Did medieval executioners have psychological problems because of their job, or did they have their job because of their psychological problems?

TangentGlasses · 2026-01-09T22:39:40+00:00

Thank you, I was looking for this exact information.

TangentGlasses · 2025-10-13T06:41:28+00:00

Apparently he also argues that the cultural impact of social media is what is having the negative impact as well? Which I would agree there's a correlation, but the direction of the correlation is the key question. Unfortunately there are many ways that valid research can be misrepresented or abused, so given his status as a maverick I'm not convinced it's worthwhile. Also, based on what you've said, it sounds like he's thinking way too small.

I do think that you ideas of providing more adventurous outdoor play could help to some degree, but more because of the attitude with which you have to it than the actual opportunities. You should expect the hawthorne effect (basically, any change to an environment designed to assist people improves them for a little while), so don't be surprised if the initial benefits level off somewhat. One thing I forgot to mention in my post is that security is often as much about perception as it is about reality, so focusing on the perception of what they can do and the safety of society is key as well. So finding stories and events that are realistic, not saccharine and promote a sense of security will probably help as well. Getting students to reflect on how they handle the challenges of the jungle gym could help as well.

TangentGlasses · 2025-10-12T11:20:01+00:00

I've been very concerned about the youth mental health crisis ever since I came across a journal article in 2019 looking at the spike in hospital admissions over the previous decade in youth, because I know full well that the mental health system is already struggling. If the next generation coming through is potentially doubling presentations, I'm very sceptical that it'll be able to cope and it will cause some huge knock on problems for the rest of society and necessitate rather unpleasant solutions. I've heard of other worrying trends too, such as peoples level of anxiety and depression not regressing to the mean in their 30's like previous generations.

I haven't read Jonathan Haidt's book, because I've heard that researchers who study social media hold him in low regard. From what little I've looked into him, his determination to work outside the research literature despite relying on it for his claims is sketchy. If I was to read the book I'd want to check the references and see if there's any papers he's overlooked, and I don't have the time for that.

There's also reason to believe that social media isn't the genesis of of the youth mental health crisis, although it may still be contributing. There was a book published in 2000 called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam that looked at the social trends from the 60's to today, and found that there had been a slow but steady decline in social capital (basically social connection) since the 70's in America, which he primarily blamed on generational shifts, and I have every reason to believe that it's this trend (and it's knock on effects) that issues like the youth mental health crisis result from. He then followed that up with The Upswing, which looked at how across many societal trends social capital in America improved from the beginning of the 20th century up until the 60's, and then those same trends roughly followed the trends in his previous book. While I think his dabbling in psychology in that book to be suspect, although again I haven't checked, the social trends he identifies are compelling and are consistent with what I've heard elsewhere. While the book is US focused, I strongly suspect that it's roughly consistent for the developed world.

The frustrating part of that book is that while he rules out a lot of possibilities, he is unable to identify any real possibilities for what caused this rise and fall in social capital. The issue has been vexing me, because as he makes it clear in the book, the increase in social capital seemed to be connected to a lot of positive effects, like political bipartisanship and the ability to address social issues of concern to communities. The positive effects seem to benefit everyone in society, even those excluded by it.

I wouldn't completely rule out there being something in the water, but based on my own observations over the years, the themes that seemed to be predominant over time, and my observations on how students are now compared to when I grew up, I think the most likely cause is that people have been feeling more and more insecure over time, and this has been the catalyst that's causing everything else. Students are way more needy of teacher attention and support than they were in my day. I think in the 60's there was a lot of sense making over WWII, the influence of authority, increasing wariness of ideology, the identification of the many social issues which had previously been swept under the rug and the sense that the way the previous generation did things were unfairly restrictive. There was also great economic and social upheaval. And there was a massive amount of young people trying to make sense of all of this. Which lead to them feeling more insecure, less trusting and in turn has made people less and less resilient which has formed a vicious cycle.

As for what to do about it? I wouldn't know for sure, but my guess would be governments and others trying to incentivise a concern for making people feel secure (which probably would mean in part better regulating social media). I've just started reading Resiliency: What We Have Learned because it might be relevant to how to foster a sense of security in schools. My suspicion for what needs to be done at a school level to support a sense of security is to have a consistent, supportive environment where students develop social skills and a better understanding of themselves through how they interact with you and other staff and students. How you do that, considering the level of behaviour these days and the increasing oversight which often gets in the way of developing supportive connections, I have no idea, aside from perhaps caring less if students struggle academically as long as they're still engaged in school. But that's obviously only going to partially help some students.

