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Why does culture get less happy year after year?

erikhoel.substack.com

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

#51

Post by photochemsyn »

If you go back past the 1950s-1960s TV era to the early 20th century, there's quite a bit of the dark and gritty stuff. The movie "Metropolis" (1927, Fritz Lang) is a fairly dystopian work, for example. A lot of popular writing from that era has a similar flavor. By that measure, the 50s and 60s were an unhealthy aberration, a one-sided positivity culture similar in style to fascist and communist propaganda regimes that never mentioned the negative aspects of those systems.

I personally like William Gibson's take on this, from Gernsback Continuum:

> "But the couple in front of me lived in it, and they frightened me. They were the children of Dialta Downes's '80s-that-wasn't; they were Heirs to the Dream. They were white, blond, and they probably had blue eyes. They were American. Dialta had said that the Future had come to America first, but had finally passed it by. But not here, in the heart of the Dream. Here, we'd gone on and on, in a dream logic that knew nothing of pollution, the finite bounds of fossil fuel, or foreign wars it was possible to lose. They were smug, happy, and utterly content with themselves and their world. And in the Dream, it was their world."

> "Behind me, the illuminated city: Searchlights swept the sky for the sheer joy of it. I imagined them thronging the plazas of white marble, orderly and alert, their bright eyes shining with enthusiasm for their floodlit avenues and silver cars. It had all the sinister fruitiness of Hitler Youth propaganda."

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

#53

Post by groby_b »

briga wrote: post #40

The 50s were a sort of golden era for North America, it really did seem like opportunities were boundless for a while there. An average family could expect to own their own home and a car in the suburbs. The cities weren't as grossly over-crowded as they are now. California only had a quarter of the population it does today, just imagine how much more pleasant that must have been. There was no social media. No quick…

Ask black and queer people how golden the 50's were. Or women.

It was a culture that "valued" long-term relationships to the extent that they were Ok with the relationship completely destroying individuals. And it had an implicit nod to at least men seeking release value outside the relationship, as long as it was discreet.

It had a large amount of mind-alterning drugs - alcohol. Barbiturates. Valium. The latter two prescribed excessively if you deviated in any way from the norm. It was OK with performing lobotomies on people to have them perform within norm.

There were almost no news except what was officially approved. You'd mostly lose contact with friends who moved more than a few miles away - long distance contact through mail is hard.

Housework was hard manual labor, because there were little affordable tools. (They were just starting to become normal). In terms of performing arts, it was a wasteland because the vast majority of cities didn't have the size to support art scenes.

I could go on. But what I'd really like to say is: Both the picture you paint, and the one I paint, are likely overemphasizing certain characteristics. In that, we generalize way too much. Happiness is individual, not cultural. Culture is tribal, not general. And more importantly, culture is what we make of it - and so imagining where to go from here very much becomes "where do you want it to go, and what can you do about that"

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

#54

Post by flippinburgers »

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 never really realized that I react in a similar way until you put it into words.

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

#55

Post by sudosteph »

nano9 wrote: post #35

Not sure if this is a frame of reference effect, or maybe just a local minimum, but alternative/rock music from the early 00s was extremely depressing compared to the modern stuff (which seems to have settled into an abstract/esoteric niche). I have sometimes wondered why it seemed like depression was "cool" in the late 90s/early 00s. For instance, if you look up the lyrics for Chevelle - Send The Pain Below, you'd q…

What is considered alternative/rock these days? I followed alternative rock in the 00's, and then the indie rock scene through the early 2010s, but it seems like rock in general has dropped off significantly. I'd be happy to be wrong though. Russian post-punk (Molchat Doma) is the only "new" thing I've been familiarized with, and it does seem pretty depressing (not that I can understand the lyrics though). As for the aughts being so depressing, I'd imagine the popularity of the emo scene was a big factor in that.

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

#56

Post by mdp2021 »

juanci_to wrote: post #11
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?

Let's be fair, humanity has been saying that everything is falling apart for centuries. There's in the front page a post that's named: "A brief history of nobody wants to work anymore"¹ that shows registers from as early as 1894 of media saying "Nobody wants to work anymore". Even the classic "Kids these days" can be tracked back to 624 BCE². Socrates said too something along those lines: «The children now love luxur…

You are forgetting a very important thing: the ever-increasing power of misplaced technology - once upon a time ability for damage equaled to a rock or a stick, today...

The "great responsibility" that should have accompanied the "great power" is dwarfed. Wisdom should needingly¹ increase more than power - of course this is not how things go.

(¹I cannot find the term for the modality: not "deontically", not "absiologically"... The idea is "X, or you are in trouble".)

So, "in the times of yore, civilization was falling apart". Today, it is with boosted damages.

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

#57

Post by mdp2021 »

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.

Is'a "good" idea: it implies a proposal of a model according to which people absorb acritically more and more, subliminally, iow process the input stimula less and less. The poster points an accusing finger against passivity.

Bravo.

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

#58

Post by mdp2021 »

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #49
bowtie109 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War breeds connection and community. Many of the greatest minds in the world came from these wars. Hemingway, St. Francis of Assisi, Konstantin Batyushkov, Whitman are some who are top of mind for me today. What other great thinkers were breed in war environments?

Orwell and Wittgenstein

How much of Wittgenstein is importantly a consequence of the war?

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

#59

Post by Apocryphon »

danjoredd wrote: post #27
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…

Does no one remember goths? Or before them, whatever the '80s subculture around gloomy New Wave bands like Joy Division, Depeche Mode, or New Order were called? And before them, the punk movement that was a reaction against the carefree utopianism of the hippies? Rockers? Greasers? Romanticism?

Yeah, the over-romanticizing of mental illness, and how prevalent it is thanks to always-on digital culture, is a real concern. But historically, there are always subcultures centered on unhappy and negative emotions, in contrast to the subcultures that focus on happy and positive ones.

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

#60

Post by Apocryphon »

sudosteph wrote: post #55
nano9 wrote: post #35

Not sure if this is a frame of reference effect, or maybe just a local minimum, but alternative/rock music from the early 00s was extremely depressing compared to the modern stuff (which seems to have settled into an abstract/esoteric niche). I have sometimes wondered why it seemed like depression was "cool" in the late 90s/early 00s. For instance, if you look up the lyrics for Chevelle - Send The Pain Below, you'd q…

What is considered alternative/rock these days? I followed alternative rock in the 00's, and then the indie rock scene through the early 2010s, but it seems like rock in general has dropped off significantly. I'd be happy to be wrong though. Russian post-punk (Molchat Doma) is the only "new" thing I've been familiarized with, and it does seem pretty depressing (not that I can understand the lyrics though). As for the…

Indie rock still exists, but rock music in general seems like a spent force that's been overshadowed by hip-hop, pop, and electronic music, for now. There's still plenty of alternative music, they just don't get as much radio play as they did in past decades. Plenty of those bands are still putting out new music. Interpol just released a new album, Arcade Fire did in the last few months, ditto Foals, Metric, Bloc Party. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are releasing one in September.
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