Why does culture get less happy year after year? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#21

Post by Llamamoe » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

corrral wrote: post #8

rossdavidh wrote: post #2

Missing the obvious hypothesis: people in the past had real problems, like living through a war (by fighting in it or having it fought where you were, not by seeing it on TV), or the Great Depression, or other real, actual threats to life and limb. Something happy was a counterbalance. Now, if you're a member of a pampered elite able to work at movies/TV/other mass media for a living (for each one who can, many try a…

I frankly feel kinda great in a crisis. The more serious, the better. All the dumbest parts of my brain shut down and I do what has to be done. Squeamishness, fear, anxiety, second-guessing, rumination—all shoved in a closet and the door slammed. Gotta be an acute crisis I can do something about, though. "Climate change" or whatever doesn't trigger that state. If not for being pretty happy with being alive and having…

In a way, isn't that exactly what evolution prepared us for, as opposed to a life of overabundance afforded by work with no personal meaning?

Perhaps we're simply missing having and being able to overcome pressing challenges as much as we're missing physical activity, nights without light pollution, or contact with nature?

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#22

Post by corrral » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

bowtie109 wrote: post #10

corrral wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I frankly feel kinda great in a crisis. The more serious, the better. All the dumbest parts of my brain shut down and I do what has to be done. Squeamishness, fear, anxiety, second-guessing, rumination—all shoved in a closet and the door slammed. Gotta be an acute crisis I can do something about, though. "Climate change" or whatever doesn't trigger that state. If not for being pretty happy with being alive and having…

Does climate change cause you anxiety? I feel the helplessness of it also leads to feelings of hopelessness (sadnees cynical).

Almost everything in the news is either gonna trigger anxiety or nothing. Outrage, maybe. That's about it. Farther away from local news, the more true that is.

Luckily, keeping up with that stuff day-to-day or even week-to-week is pretty pointless, so easy to avoid.

The knowledge of all those problems just goes on the pile of shit that I can't possibly deal with, so just have to try not to think about, along with things like existential dread, the fact that my living the way I do (so, like a normal developed-world person) is probably indirectly causing misery for someone somewhere (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is, like much good speculative fiction, not about a fictional place but rather our current world), my hunch that cosmic horror probably comes about as close to capturing the nature of our existence and place in the universe as anything does (if only metaphorically), all that and the rest of the unhelpful crap that's probably true and real but also not especially actionable short of "kill yourself, or else devote yourself body and soul monk-/batman-like to some cause all the time every day, probably to no real effect except personal satisfaction".

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#23

Post by Damogran6 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

corrral wrote: post #8

rossdavidh wrote: post #2

Missing the obvious hypothesis: people in the past had real problems, like living through a war (by fighting in it or having it fought where you were, not by seeing it on TV), or the Great Depression, or other real, actual threats to life and limb. Something happy was a counterbalance. Now, if you're a member of a pampered elite able to work at movies/TV/other mass media for a living (for each one who can, many try a…

I frankly feel kinda great in a crisis. The more serious, the better. All the dumbest parts of my brain shut down and I do what has to be done. Squeamishness, fear, anxiety, second-guessing, rumination—all shoved in a closet and the door slammed. Gotta be an acute crisis I can do something about, though. "Climate change" or whatever doesn't trigger that state. If not for being pretty happy with being alive and having…

This resonates. I'm in a highly regulated industry and nothing makes my happier than a Sev 1 emergency where I can push all the mind numbing process to the side and actually FIX shit. Otherwise it's process, and review boards, and iterating on the change til someone is happy about some arbitrary documentation issue.

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#24

Post by jamal-kumar » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

corrral wrote: post #8

rossdavidh wrote: post #2

Missing the obvious hypothesis: people in the past had real problems, like living through a war (by fighting in it or having it fought where you were, not by seeing it on TV), or the Great Depression, or other real, actual threats to life and limb. Something happy was a counterbalance. Now, if you're a member of a pampered elite able to work at movies/TV/other mass media for a living (for each one who can, many try a…

I frankly feel kinda great in a crisis. The more serious, the better. All the dumbest parts of my brain shut down and I do what has to be done. Squeamishness, fear, anxiety, second-guessing, rumination—all shoved in a closet and the door slammed. Gotta be an acute crisis I can do something about, though. "Climate change" or whatever doesn't trigger that state. If not for being pretty happy with being alive and having…

Isn't a great part of the occidental world going through 40°C heat waves right now? That doesn't concern you?