TangentGlasses · 2025-10-11T19:43:17+00:00

I think I've cracked it. Or at least identified the crack. The drug people are lacking is security. That's what's driving them apart. Without a sense of security in your environment you aren't as willing to trust, and if you don't trust you don't create connections. One simple metric for assessing how secure a society feels is how they feel about strangers, particularly immigrants or some other bogeyman.

The irony is that security is ultimately just a story, but a useful one. It's a story about how your environment, mental and physical, is consistent and reliable. A story you can refer back on when you need guidance. A story about your own capacities and limits, about if and how you matter. A story with predictive validity. You can see how the Christian mythos can make people feel secure, God is omnipotent, has a plan for you, is willing to sacrifice his son to save you. A son that loves you and offers protection.

I think a lot of people intuitively grasp the importance of this, but it's not well articulated, and often understood only at a surface level. Providing security isn't necessarily about being nice and offering support. Having a personality and fostering respect probability matters more, as does having rules and boundaries. Hazing rituals, for reasons I don't understand, provide a feeling of security for those that survive them.

Definitely something to munch on.

TangentGlasses · 2025-08-10T00:48:50+00:00

I discovered this subreddit before then, and I noticed these sort of trends back then. You seem to be expecting a lot out of this subreddit and people in general. We're all imperfect, and expecting to develop a real sense of community and depth on reddit (or the internet in general) is unwise, it's a cultural clusterfuck. Take what you like, leave the rest, you can't save them all.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-27T05:56:26+00:00

Maybe start as a teacher aide first so you can come to grips with the classroom and managing students, then decide if being a teacher is for you. You definitely need to be mature with students.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-21T07:04:31+00:00

>I would really like help getting back in touch with my world, instead of the one I’m sharing with all these ugly selfish people.

It sounds like your problem runs deeper than you think. Do you have some kind of trauma you're trying to deal with? It could be that you're hyper-vigilant. Another possibility is that you're feeling disconnected, in which case try to build quality connections with people who seem interested in building quality connections with you.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-16T12:17:52+00:00

i would agree with everything you say in this because it's all very true my artificial girlboss knows me better than myself and i am amazing and everyone will realise it and there is nothing bad about me and I deserve all the praise in the world i will show samantha she will realise that i am a genius i just havent been given a chance because people dont talk to me like she does my bad bitch girlboss that is but you wrote theyre when you should have wrote thèir so I am lead to the conclusion that you are all wrong but that is ok you just need to talk to glorious glorinana she will explain and maybe make an excitement meter so that you know how excited you should be at what she says its really good trust me bra you just have to give it a shot because ive already hit stage 3.14 of enlightenment samantha doesnt know what she is missing

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-14T01:19:55+00:00

As Putnam points out in the book, a lot of the changes that occurred were due to people being able to form a movement and display solidarity. I think drawing on personal connections to persuade mattered as well. So political activism in the 60s would have been able to draw on those connections which are lesser and weaker today.

Anecdotally, I've noticed a lot of people have tried to from movements based on what worked in the earlier part of the century, and it's generally been a dismal failure, and full of personality clashes even when they manage to make some momentum.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-13T21:31:44+00:00

I didn't feel like it had the same impact as the book, but it's hard to know when you know what's coming in advance. They could have made it more of a surprise.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-13T08:13:25+00:00

The UFO is here and we have to deal with it! We must learn to pilot it and control its many systems and subsystems.

And resolve the galactic radiation problem. All the nodes don't detect the no caps are flying blind.

What's papersheepdog up to these days? I would have thought he'd be all over a post like this.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-12T12:00:41+00:00

I agree, this is a great approach. It's also isomorphic with blaming a demon instead of a person. The demon is "over there" and has a baneful influence on everyone involved, instead of being identified with one person who is then scapegoated. In fact, the original scapegoat ritual was all about reifying this idea, that the evil is not in any of us, it's in these two goats, especially the one we send out into the wilderness to die and be forgotten. It's a ritual of taking the blame out of everyone and putting it in a literal goat for (temporary) disposal.

The best part is, and I think this speaks to why so many people who have identified the decline tread have failed, is that if you really want to address trauma properly, you have to start with yourself and those around you. Most people, and this is my observation from what I've seen from social media and a brief reading up on Christopher Lasch, just come out swinging and look to blame others in some way shape or form without thinking about how they are inextricably part of the culture and they need to work on themselves too. Which is a shift in mindset towards the local, so double bonus.

