Decline

[sufi]

the internet has become unsustainable - its literally trying to eat the planet on the physical plane, consuming mountains in the appalachians. and that's just the machinery, never mind even about all of the unstable and unreliable content or irresistible colonisation of human brains

so i think we should be ready for it to be less omnipresent, not forget our offline coping mechanisms

 

[constant escape]

Part of the reason I've been mass downloading pdfs, for an offline library. It can't all be this easily accessible forever, unless we hit a serious golden streak of tech developments, as far as I can see.

 

[sufi]

tech solutionism is over already

 

[version]

Just got this text from my dad.

"Am at Cineworld in Bolton waiting to see Avatar 3D. It is a wasteland: half the screens shut because the heating is not working and less than a quarter of the seats filled. Still got old popcorn and crisps ground into the carpets from ages ago... the lights are on but barely anyone home. Virtually no staff ... Ghost town."

 

[Leo]

Grim Britannia

This is the one of 1977's grimmest moments - a documentary about football hooligans who may well no longer exist in a South East London that's become obsolete - I'm not sure which bits are most interesting / depressing ; the opening shot (which, with the sound turned off, could easily be from...

www.dissensus.com

 

[Mr. Tea]

NHS trust apologises as man kept in hospital for more than a year

The man tried to "escape" on one occasion and broke his arm in the process, a court hears.

www.bbc.com

A lawyer representing another health authority told the judge that professionals involved were under pressure because of the "state" of the health and social care services.

 

[IdleRich]

u ok luke? there's about to be a load of posts here from serious posters explaining that this or that period was much more fucked

That's something that happens a lot these days (ok, last few years) but never used to happen before in the entirety of human history - a definite sign that things have got palpably worse.

 

[IdleRich]

this did it for me the other day, i was genuinely thinking what if 1988 actually was a/the high mark of western culture and we will never again know such opulence? while enjoying it

What if it was? I saw some film or something the other day with someone saying "Have you ever thought that the best moment of your life might be in the past?" as though it was some sort of profoundly clever and deeply unsettling challenger that would have you lying awake at night. Thing is, I don't care if THE best moment is behind me - it either is or it isn't, or there is not a specific best moment - as long as there are plenty more good moments to come. If the best moment has been but moments number two, three, four, five, six, nine and twelve still lie in front of me then which part of my life counts as better the past or the future?

In the same way, if the history of the world has loads of peaks and troughs and 1988 happened to be a high peak that doesn't bother me, I would only be bothered if we were in an actual decline where life (and everything else) quality was slowly decreasing day by day. As the thread posits I suppose. The frightening question is whether we are - individually or collectively - locked into some kind of downward spiral, and if it were really possible to identify such a situation, can we escape from it?

 

[IdleRich]

one of the most common ones i see on youtube is "who's still listening in 2020?"

Or what you often see is the comment "who is still listening in 2008?" and slightly further down you see "Who is still listening in 2015?" and also "Who still listening in 2021?" - I guess the very nature of time is such that things are brand new for only a few seconds and then they are in the past forever. So especially if you're a fourteen year old youtube watcher it's quite natural to ask if people are "still" listening to things that only came into existence a couple of years back.

 

[IdleRich]

OK you got me

I feel bad for taking this thread sincerely but it's serious guys! This isn't a joke! It's not funny! Nostalgia is BAD BAD BAD. It needs to be stamped out everywhere it pops up. The only way through is forward!

I only hope young me is around to spank old me in 20 years

I broadly agree that there is a tendency, as you say, to mythologise the past. A tendency that should be overcome. The only problem is sometimes something IS literally worse today than it was in the past and if we always reply automatically "No old man, x is just as good as in your day, it's just that you are not with it any more" then we are in danger of wrongly overrating things that are shit. I guess that it doesn't matter too much if a few people mistakenly overvalue the present version of something... it can be a counterbalance to all the nostalgia. But individually you don't want to be someone making an error in the more interesting direction, you want to get things right.

 

[IdleRich]

The Milton Point is what folks call it. The idea that Milton was the last person able to read basically all the written works of the West—not the canon, the entire (surviving & printed) corpus. Nowadays you can devote your whole life just to reading Hugo and Nebula-nominated sci-fi and you won't be able to get through it, it'll stack up faster than you can pop off.

