
Why are we so pessimistic? - allthings
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2019/06/13/why-are-we-so-pessimistic/
======
DisruptiveDave
I have another point of view here - there's power in overcoming adversity.
Nearly every movie produced tells you that. But your average American doesn't
face real adversity anymore. We are extremely comfortable. Extremely safe. But
there's something inside us that needs this adversity, it needs to triumph, to
overcome challenges. This is why we run marathons, punish ourselves in the
gym, climb mountains. Some of us, at least. Most of us don't. So, we make up
these stories in our minds. These fake enemies, these challenges-in-
perception-only. If we can convince our social circles that these adversities
are real (even absent the reality of ever actually experiencing them), well,
we've put ourselves in a better place. We're victims. We're fighters. We're
warriors!

That's a bit reductionist and dramatic, but when you cut through the bullshit,
this is happening every single day around us. Nobody wants to admit how easy
their life is, how very rare actual, significant adversities are. It's part of
human nature. For the time being, at least.

~~~
sonnyblarney
I agree for many of us ... but I think 'life is not easy' for the bottom 50%.

Most people sling coffee, serve food, work in factories, panic around in
delivery vehicles all day, and with one wrongs step or bad health outcome they
could be in doom. Lack of job stability, longer retirement, lack of community
... these things take their tole. Kind of a permanent existential anxiety.

Just 'keeping on doing', facing the daily grind and all the little things,
taking care of kids - without falling down (because the cost could be
catastrophe) is actually 'facing adversity'.

~~~
DisruptiveDave
This point also confirms my relativity of perception thoughts. Yes, compared
to me, the bottom 50% certainly has more adversity. But why stop there? The
bottom 50% in America is likely the top 20% somewhere else (I'm making all of
this up, of course). Then the bottom 50% of that 20% is likely the top 1%
somewhere else. And on and on it goes.

I don't believe that thinking about nameless, faceless people thousands and
thousands of miles away is particularly effective at altering daily behavior
and mindset here, but it's important to recognize nonetheless.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"I don't believe that thinking about nameless, faceless people thousands and
thousands of miles away is particularly effective "

But this is what is implied by the opening statement 'The Average American'
etc. etc. , no?

The 'The Average American' does face 'adversity', because most people are
barely getting by.

Imagine middle aged parents without spectacular health care coverage, someone
gets a cavity and needs a root canal. That's $1000 - and actually beyond the
'average Americans' ability to pay for out of hand. A _cavity_ can be little
economic emergency. It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach, or no piano lessons
for the kids, or worse, having to put it on the Credit Card, pay terrible
rates etc.. And 'cousin Joe' was pulled over for DUI. He'll lose his job if he
doesn't make bail, he needs you to co-sign for him. Now you have to make sure
he shows up for court. Parents are inching older, have some income but likely
need to go into a home, which will be exceedingly expensive. There are umpteen
such challenges is 'most people's lives'.

So I agree with the sentiment that normal, employed middle class families
wherein there's stability and gainful employment, low crime etc. - yes, it's
effete, and not much adversity there.

There is a class of Americans for whom life doesn't have a lot of adversity,
fully agree. But it's not 'most'.

~~~
sigstoat
> The 'The Average American' does face 'adversity', because most people are
> barely getting by.

> ...

> It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach

were you trying to make the point that people concoct adversity where it
doesn't exist? because i think you're doing good work on that front. keep it
up.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Yes - a 'car trip' to a crappy dive like Myrtle Beach and it's shady Motels as
one's _only_ , tiny respite from a life of slinging coffee at the Waffle
House, in the balance of financial emergencies from something as trivial as
some basic dental work - absolutely implies 'adversity'.

In case you're having trouble contextualizing: a family in that situation is
an inch from ruin. They will never have anything, and odds are, they'll hit a
bump now and again and it will get messy.

Those kinds of families are always coming in and out of financial difficulty.

------
yibg
I think another aspect of this is when life is generally good you start to pay
more attention to the little things, and generally there are going to be small
annoyances in life. When someone is fighting to feed their family getting a
good meal is a hugely uplifting thing, but when hunger isn’t an issue having
food come later than you like at a restaurant becomes annoying.

I’ve certainly experienced this in myself growing up. We grew up poor but most
things didn’t get us down, they were just normal aspects of life. We had to
hunt for bargains, not take vacations, always cook at home. It was the
baseline. When we did eat out everyone was looking forward to it and really
enjoyed it. Now life in economic sense is measurably better for me, but eating
out at whatever place I feel like is the new baseline. I no longer look
forward to it, it’s just feeding myself. Now when I can’t decide what I want
to have for dinner it becomes a minor annoyance. Something objectively better
has become in some ways a worse experience.

I try to put things in perspective and be grateful for what I have now, but I
admit I don’t always succeed.

