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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

From a US perspective, I think there are major differences between WWI/WWII and 1968/perhaps recent years.

In the WWs you had a society perhaps more structured and united for a common national and patriotic cause.

In 1968 (since it's mentioned) and perhaps in recent years you have a society that arguably is less structured and people having issues with society itself and the state of the country.

It also seems to me that it was during the 70s that the US started to feel that things and the country were going down.

I suppose there is a parallel in the UK, for instance. Things were hard during WWII but people came together and had a sense of purpose and of fighting for their homes.

But then factories close, you lose your job, inflation picks up, society changes... now you may perhaps really feel depressed.

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Not really a fan of militarism, but WWII had a lot of people working alongside a lot of other people they wouldn't usually spend time with. And a desperate need to innovate new technology and new industrial and managerial processes. So there was unity in the face of a common threat.

Also, GI Bills allowed intelligent individuals to get an education without worrying about debt as well as discounted mortgages and business loans.

That need dissipated after the 60s and there was more emphasis on hedonism and competitive individual ambition. Then in the 80s competitive economic individualism started to dominate everything else.

The result was a classic race to the bottom - with a few extreme winners who are indulged and beatified, a productive but often hamstrung professional underclass, and a huge precariat of economic losers.

At the same time the media landscape started promoting division and tribalism for profit.

So now we have a dysfunctional culture which is unable to cope with challenges like Covid, gun violence, and climate catastrophe because it has been groomed to be more emotional than rational, and the tone has affected everyone from the top down.

> So now we have a dysfunctional culture which is unable to cope with challenges like Covid, gun violence, and climate catastrophe because it has been groomed to be more emotional than rational, and the tone has affected everyone from the top down.

The arc of cultural history you describe seems spot on. But I don't think splitting between "emotional" and "rational" is useful or even the root of what you describe.

Emotion is a kind of reason too, only it yields affect. Much of what we reason out "emotionally" is the really important stuff - who we marry, whether to have kids, when to change jobs.

I'd rather say, if it's true, that the quality of emotive and positivist thought has been equally corroded. I think if you truly take on board the thrust of the Trilateral Commission's action on the "Crisis of Democracy", the attack on emotional literacy has been even more vicious, and vital to the their aims, than the so-called "dumbing down of education".

> WWII had a lot of people working alongside a lot of other people they wouldn't usually spend time with.

To some extent, but the military was still segregated by race.

> From a US perspective, I think there are major differences between WWI/WWII and 1968/perhaps recent years.

The UK's literary output is probably also included among the English books of that period. It should show up, shouldn't it?

> But then factories close, you lose your job, inflation picks up, society changes... now you may perhaps really feel depressed.

Then it should go down in the 90s, right?

They paper says the English sample is from the United States of America, U.K. publications are presumably excluded.

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