When did the world go to hell?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Two possible picks to get the ball rolling...

1914 - Socialism is unable to prevent WWI. The theory that class could be more important than nationality was undone as workers from across Europe took up arms against other workers as expressions of aristocratic will.

1980 - Ronald Reagan elected, ending the progress in all things that made the 1945-1980 period an accelerated leap forward for almost all Americans.

[Motown_Johnny]

1. Reagan's Election.....

[dogday]

3. Amen to that

First thing I thought of was Reagan...


On edit: Nixon had his hands in it as well...

[gateley]

16. Ditto - Reagan came to mind immediately. nt

[Lorien]

23. Yep. The culture of this Nation took a nasty shift after it

and has only gotten worse since he revoked the Fairness Doctrine and the media turned into one giant pro-conservative pro-corporate greed propaganda machine. I feel sorry for those who are too young to remember what America was like Pre-Reagan.

[L0oniX]

28. [phone]

[liberal N proud]

2. 1980

[Brickbat]

4. Both of those are quite valid -- the crushing of widespread class-consciousness in the western world

between 1910-1925, the continued bogeyman styling of anything remotely socialist from the 1930s to the present, the beginning of the destruction of the middle class under Reagan, and the amazing trick -- I still haven't quite figured out how they did it -- that made people believe that moving numbers around through "the market" and "making money" that way was somehow better than producing widgets. It's all interconnected, though.

[whistler162]

5. May 5, 1818 down hill after that!

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

6. What does one give a communist for his birthday?

(the date is Karl Marx's birth date... and yes, I googled)

[Clovis Sangrail]

7. things were already pretty vile in 1980 - Reagan just made them worse

nt

[stray cat]

8. When was it that much better? The pre-antibiotic era, slavery?

Pre -SS and Medicare fend for yourself? Pre-Unions?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

15. You are right, of course... up to a point

In objective terms it is obviously a lot better today than at any point in history.

In terms of human happiness, satisfaction, etc., maybe not so much.

People need both material benefits and a sense of either driving progress or secure tradition.

We seem to have have neither.

So this seems to be a somewhat more difficult time for people to be happy, fulfilled, or secure.

What's the trade-off between modern micro-surgery and a (bygone) trend of increasing real wages? Hard to say.

[comrade snarky]

30. When were things better then?

In terms of human satisfaction and happiness?

Not just for a small minority but in general? When was the golden age from which we've fallen? The 60s? The 20s? The last century? Pre-industrialization? Were women more fulfilled when they were second class citizens (at best) as they've been for most of recorded history?

Things now are far from perfect but I'd argue more of the human race has a shot at happiness now than at any other time in our history. Hell yes, life can suck and life is nowhere near as good as we could make it for far too many of us. Then again you don't need to have 8 children in the hope 2 will survive and no one in the vast majority of the world can legally own another human being.

That's gotta help at least a bit.

[defendandprotect]

73. On this continuent? Begin with the arrival of the "white" man .. and his violence ...

[OHdem10]

9. Eactly, Regan accomplished two major and critical changes

Replaced any idea of a common good with Rugged Individidualism
(Personal Responsibility ) Each person is responsible for himself
and or his family. No one is owed anything.

Government is the problem according to Reagan, therefore
policies were put in place which would hand over increasing
amounts of Power to Business. Free Market fundamentalism.
Let the Invisible Hand of the Market right all wrongs.
Thus tax and trade policy were designed to favor business
over the people.

[aquart]

10. Yes, the world was utterly perfect before then.

Which would make socialism unnecessary, wouldn't it? And the dimwitted twit who thought a French bricklayer wouldn't kill a German bricklayer never saw a soccer match, I assume.

"When did the world go to Hell?" Born yesterday?

[Greyhound]

11. August 14, 1945.

The system designed during the first decade of the last century was in place and the final implementation began.

It should have gone into production in 1930 but fucking FDR screwed it up and delayed it.

[hfojvt]

43. Bretton-Woods? A little early, I'd pick 6 Jul 1946.

[Steely_Dan]

12. When they started naming...

stadiums after corporations.

[Coyote_Bandit]

13. I'd venture to say the world went to hell the day

that humans first walked on it.

Hell is little more than the many fallacies and perversions of human nature and its existence here.

[mix]

20. But the contemporary world is fundamentally different in two important ways.

1) Humanity is destroying its habitat, perhaps irreparably, through industrial capitalism.