~~~
benj111
You're referring to the hedonic treadmill[1]. I find it useful to A) be aware
of it so you can B) reset it every so often.

Objectively we both know it shouldn't be an annoyance choosing food from a
menu, so go back to cooking at home for a while, at best you rediscover your
love of cooking and don't go back to eating out. At worst you learn to
reappreciate just how nice it is having someone else cook.

Same principle applies to every expensive thing that you don't now judge to be
a luxury.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill)

------
mbfg
If you've always lived in a society where things are generally bad then it's
likely that at present times things are getting better even if only slightly.

On the other hand if you're living in places that have generally always been
good, it's likely that things are starting to regress.

Given that most of the people who comment about such things on social media
and otherwise or likely from the latter camp, it's not surprising that the
general tenor is pessimism.

In America for instance many indicators are going south. Life expectancy,
suicides, debt, freedoms, etc.

While America has always had problems, it seems we are close to a tipping
point where we may lose what semblance we had of a democracy.

~~~
oblib
I can agree that the rhetoric and division is heated right now to levels near
what it was in the mid `60s - early `70s but I don't think we're as close to
that tipping point as some might feel. By the mid 70s things calmed down a
lot.

It feels to me like we peaked in the year after Trump was elected and things
have been easing since. I'm basing this mostly on my FB feed but I think it's
a fairly good barometer to gauge it because I live in an area where 76% voted
for Trump. They were riled up when they did that.

My right leaning neighbors are posting near as many anti-liberal memes, almost
no flat out lies about "liberals", and not much at all about Trump. This past
year I started asking them to "make a list of things Trump has done that is
good for us." and none, not one, has taken me up on that. Not even the "Wall"
has been offered as an example.

This doesn't mean most won't vote for him again, but it probably does mean not
as many will vote. They're not as motivated as they were in `16. Not as
feisty. And they don't have near the disdain for Bernie, or even Biden, as
they still have for Hillary. They really do not like her.

I have not heard a single one of them support Trump saying that he should get
more than two terms or be appointed "President for Life". Right now almost
none of them are posting anything at all about Trump. In fact, they haven't
worked up a good outrage since the Kavanaugh hearings.

Very few of my FB friends trust the big Corporate Network News anymore on
either side. They're all producing to much "Opinion" which is blatantly one
sided and they all focus on the same "News of the hour" stories.

The result is the level of awareness of bias in those "News" reports has
increased a lot the past couple of years and overall people are beginning to
ignore it more now than they are to react with passion.

It was getting scary for awhile there though.

~~~
sanderjd
This is an encouraging anecdote but "not advocating for the overthrow of our
constitutional system of government" seems like a pretty low bar to ask for in
our fellow citizens...

------
lifeisstillgood
Humans have to assess all incoming information (gossip round the campfire,
stirring in the long grass or twitter feeds) and aa strong bias to pay more
attention to potential negatives in the environment will in general allow us
to avoid disasters (like getting eaten)

In our evolutionary environments that would be balanced out by "good fortune"
\- a old tree has just produced fruit perhaps, so we would get our optimism
reinforced as much as our pessimism.

But good fortune today is basically baked into life for most of the western
world - starvation is rare.

