The article is smarter than the title makes it sound. He's not seriously proposing that being rich makes you happy. And he notes that there's a big drop around 2020 specifically , which long-term trends don't explain. Just to state the obvious: 2020 was the year of COVID, which played hell with peoples' social lives. And I think it's been pretty well-proven that happiness is largely driven by the strength and quality…
These are the secondary and tertiary bad effects of lockdowns which were ignored at the time.
If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
301–310 of 1001 posts
Re: If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
#302At the US hotel I stayed at they had a waffle machine so that you could eat waffles for breakfast. To make waffles you took a plastic cup to the "faucet" of the waffle machine, filled it with paste and then poured it into the waffle frying pan. Then you threw the cup away. Apparently, there was no need for a more efficient way. Americans seem to be very, very good at working very, very hard but not so good at efficie…
It would probably be less efficient to have a more complicated waffle machine with a dispenser attached that costs more. Having a re-usable glass or metal cup, would require cleaning, and waffle batter is kind of annoying clean. Instead you buy a big ole sleeve of paper cups that are used one time and cost $.01 each. It is more efficient than paying someone making $20/hr to spend 5 minutes a day scrubbing it.
Re: If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Religion has nice side effects (community), but vast downsides (non-scientific worldview, brainwashing). I think you can get the community feeling also by simply meeting with people you know, in hackerspaces for instance.
"non-scientific worldview" I find this an oft repeated meme. The men to whom we own our scientific understanding were all deeply religious (not just lived in a time when everyone went to church) For example - Darwin had trained to be an Anglican vikar prior to his journey on the Beagle and wrote to his future wife letters full of discussion of divinity. Newton was obviously deeply religious and wrote more about relig…
But this is a straightforwardly transparent attempt at apologetics. It looks weak when it goes up against answersingenesis.org, and a rabidly (maybe not literally, yet, but give it time...) culture of opposition to basic science, such as vaccination, among many evangelicals.
Ultimately the claims of religion are moral, and they're on very thin ice when religion has such an appalling history of support for slavery, torture, murder, exploitation, grift, war, paedophilia, and biblical literalism.
The usual argument at this point is a No True Scotsman. All those other religions do these things. Never the claimant's own.
But for every Pope Leo - who seems like an unusually decent example - there are five Kenneth Copelands, and an apparently endless series of scandals and court cases featuring youth pastors and grifting megachurch multimillionaires.
Personally I'd rather not be in any community that trades comfort for complicity and/or denial, no matter how nice its social events feel.
Community in practice should be wider than that.
There's some extra stress involved in finding your own way, especially in a culture of forced competition.
But you're far more likely to see atheists trying to progress public ethics than religious believers, especially in the US.
Re: If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
#304The article is smarter than the title makes it sound. He's not seriously proposing that being rich makes you happy. And he notes that there's a big drop around 2020 specifically , which long-term trends don't explain. Just to state the obvious: 2020 was the year of COVID, which played hell with peoples' social lives. And I think it's been pretty well-proven that happiness is largely driven by the strength and quality…
These are the secondary and tertiary bad effects of lockdowns which were ignored at the time.
Re: If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
#305On my trip to Austin a couple of years ago it'd got really expensive. Even food where normally you could walk in a shop and get something for not much, a basic sandwich started from $8 and when I came out some lady followed me and said could she have some she was hungry so I gave her half and really was hungry. I've never really had that in the other fifty countries I've visited including in Africa. In London you get Roma sitting around with 'hungry' signs but they are all fat and well fed and want cash. It's odd.
Re: If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
#306I feel like this is an easily answerable question, but I can see this because I grew up an atheist (and travel in those typically atheist/educated/professional circles) and have become much more aware/educated in/embracing of religion later in life myself. If you compare apples to apples - say my average atheist friend who is a director in a FAANG and also my religious friend who is also a director in the same FAANG.…
> America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization. If I understand correctly, connecting the dots from the article and your comment, beginning in 2020, everyone moved away from religion towards atheism in some kind of rapid shift? Is this supported by the demographic data?
Re: If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
#307At the US hotel I stayed at they had a waffle machine so that you could eat waffles for breakfast. To make waffles you took a plastic cup to the "faucet" of the waffle machine, filled it with paste and then poured it into the waffle frying pan. Then you threw the cup away. Apparently, there was no need for a more efficient way. Americans seem to be very, very good at working very, very hard but not so good at efficie…
I am failing to make the connection with the topic of the article. Are Americans sad because they are not efficient with their waffle-batter cups?
Re: If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
#308I do feel this trend in my life. I have a job which I'm grateful for but nothing feels satisfying anymore, and I feel like it is much harder to connect to people or form deep relationships, especially in this field, unless you already have a clique in your workplace. On top of that, AI is generally a demotivating entity to the majority of people. Despite all the hype of Altman and whonots, I feel like people just don…
At some point you have to take some responsibility for your life. I can't relate to any of the things you mentioned. I have deep relationships with lots of people, across entirely different types of groups. We see each other regularly (weekly, sometimes more), we do fun things together, we go to events and plan trips, we always have things to talk about, we have hobbies and communities to connect with even more peopl…
Re: If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
#309Our CEOs are happily, gleefully, boasting about how we're replaceable. That sort of stuff causes pitchforks to rise up in other countries. We Americans are hard-working sheep, and we deserve all the motivational Corpspeak we have to suffer through on LinkedIn posts. I've worked in this industry (tech) a very long time, and in every job I have peers that boast about off hours work. We get what we deserve.
Well here's my invitation: rather than resign about how everyones weak and a sheep, take on the perspective of voicing what you want and what you are doing about it and feel free to share about about how even if you've experienced bad things you would rather want to experience goods things. Maybe things could change if you focused on what you actually want over complaining about what you don't?
Re: If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern christianity in America is a primary contributor to my sadness.
Can you explain that?
Let me first correct my statement, it is a little too broad. In my circle of family and friends, I can readily identify maybe three people, one of whom is now passed, who I think of as Christians in the biblical sense. That is to say, their actions seem to closely reflect an honest attempt to answer the question "What would Jesus do?" The vast majority of Christians in my family are Evangelicals, though, and to be fair this is who I was really thinking of. They like to ask that same question, and then answer it "See Leviticus."
Why do they make me sad?
Because they are judgemental jerks who pretend that the Bible is the most important thing in their life while simultaneously giving uncritical loyalty to a man who is the closest embodiment of an antichrist that I've encountered in all my years.
They have tried to declare ownership of the word "patriot" and defined it as loyalty to their faith, while making a mockery of it at every turn.
They have declared a huge swath of their fellow Americans as evil, not someone to be disagreed with but someone to be bullied, kicked out of the country, or worse.
They make me sad when they try to talk me into hating immigrants, or minorities, when they piously say they cannot in good conscience be associated with the few people in our family who are openly gay, when they pretend to be oppressed by The Alphabet Mafia, when they act all righteous up until the moment when someone close enough to them (like their own child) runs afoul of these 'values'. And even then, more than one of them have disowned their child instead of moderate their approach to faith.
It is corrosive, antisocial, and they cannot seem to stop themselves from dragging everyone else around them into the mud. All I have ever wanted is to be predominantly left alone in my beliefs but loved by my family. I don't put conditions on my love, I am sad when they put conditions on theirs.