I think you are right. The US kinda feels like Asimov’s foundation, especially in the west coast. Fewer people acting like adults and more people chasing dopamine and letting entropy do its damage.
Maybe I just need to stop taking public transportation and walking the city. Perhaps suburbs feel further from the precipice.
I've been wondering lately if it's down to the lack of agency on the part of average people.
Like I see that America is in decline and has a decent chance of falling apart in my lifetime (I'm 34), but what exactly am I going to do about it? Nobody in charge cares, they're too busy fiddling. If you can't stop the decline and have to live it, why not try to enjoy what you have while you have it?
I’m 37 so we’re pretty much the same cohort. And I’ve also reached that conclusion - I get out of the city and ski and hike, spend time with SO, etc. I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to.
However, my daily commutes through seattle runs me right into the Pioneer square station and I swear it’s like something from “the Wire”. It feels like hamsterdam, a hell on earth. So while I generally resolve to do whats best for myself I still run into the effects of the society I live in everyday and it’s depressing/demoralizing. This city is diseased with an aggressive malignancy.
> I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to.
The thing that's interesting about this is that human beings in acute distress are less adept at planning ahead and being creative. Which means that people in the doom cycle can't start building new institutions to challenge the old ones that are decaying and pillaging. The perverse incentives that got us to this point are also disincentivizing fixing the problems.
I don't even want to think about what Pioneer Square is like now. It was sketchy when I lived in Seattle and that was 10 years ago. I agree that even with some healthy distance/putting on your own oxygen mask first, it's very demoralizing. My trust in people is much lower than it used to be.
I'm not sure rural or suburban areas are much better. Most of the malignancy just happens in private.
You may be right about the suburban areas, I just don't know. I haven't lived there since I was a kid.
The area around Pioneer square is all boarded up now, even the court house! During the summer/fall it was much worse with indigent drug use and florid psychotics but now that it's cold and wet there's less. The station is still used as a toilet though.
Funny enough the stairs at exit A in Pioneer Square have inscribed on them as you walk up "Why are you not afraid?". And I always say to myself, "I fuckin am!"
Seattle needs some chemotherapy but that would require its citizens to recognize they have a disease and actually seek treatment. Instead they put on their airpods and stare at their phones and completely live in a parallel reality.
The most recent elections clearly demonstrate that Seattle voters are fed up and are ready to try something else. Of the seven city council members whose terms are up in 2023 only one has announced a re-election campaign and four of them have said they won't be running. It's a mess right now but I don't think it's fair to accuse the electorate of living in a parallel reality.
> I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to
I was part of this so-called doomerism group when I worked in a more traditional 9-5 job in IT about 8-10 years ago. Now I'm solidly in the homesteader/freelancer/homeschooler counterculture.
Maybe there's a natural progression where you begin to question your life/the system/who you're serving and then you do something about it. I'm sure many people get stuck and never make that transition because of the perceived risk in doing so.
You realize that "America is in decline" has been alive and well since the 60s. Not sure anything right now points to it being any different back then. If anything militarily and intelligence wise the US proved the dominance globally by tipping off Ukraine and stopping a full Russian incursion.
The main problems America has are internal. I agree that nobody could realistically invade us or wage war against us, but that doesn't mean we can't have civil conflicts or a period like the Troubles. In those cases, our overwhelming military superiority might be a drawback since everybody and their cousin is armed.
This observation, for me is a rationale for supporting efforts that shift power down. From federal to state, from state to county, from county to local gov, from local gov to individuals.
Public policy discussions that start with the assumption that the only possible solution is for the federal/state/county/local government to dictate policies from above are almost always non-starters for me. The higher up in the hierarchy the more evidence I need to support a solution at that level.
I'm not absolutist on this matter, there are concerns that are best addressed at all those various levels but I prefer to get there through bottom-up policy experimentation and iteration rather than top-down diktats. There are also ample lessons from history about the dangers of expansive government powers.
That debate has been ongoing since before the founding of the country. You are in good company and our system is designed with the idea of distributing power. The key is for people to recognize and exercise their power.
I'm actually very locally active and came to the same conclusion in that I think building local institutions is the best thing that I can do right now.
These decline stories are universal, and probably no more true than 400 years ago: I am French and live in Hong Kong, do you think decline is not what everyone is talking about in BOTH places ? What is a place not in decline in the eyes of its inhabitants ?
It says more about how we view the past than how the present is: we remember only the glorious good times, and forget nobody could read 200 years ago, or nobody could eat 400 years ago. They all said they were in decline, the values of their grandfathers diluted by a constant change.
But while I sit on my toilets, on the 44th floor of my hyper tower, writing to americans in a language nobody in my ascending family can speak, before tucking my trilingual kid to bed, well, I think the decline isn't so bad, if you zoom out a few decades.
Doesn’t look like decline to me. I could cite dozens more examples and not just around technology.
Russia is a good example of a nation in decline: hemorrhaging young people, horrible corruption, cynicism, delusional leaders, and the use of imperial war and dramatic ideology to try to paper over it all.
We do have a lot of dumb problems like a homelessness epidemic that are due more to lack of political will than inability to fix them.
Some are also due to the high priority we place on individual freedom. We’d rather have freedom from detention and to move about than round up the homeless and force them into institutions. We’d rather have shootings than remove the individual right to bear arms. We’d rather have strong property rights than eminent domain people to build infrastructure. Etc.
> hemorrhaging young people, horrible corruption, cynicism, delusional leaders, and the use of imperial war and dramatic ideology to try to paper over it all.
So which of those is missing from the US? I see fewer and fewer young people, the corruption may not be at the level of handing over banknotes but the distrust is just as real, and everything else on your list is much th esame.
I don't think it's bad in the long run either. I think sometimes we need to get rid of old things to make way for new things. It still kind of sucks for those of us who live through it, though. A lot of my frustration is with the current system's inertia as the current decaying institutions do their best to keep alternatives from taking root so all we can do is wait until they're finally weak enough to be ignored. In the meantime, what should we do?
I can only speak to the American (and somewhat the Canadian) situation. I don't know what on the ground sentiment looks like in France or Hong Kong.
Maybe I just need to stop taking public transportation and walking the city. Perhaps suburbs feel further from the precipice.