In short what used to be good news (hey I got to eat today) is just normality
and so that leaves just downsides (perhaps an analogy of a roller coaster with
half of it underwater - being above water is taken for granted and so there is
only dips down and long slow climbs back to normal.)

In short, we need to get a sense of perspective back. Social media is not
making people worse - we just happen to have sight of every moron and pub
conversation that has always been there but not aggregated and delivered in
front of us.

Democracy is under no more threat than before - we have always had to fight
for it - from Tammany Hall to Jarrow Marches and we shall have to fight again.

This time however we have human instinct on our side - this is our democracy
and you can't take it.

~~~
maxxxxx
"In short what used to be good news (hey I got to eat today) is just normality
and so that leaves just downsides (perhaps an analogy of a roller coaster with
half of it underwater - being above water is taken for granted and so there is
only dips down and long slow climbs back to normal.)."

I think it comes down to income inequality. A lot of people don't share in
benefits of a rising economy so they become cynical and detached. The promise
is that a rising tide lifts all boats but that doesn't seem to be the case
anymore. And I don't like the argument that people should be happy with having
something to eat and water while the top few percent increase their income
every year. This slowly rips society apart.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
The phrase "hey I got something to eat today" was meant to be our paeleolithic
ancestors on whom all our modern human reactions are based - we evolved in a
world that had (say) equal amounts of good (berries !) and bad (snake!) - so
our optimism and pessimism had equal workouts in the environment

now I would suggest our pessimism gets much more work out

However an interesting podcast (frwkonnomics) has someone last week saying
their research showed that we are more pessimistic when stressed and more
optimistic when less stressed (indicating that perhaps it is just the stress
of the information overload leading to pessimism rather than the information
content)

------
redsymbol
Years ago, I was part of a a guided tour at the San Francisco modern art
museum. And they had this wooden sculpture of Popeye (old cartoon character,
you can look him up - kind of a tough/strong but lovable sailor guy). It
looked old, bedraggled and beat-up looking; I think it was assembled from
found driftwood or something.

But when I looked at the sculpture, I saw strength. Good-natured defiance and
tenacity. That even though it looked like bits of wood were about to fall off,
the figure stood with fists up, straight posture, ready to fight. Appearing
calm in the face of whatever challenge lay ahead.

As I thought all this to myself, the tour guide asked each of us (about a
dozen in the tour group) what emotions we felt looking at it...

And I was shocked. One by one, everyone said how it reflected the worsening
state of the world, the fall of the USA, the hopelessness of life...

Which was the _exact opposite_ of what I saw. I saw a spirit of overcoming.
That regardless of circumstances, even though one's body (or whatever the body
is a metaphor for) is beat up and falling apart, you don't let it drag you
into darkness. You stand up straight, you fight with all you've got, and never
give up.

Inner strength, resilience, and an unquenchable spirit. Only giving attention
to that which leads in the most positive direction availble in that moment.

I told everyone this when it was my turn, and nobody (including the tour
guide) seemed to know how to respond. We just kept going on the tour.

I'm not sure what the lesson is here...

But that was about a decade ago. And in the time that's passed, I've created a
immense amount of freedom, success and happiness for myself and my family.

And I think a huge factor in me creating that has been my ability to see the
good in people and situations, even when no one else seems to... to hold my
focus of attention on that, regardless of what others are talking about... and
persistently act on the opportunities it lets me perceive. Doggedly keeping
this mindset, even when it seems no one else around me does.

~~~
aeternus
Yes, people seem to greatly underestimate how much their own outlook affects
others.

This is actually an important quality I try to look for when hiring. I've seen
some very technically competent leads cause team productivity and morale to
plummet due to their negativity and pessimistic outlook.

~~~
lotyrin
I've seen that as well. I've also seen optimism doom teams in the forms of
failing to anticipate obstacles, making unreasonable promises in binding
documents, and underestimating project effort.

Seems like being objective and calibrating your expectations appropriately
based on the risks you can or can't accept, or the trade-offs you do or don't
get to make and avoiding bias or emotional attachments is pretty awfully
difficult for humans (even very bright, talented ones) to do.

------
cybervegan
People are pessimistic precisely because they are aware that if we don't do
something about the climate crisis, everything will come crashing down. Being
optimistic about it, you might say "don't worry, they'll work out a plan"
(whoever _they_ are), and then carry on as before, but being pessimistic,
you're more likely to think "we'd better do something, and NOW!".

When you realise that Live Aid was one of the earliest reactions to the
climate disaster, and that it was OVER 30 YEARS AGO and no real progress has
been made: CO2 emissions have continued to rise exponentially, almost
unabated.

When you realise that, you realise there is no cause for optimism.

