It’s cultural rot. Those values that you cherish are not seen as important by a growing portion of people in society, and those values aren’t being transmitted to their children, etc.
Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
331–340 of 835 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is “beautiful” is, like, the textbook example of a subjective opinion.
No, not really. The concept of beauty has a long philosophical history and many knowledgeable and intelligent people have written books on the topic. As I said above, the people who think this stuff is entirely subjective tend to be ones that haven’t engaged much (or at all) with previous thought on the topic.
> The concept of beauty has a long philosophical history and many knowledgeable and intelligent people have written books on the topic
Which is not incompatible with it being subjective. In fact, many of those “knoweldgeable and intelligent” people have written specifically on its subjectivity, and others explicitly on specific, e.g., of a specific culture and time, subjective standards.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right but that’s a non-answer because norms change over time and place and that can only happen if people are allowed to change them over time and place. All you’re saying is that it’s subjective in a clouded way. At best you’re basically being left behind the cultural norm and probably should catch up.
I think we ought to distinguish between the case where the person has thought through their decision to wear pajamas in public and is doing it as an attempt to challenge existing norms, versus the case where they didn't even give it a thought. Because if that's what they're doing, then I'm 100% with you. Hanging onto existing norms is just opting out of the conversation about what the norms should be. I suspect, thou…
But norms change because it becomes normal to do it which requires people do it without thinking about it. By definition.
If people only do subversive things intentionally nothing changes. That’s in fact what the conservative view wants, safe “change” that doesn’t actually matter. Which is why for example Iran is cracking down so hard on the recent protests because they desperately need for the norm not to change.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#334People notice and express this pattern every year for all of recorded history. People also express the opposite, seemingly as often and seemingly as perpetually. It might just be subjective. There are countless things to see in the world and you can make a list of examples affirming whatever you want to (or dread to) believe.
Yes pretty much this. It’s subjective based on an enormous number of factors. Your lifestyle, your personal experiences, reading too much news (especially in the US), having a pessimistic attitude towards everything, your general personal beliefs and how they align with the world. The list goes on. Many of these factors can be personally influenced. For example, I live in the Bay Area and love it, have lived here sev…
What I would love to know is what percentage of the population have a pessimistic view of the future currently.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy crackers. When I see a person wearing PJs in public, I think -- actually, I guess I don't really think about it beyond "huh.. PJs in public." You're out there stewing on it, writing about it on the internet, and literally thinking that people wearing things you don't like is stemming from a mindset that's at the root of society's problems. This casual insight into madness is what keeps the internet exciting.
This is why I come to Hacker News.
This whole thread of folks arguing about PJs in public is reinforcing OP’s point IMO :)
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
We expect much much much nicer things.
Yeah, that house had one bathroom. One phone. Zero air conditioners. Zero computers. The four kids had two bedrooms with bunkbeds. The TV was black and white with 2.5 scratchy channels. If the car made it to 50,000 miles you were doing well. Entertainment was maybe a trip to the movies once a month. Eating out was for celebrations only. Certain things have gotten worse, though. The neighborhood was pleasant, with fri…
I'm not a historian but I'm pretty sure a lot of people talked about racism in the '60s! People thought the same thing about colleges, television, and movies pushing a radical racial message.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#337You’re way off base by almost every measure.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
We expect much much much nicer things.
Yeah, that house had one bathroom. One phone. Zero air conditioners. Zero computers. The four kids had two bedrooms with bunkbeds. The TV was black and white with 2.5 scratchy channels. If the car made it to 50,000 miles you were doing well. Entertainment was maybe a trip to the movies once a month. Eating out was for celebrations only. Certain things have gotten worse, though. The neighborhood was pleasant, with fri…
We have become wealthier in terms of material goods but poorer in terms of social capital. I wonder if there's some inevitable relationship there, like if you don't have much you are more likely to seek the support of others.
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#339A lot of this is related to inequality, value of labour detaching from wealth, and the increasing unaffordability of life. The material conditions of regular people are continuously getting worse as more and more of their income is stripped away by rent seeking oligopolies, mainly increasing housing costs but depending on your jurisdiction all sorts of other costs (eg. cable and mobile phone costs an issue in some pl…
> A lot of this is related to inequality, value of labour detaching from wealth, and the increasing unaffordability of life. Inequality is declining by every measurable metric in the United States. Edit: To answer the folk naysaying with their ten second Google searches, the income inequality rate has declined between 2007 and 2019(1), helped by a strong wage recovery in the late 2010s. The share of wealth held by th…
The census bureau disagrees - income inequality is increasing, not decreasing
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...
Re: Ask HN: Why Is Everything Declining?
#340A lot of this is related to inequality, value of labour detaching from wealth, and the increasing unaffordability of life. The material conditions of regular people are continuously getting worse as more and more of their income is stripped away by rent seeking oligopolies, mainly increasing housing costs but depending on your jurisdiction all sorts of other costs (eg. cable and mobile phone costs an issue in some pl…
> A lot of this is related to inequality, value of labour detaching from wealth, and the increasing unaffordability of life. Inequality is declining by every measurable metric in the United States. Edit: To answer the folk naysaying with their ten second Google searches, the income inequality rate has declined between 2007 and 2019(1), helped by a strong wage recovery in the late 2010s. The share of wealth held by th…
This doesn't seem to be the case at all from the top two hits of googling inequality america but maybe there's a contrived way to come to any conclusion here.
But aside from that a more important metric than inequality is the real material conditions of regular people.
In Canada at least rents have been spiking for years on end which is directly reducing people's money on hand, and an inflation crisis is further compounding this issue this year. There's different situations in different US states, but I do not believe the situation is terribly different in many places.
Things are getting worse and worse because people have less and less money.