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#25

Post by tomgp » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

Feels like theres some cherry picking going on. eg whilst “the power rock of the ‘80s is… incredibly cheerful’ the 80s also played host to Joy Division and Suicidal Tendencies neither of whom exude incredible cheer (though the angst is expressed very differently). Similarly the cheerful rock’n’roll of the 1950s might be contrasted with the mournful blues and jazz which spawned it. Or what about the 50s novels of Richard Yates pretty bleak stuff compared with the life affirming tone of best selling contemporary novelists such as John Green and Becky Chambers.

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#26

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

corrral wrote: post #8

rossdavidh wrote: post #2

Missing the obvious hypothesis: people in the past had real problems, like living through a war (by fighting in it or having it fought where you were, not by seeing it on TV), or the Great Depression, or other real, actual threats to life and limb. Something happy was a counterbalance. Now, if you're a member of a pampered elite able to work at movies/TV/other mass media for a living (for each one who can, many try a…

I frankly feel kinda great in a crisis. The more serious, the better. All the dumbest parts of my brain shut down and I do what has to be done. Squeamishness, fear, anxiety, second-guessing, rumination—all shoved in a closet and the door slammed. Gotta be an acute crisis I can do something about, though. "Climate change" or whatever doesn't trigger that state. If not for being pretty happy with being alive and having…

I too like when crises time hits, when I have something I need to act upon and deal with. And I think that's a lot of it - WW2 people could do their part for the war effort, their enemy had a face, they could fight it, they could win. You can understand this at the simplest levels, everyone understands fighting.

I can't fight climate change, I can't fight COVID. I'm powerless against the specter of fascism. We have all these anxieties about what's happening, but no way we can do better. Frustrations and anger pile up but there's no catharsis. A lot of the time embracing the darkness in media is cathartic.

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#27

Post by danjoredd » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

mojuba wrote: post #13

Isn't it because depression and anxiety were taboo topics then? I think these topics have been normalized only relatively recently. Even in the 1980s none of the superstars would come out and admit they are suffering depression (Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson come to mind). Or a more recent "coming out" by Sinead O'Connor that she's in deep depression was a complete shock to me (and to many). I couldn't even wat…

True, but I also think the romanticization of depression is a factor as well. Just look at "Doomer" culture on the internet, or "black pill" types. Watch one of those videos on youtube, and all of a sudden you get a deluge of those types of vids. That is what I fear for future generations. When depression is seen as an aesthetic, some people(mostly teenagers) try to identify with it and accidentally end up depressed for real.

For most people, it is more complex than that. However this is a trend that I worry about.

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#28

Post by eunoia » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

corrral wrote: post #8

rossdavidh wrote: post #2

Missing the obvious hypothesis: people in the past had real problems, like living through a war (by fighting in it or having it fought where you were, not by seeing it on TV), or the Great Depression, or other real, actual threats to life and limb. Something happy was a counterbalance. Now, if you're a member of a pampered elite able to work at movies/TV/other mass media for a living (for each one who can, many try a…

I frankly feel kinda great in a crisis. The more serious, the better. All the dumbest parts of my brain shut down and I do what has to be done. Squeamishness, fear, anxiety, second-guessing, rumination—all shoved in a closet and the door slammed. Gotta be an acute crisis I can do something about, though. "Climate change" or whatever doesn't trigger that state. If not for being pretty happy with being alive and having…

I have a very similar crisis reaction. Acute crisis bring out the best in me. Unfortunately conversely, long slow simmering ones without agency break me over time.

Anectdote: I was very into “extreme” sports as a kid and into adulthood. I eventually took up skydiving and had quite a bit of fun with it. Met a lot of old timers with a lot of jumps under their belt. An observation really struck me talking to them: the people at the top of “extreme” sports are not really adrenaline junkies, but control freaks.

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#29

Post by Alex3917 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #2

Missing the obvious hypothesis: people in the past had real problems, like living through a war (by fighting in it or having it fought where you were, not by seeing it on TV), or the Great Depression, or other real, actual threats to life and limb. Something happy was a counterbalance. Now, if you're a member of a pampered elite able to work at movies/TV/other mass media for a living (for each one who can, many try a…

> people in the past had real problems, like living through a war [...] Something happy was a counterbalance

I would posit the opposite, that gritty content resonates more each year due to American's lifestyles being less subsidized by those abroad.

Re: Why does culture get less happy year after year?

#30

Post by superchroma » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

henriquez wrote: post #5

superchroma wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or perhaps it's because the world is falling apart and we're on a solid trajectory to make it worse, and unlike a war, it's not something easy to bounce back from?

It’s probably because car headlights and grilles become squintier and angrier every year. People drive too much and everywhere they look is angry car faces.

oh, yeah, that's what it was.