Since this article is regarding USA, it's worse than that. We are living in the golden age of insanity.
Delusional religious people and sociopathic Nazis have taken over USA.
For the civilized world there are warning signs, but insanity is unlikely to take control.
I’m starting to believe natural selection didn’t just get us to where we are, it kept us here.
The genetic variation in the human brain will lead to more and more good and bad variations generation after generation. Stupidity used to have deadly consequences, now it’s just poverty (or the White House).
Our society wants to be inclusive and accepting and liberating and safe, but what if that just doesn’t work with our current make? What if these mild deviations and mutations only progress forwards when the weak traits perish? We don’t have that mechanism anymore so weak and dangerous personality traits persist and continue to vote.
It’s a scary thought, but I can’t see anything wrong with the logic, especially observing how it’s taking hold across the globe.
Worse than, say, the dark ages?
"Dark Ages" comes from Renaissance and Enlightenment scholars saying, "Thank God we're so smart. Those people were morons."
Also, it was after Rome really fell apart, darker times then the Empire certainly.
Maybe þere are repeatedly recurring golden ages?
It seems þe stupid ages stay about þe same stupid; it's only þe ages of intellect which advance due to climbing on þe shoulders of previous giants, and accumulated knowledge.
Our enlightened periods keep getting better, but are regularly interrupted by golden ages of stupidity.
Everything is cyclical. Funny reading people on here acting like it's the end of the world. No, they just haven't lived through the end of a cycle. Gotta admit, the West had a hella run since WWII.
Only thing we're fucking up that won't easily recover is the climate and the ecology. (Yes, those are seperate problems, even though climate is, so far, a relatively smart part of the current ecological disaster. The BIG chunk of that is human activities.)
Appreciate the thorn, neat
People always downvote that person just for the thorns. I dunno. I can read, it takes one sentence for my brain to compensate and roll with it. I think it's kinda neat as well.
It's only a golden age insofar as a golden shower is golden
Yes. Next question.
Nope, humans have always been stupid. People said the same shit when the printing press was invented, or TV, or whatever.
Seriously, crack a history book. Modern times are actually pretty good, even with all the bullshit.
New media indeed coincides with revolutions. I disagree with your final assessment. We have yet to see how this turn of new media plays out.
Good or bad is a relative. The frame of reference should be contemporary. Just because we ostensibly have technological luxuries not mean things are going well right now. Authoritarianism on another up cycle.
It's pretty good compared to, say, 100 years ago. But is it better than, idk, 10 years ago? This is highly dependent where you live, of course. But, in the US, I can 100% say life was better a decade ago and people weren't outright rejecting intellectualism en masse.
54, American here. Yeah, I think we peaked in the 80s and 90s after a small setback in the 70s. Through 2010 was pretty good as well except for 9/11 fucking up our politics and legislation.
I'd agree the US peaked in the 90s. 2008 really fucked us for almost a decade, though. Economy had essentially recovered by 2014/2015sh until COVID. I'm almost 40, so most of my adult life has been plagued by crisis after crisis.
Quite my last tech support job in 2007, hated it, ready to move up. Didn't score another IT role for 7 years, hated the job I was in.
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