Comment by Waterluvian
2 days ago
And we know this. We can measure it and reason about it. But good times breeds weak people and we’re well into the phase of people no-longer grokking why vaccines, civil government, democracy, floodplain management, etc. need to exist.
This social plague is proliferating and I’m not sure we really know how to fight it as it takes colleagues, friends, family, celebrities we once admired.
> good times breeds weak people
This is a silly and regularly disproven trope.
For an extensive and approachable start: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
Maybe arguing over different interpretations of it, but I think it's obviously true. Once you become separated by too many generations from the first-person experience of a world war, a famine, now-preventable childhood illnesses and deaths, fascism, etc. it becomes impossible to truly grok the fully weight and critical importance of why we take these menaces so seriously. And some of these things have happened more recently to some, and you don't see people from those regions being as confused as Americans, for example, for why you don't embrace fascism, or Russia, or anti vaccinations, etc.
When a population spends a generations enjoying a world without all these diseases, they lose the social herd immunity to the intellectual stupidity that's proliferating today, now helped along by increasingly prominent figures, including one government health department head [1][2][3].
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/07/08/nx...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-health-secr...
[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
And yet the second World War, the most destructive war in history, and fascism and nazism themselves, occurred within a generation of the end of the first World War, the most destructive war in their history.
Throughout history, war has always begotten more war. Look at the Middle East today: by your logic, it should be the most peaceful place on Earth by now, given how all of the people born there for the last 50 years had been through war (and often famine etc). And yet many of them are actively seeking more war to right the wrongs of the war before, or just because they see their neighbors are weak and it's a good chance to invade them and "rebuild our historic lands".
Beat me to the punch. That simplistic piece of fantasized trope needs to die as soon as possible.
> But good times breeds weak people
Yea I know a couple of people who watched their families and friends get chopped to bits with machetes and lemme tell you, they are not stronger for it. I would maybe rethink this idea. I suspect ignorance has always thrived.
Same goes for preventative maintenance, handling technical debt or any action that keeps negative consequences at bay. It's a failure mode that's almost an inverse of loss-aversion; some people will start asking "Why are we investing in $ACTION, it seems unnecessary as nothing bad ever happens"
People don't understand why Chesterton's fence exists
You can’t fight it, you just endure, and one day you may die but hopefully others will carry on in a better world.