2) In the 20th century, humanity--the five nuclear powers specifically--developed the means to kill every human on the planet. Now there are of course more nuclear powers than the original five.

Extinction has never confronted our species like it has today beginning with European imperial expansion in the 1400s, the industrial revolution of the 1700s and nuclear age since 1945.

These are epic crises facing humanity as a whole and unprecedented.

[mix]

14. 1492

European imperialism is the underlying cause of most world problems today from the poverty of the Southwest to the West Bank and Gaza; from the exploitation of the African continent to the environmental crises of the present. It provided in part the capital accumulation--through slavery, theft, and wage labor--necessary to shift Europe's economy from feudalism to capitalism. Without the raw materials of empire, cotton and precious metals among others, the industrial revolution would have stalled.

The ongoing age of empire has been golden for capitalists and oligarchs, and their middle class allies, but a downward spiral for humanity as a whole and for working people and the poor in particular.

Columbus Day

I like your two choices as well for more immediate declines.

[L. Coyote]

50. When the concept of "hell" arrived in America -- what irony

Hell is a belief, not a reality, so the world cannot go to hell.

[mix]

57. Even figurative language has a material and historical basis:

1492

[rug]

17. June 6, 666

at 6 a.m.

[Ozymanithrax]

18. Your questions assumes we were elsewhere before.

In WWI, workers had not power to stop national governments, and as individuals they were (and are) as easily manipulated by jingoistic appeals to nationalism as anyone else.

Wilfred Owen had it right in DULCE ET DECORUM EST.

I think you give Rotten Ronnie too much credit. He epitomized the Republican two pronged Republican leadership strategy; appeal to uneducated proletariat to rise up against the semi-educated bourgeoisie and put the elite rich in power in answer to the impetus of social Darwinism. In other words, find an angry mob and run in front of it.

I don't think there was a golden age when we were out of a self made hell.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

19. 312 C.E.

Constantin's "miraculous" (also politically very expedient) conversion to Christianity in 312 CE (i.e. 312 AD) led to almost two millenia of radical anti-semitism. Also the sexual repression engendered by the rise of Christianity probably has a great deal to do with all the hatred and suffering in the world.

http://constantinessword.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I_and_Christianity

Although for sheer human suffering it's hard to overlook 1492. That's when state-sponsored terrorism really took off.

The industrial revolution should get honorable mention.

Definitely, in my lifetime, 1980, the election of Reagan. Unless we can someday elect a president who will attack the Reagan revolution head on, western civilization will collapse in this century.

[mix]

25. The Reformation was another enormous impetus to radical Christian anti-Semitism.

After the 16th century, two major branches of Christianity vied in their scapegoating and vilification of Europe's Jews.

[Liberal Veteran]

21. October 23, 4004 BCE at 9am.

It's been downhill ever since.

[Lyric]

38. But at least we know that the earth is a Libra.

And that the dinosaur bones are a joke that the paleontologists haven't seen yet.

:hi:

[RevStPatrick]

22. The world went to hell when human beings...

..started locking up the food. Everything we've done after that, has been due to the power struggles that ensued once one group of people had that much power over other people. No other species does that.

[customerserviceguy]

26. Nobody locked up any food

Until there was agriculture. If you take the view that our species is a blight upon this planet (I don't) then you can at least give me that hunter-gatherer societies of human beings probably had no worse effects on this planet than any other species of plant or animal.

My view is that we're always working from turning life from "nasty, brutish and short" to something better, it's only a matter of how fast or slow we're getting there.

[mix]

29. For Hobbes, life was only "nasty, brutish and short" in nature.

Political society was meant to end this condition.

Whether it did is another question entirely. Predatory capitalism, which requires a strong state sponsor and ally, has led us back to the state that Hobbes thought we would escape by embracing the Leviathan's social contract.

How could he have known?

[customerserviceguy]

32. There have been numerous setbacks on the road

The need to coordinate human activity to build dams, warehouses, etc., gave us monarchies that did nothing but live off the sweat of the serf class. We had to overthrow kingdoms to get to the next level of government that had a chance of improving the lot of the common person. It's no surprise to me that representative government would fall into traps set by oligarchs, our Founding Fathers warned us of it.

Communism wasn't the answer, but we are working towards refinements of the system that will make it better. This very mechanism of the Internet that you and I are communicating on is one step in that direction.

[The2ndWheel]

78. "The need to coordinate human activity to build dams, warehouses, etc."

