LogFAQs > #943810558

Mead posted...

We are in a very different situation as a society that we have been at any other point in living memory.

We really aren't, but people in the moment always believe that. Because humans in general tend to be egocentric/ethnocentric as fuck, and always see themselves at the center of the universe.



Mead posted...

I dont think you or anyone else can accurately predict what is going to happen based on recent historical norms

I've predicted the outcome of pretty much every Presidential election in the US for the last 28 years, plenty of social movements and shifts of the last two decades or so, and almost every facet of the governmental and societal response to Covid since it started. I also predicted exactly what was going to happen for the last few sweeping social movements or protests.

And I don't even consider myself all that skilled at predicting social trends. Just paying attention and applying a little common sense can go a very long way.

It really isn't hard to predict things at all as long as you take basic human nature into account, and have a fairly firm grasp of the important variables involved. The only real curveball is when something comes completely out of nowhere, but even then you can pretty easily predict where it's going to go afterward.

The people who get blindsided by the future are usually the people who had extremely unrealistic expectations about the future in the first place.



Blightzkrieg posted...

Guys I'm not sure if PO realizes that there has been social change in America since 1960.

I'm not sure if you realize that the social change in the 1960s and since hasn't been a steep steady upwards line towards universal enlightenment, but is a wonky wobbly curve where some things get better, others get worse, reactionary thinking kicks in and some things backslide, perspectives shift, and overall a lot of things just stay exactly the same no matter how positive the wide-eyed idealists are that THIS is going to be the generation that really fixes everything.

I'm also not sure if you realize that there's been a greater trend towards slow pacification of civil dissent over the years. Years ago idealists predicted that the Internet would usher in a new age of informed voters and dissemination of information that would empower the public like never before, but in practice the signal:noise ratio has desensitized people to the sheer amount of information (and the validity of it), and created more and more distractions to the point where people are easily distracted and diverted from any meaningful form of resistance (something which, in spite of Mead's skepticism, a number of technological futurists were predicting as early as the 1980s). Protests don't really mean much when protesters get bored after a few weeks and disperse. Movements don't accomplish much when they're little more than a punchline even a few years later. Hashtags on Twitter

The main reason why so many people these days have grown disillusioned towards strikes and protests as an agent of change is because so few people involved in them have the commitment to actually follow through to a meaningful conclusion. It's the same reason why Internet outrage culture can accomplish minor "victories" in the short-term but make little lasting change in the long term - when you're looking for a new thing to be pissed about every 15 minutes, you don't devote the time and energy to any ONE specific thing long enough for your outrage to really matter. And governments and businesses are fully aware that all they really have to do is outlast the current tantrum because most people will have forgotten about it soon enough.

When you assume there's going to be massive protests and rebellions and negative reaction, you're basing your assumption on the amount of outrage you read or hear online. But almost all of that is hot air from anonymous strangers in the comfort of their own home, and very few of those people would ever make the actual effort to try and fix the things they rail about, especially if it would require more effort and risk than just typing a hashtag and posting memes. THAT'S what keeps the status quo so powerful.

Honestly, we almost certainly wouldn't have seen BLM protests and reactions as strongly as we did this year if they weren't in tandem with the greater anxiety/stir-crazy mindset engendered by Covid quarantining in general, which left people wound up and ready to blow for almost any trigger. But even that pent-up energy can only last so long before it burns out (which it mostly has by this point, at least in the more dynamic sense). It usually lasts long enough to spur a few minor concessions, a few token gestures, and a tiny bit of "positive change" - just enough to help defuse the situation. And then "business as usual" kicks in and the status quo is, for the most part, unchanged.

If Trump wins a second term (which isn't guaranteed, though Trump losing by a landslide also isn't as sure-fire an outcome as some anti-Trump people would like to believe, either), we'll likely see the exact sort of reaction we saw the first time he got elected, with a slightly higher incidence of protests or demonstrations... which will last for a very short period of time before everyone gets tired, slides back into apathetic grumpiness, and the status quo keeps chugging along.

I know there's a strong desire for people - especially for younger people - to optimistically believe that they're living in times that will be forever remembered as the progressive and enlightened period where everyone started getting their shit together and fixing all the injustices of the world. But after you've lived through a few periods like that and have seen how those moments sputter and fade, and that very little changes all that much in the long run, and that progress tends to be a slow plod forward rather than an explosive revolution, you get a bit more realistic about the future.

It also doesn't really help that most "revolutions" in history usually leave people much worse off than when they started. That helps fuel the cynicism a bit as well. "The road to Hell is paved with..." etc etc.
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