

The Lost Decade:What the World Can Learn from 10 Years of Excesses - sdave
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,668729,00.html

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btilly
I only skimmed after this paragraph.

 _The internationally most successful film of the decade was "Lord of the
Rings: The Return of the King." Harry Potter was the most successful literary
character. Both are children's stories that are also enjoyed by adults. We are
withdrawing into an infantile world, in which attractive heroes conquer evil.
The modern fairy tale is our response to a harsh world._

Harry Potter, yes. But he thinks that The Lord of the Rings is a children's
tale?? Sorry, but no. Fairy tales started as stories for grownups, and were
made into children's stories when grownups stopped believing in them. However
Tolkien was aware that the structure of the fairy tale lends itself to darker
themes that aren't for children, and the LotR is a deliberate exploration of
that dynamic.

Judging by my quick skim of the rest, he recited a lot of things I already
knew without any real attempt at analysis, then called it perspective.

------
RyanMcGreal
>In a few days, the first decade of the 21st century and of the third
millennium will come to an end.

Sigh. Given that our calendar started with year _one_ and not year _zero_ ,
the first decade of the 21st century started in 2001 and will end at the close
of 2010.

/datenerd

~~~
dhoe
So you define millennium as "years passed since year 1", and think that those
who count "years passed since year -1" are wrong? Interesting.

~~~
gloob
Yes, in just the same way that I think people who start counting from -1 on a
measuring tape or from 37 on a speedometer are doing it wrong. Just because a
convention is entirely arbitrary doesn't prevent people from being wrong about
it.

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grellas
Economic misery and turmoil through war are not new to the 21st century, and
the fact that we did not achieve unending prosperity through an Internet-based
economy or eternal peace through the end of the cold war should come as a
surprise to none but the most naive of observers of human nature.

This decade was no more "lost" than was the generation that followed the "war
to end all wars." Both labels arise from those who placed unbounded hopes in
human potential only to discover that the drivers in this world can often be
as malevolent as they can be good.

Will the information age change any of this, as the authors imply? There is
much good that indeed comes from having the interconnectedness of instant
worldwide communication and of social networks and the like. But, if someone
is going to argue that this will alter centuries of human experience that has
been bedeviled by the bad as well as the good, he will have to come up with
something far more convincing than the headline-level analysis and naive hope
in new political structures that the authors seem to espouse as the basis for
our future hope.

------
Freebytes
I found the article interesting if only for the comparison of information
connectivity to electrical connectivity. Just as some people feel that
electricity is a basic necessity, people also feel the same about
communication. A mere 30 years ago, people could not have imagined such a
statement.

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mixmax
This made me extremely sad:

 _Over the last decade, the Western political system has lost its claim to
global preeminence; it is no longer certain whether democracy will eventually
prevail everywhere. In fact, it is not even certain that it will last forever
in Western countries._

~~~
houseabsolute
It's not hard to come up with sad but unlikely eventualities. The question is
whether any of this article's hypothesis are true. This question is far from
settled. For example, the whole retreat to an infantile world bit. The
examples are cherry-picked. In television, the most acclaimed and talked about
shows have characters far more ambiguous than decades past. Even in movies,
the idea of inferring a trend from but two datapoints that are almost by
definition outliers (I.e. the record-setters) is sensational but unsound.

I've only read some of the article. But of what I did read 100% was bullshit
of similar provenance. I don't trust it.

~~~
pwnstigator
_For example, the whole retreat to an infantile world bit. The examples are
cherry-picked. In television, the most acclaimed and talked about shows have
characters far more ambiguous than decades past._

We're exiting postmodernism in favor of a world less nihilistic and
relativistic, which makes heroism attractive, even when the hero is morally
questionable (e.g. Jack Bauer, Dr. House).

On the other hand, casual sex is as common as ever, so nihilism and self-
loathing haven't gone away entirely.

~~~
damienkatz
> On the other hand, casual sex is as common as ever

Citation needed. Other than lots of pictures of nekkid people on the internet,
most studies show sexual activity (amongst teens and college students anyway)
to be going down. It's been argued that availability of porn is reducing the
amount of casual sex.

~~~
mdg
Interesting. Do you have a citation as well?

~~~
damienkatz
<http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=514>

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gamble
Whether the 2000s feel like a lost decade depends a lot on where you lived. I
don't think they were particularly bad for Canada - we had a strong economy
and currency, decent government, and Quebec separatism is almost a non-issue
now. We shared in the US recessions, but neither has been anywhere near as
severe in Canada. We enjoyed the commodities bubble without suffering from a
housing bust. All told, I don't have many complaints.

Similarly, I doubt it would be easy to find many eastern Europeans, Indians,
or Asians that felt the 2000s were worse than the 1990s.

------
mixmax
One page:
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,druck-6...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,druck-668729,00.html)

------
billswift
"Climate change" isn't putting any pressure on civilization, at least not yet.
Only the politicians and bureaucrats who want to use it to increase their
power are putting pressure on civilization. (And researchers, sucking up to
the gov't teat, who want to increase their grants).