Hardly a need.

[stuntcat]

33. yah, and when we started the farming

if we were all still hunter-gatherers the world would be a lot healthier, our species wouldn't be wiping so many others out :( Of course we wouldn't be sitting at computers all day & living to 95 and 100 years old.. that stuff that humans think is so important.

[moondust]

24. Today Fareed Zakaria had some interesting comments on WWI.

Germany makes their last reparations payment ($94 million) as part of the WWI armistice as well as celebrating the 20th anniversary of German unification today.

Recommended viewing.

[Starry Messenger]

27. Enclosure Acts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure_Act

[TonyMontana]

31. 0 A.D.

You know why.

[rrneck]

34. My first thought was Reagan,

but sometimes I think we might have jumped the shark with the advent of agriculture seven thousand years ago.

[comrade snarky]

35. I see a lot of people saying that about agriculture

But nobody ever seems to give it all up and go back to a hunter gatherer existence.


I wonder why that is? :evilgrin:

[mix]

36. There is very little habitat left that would support nearly 7 billion people

as hunter gathers, let alone a few bands of intrepid souls. We are structurally constrained to seek survival by other means.

In other words, it is impossible for enough of us to reject modernity (agriculture, industrialization) to have any significant impact on the world's decline.

[comrade snarky]

45. Sure, but if it's such a better way to live why don't you?

Everyone couldn't do it, but you could if you try. Head for a sparsely populated area and drop out.

Remember, no products of a civilization though. Not of you want to be happy.

[mix]

51. Who said it's a much better way to live?

Someone in your imagination.

[comrade snarky]

64. Gee, I guess I must be crazy

Cause I thought that some people on this thread were saying the world went to hell when agriculture was developed and humans stopped living as hunter gatherers. Kinda implied if someone says humanity jumped the shark at that point isn't it?

<looking over thread>

Yep, there it is. Just a couple of posts ago. The one I replied to that started this little digression in fact.

Weird that you cant see it. You feeling OK?

[mix]

66. I could give a fuck what other posters say.

You were addressing me specifically ("Sure, but if it's such a better way to live why don't you?") and offering up some lifestyle advice based on your feverish and flawed perusal of my post in which I state clearly that it would be "impossible" to return to a hunter-gathering life. I also said we are "structurally constrained" to pursue other ways of living, i.e. other than hunting and gathering. Why would I be advocating or wanting to live a way of life that I fundamentally believe is no longer attainable?

It is undeniable however that the environmental impact of hunger-gathers was much less destructive than industrial capitalism. In your mind I suppose this translates into a belief and desire to get back to nature.

Learn to read.

[comrade snarky]

67. Dang! You sure do get picky about conversations

I thought you'd probably have read the whole thread and might even have remembered the posts before yours.

Guess not...

See, you can say you are "structurally constrained" from perusing a life you think would be better for the world (and as others on this thread have said would be more fulfilling) but that's just a cop out. There's any number of places in on Earth where you could still do that. I can name half a dozen in N. America alone. But no, the big mean world is keeping you from living the way you think you should. Why? Cause it would be hard? So it's easier to sit in an industrialized society drinking parasite free water and complain on the world wide communications system at your fingertips about how bad you have it because you're not going to die of an infection at 35.

If you want to drop out. Drop the fuck out and stop bitching about how you can't. Or you know, at least read the whole conversation and don't assume the sun rises and sets on what you say and only what you say.


Lookie at me Ma! I'm a readin'! Jus like in the big city!



Edited to add:
This was a reply to your original post. Not what you added and changed later, without noting what it was.

[mix]

68. You're entirely off the mark.

In fact your post is fantasy of miscomprehension and not worthy of a response.

:hi:

[comrade snarky]

69. And yet you did, in seconds

It's a conundrum.

[rrneck]

37. Ain't it the truth!

I like ice in my Scotch as much as anybody.

[comrade snarky]

47. Heresy!

Just a splash of spring water is all it needs. B-)

[MrScorpio]

39. This world has ALWAYS gone to hell...

Because, as Sartre once aptly said, "Hell is other people."

[ThomWV]

40. 1980 - and the Church Bells rang as hell fell like a blanket across the land.

[Bigmack]

41. Reagan election of 1980...

Without doubt.

As earth-tilting as the Battle of Tours, as the Norman Conquest, as the French Revolution....

The earth will never be what it could have been.

