> Disoriented by the speed of modern times, Europeans and Americans suffered from record-high rates of anxiety and a sense that our inventions had destroyed our humanity.
Were they wrong?
> Disoriented by the speed of modern times, Europeans and Americans suffered from record-high rates of anxiety and a sense that our inventions had destroyed our humanity.
Were they wrong?
If they're right, our humanity was destroyed long before any of us were born.
So... how would we know?
Maybe "destroyed" is too strong a word. I would say "suppressed" is better, at least for some people.
Spend 3 days in deep nature, or meditate etc, and you can uncover your humanity....
Yeah our lives are mostly noise, we flip between working and "chilling" with virtually no inbetween idleness anymore.
Go look at the clouds, or better the stars, for some time. But don't do it tool long because you might start wondering why the fuck you're wasting so much time and energy fulfilling other people's TODO lists
> Go look at the clouds, or better the stars, for some time. But don't do it tool long because you might start wondering why the fuck you're wasting so much time and energy fulfilling other people's TODO lists
I tend to agree. I’d like to live a different lifestyle than the one I have today, but that would require rolling back the clock about 20 years at least and learning 1,000 lessons I have now that I wish I’d known back then. Don’t marry the wrong person. Figure out how to marry the right person. Have kids with the right person. But also you don’t HAVE to have kids. Avoid divorce. Avoid debt. Know myself, truly.
Now I’m on the “hedonic treadmill” and struggling to get off. I’m reading The Happiness Trap, it is good so far. But there are bills to pay, mouths to feed, and so it goes. The TODO list keeps growing, and I can only keep doing the job in front of me.
And yet, it is hard not to read this article and feel a bit, what’s the word, perhaps melancholic, about the direction we’re heading as a species. I’ll raise my son the best I can, and be the best person that I can be. And maybe build some stuff to leave the world a little better than I found it. None of us asked to be here. But given that we’re here it makes sense to try and do what we can to make things better. For now that means commenting on HackerNews about the current state of affairs and lamenting the direction humanity is going in. We’re burning the planet, pursing instant gratification, and “late-stage capitalism” is the status quo we live with. All we can do is what we can do. It is easy to think “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” but I’ll keep hoping for a better world where we take advantage of each other less and do a bit more to help each other though this thing called life.
Yeah I think people might be downplaying the fact that some different choices on automobiles could have led to drastically different outcomes with respect to the health of cities, suburbs, and communities
I mean sure, people still had babies, and the babies (us) adapted to the new environment, viewing it as "inevitable"
But that doesn't mean we can't make better choices around governance and technology going forward, or that we're not making bad choices right now
Just to add a small example of what I mean, I stumbled across this video yesterday:
How New Jersey Turned Into A Giant Suburb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKgK7Z-yu-4
Talking about how NJ is one of the wealthiest states in the nation, but also has striking poverty
I'm not sure what exactly could have changed, and of course plans are different than outcomes. But to me it's clear there is huge leverage around certain choices, especially regarding automobiles, and they are worth being thoughtful about
---
There's also the question of why public transportation from Manhattan to the 3 neighboring airports is surprisingly thin ... I'm pretty sure that a large part of the answer is lobbying by taxi companies that stood to profit
It started before cars. But cars have devastating effect on how we built our environment, which has negative impact on social life, health and climate change.
I would never wish to live like the average human 100 years+ ago. Most people lived in squalor, died easily, toiled their entire lives.
We live in absolute luxury and comfort today compared to pretty much any point in history.
It gets very tiresome hearing people complain about how hard they have it these days, which is just factually untrue. What I actually think the problem is, is apathy. People are looking to blame anything else for how they feel in life, rather than take ownership.
I see so many times people complaining about how fast modern life is, and yet they have a very real choice to go and live mostly off grid. There are communities all around the world where pro-active people have had the same thoughts and feelings, and actually had the guts to do something about it. This is all available to you right now, with the added benefit that it isn't even permanent if you don't like it (unlike 100+ years ago when there was no choice).
(waits for the downvotes)
Maybe.
Or maybe everything is cause and effect, there is no free will, and what people feel or do is completely predetermined and outside their ability to change.
Flip a coin.
Humanity had its inherent problems well before any technology was invented.
Yes but technology exacerbated them. The great wars of the 20th century killed 10s of millions of people, 10x more per year than any other conflict.
Maybe, but what about per capita? More people participating equals more people killed, but at the same time i dont think you need high technology to engage in a mass slaughter, swords work just as well.
A sword can kill one person at a time. A gun can kill 10 people at a time. A bomb can kill a hundred people. A nuclear bomb can kill thousands.
You can certainly commit mass slaughter with less technology. But then you need either a) more people to do the slaughtering, or b) more time. Technology makes it possible for a few people to slaughter many people in very little time.
Even ancient wars wiped out whole peoples. Like the Carthaginians.
We could kill the same number of people today with a single conventional air strike.
Percentage of population-wise, I presume we are killing far fewer people.
I don't presume that and I also don't see what difference it makes.
Man-made climate change is also new experience for humanity.