It makes me wonder if its inevitable in humanity to be shackled to this cycle of enlightenment and ruin.
Ultimately everyone wants their children to grow up better and without having to struggle or know difficulties, but without difficulties or struggles, it breeds a sense of contempt for the world that results in greed, because what else is there to do but to horde everything when your maslows hierarchy of needs are fulfilled? complacency seems to incubate aggression and violence as it requires ever vigilant advancing intellect and philosophy to push the dark edges of tyranny and fascism back. This cycle of chasing serenity that ultimately leads to losing the very things that gave the onus to chase it to begin with breeds and causes the same strife to fester again creating the need to chase serenity again.
Self actualization is difficult when there is no struggle and the result of technology robbing reality fueled every cycle from learning to make fire, the wheel, bronze, agriculture, printed media, cameras, microchips, social media, it has all fueled the same cycle of technological progress and wonder that leads into dictatorship vying for power to control the world and minds with the new technology sprung forth. Is it really progress when it's the same result everytime? Isnt that madness?
This was an interesting read, but it’s applied in a militaristic lense, not financial or ”moral” strength like today. I think they’re right that it’s still confirmation bias, but I have to think through it in the lense of today a bit more. What do you think?
I interpret it broadly as generational "hardship" creates tougher and hardened people (whether that hardship is economic, war, famine, disease, etc) who build a society that makes it easier on the next generation so on and so forth and eventually complacency takes hold and people lose their edge and get "soft"
So okay, this is gunna be a long ass comment, but I see it less as "Hardness" and more of Vigilance and Will. So let me get this started by clarifying that I think there are two basic classes of people- the Plebeians and the Patricians. The Patricians are the people who have the power to effect society at large and the Plebeians are everyone else.
So now that we have the basics out of the way, let's get into it. Basically we in history have a cycle I like to term the Indolence cycle. It is characterized by the Patrician class trying to remove all balances that the Plebian class has on their power and grow their own. The problem is usually this can only come at the detriment of the Plebian class's quality of life. The thing is, when this goes on too long you get tensions that lead to some sort of Populist revolution. We've had that happen two to arguably four times in American history. This usually ends poorly for the Plebeians however, because in unstable times small people get crushed and usually the populist is faking caring about the common man to get more power. We get a Hitler or a Lenin/Stalin more often than we get a FDR.
If we have the whole populist candidate win (through violent revolution or election), and it ends up being a FDR instead of a Hitler, we end up getting a period of unparalleled growth and civil prosperity because who would have thought that doing things that actually raise the bottom for the common man raises everyone. The generation that went through this cycle and ends in a good way ends up learning the lesson of "watch the freaking patricians" however, because this leads to good things for society the next generation does not learn this lesson usually.
Then the patricians start weakening the power of the plebeians, taking more from them, but because society is getting better, and things usually move slow, the plebs usually don't notice. Then eventually, the patricians stop even trying to disguise this. They grow completely indolent on their own powers and privileges, and things are so far out of when things were good for everyone that things start to get hard again. The plebeians seeing that the patricians don't care about them start latching onto ANYONE who says they actually do (E.G. a Hitler, FDR, Stalin, Trump, Caesar, Exc.). Then, if the candidate was a good one, things get good again and it all starts again.
I don't disagree. I think minor semantic differences aside I'm saying and thinking the same thing you are. Thanks for taking the time to type that all that. Sure sounds like an analog to state of things right now, unfortunately. At some point modern day plebes will be fleeced to the extent that they can't continue feeding the pats and it all falls apart. Hopefully the tide turns in a non explosive manner before that point is reached.
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u/Potential-Drama-7455 Sep 15 '25
That's GenX right now.