I’ve had a pet theory for a long time that society loses it’s collective mind every 10ish years or so, usually starting with a good reason, but the outcome is mass stupidity followed by mass forgetting leading to a new cycle. War on terror, GFC, crypto, covid, now AI. Although the cycle does seem to be shortening.
Also we’re just so damn stupid to learn from history, or even just people 10 years older than us, that we repeat the cycle.
And there I guess is where saying a new sucker is born every minute is from.
I have a more sympathetic view, I thought covid could have been much worse. Of course there were silly moments like the existential panic from a toilerpaper shortage but it seems like the vast majority of people acted responsibly and kept their heads over the long haul. In the meantime, we developed revolutionary vaccines that solved the problem.
There's the lingering societal PTSD to consider, but I think most of the challenge in the aftermath are latent issues that preexisted covid and it just brought them to the surface. I think our world a couple decades from now will be stronger than it would have been in a universe where covid never happened, and actually has a better chance at dealing with the next covid-level threat. Perhaps that is this, in a way.
Covid proved that a healthy looking society is not always so healthy, and I think it works in reverse too. The outcome of the upcoming election will tell us something about how far we have to go.
I appreciate your optimistic view of it. What I got out of it was that Covid was a sort of dress rehearsal for a far worse outbreak that could eventually happen, and we (Americans) failed miserably.
grebc · · focus · HN ↗
Also we’re just so damn stupid to learn from history, or even just people 10 years older than us, that we repeat the cycle.
And there I guess is where saying a new sucker is born every minute is from.
doginasuit · · focus · HN ↗
There's the lingering societal PTSD to consider, but I think most of the challenge in the aftermath are latent issues that preexisted covid and it just brought them to the surface. I think our world a couple decades from now will be stronger than it would have been in a universe where covid never happened, and actually has a better chance at dealing with the next covid-level threat. Perhaps that is this, in a way.
Covid proved that a healthy looking society is not always so healthy, and I think it works in reverse too. The outcome of the upcoming election will tell us something about how far we have to go.
pelotron · · focus · HN ↗
account42 · · focus · HN ↗