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Gunnar Miller's avatar

I think you are onto something very insightful here. I'm close to 60, and my whole adult life I've been constantly warned that everything's on the verge of collapse. But it never does. That said, I've come to realize that in our business you can't sit at the same lunch table as the cool kids if you're not a cassandra.

Ennui, incouisiance, fatalism, and derision of cheerfully optimistic people has always been a particularly upper-class affectation through history, but I observed that what had always existed as good-natured satire sending up politicians, bosses, etc. took on a very snarky and mean tone, likely beginning in the '60s and 70s but accelerating in recent decades. Exactly how things became increasingly mean-spirited and negative probably had social drivers: Better-educated and less religious, so more sceptical, people. Pop culture, notably movies moved from light drama and comedy to darker subjects such as horror and anti-heroes. But very real betrayals such as the Vietnam War, Watergate, etc. started an erosion of faith in the very instituions and authority figures who'd led us out of WWII and into post-war prosperity, which is where the long slow slide likely began. A US Vice President (somewhat ironically as he was part of an administration that was part of the whole problem in the first place) once used the phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism" https://politicaldictionary.com/words/nattering-nabobs-of-negativism/ .

There were also distinctly economic drivers: As newspapers lost, along with all their advertising revenues, their function as news breakers to 24-hour TV news, it became all about opinion/editorial. And we all know that "if it bleeds it leads" and "dog bites man stories are always trumped by man bites dog stories". Then in 1996, Fox News was founded explicitly as right-wing agit-prop, the prime purpose of which is to keep viewers constantly lathered up and angry about everything every day, even if it's stuff that's completely contrived. Then the internet spawned "enrage to engage" as a business model, and things really went pear-shaped.

Kids (who are naturally optimistic) grow up in environments with grumpy adults, and the cycle continues ... unless the Millenials eventually break us out of it as "hero archetypes" tend to do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theory .

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UK Lawman's avatar

A useful analysis; but - 2 thoughts.

JK argues that ‘progress’ came with the decline in ‘religion’ and advance of science - post 1850. Yes, but - before the corruption of the church in the 18th & 19th C, the foremost scientists & philosophers existed within the church. Thus change came in Northern Europe but not Asia, as JK says.

Pessimism, and now cynicism, have not led to ‘progress’ but negativity even despair, particularly post 1960.

Synthesising these, it may be that we need to value science, technology and entrepreneurship, but hold philosophical views of hope and respect for a greater whole. Meanwhile laissez faire liberalism, populism & militant Islam are antithetical to progress.

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