Comment by Avicebron
2 days ago
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit" - Paraphrased from Elton Trueblood
2 days ago
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit" - Paraphrased from Elton Trueblood
Which defines why American society seems to be F'ed of late. Decades of short term rewards combined with a baby boomer population looking at their last hoorah and declining relevance. Most of the old people I interact seem to be in a state of denial about soon not being here.
Or just compare the billionaires actions now - they are building tunnels in hawaii to prepare for survival just as they are knowingly destroying the future instead of spending their obscene wealth to protect it.
Elon Musk is working towards getting humanity to Mars in the low chance Earth becomes uninhabitable, and he'll never live to see the Mars dream become a reality even if everything goes as planned.
But I guess that doesn't fit the common narratives about a man that isn't a cartoon but a flawed human with strengths and weaknesses.
This is why we don't hear of great men anymore: We only hear about them when they're long dead and their transgressions forgiven and their strengths raised to a pedestal unattainable by real live human beings.
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Why? It's very easy to get people to plant trees for you. Just give a gardener, even a very old one, some money and they'll do it for you.
Because "caring for the future" is not a problem that's solved with money. Especially when short-term profit trumps it, and the people that should be caring wont be alive in that future and don't give a fuck.
Thinking "we'll just pay someone to do it" is exactly the mindset that fucked up everything.
(And, for starters, you need to care for X to pay someone to do X, to begin with).
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No amount of money allows the gardener to plant it in the past. You can pay money now to plant tree now whose benefit will be reaped 100 years down the line. Also, tree is symbolic so no point in going in details of tree growth.
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Greatness seems to come from long term vision, and with success that vision collapses to short term gains. It’s cultural. Why does that happen and how do you prevent it?
I don't know (not a philosopher or politician or whatnot), but I think great steps were taken when countries introduced a constitution; the US was one of the first modern countries 250 years ago. I think a constitution is that long-term vision, setting a country's morals and values in writing, spanning multiple generations and administrations.
Of course, it can never be set in stone because morals and values evolve; things like equal rights for PoC and women were only added later on, and they seem unsteady at best right now.
The other candidates for long-term vision (but not necessarily success) is organized religion (e.g. Holy Roman Empire) and generational authoritarianism (e.g. kingdoms/empires, North Korea). There's also an in-between with China's 5-year plans, where they make plans (or, feel like they do, I don't even know lol) instead of trying to make big changes one legislation or one budget term at a time.
What a heinous posting. Judging about others shows true evil.
What is the bad part? Still number 1 GDP.
When was the glory days? Pre 1900s with slavery? The war and interwar years?
The cold war?
Pessimistic.
> Still number 1 GDP.
China will overtake them in 10, 15 years; possibly sooner depending on the economic damage of the Trump admin's trade policies, possibly later if another US company does well abroad.
Unfortunately, while they bridle at the truth, Boomers are the most selfish generation in American history. Every single political and economic action of their generation has been done explicitly at the expense of future generations to enrich themselves. They are the first and only generation in American history to leave their children worse off than themselves. Unfortunately, they are also one of the longest living generations in American history also, and still control the reins of power long after most other generations had passed along. I think we're far from reaching the pinnacle of the damage they will do to our society and to the world. Depending on how long the US lasts as an entity, they might well go down in history as the worst generational cohort ever.
Zoom out: 200 years ago they were killing each other over slavery, 400 years ago, there was no american society.
The trend is up, but they're in a local minimum :D
> [...] 400 years ago, there was no american society.
Well, there were people living in that part of the world..