~~~
benj111
If most people are pessimistic for that reason, why havent they done anything
about it?

If you're worried about the zombie apocalypse, you start prepping, you don't
start complaining about how rubbish the world is because the apocalypse is
coming and no ones prepared for it.

~~~
js8
We haven't because we are much more social than we realize. We don't want to
break social conventions, if possible. We don't want to tell people who are
talking with joy about having kids or exotic vacations or luxury cars that
they should hold back. Even though we all know that these things are the cause
of the problem.

We are facing a collective procrastination of sorts. Just like when you
procrastinate, you know very well that you should be doing something else, and
you can even be pessimistic about it. Yet you don't.

That's why the governments, people in charge, need to take action, at the very
least, start talking about it openly. Then the rest will follow.

~~~
benj111
"We don't want to tell people who are talking with joy about having kids or
exotic vacations or luxury cars that they should hold back"

But those people, according to you have been worrying about climate change for
over 30 years, so they _should_ have made the decision not to fly to their
holidays, to buy an electric luxury car.

If everyone is aware of this and spends time worrying about it then you
shouldn't have to pressure other people, they would already be doing it.

The fact is, a large number of people don't believe / don't care (enough).
That's why you need peer pressure.

~~~
js8
> they should have made the decision

Yes, at least in the interest of their own kids. But we are just humans and we
fail for human reasons.

> The fact is, a large number of people don't believe / don't care (enough).
> That's why you need peer pressure.

The peer pressure works both ways. There is also peer pressure to have these
fancy things.

Peer pressure is, in a way, a neutral thing. It can work against action or for
action. However, without effort it will just pick a high-entropy state of
inaction.

------
scottlocklin
We're pessimistic because we have marinated in an ideology that claims to
bestow progress; scientific and cultural. All we got was mass hysteria and
nerd dildos used to organize witch hunts and a dystopian surveillance state.
And we still have the same disgusting weasels running things and telling us we
should be happy with the state of affairs; scum from Brookings being great
examples.

------
narnianal
Hoped for a scientific study, got philosophical bla bla.

Yes, there are people, probably the author as well, who are resilient to
actually seeing facts. Just as the joke about fat people and zombie
apocalypses go: Be nice to them, they will save your life one day (by being
crushed before you, thereby giving you a little more time to react).

Still I'm a little sad about the lost opportunity. It's also true that people
who interact with reality usually are more pessimistic, but there should be
ways to improve one's own outlook if one is smart enough to see reality and
strong enough to not go crazy from it. This would be a worthy topic to study.

~~~
Bakary
Ultimately even the people who supposedly "see reality" are just seeing a
subjective mental model of it.

~~~
narnianal
You probably have experienced two people fighting with each other, both only
living in their own information bubble, both claiming to see the truth. I
agree with you that your understanding goes deeper realizing that both are
just as much true and untrue, and just as much good or bad.

But now comes the strange part. From this higher understanding you can't gain
any more happiness. In fact either of them might be more happy than you,
because living in a bubble doesn't just contain fake truths, it also contains
fake meaning, and the times in which they can believe in these fake meanings
are the times where these people will be more happy than you.

Thus you have more ability but less happiness. That's quite strange, right?
Shouldn't more ability lead to more happiness? And if not, then why bother
about having more ability?

~~~
Bakary
The point I wanted to make was in fact that there is no such increase in
ability. I was not claiming that I was able to see reality myself. On the
contrary, it is most likely an impossible task.

In absolute terms we are all on the same level of understanding as a homeless
man ranting at the bus stop.

