pull down to refresh
152 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 3 Oct \ on: Society is not degrading culture
I think this is broadly correct, but acutely inaccurate for much of the West. We're getting fatter, sicker, and crazier. People are forming fewer meaningful connections with each other (marriage, church, families, etc). Deaths of Despair have risen dramatically, as has regular violent crime. Social trust is decreasing and polarization is increasing.
These may all be temporary downtrends before a correction, I think that's likely, but they aren't illusions. We have good records of the recent past and many of us remember it pretty clearly (although I grant that there are lots of problems with human memory).
But we're also getting healthier. You've got more medical knowledge (perhaps hidden behind a ton of noise) than ever before in history. You've got RFK and folks like bitcoiners caring about health, and that'll catch on. And health in the past was AWFUL. Cholera, typhoid, 1918 flu, on and on.
reply
I think there's a difference in timescales to what we're talking about, which I was trying to get at by saying "broadly correct, but acutely inaccurate". Over the past generation or so, the things I brought up are getting worse and I don't see anything that makes up for them. If you look substantially further back, then I agree with what you're saying.
We're talking about society, here, so it's not directly relevant that an individual is capable of being healthier today, because most are not taking that opportunity. That's the nature of societal decay: taken in aggregate, important things are trending down.
reply