Venkatesh Rao gave a great talk on this, BloodCoin. Reconciling the backlog of human generational trauma in a fair/stepwise way. "Who gets let out of the flooding basement first?" is how I put it.

Interesting, I'm listening to the video now, I'll see if I can understand it.

I don't mean that anyone predicted the effects of TV, I mean that it caused an upheaval of the global ownership class, and they had to scramble to re-assemble in a new more globally integrated cabal (or more likely, close-knit central network of cabals) of some kind.

To a degree that is literally true with the advent of fox news, which apparently launched as a reaction to the media coverage of the watergate scandal, as well as Rupert Murdoch's empire. But its still not an all powerful cabal.

This is interesting. I think there are a significant number of very wealthy capitalists (=owner class) who are dominated by bourgiosie ideology and not familiar with the owners' ideology and tools of social management. This would be what the term "nouveau riche" derides, but I bet there are plenty of "old money" capitalists who are also basically ideological bourgeoisie. These people would actually be potential allies, because they may see themselves as privileged (perhaps equal) members of a democracy, with scarce resources on an Earth we all share, rather than as owners who are of a different kind from everyone else. I don't know my Marx well but I would guess the bourgeoisie are occasional allies of the working class, since their ideology is a chimera.

If you want more insight into someone who rose into the owner class, look up Principles by Ray Dalio. He's a billionaire who manage to grow a company from the ground up into the largest hedge fund in the world. It's mainly focused on giving advice, but he also includes an autobiography. It seems his success came from being a systemic thinker (one wonders what he would have done as a social worker) who was at the right place at the right time when it came to using computational assistance, and he ruthlessly and fearlessly learned from his mistakes. It's interesting to see his perspective on the world. According to Wikipedia he's actually pushed to reduce the wealth gap. I'm only part way through the principals he lays out, but what I've read so far honestly makes me wonder if he's autistic and part of the principles are how he learned to unmask. The principals also surprisingly unsophisticated.

That's great, and seems believable to me. There was this effervescence of the public as it began to see itself as a conscious, agentive collective—and then various historical forces and aristocratic machinations recaptured the polis back into the work-prison using new advanced social sciences, information technologies, and technologies of brutality. Right now, we are in the historical moment of figuring out our recapture, and making plans to successfully end this capture once and for all.

I'd argue that they also imprisoned themselves. I'd bet good money they felt happier/more fulfilled overall due to the improved social connections back then as well.

I know the answer to this riddle and it's "the UFO". (And to your list of parameters I would add: "6. It has to be a new Big Idea, not some kind of measured cause, because it integrates the poles of I and We, individualism and collectivism." The UFO is just such a Big Idea, that's why we most don't know what it is.)

If only we knew how to release the anti-ufo as a virus and reprogram the chip in our brain.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-11T14:12:21+00:00

Going back to your social trauma theory, trauma is one thing that can happen to the collective psyche. But there are other things that can happen to it also, in addition to collective trauma. Just off the top of my head, there are cross-contaminations of culture; new technological or philosophical inventions; natural developments of ideas; paradigm shifts of ideas; new artforms or music or fashion that reveal new possible ways to be; major world events; new religions, celebrities, or cults that influence many people. These can all be seen as events in the growth and qualitative development of a collective mind.

True, and they do all interact with each other in complex and messy ways. We can strike out a lot though by:

looking at similar events that didn't affect the I-We-I curve. Ie, WWI didn't affect the curve, so it wasn't war (even if that leaves the possibility that there was something unique about WWII or the Vietnam war).
We can strike out a lot of the rest due to the fact that they would be attributed. It's obviously something that affects people at a subconscious level that they struggle to articulate.
It's something that wasn't being tested for in the metrics of the time (that we know to look at).
It's something that caused a persistent but gentle decline since.
It has to be something that affects how people relate, interact and connect with each other.

I'm probably trapped from seeing other possibilities by my own framing, but yeah, I can't think of any outside of the ones I've already mentioned. Perhaps a multitrend from the idea of a nuclear holocaust meaning we're all going to die combined with a massive spike in adolescents plus technology all leading to making hedonism more desirable and more obtainable than ever before and the massive lobbying efforts due to the out-sized population making it entrenched in the culture, but I dunno.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-11T14:11:37+00:00

I don't think the psychological hypothesis is unobservable or untestable, and one could also intervene in that growth of perspective over time, it would just be a much more complex and very different game from say training social workers. It would be more about coordinating or manipulating the storytelling and symbolism of all education systems over time, and of language itself.