I've heard, similarly, that Pascal was the last person to know all of maths - as it was at the time.

 

[IdleRich]

I've heard, similarly, that Pascal was the last person to know all of maths - as it was at the time.

Oh I said that last time I read the thread. Thus proving my point (as recently stated in another thread) about my repeating myself when the same conditions reoccur. I'm not at all pleased to prove that point though.

 

[IdleRich]

NHS trust apologises as man kept in hospital for more than a year

The man tried to "escape" on one occasion and broke his arm in the process, a court hears.

www.bbc.com

OK, so I get there is a guy who has been in hospital and who is now well enough to leave, but the council and the health trust or whatever have not got it together to find him a place to live that can meet his needs.... sure, ok, that's annoying and everything but it lies within the bounds of what is imaginable. What I don't get is.... why is he imprisoned? I mean he's been cured of his immediate health problems and they haven't found him a place to live, what's to stop him going for a walk or whatever? Why does he need to break his arm trying to escape from the hospital? Surely the fact that they can't find him a house doesn't mean they have to lock him in a cell and chain him to a wall? What is going on here?

 

[Mr. Tea]

OK, so I get there is a guy who has been in hospital and who is now well enough to leave, but the council and the health trust or whatever have not got it together to find him a place to live that can meet his needs.... sure, ok, that's annoying and everything but it lies within the bounds of what is imaginable. What I don't get is.... why is he imprisoned? I mean he's been cured of his immediate health problems and they haven't found him a place to live, what's to stop him going for a walk or whatever? Why does he need to break his arm trying to escape from the hospital? Surely the fact that they can't find him a house doesn't mean they have to lock him in a cell and chain him to a wall? What is going on here?

The mention of "mental and physical health problems" makes me think they can't assume he'll come back if they let him out, and no doubt the hospital is too short-staffed to actually spare someone to accompany him for a walk.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Or another way to look at it is that he has a very reasonable desire to get the hell out of there, but they can't risk that because there's nowhere else for him to go.

Pretty miserable situation all round.

 

[version]

Been seeing more and more lately about just how poor wages in Britain are relative to the US, Canada, Australia. Anecdotal stuff under FT and Economist articles with people talking about nurses being paid twice as much in Oz, tech salaries being two or three times higher in the US. Saw someone earlier saying their wife was devastated when she learned she could be earning 90k elsewhere for something she does for mid 30s in the UK.

 

[Leo]

Yes, but one important factor is health insurance and medical expenses. Our salaries are higher, but we have to pay monthly health insurance premiums (your company contributes the bulk of it, but the costs are ridiculous if you're self employed), and we have to pay for actual tests and treatments not covered by the insurance. Medical expenses are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy here.

This is just anecdotal but I remember my wife saying lots of her friends in England could afford to live ok, but none of them were saving anything. Their office jobs covered rent in an ok apartment, nights down the pub, etc., so it wasn't a month-to-month struggle, but five or 10 years down the road most of them hadn't accumulated any sort of cushion or rainy day savings.

 

[shakahislop]

Been seeing more and more lately about just how poor wages in Britain are relative to the US, Canada, Australia. Anecdotal stuff under FT and Economist articles with people talking about nurses being paid twice as much in Oz, tech salaries being two or three times higher in the US. Saw someone earlier saying their wife was devastated when she learned she could be earning 90k elsewhere for something she does for mid 30s in the UK.

was talking to a mate about this the other day so it's in the air at the moment. gut feeling from day to day experience is that this is right and that our collective imagination about the UK being a very rich country is a bit out of date. still a class place and probably overall nicer than the US though.

 

[version]

'Is life in the UK really as bad as the numbers suggest? Yes, it is'

... Real household disposable income per capita has barely increased for 15 years.

This is not normal. Since 1948, this measure of spending power reliably increased in the UK, doubling every 30 years. It was about twice as high in 1978 as in 1948 and was in touching distance of doubling again by 2008, before the financial crisis intervened. Today, it’s back at those pre-crisis levels.

It’s worth lingering on this point because it is so extraordinary. Had the pre-crisis trend continued, the typical Brit would by now be 40 per cent richer. Instead, no progress has been made at all.

 

[version]

It all seems to hinge on Cameron and Osborne's handling of the fallout of the financial crisis.