Not hyperbole, either.

We are fucked.

[treestar]

42. The world has always been going to hell

Whatever time is the present; that is the worst.

[Canuckistanian]

44. The Latter

Humanity had a chance before then.

Reagan killed it. Knowingly.

[Skittles]

46. REAGAN, hands down

he made greed and idiocy fashionable

[L. Coyote]

48. When primates learned to use fire.

Damn climate changers :rofl:

[Spider Jerusalem]

49. Of the two? 1914 is a lot more valid a date for 'the world' going to hell.

Since Reagan's economic policies affected Americans more than anyone else. And America is not the world. Regardless of what a lot of people around here seem to think.

[IDemo]

58. edit - misplaced post

- meant to post in response to the OP

[Spider Jerusalem]

60. Again, America != THE WORLD.

Britain was in the imperialism game long before the US decided it wanted a piece of the action, and Spain before them. Then there were the Crusades, Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde, the Roman wars of conquest, and on back into the dim mists of time before recorded history. It was ever thus.

[IDemo]

63. If you want to speak of the big picture

Humans and their activities != the world, either. But since I'm sure we're considering only the human hell here, it began when evolution gave us a reptilian brain stem and all its inherent behaviors.

[Gabi Hayes]

52. choosing a different metaphor, decline of very recent modern world dropped off the continental

shelf on Dec. 12, 2000

[Gabi Hayes]

53. remember how sort of half way decent things seemed to be at the point, at least

superficially?

you know, if you weren't poor, or a third worlder, or had your own place, and decent prospects for a secure future

how quaint all those silly ideas seem now, and what a tsunami-like change turned everything upside down

amazing what a few well placed sociopaths can do with the control of the largest economy and defense system on the planet

[MrMickeysMom]

54. The first date seemed to open the door for the second coming...

By the time Ronald Reagan shed his Hollywood B movie Democratic persona for the Republican party, I think the path was getting clearer... All you need is a good marketer and a bunch of fascists to back you.

My few cents...

[pipi_k]

55. Things were great until Fred Flintstone bought that stolen piano

from "88 Fingers Louie" as an anniversary gift for Wilma.



Then the whole world went to hell.

[bigwillq]

56. Nov. 4, 2008

:rofl:
I kid, I kid. :rofl:

[IDemo]

59. The modern era's hell began in Dallas, November 22, 1963

In the broader spectrum, I would say that the hell wrought by the belief in American exceptionalism and the practice of imperialism began with the Spanish American War, 1898.

That said, the selection of GW Bush by the Supremes represents the most serious event of late in the downwards slide to hell.

It's hell all over.

[Ishoutandscream2]

61. November, 1980

And then John was killed. The only good thing about that year was that I graduated high school.

[Kaleva]

62. The events of 1914 impacted far more people then did the election of Reagan

[the redcoat]

65. Little known fact:

Feb 6th, 1911.

Reagan is born, and a big fire destroys downtown Constantinople/Istanbul.

Coincidence? Science reveals no.

[Rex]

70. 2000AD - the year Democracy died and FoxNews lied a warmonger into office.

everything before that was window dressing.

[MilesColtrane]

71. Since it's such a subjective question I'd say 1963 through 1968.

These years saw the very public murders of those who could have made a difference.

JFK, MLK, Malcolm, Bobby....

[defendandprotect]

72. I'm way too unfamiliar with all of this history ... but as I recall it US put 75,000 propagandists

on the streets to prevent anti-war activists from succeeding --

and pretty much made those speaking against the war "enemies of the state" -- !!

Between 1914 and 1980 and Ronald Reagan, we also had a coup on our "people's" government

in 1963 by the right and since then continuing political violence, including stolen

elections.

Wherever violence begins in history -- vs nature, animal-life and other human beings

is where we went wrong.

[LunaSea]

74. .

[olegramps]

75. When workers bought the corporate propaganda and deserted unions.

[Myrina]

76. ... the day the Military Industrial Complex was born ...

... in whatever dark room full of war profiteering "capitalist" robber barons.

[Initech]

77. I'd go with the creation of the CIA, FBI, and NSA.

Yeah sure we can all say Raygun but these organizations have done more harm than good since their creations.

[slackmaster]

79. 1791

The year Congress enacted the excise tax on whiskey.

[bvar22]

80. When "Centrist" Democrats voted for Reagan.

"Centrist" Democrats were the Beginning of the End in the USA.