The idea that we are tragically bereft of meaning because we are somehow too
perceptive unlike those other people is an absurd fantasy.

------
nercht12
... Why not take the obvious answer: It's easy to be pessimistic when you
interact with people. Just read HN and see how everyone disagrees. You start
to think things won't ever get resolved, even among people with "good
intentions".

Notably, of course, the KIND of pessimism or the TARGET of pessimism varies
per individual based on their natural concerns, life situation, and lots of
other variables. For example, individuals who like to think ahead / intuitive
mentalities tend to plan out possibilities, and if you try to plan for all
cases of Murphy's Law, it's going to make you feel like there's no end to the
madness.

------
mbfg
If you live somewhere that has always been pretty bad, then chances are,
things are getting better, even if slightly. If you live somewhere, where
things have always been generally good, it's likely that things are
curtailing. Its brownian motion of societies.

Given that on average the people who most often discuss the state of being on
social media and otherwise, are more likely to be in the second camp, it
doesnt seem that surprising that the overarching sentiment is pessimism

------
c1ccccc1
>Rosling’s “Factfulness” starts with a quiz of 12 questions—ranging from “How
many children will there be in 2100?” to “In the last 20 years, the proportion
of the world population living in extreme poverty has almost doubled,
stabilized or reduced by half?”—to which he then applies his “chimpanzee
test”—the likelihood that a random choice is superior to that of humans.
Humans always seem to fail the test: even CEOs at the World Economic Forum.

That question about the number of children in 2100 really bothers me for some
reason. Sure we can make some pretty reasonable projections, but they will be
just that: projections. Even assuming no black swan events, the error bars 80
years from now have got to be enormous. The numbers could be wildly different
depending on how bad climate change turns out, and what kinds of technologies
we develop. If you're trying to prove that other people are overly
pessimistic, it makes more sense to show that they are wrong about currently
available data. Otherwise they can just say that _your_ answer to the question
is overly _optimistic_.

~~~
tim333
The article gives a bad summary of the actual question here
[https://www.gapminder.org/test-questions/how-many-
children-w...](https://www.gapminder.org/test-questions/how-many-children-
will-there-be-in-2100/)

>In 1950 there were fewer than one billion children (aged 0-14) in the world.
By 2000 there were almost two billion. How many do UN experts think there will
be in 2100? 2bn 3bn or 4bn?

so it is asking about a present number.

~~~
AstralStorm
Current predictions are at the number being close to constant as births slow
down everywhere. Global birth rate is around 1%, halved in 20 years. There's
even predicted quarter of a chance that population will stabilize completely
in a century.

------
woodandsteel
Part of the reason for pessimism is that the enormous progress of recent
centuries is due to a set of liberal political philosophical ideas that are
being rejected by an increasing number of nations.

That implies that if the present political trends continue, then as some point
in the coming decades progress for the world as a whole will reverse.

~~~
Bakary
"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without
changing a single idea." \- Robert Anton Wilson

The idea of there being an right and wrong direction to history is flawed at
best.

The current rejection of liberal values didn't come out of nowhere either.
Some people are unhappy and feel the system has failed them. This was the same
reason that pushed liberal ideas to the forefront in the first place.

~~~
AstralStorm
What do you mean liberal?

Even drugs are not legalized, up until recently homosexual marriage was not
recognized. People toil about the same hours, though more often mentally than
physically now.

You have no direct choice in how to pick candidates for Senate or presidency -
you can only pick from choices presented to you, and even there tribalism of
the masses beats any individual choice. (The best you can hope for is picking
a governor.)

