@thomasfuchs It is a plot point in The Matrix that the simulation is set in the year 1999 because that year was the peak of human civilization.
Oh how we laughed at this in the early 2000s. Not anymore.

@thomasfuchs And AI finally killed everything on the path of enlightenment (in the way of Kant). 😭

@thomasfuchs it was always just make-believe, just somehow people used to take each other at their word, trusted strangers had good intentions, that laws were designed to protect society, that pieces of paper with privileges on them which say they're for everyone, but was never actually for everyone. Inalienable my ass.

You're right though, it's weird that it ever happened.

@thomasfuchs exceptional for whom?

@thomasfuchs You know what else 1950–2010 had in abundance? Serial killers:

https://serialkillersinfo.com/serial-killer-statistics/serial-killers-by-decade/

@thomasfuchs It was indeed. Life was good. In about 1990’s the Republicans started laying the groundwork for this. Project 2025. It is an expansion of everything they’ve been trying to do with the Supreme Court, unitary executive, stealing elections, rabid anger and conspiracy theories. You can thank Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. It got worse with their fear and hatred of the Clintons.

@thomasfuchs 2010-2020 definitely felt like there was a little more social accountability in the world, the (decades long) struggle to stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere was gaining common support too.

You’d have to be either really poorly informed on history, or just the whitest, most cis person imaginable to think the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s were some beacon of truth, facts and science.

For a large percentage of this time: people of colour were ‘scientifically’ and medically considered lesser than white people.

In 1954 Alan Turing, one of the major figures in inventing the fucking computer killed himself. He was gay. It was a crime to be gay in the uk until 1967-1980 (depending on which region you lived) and the punishment involved being castrated, which is what had happened to him a few years prior.

Stonewall was 1969

Black people only got the right to vote in 1965 in America

Women in America were not allowed to open a bank account or get a loan without a husband or male relatives permission until 1974

Despite being a known danger, leaded gasoline wasn’t banned until 1996 in America. 1973 was when the reduction of reliance on leaded gas had begun, because of the known damage it was causing.

Smoking in restaurants, airplanes, hospitals, and generally everywhere indoors was a normal societal/legal right. Pregnant women were not advised to stop smoking until the 60s or 70s.

It’s a matter of documented history that no, you are incorrect to assert it was ‘great while it lasted’ - it’s not a matter of semantics. Stuff was worse back then.

@thomasfuchs I see the argument, but this was also the period where economics/
economy was completely transformed away from fundamentals and real value no?

@thomasfuchs The new DARK AGES are going to be better than ever!

@thomasfuchs Don't forget that this is the result of a pretty fifty-year siege (in the United States), because forcing Nixon to resign and watching Ralph Nader win hearts and minds scared the Hell out of capital. Roger Ailes put together the plan to push the media right, and the Powell Memo laid out the plan to focus on the courts, which included Karl Rove's REDMAP.

Worth noting because after decades and untold money spent, for all the damage they've done, they're still kind of losing...

@thomasfuchs And, as far as I can see, the main driver is that we stopped using those much-maligned gatekeepers, professional media with some standards regarding facts. We went back to the village gossip mill aka social media.

Really. What else has changed all at once, everywhere? Because it's a global phenomenon, so the cause has to be equally widespread and sudden.

1972 was the top of humanities bell curve.
If you wrote a letter from then it would sound like it came from the distant future.
Riding dune buggies on the moon.
Passenger planes at twice the speed of sound.
Great music with a great diversity of players & everyone only noticed the music.
No social media. No AI. No Auto tune. No celebrities famous for being famous.
All movies were originals. No embassingly infantile superheros or franchise BS except James Bond.
As you say, it was far from perfect.

@thomasfuchs @ewolff I think I’ll have to ruin your nostalgics.

Back then It was a known fact that burning fossils will kill us. Being queer was illegal in many states until the 2000s. Raping your wife wasn’t a crime until the 90s (in Germany) …

It was a bit nicer for us white middle class cis men though. Yep.

@thomasfuchs Were those really the days? Yes, they weren't perfect, but I'm guessing you weren't the type to beat your child or your wife. It was pretty common where I'm from to the point of being "the ways things were."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plk3lV-aljc

Note: I’m not claiming everything was prefect or that this universally happened everywhere.

But, broadly, western societies tended to get more inclusive, more open, less jingoistic, more science-positive and less bullshit-believing in this timeframe.

@thomasfuchs eventually the pendulum will swing the other way

@thomasfuchs It is a US problem but really a huge thing everywhere. The decline of truth and facts started with Reagan and solidified with GWB. Tribalism, on both the left and the right, young and old, it accelerated. Obama was actually the last stand against it and when he was done it was game over. Amazingly so many others have come and gone but Bernie is still out there and has a bigger following than ever.

@thomasfuchs speaking from deep in my heart.
Thanks.

@thomasfuchs just enough USAians lost their shit over that nice black family in the White House #teaparty And GenXers taught their #boomer parents how to get on the internet and wrongly believed they could navigate the world unassisted like we were raised #maga

@thomasfuchs We have allowed #homoavistique into power

@thomasfuchs

this is simply a privileged perspective

@thomasfuchs not quite. People didn't trust facts, they trusted institutions, and the institutions were up for sale. Tobacco? Cancer alarms from science in the 1950s did nothing. Leaded gasoline? Alarms from science in the 1920s ignored. So many examples. AIDS denial, Tuskegee, Radium, Asbestos, Sugar, Thalidomide, Lysenkoism, creationism (polling 40% in America), new ageism, satanic panic.... The point being, you are describing a period of manufactured consensus, which should not be confused with pursuit and respect of truth. Goebbels called it Gleichschaltung. FDR called it a menace and broke the chokepoints, like forcing NBC to spin off the network that became ABC.

@thomasfuchs I've thought about this, too. Like there was a brief time where most aspects of modern life held together long enough to give the majority some sense of stability. Now it is in rapid decay / freefall.

@thomasfuchs The 60s and 70s saw a huge prevalence of irrationalism too. They just didn't have YouTube.

@thomasfuchs I think that you are right but only in a very narrow sense, meaning that there was a subset of truth and facts that had broad societal support, but there was a lot, a lot of superstition and rejection of evidence in many areas, especially around the economy and social justice—even as our technical abilities bloomed, our society remained broken and social progress failed to deliver. That's what broke us, because it's social progress that people feel most intimately in their lives. So now instead of making good about the promise by integrating social science facts and truth into our society, we collectively are throwing the baby out with the bath water...

@thomasfuchs Historically, those backslides always seem to happen when there's a concentration of wealth and power. Suddenly there's not enough to go around and people start looking for outlets for their frustration. That's when grifters come along and exploit their weakness.

@thomasfuchs Fall of the Berlin wall, Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, the Oslo accords for Israel and Palestine. Those were the real political highlights I've lived through.
It's pretty bleak right now compared to those times.

@thomasfuchs

No, we can have it back. But it'll need time and a lot of effort.

@thomasfuchs nothing is lost in term of progress tho. We have a distributed save state via the web across us 8B. ✌️💙

All it can do is come back and then some. 😉 🫂

@thomasfuchs I think there were other times in history that we had spurts of inspiration like this... but the last spurt was the first one amidst an aversion to war and with access to the computer.

@thomasfuchs We went to the moon, we have Dick Tracy watches on our wrist, we've got Landru in our pockets. The era of Tom Swift is over. There's nothing left for society except invisible dragons in the garage.

@thomasfuchs We even went to the moon.