The West Wing and the Death of Belief

I really enjoyed Matt Yglesias's take on The West Wing, and in particular on how it's a fair bit more realistic than it often gets credit for: https://www.slowboring.com/p/in-defense-of-the-west-wing

> ... I know this sounds melodramatic, but I think we've witnessed something unprecedented in our shared culture: the wholesale abandonment of progress as a governing narrative. Where we used to tell ourselves stories about systems that could be reformed, institutions that could be redeemed, and problems that could be solved, we now traffic almost exclusively in a paradigm of decay, capture, and inevitable disappointment.

Yes, this new reality is grim; many countries (including the US) are sliding more into autocracy every day. One can look at this and say "we have lost so much". _And_ we can look at this and say "look at how much we have to do". Both points of view are valid and probably necessary, but I find the latter to be more motivational.

I strive to operate from a position of no expectations. Just reality. There is nothing we are owed. There is nothing guaranteed. We have to strive.

Our generation has a long struggle ahead. Even if you didn't live through World War II or the Cold War, your ancestors did. They found a way to survive and move ahead. So can we.

Doing the best we can in life does _not_ have to be coupled with a rosy outlook for the future. I've been in this kind of mental space for many years. It is uncomfortable at first, but there is no law of the universe that says our life has to be easy. There are no guarantees that:

1. Your economic prospects will match (much less exceed) your parents.

2. American society will go on the way we want it to.

3. If/when super intelligent AI arrives, it will not kill us all.

4. Climate change will be ok.

And so on. We can choose to go on anyway, this is a test of our character and resolve.

I'm not being melodramatic; this is a pretty dry summary of my views.

There is a silver lining; if you want a life of purpose, this is a great time to live. If you read philosophers who explore happiness, two aspects often show up: the importance of human connection and goals bigger than oneself.

I think it's just a simple case of "when times are good, people cooperate, when times are bad, they turn on each other."

And right now, we're somewhere in-between, where things have stagnated but nothing's catastrophic yet. People turn on each other over tiny symbols, but very few people are actually choosing violence over words.

The problem is that the default trajectory is currently downward. Stocks grow at 6% while wages lose ground to inflation, and no one is doing anything to stop this (most of them don't even seem to realize this, they just have some intuition that the economy is being not-nice), so things are probably going to get worse until some Next-Big-Thing finally shakes things up.

Sorkin on US exceptionalism https://youtu.be/fJh9t9h6Wn0?si=-p6XAyAIipyDJO5s

I guess it’s probably clear to reasonable people but the implicit context to this whole article is “…in America.” Not that these problems don’t exist elsewhere. I definitely sense similar threats in Canada. But compared to America it’s day and night… for now.

My one hope is that by lagging behind America’s decline, maybe we’ll witness the consequences of this path and manage to turn away from it in time.

I would add that before social media demonstrated many times, how great fortunes can be made scaling up seemingly small conflicts of interest into monsters, even ruthless moguls in the valley tended to operate with the assumption that their empires would be built by creating useful things.

As apposed to attention traps and user farming.

We are generally a lot more cynical about the valley today, than a couple decades ago. And for good reason.

“Serve” has multiple definitions. Its former meaning associated with phrases like “serving people” is now effectively happening in the phrase “serving ads”. Ads are now the god. And the way we used “serve” in “serving ads” is now an appropriate way to interpret “serving people”. People are now the means, the consumed sustenance, instead of the ends. For several global tech giants.

Social media hasn’t just poisoned personal lives, but also the focus of much investment. (In both startups and in corporate growth.)

There’s a name for this condition. It’s called burnout.