Where is liberal in that? Where is the liberal, when all rulers are ivy league
educated?

~~~
Bakary
In this sense, (and what I believe to be the sense of the original quote) I
mean a person who wants to see societal change.

The examples you've provided actually give a pretty good picture of it. A
person who was liberal 20 years ago would look at what you've described and
wonder what the heck happened. They might also look at the current topics of
social reform and probably not recognize themselves in them.

Essentially, anyone who has a teleological view of history tends to get burned
within their own lifetime as the world inevitably moves past them. You get
"assigned" a set of topics and social struggles from the environment and
historical you grow up in. Since the next generations grow up in a different
soup, they don't follow the same lines of thought. The person who scoffs at
their grandpa for being lukewarm about same-sex marriage becomes the grandpa
lukewarm at their grandson's simulated AI life-partner.

>you can only pick from choices presented to you, and even there tribalism of
the masses beats any individual choice.

Going off on a tangent here. You are part of the masses. You are not in
traffic, you ARE the traffic.

------
dr_dshiv
What is the role of the loss of spirituality and ritual practices? We are so
proud of throwing off superstition -- as we should be -- nevertheless, a sense
of spirituality is a known factor in scientific models of wellbeing.

Our pessimism is protected by our cynicism.

------
hashberry
> Third, this “negativity bias” is further amplified in the era of social
> media. In the past, traditional authorities and intermediate
> bodies—churches, political parties, trade unions, sports clubs—neutralized
> extreme positions.

Blaming social media is trendy these days, but this is a poor argument when
one reflects on history. "Traditional authorities" often encouraged extreme
positions for its citizens, such as the governments of Germany, Italy, and
Japan during World War II. (Hitler Youth was a very popular "club!") And
doomsday cults have been around forever. (Many are still waiting for The
Rapture!)

I'm actually rather optimistic about social media. Proper use of social media
makes it easier to understand viewpoints of the opposing side and find and
share new information. It seems there is a pessimistic "negativity bias"
around social media itself because it's easy to point out extreme examples and
users.

------
unholyguy001
Well, inevitably you die ?

~~~
mythrwy
Exactly. From our perspective, entropy is inevitable.

And this is true on many levels. Like, it's easier to wreck a car than build a
car. Generally easier for bad things to happen than good. For good things,
(and to avoid bad things) takes work, and there is limited capacity for that.

Of course we seldom stop to consider the amazing luck and circumstances that
put us here in the first place.

But why should we? It's only temporary and in the rear view mirror anyway.
Going forward we have the future to worry about. And the future is full of
pitfalls. At least some of which are bound to get us.

From our perspective I do believe reality has a pessimistic bias. But
sometimes maybe we should remember this is only our perspective.

------
yters
If we look at history on the large scale, it seems things have generally gone
upwards: health, wealth, and liberty. That being said, the upward trend means
even greater dips occur than were possible in the past. So, the general
optimistic trend of history is countered by the previously unimaginable
horrors of the 20th century made possible by our great progress.

------
RickJWagner
There's some truth here.

When I think about the life I had in my early 20s-- looking forward to a
middle class with cars, houses, food, etc. of the 80s-- things are so much
better than they were then.

Time goes on. Everybody gets better stuff. Cell phones, health care, cheap and
good food. The list goes on. There's never been a better time to be alive.

------
NeoBasilisk
I can only share my experiences from playing open world MMOs with perma-death
PVP. You can have 10 positive interactions with other players, but it only
takes one bad interaction for your character to end up dead and gone.
Immediately identifying those potentially bad situations as they unfold is of
critical importance.

------
rolleTx
> A more constructive approach is one that acknowledges that things are
> getting better but that this progress is neither automatic nor optimal.

Totally agree!

------
mamon
There's really no such thing as pessimism. People can only be:

