend to and explain the child's actions - and that's how a place like Elan can exist. We can curse that darkness, but nobody has time to work out all the ways in which they could properly live better instead of succumbing to a norm; you have to lead with strength and hope others follow.

[0] https://elan.school

Religion went away decades upon decades ago. It went away in my parents' generation. That is not new.

In my lifetime, the main variable that has been changing the most for the negative, rapidly getting severely and dramatically worse is the cost of living and in particular the cost of housing.

Maybe the causes of everything getting worse are just that simple.

https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...

The best thing you should worry about right now is figuring out a budget that allows for constant savings into bellwether stocks or savings bonds THAT YOU DON'T DESTROY ON A WHIM to tap the power of COMPOUND INTEREST. Heed Warren Buffett's advice and get into the habit of saving money early along with the discipline of not touching it for any reason until you have sufficient resources to readjust the performance of whatever it was invested into.

If you don't have money working for you by collecting interest or grown by investment whether by wall street or a main street business, it will not keep up with inflation - that was learned by many in the 1980's when deregulation began eroding the financial industry.

But the real point is that you should be young and take risks now as when you are older, you won't have the time or possibly the freedom to do it without other factors being in play (job,family,responsibilities for young and old, etc..)