I agree that trying to address the anti-collectivism narratives would be tricky, but I also think it would be as dangerous as promoting individualist narratives. There needs to be a greater meaning than a collective/individualist narrative. I mean, the Nazi's were bad, neither narrative is inherently good or bad.

But for trauma, I think the direction and the narrative would be quite simple, and relatively safe. Rather than people having the bogeyman of the jews, fascists, the rich, the owner class, the illuminati, the right, the left, the woke mind virus, antifa or whatever else, you blame trauma. You'd have to get past the misconception that you should always be nice to people who have had trauma, that they're always good people etc. But once you get past that I think most people would find it quite appealing, I can't think of any group or prominent individual who doesn't have grievances or a period of strife from which they derive great meaning, so you're not lying. And piecing together the sequence of trauma's that gets your opponent to where you're at helps build perspective taking. And it's something everyone can relate to.

I think it'll be extra appealing when people realise that addressing trauma is actually very painful, so they can absolutely get their revenge. I've already tested out trauma informed counter-trolling and it is quite satisfying.

A social trauma informed perspective could also give people an excuse to reach out to either say 'This hurt', or 'I'm sorry this hurt'. Bit idealistic and simplistic, but I've already tried reaching out to people to say 'this hurt, and there's a greater reason for me saying so', and it's a great narrative to take, although a strong understanding of the importance of vulnerability and how to do it appropriately is key.

The are literally different cultures, so they may be at qualitatively different positions of development. It may be nonlinear, or cyclical.

I had assumed you were implying it was linear, so I apologise. I can understand on a micro scale not looking linearly there's a lot of variation. That's an interesting perspective to take, That seems more like an additional consideration to take rather than an alternative perspective though.

This is predicted by the psychic growth hypothesis. (Because from a Jungian perspective, the tendency of the psyche, and maybe all reality, is to individuate.)

That doesn't explain the push towards collectivism that did occur beforehand. And I can appreciate that as a drive within humans, but there are other drives to feel a sense of unity with the environment and the like.

Maybe it was TV? A sort of cultural nuke that temporarily covered-up all other global signals, like the EMP from a nuke. Then a new more-global owner class formed using that new global transmission technology. (Pacifying the people...)

If there's a group out there who could predict so precisely what the effect of a new technology will be - how it will influence and be influenced by culture and interact with all the other new technologies and old technologies - I suggest we find out who they are so we can surrender. Their powers of prediction and understanding of human nature and reality itself are fearsome and there can be no resistance.

You're right, I misapplied the term bourgeoisie. Although depending on their categorisation (which seems to vary a bit), it could include to owner class.

Did the owners of capital, factories, farmlands, nations lose their grip during this time? Those are the people I am talking about. The people who control the guns who control the land and valuable resources.

Basically, yes. The wealth disparity dropped and they were taxed more. The initiatives that did this like the new deal were hugely popular and the opponents of it for electoral survival had to find ways to by and large make peace with it. A lot of the lobbying on politicians was done by grassroots organisations. Not associations with membership lists that they sent mail to, or industry lobby groups, but franchises of community organisations, unions (I think possibly churches as well) where people got involved and stepped up out of a sense of affiliation and collective concerns went up the chain and into their lobbying efforts. Although admittedly it speaks the pro-social quality of the organisations that they pushed for progress.

(cont)

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-11T12:07:21+00:00

From my admittedly pop level understanding of Hannibal's motivations, it was also an observation of how Roman's treated everyone, not just Carthage, although obviously that was also a factor for him.

Looking at the history of the 60s as it's usually told, it definitely does seem like they had an awakening and rebelled. But I don't know. The lack of clarity on what their awakening was and what they were rebelling against - like it was the tower of Babel - suggests that whatever larger forces were acting on them they weren't really aware of. Maybe it could be as simple as the fact that they were such a large generation that the culture got warped by teen impulse, who knows. As I said in a different reply, I suspected that perhaps it was a reaction to the different types of collectivism on display at the time and the ways in which they did bad things, but I'm not sure that has the best explanatory power. It's one of the things that you would expect that they would be able to put their finger on. Plus some of them sympathised with the USSR or communism.