\- realistic

\- optimistic (a.k.a. delusional)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Um, no. Very much no. Some optimism is delusion; but not all is. And your
pessimism isn't realism, no matter how much you want to define it to be.

~~~
raxxorrax
If I read that comment optimistically, I think it was a joke.

------
known
I think the same reason why people lie

------
SomeOldThrow
Compared to what

------
sonnyblarney
It's more than news; it's everything else as well.

Even the music.

Go ahead and listen to pop music from any previous area - there is a lot of
happy music, and a lot of slower tempo, beautiful music.

'Beautiful' stopped being cool in the 1990's, since then everything has to be
trounced in some kind of faux-noir or whatever.

Even sad songs by Simon and Garfunkel are beautiful, honest.

Even the slightly cheezy soft rock like Air Supply, Chicago ... it was
relaxing in a way.

Even the music was upbeat was still positive: 'Jump' by Van Halen' \- a
ridiculously rubbish but positive song, almost child-like.

Even the unconentious pop music of today lacks a kind of naivte.

It's in lyrics, timbre, instrumentation, production, presentation -
everything.

My all time favourite band - Radiohead - is kind of guilty of this. They just
can't be happy, now matter what. They _must be dour_. Have you ever seen an
interview or video with Thom Yorke just clowning around the the lads,
laughing, enjoying himself, not really caring about much at all? It's 'not
their brand'.

Spend a day listening to music any time before the 1990's, especially the
slower tempo stuff (of any genre, big band classical), and it changes your
demeanour.

~~~
lacampbell
> 'Beautiful' stopped being cool in the 1990'

Was this coincidentally around the time when your adventure through puberty
came to an end?

There has been plenty of 'happy music' in the past two and a half decades.
It's likely you just view as cheesy saccharine garbage because you didn't
listen to it during a formative time of your life.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Hot 100 today:

[https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100](https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100)

Hot 100 1980:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-
End_Hot_100_sin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-
End_Hot_100_singles_of_1980)

They still make good music, it doesn't go on the radio and can't compete on
billboard, which is beyond rigged.

There are also technical issues such as audio levels, creeping volume etc. -
Simon & Garfunkel doesn't use enough of the spectrum to be played, it's too
quiet, it would be 'filled up' were a producer to touch it today, whereby the
nuance is lost.

Related, compare the amount of 'energy' in the sounds - the hot 100 today is
almost all verging on aggressive, it's like a caffeine jolt.

Even the slower tempo songs are 'in your face' musically, and usually
lyrically as well.

There is the very subjective issue of overall quality. I don't think there is
a single track on the Hot100 today that will be played in any number of years
wherein people will really 'remember that jam', in any way other than to a
very few select few fans.

While it's not a fair comparison because the 1980 list I linked to was a 'year
end list' and not a 'current list' \- many people would instantly recognize a
whole host of songs on that list. If not by name, by sound.

'Radio' and distribution channels were a rough collusion between artists and
industry, now it's almost entirely industry.

I really don't think there is anything relaxing about any of the Hot 100
songs: they are heavily produced, 'loud', assertive, repetitive, low-risk
products.

Maybe if we take it back further than 1980 for example, before rock and roll,
almost all (non colloquial) music was fairly authentic and beautiful, being
orchestral in nature. The soundtrack of every film was 'pretty'.

------
Negitivefrags
I believe that pessimism is the greatest crisis facing humanity today. Yes,
that includes climate change.

It's just not possible for a civilization to make progress if everyone
believes that the future will be worse and it's not possible to avoid it.

~~~
graeme
I actually think society as a whole is rather optimistic on climate change:
currently we aren’t even trying to solve it policy wise.

If we were more pessimistic, we would take preventative measures seriously.

“Everyone believes the future will be worse and it’s not possible to avoid it”
is a strawman, I think.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
Global warming is a thread the needle problem: people need to be worried
enough to act, but not to give up. Collective action is the ONLY way through
this.

Last year ABC news gave more air time to the new royal baby in a single week
than they gave to climate collapse in a year. You may feel inundated with
pessimism, but that is far from universal. (Source:
[https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/21/ABC-News-
spent-...](https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/21/ABC-News-spent-more-
time-on-royal-baby-in-one-week-than-on-climate-crisis-in-one-year/223759))

I think optimism/pessimism is the wrong axis for this. It should be
complacency/activism. I think MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is more apt
than ever.

~~~
graeme
Did you mean to reply to me? I said people weren't pessimistic enough.

But I think you're right that complacency/activism is a good lense to view
things through. The people that accept climate change is happening remain
fairly complacent. Whether this is due to insufficient pessimism or
complacency, the result is the same.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
Sorry, I didn't mean to come off as contrary! I certainly agree, I just wanted
to tweak the framing.

