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Is everything falling apart?

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Re: Is everything falling apart?

#181

Post by zdragnar »

RivieraKid wrote: post #146
mrits wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a much different experience. I have a dozen family members that were part of the auto industry in Michigan. They were on top of the world for decades. It ended with most of them thinking society has collapsed in the 80s and doubting they'd actually get their pension. My grandfather spent the last 30 years of his life in retirement collecting a pay check that he thought might be his last.

Why did he think the paychecks would stop coming?

Not all pensions are well managed; some have needed bailing out from public coffers. Other companies have shuttered completely, and the lack of incoming money to the pension funds made them insolvent (again, not especially well managed).

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#182

Post by [deleted] »

goatlover wrote: post #65
giraffe_lady wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every generation thinks the world is ending but eventually one will be correct.

Do you think there can't be any civilizations in the universe which exist indefinitely? For the past millions or even billions of years? If humans get past the next couple of centuries and start spreading out into the solar system and possibly beyond, what would cause us to have a last generation?

[deleted]

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#183

Post by ativzzz »

javert wrote: post #154
ativzzz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. Strength is useless during peace times, so strong men find themselves out of a job with nothing to channel their strength into. "Weakness" which in this case means classically feminine traits are useless during war times but are far preferred during peace times. We don't need strong men during good times and we don't need weak men during bad times. Although now we are in neither a good nor bad time. What…

The quote is about moral strength and virtue, not muscles.

Virtue is not what survives hard times, it's grit and brutality. Raw strength. Morals and virtues are what arise during good times once we've secured survival.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#184

Post by giantg2 »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #163
david927 wrote: post #139

I think there are two intersecting issues. The first is the dwindling of easy resources. The second half of the 20th century was so easy it was wasteful, and we don't want to give that up -- that abundance of resources, readily available and on the cheap. But the bigger issue right now is the end of the US/NATO empire. It matches with the end of other empires like Rome: the spending, the inflation, the corruption and…

>if only they would agree with our side, we'd be fine again I'd argue a lot of problems today would be solved if people stopped buying into the massive intra-class war propaganda pushed onto the working class and had a little more empathy for one another.

I sort of agree. A lot of the normal people, like neighbors, tend to be more empathetic and are accepting of people who are more or less affluent than themselves. But the normal people aren't the ones that run the country.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#185

Post by mbg721 »

giantg2 wrote: post #161
mbg721 wrote: post #124

It's easy to lament polarization, but the reason it's not going away is that there are important differences in how people view the world, and calls for unity are really closer to "It would be so peaceful if we could eliminate the opposing viewpoint once and for all".

I agree. It seems "compromise" is increasingly used as "What I'm proposing should be considered the compromise and you should listen to me". There's no real debate. Nobody tries to address the other side's concerns. And then we do have, as you say, some fundamental differences in world views and experiences that sometimes form an impasse.

Everybody has internalized the idea that if you ask for twice what you really want, meeting in the middle will give you the thing you actually wanted. So if you notice that the other side is doing the same thing, you double it again...

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#186

Post by cleandreams »

He speaks of "the magnitude of the attendant change in social structure: a movement from national toward international social organization."

This can't work because it is not associated with growing prosperity in developed world but rampant inequality, the decline of good jobs for the non college educated, and growing resentment about this. Particularly in America, labor has been crushed.

The substitution of "international" for "national" elites has worsened the problem and made the resentment worse not better. Because there is a material basis for the discontent it is indeed likely that we will fall apart.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#187

Post by paulpauper »

zozbot234 wrote: post #39
leereeves wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nations rise. ... Sometimes there's peace. In short: sometimes things aren't falling apart. For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of peace and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end eventually, but I wish it could last a while longer.

It's an endless cycle. As the saying goes... Hard times make strong men Strong men make good times Good times make weak men And weak men make hard times.

nah, strong but insane men make hard times.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#188

Post by NationalPark »

Geonode wrote: post #160
NationalPark wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have some relatively recent public polling data on this phenomenon: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/20/republicans... For what it's worth, the decline of trust in institutions is primarily among "Republican/lean Republican" respondents, who are a minority of American voters and likely a minority of American non-voters as well.

Polls are good measures of the kind of people who willingly talk to pollsters.

If you're willing to dismiss polling out of hand for selection bias reasons, then why would you put any more weight onto intuitive arguments that rely on an even smaller and less systematic sampling?

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#189

Post by BiteCode_dev »

_usr1 wrote: post #116
rank0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t understand what you’re trying to convey. The terms fascist and nazi seem to have lost all meaning nowadays…at least to the far left.

Good god, enough with this "fascist and nazi seem to have lost all meaning" nonsense. Let's call it the "No true fascist fallacy". I could bring the corpse of Himmler here and some people would regurgitate the same "Bu-bu-but that's not actually fascist enough!". OP was basically quoting the definition of Ur-fascism by Umberto Eco. Is that historically accurate enough for you? Or should we check beforehand if whoever…

Well yes, the Goodwin point is now crossed very casually, just like people are using superlatives for the mundane things, such as "I ate the most amazing fries yesterday".

This makes for poor debates, where there is little nuance, fuzzy scales and hardly meaningful communication.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#190

Post by Johnny555 »

goatlover wrote: post #65
giraffe_lady wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every generation thinks the world is ending but eventually one will be correct.

Do you think there can't be any civilizations in the universe which exist indefinitely? For the past millions or even billions of years? If humans get past the next couple of centuries and start spreading out into the solar system and possibly beyond, what would cause us to have a last generation?

I can't speak of all civilizations, but I do think that there can't be any human civilizations that last indefinitely -- human nature will prevent it.
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