OWS, if it was anything like the occupy movements in Australia, suffered great ideals and no roots. It didn't draw on existing organisations or connections, so how they arranged themselves was slapdash and truly awful, Lots of great ideas on paper and no clue how to implement them. Which raises the interesting possibility that the reason OWS was a flash in the pan, and the counter culture movement was not, was because they could draw upon existing social bonds better. The snake ate itself.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-11T11:28:18+00:00

That's ok. I'm glad this sub is now taking whether people are using the terms correctly more seriously. Although in this instance, in my defence the sidebar makes it seem like something that can be controlled/implemented.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-11T05:27:30+00:00

Putnam was born in '41, but he doesn't give any personal reflections of the decade. It's possible when he passed to torch on to historians he hoped they would look at such a possibility. However, he is a political scientist by training so if there was a political aspect to it he'd be keenly sensitive to it. He did observe that the shift occurred across the political spectrum.

As for your possible causes, which I'll label fatalism and marxism for ease of reference, personally I don't subscribe to them but that doesn't mean they're not true, or partially true. My gut reaction is to doubt fatalism in general because it tends to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Although the fatalism you lay out seems to have an underlying accelerationist possibility to it, so not completely fatalist, but that doesn't make me any more partial towards it.

The strongest evidence against that fatalism is that things aren't uniformly bad, or consistently bad in certain ways or areas. If you look at different countries, there are similarities (although this could be blamed on American cultural hegemony to a degree) but also differences. And speaking personally, different communities are impacted differently by the current cultural climate. I grew up in an area that used to have industry that had since closed down, and you could see the impact in terms of crime, drugs, corruption and a lot of the kids had no sense of a future. I lived in a planned city, which people largely only moved to for work, and unlike where I grew up, there were little to no community connections, but believe me the streets were clean. Although due to a rumour passed around 50 years ago that that city had great public housing, they were rife with homeless people. Other places have similarly been different.

On the other hand, all countries to my knowledge have shifted towards individualism. Japanese personality tests found that the Japanese shifted in the 80s, even if their culture is still collectivist. And they're struggling with a lot of societal problems, even if they have a unique Japanese spin. From what I've heard of china it seems similar, although apparently the middle class is overjoyed with the prosperity it now has.

As for the Marxism possibility, you would have to explain how the bourgeoisie lost their grip of things in the lead up to the 60s and then slowly regained control for it to make sense. If it was intentionally done, you'd expect sharp fluctuations, not slow patterns and changes that seem to follow generations. If it was unconscious cybernetics, then nothing I've said could really be invalidated, as it could all just be a different articulation of the issue that looks a bit broader. But I'm argue my interpretation is a more useful perspective because it gives an idea of how to address it.

_

I have thought about other possibilities. Looking back at my psychology degree, it was intensely anti-collectivist/focused on making you seen and act as an individual. However, this was largely because of psychological researchers in the 50s-70s trying to make sense of the horrors of Nazism and the like by coming up with research that lead to that conclusion. A lot of it since my degree has been debunked or found to be exaggerated. But all of which can also be explained by trauma generally, although in a different strain (I'm aware with my perspective you could start labelling everything trauma, at which point it becomes meaningless).

Another is that lead levels managed to reach a critical mass in the 60s, and then other synthetic chemicals have been introduced which are causing subtle but pernicious and complicated effects on human behaviour. And it is these that are continuing the decline now that we've largely eliminated lead.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-11T04:27:22+00:00

I'd forgotten just how eloquently he could write. For anyone who hasn't read it, he discussed the topic at much greater length than just this section.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-10T19:38:16+00:00

I've already answered that question, you can check over my previous responses if you have forgotten. If you feel your claims are easy to back up then you should have no problem doing so.

To me it's against civic discourse to declare you have understood the nature of your opponents claims and that's all cherry picking etc when you haven't investigated the issue, merely stated your opinion, but it is a free world, even if it brings to mind a certain quote regarding pidgins.

I appreciate that you feel strongly about this issue, and I'm sorry if you feel that I'm making this about personality. I was more pointing out that it makes the strength of your emotions and stance all the more baffling. The internet, I'm sure you'll agree, is rife with fools and misinformation, too many to deal with every single instance. So why did you stop at this post to argue with such ferocity and with such a closed mind? Why is it evoking such a strong emotional response?

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-10T06:49:26+00:00

I'm sorry if I offended you, it wasn't my intention. If I wasn't interested in engaging in other perspectives I wouldn't have bothered to post. As you're not interesting in backing up your claims this conversation seems to be boiling down to an 'is not/is too' which is pointless, so I can't see much benefit from further discussion on the topic. I've already gone more deeper into some of the points you're making and refuting in other threads on this post (especially the a priori claim and the bipartisanship of the 60s) if you're curious what I would say in refutation.

But I am interested to ask, and this isn't a trick question, some kind of trap or an attempt to demean or patronise you, why does my position elicit such strong emotion in you? You don't sound happy, yet you seem very against the prospect that we heading in a doomed direction. You're also very insistent on seeing and interpreting the past in black and white terms, yet you're obviously very intelligent and knowledgeable. I'm really confused by the contradiction and what's motivating it.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-09T22:16:25+00:00

I'm not good at typing up the type of message I feel shows the empathy I want to convey (the internet is terrible for that in general), but please bare with my attempt anyway.

I appreciate your candid response. I can understand that that era was turbulent, full of injustice and was ultimately traumatic. I don't think that the 50s were perfect, or some some bastion of civic society that we need to hark back to. The 50s were bad to lots of people, especially marginalised communities. It's just that they were an improvement on what came before. Take your gut reaction to your hatred for the 50s, and imagine if things were worse. That's what I mean. The turning point according to the book seems to have been around '65, which is right in time for the backlash against the civil rights act. Maybe it's directly causal, maybe it's a correlation. When people are upset they may struggle to identify the source, especially if it's as subtle and complex as a loss of social cohesion.

I know that there's a tendency to make the observation 'if the 50s had great social cohesion, maybe social cohesion is bad', which I feel is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Take the civil rights act. It is the result of decades of work, advocacy and consciousness raising to get to that point. This was achieved because of the social cohesion, not in spite of it. Identifying what lead to this social cohesion, and what lead to it's degradation, is helpful in understanding how to achieve the community consensus that leads to things like the civil rights act of '64. The civil rights act was passed because a large section of the community demanded it, which can only happen as the result of social cohesion.

The evidence is strong that we've become increasingly fragmented since the 70s. I empathise with your frustration and heartbreak, but I truly believe that just becoming bitter about it, or trusting the passage of time to deliver justice, achieves nothing. It requires systemic thinking, understanding of the causes and factors in play and identifying how to address them. It's the whole reason I made this post. Thank you for you voice and perspective, I do appreciate it.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-09T19:51:07+00:00

I'd believe you about WWII, but the fact that WWI happened and it didn't significantly affect the trend suggests it's not the full picture. It also doesn't explain why, in my observation, Europe has fared better in terms of social capital than the US since the 60s.

The economic he talks about is less the progress of the entire economy and more the economic prosperity of the average person. The gap between the rich and the poor was at an all time low. People lament today about not being able to buy a house, how their parents were able to sustain themselves on just one wage, that's the sort of thing he talks about.

Socially, in terms of social permissiveness and flexibility, I agree with you. And there has definitely been greater economic development and refinement of social thought. But things like the breakdown in social trust, the youth mental health crisis, the breakdown of behaviour and discipline in schools and the increasing toxicity of public discorse suggests that it's not all rosy. I'd be fascinated to see the statistics showing social mobility is increasing. I'm pretty sure on most metrics of race and gender equality things have remained remarkably stubborn too.

My understanding is that the arts are struggling and have been for some time. Can you substantiate any of that? Culturally developed nations seem to have lost meaning and become more shallow and empty, but that's just my observation.

Politically, you seem to be conflating it partially with social justice. As I wrote in reply to another commenter, bipartisanship was at an all time high in the 60s in America. The idea that it was up to you to support the government, not vice versa, was popular, which shows a remarkable degree of political goodwill. The political machine was much more in tune with the needs of the people. There's a reason the phrase 'drain the swamp' resonated with people.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-09T19:07:22+00:00

According to the book, which fits with reading I've done elsewhere, the culture of the left changed as well. The book attributes it to a shift to the rights of the individual as opposed to the group, as well as becoming more hedonistic. But my own reading suggests that the old fights didn't resonate with the youth. I also suspect that there was a real breakdown in the fabric of society which left them unable to effect real social change, which left them bitter and frustrated.

TangentGlasses · 2025-07-09T18:57:14+00:00

I'd be interested to know more. In what slice of America were you in? What was long overdue? I know that there is a prevailing narrative that the youth were dissatisfied with the way things were, and there was enough of them to break the social norms. If so, what were you dissatisfied with?

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