Timeline for Is it true that a technological society has to weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
26 events
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| Feb 19 at 0:01 | comment | added | Scott Rowe | @Mutoh societies don't get married, individual people do. Individual people are "incompetent at forming stable, fulfilling marriages or preventing/fixing bad ones". They always have been, and probably always will. If you'd asked me what I wanted, I'd have said, "better people." | |
| Feb 7 at 21:56 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @Mutoh "higher rates of divorce ... will be evidence for the weakening of family ties either way" - I couldn't care less about some vague appeal to "family ties". I care about increased happiness and reduced abuse, both of which could be a result of a higher rate of divorce (as I literally just argued... which you pretty much just ignored). If you think "family ties" is more important than happiness and avoiding abuse (which your position requires, mind you... as long as you don't address what I've said on that), then I can't really say much more to demonstrate the absurdity of your position. | |
| Feb 7 at 20:43 | comment | added | Mutoh | @NotThatGuy higher rates of divorce, whether one likes it (such as in your case) or not, will be evidence for the weakening of family ties either way. In this case it is indeed a heads I win, tails you lose. | |
| Feb 7 at 19:54 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @Mutoh It sounds like you'd just say that literally everything must be evidence for your position, and nothing can be evidence against it, and you'll also hop to another point as soon as you're pressured to defend any of your claims. More divorce? That means technology is bad! But people are divorcing for good reason? That also means technology is bad! You implied that higher rates of divorce is bad. I argued that divorce isn't always bad. Rather than trying to refute my claim or admitting that you're wrong, you just threw out a meaningless statistic and started arguing something different. | |
| Feb 7 at 19:27 | comment | added | Mutoh | @NotThatGuy the vast majority of causes for divorce aren't abuse (>75%), but even if they were it'd be further evidence that modern (post-)industrial society is utterly incompetent at forming stable, fulfilling marriages or preventing/fixing bad ones, thus giving more credence to Ted. Indeed, the modern trend is to treat everything as disposable, which even leftist authors such as Bauman will recognize and correlate to technology (Liquid Modernity). Now, notice that the metrics you sweep under the rug or rationalize are precisely the ones relevant to Ted's point. Now that's disingenuous. | |
| Feb 7 at 19:09 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @Mutoh 1) I'm not really inclined to get into a discussion about the varying and wide-ranging implications of fertility rate. 2) It's very disingenuous to frame my position as merely "more broken marriages is worth it", when I specifically mentioned unhappy or abusive relationships. Should someone who's being abused by their partner stay married to them? If not, then you seem to be disagreeing with something I didn't say. 3) It's also very disingenuous to conflate "X is a problem" with "X has gotten worse", and to act like I said "every metric" instead of "practically every metric". | |
| Feb 7 at 18:32 | comment | added | Mutoh | @NotThatGuy downplaying and sweeping under the rug. Try telling E. Asia that subrepl. fertility rates aren't really a problem, and one or another anecdote about people who turned out okay from broken marriages doesn't refute the trends (even if you think more broken marriages is worth it). I suggest editing the answer as "it's better by practically every conceivable metric" is patently false as you yourself admit that loneliness, mental illness and suicide are problems. Problems which technology is currently exacerbating - your idealized solutions aren't what scientists are reporting. | |
| Feb 7 at 18:17 | history | edited | NotThatGuy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 7 at 17:37 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @DavidS We have done a bad job of adapting to technological changes, but I don't see much reason to think that's because we cannot adapt fast enough, especially given that, for many things, there have been clear signs of the problem, and clear ways to deal with the problem, but people have consistently chosen short-term financial benefits (often just for themselves) above dealing with those problems. There are very few present-day problems that haven't been around for at least a few decades. | |
| Feb 7 at 17:26 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @Mutoh "of divorce, of children born out of wedlock or in divorced households or being raised by single parents" - what does any of that have to do with technology? But anyway. People get divorced if they're in an unhappy or abusive relationship (and I don't think I've met anyone who took the decision to get divorced lightly, without trying to fix their relationship first). So divorce rate doesn't say much about happiness or quality of life. Also you complain about a low fertility rate (not necessarily a problem), but if children are only born in marriages, that means... fewer children. | |
| Feb 7 at 17:26 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @Mutoh Where's your reference comparing any of those things to the past (especially the more distance past)? But anyway. Whether worse than the past or not, I agree that loneliness, mental illness and suicide are all problems (and the first 2 points in my answer are ways technology can improve all of that). But blaming technology for all of that, and abandoning technology to try to fix it doesn't really make sense. The world isn't that simple. Those are complex issues with many contributing factors, and technology can help improve it, like it's helped to improve many other things. | |
| Feb 7 at 17:17 | comment | added | David S | @NotThatGuy I don't subscribe to Ted's belief in technology being the cause of social issues. Humanity has had technology since before recorded history, it has nothing to do with systems of governance or economy. Some advancements can certainly catalyze events or changes. I believe that it was recently that technology's advancement began to outpace societies ability to evolve with it. Our cultures cannot adapt fast enough. I think he misinterpreted that strain. Another thing, part of Ted's arguments include geographic aspects. Ted implies that technology cannot substitute physical proximity. | |
| Feb 7 at 16:56 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @EricDuminil Yes, I briefly mentioned climate change in my answer (although calling 9 thresholds of climate change "9 examples" is questionable). Technological advancement made climate change worse, but also greatly improved quality of life and saved many lives. I don't think the downsides of the industrial revolution outweighed the upsides, but even if it did, we don't have a time machine, and we have the technology to maintain quality of life without causing more climate change. Also, crucially, things wouldn't have gotten this critical had politicians not been ignoring science for decades. | |
| Feb 7 at 14:00 | comment | added | Matthieu M. | @Mutoh: Your "points" seem haphazard. Born out of wedlock is not an issue in itself -- my very godfather lived in a stable relationship for 30+ years before finally marrying his partner (worrying about inheritance). Similarly with regard to divorce, I seem to remember a study showing that the availability of divorce seemed to correlate with higher life expectancy, especially for males. Finally, it's not clear whether being raised by single parents is problematic due to the "single" part, or the largely correlated budget issues part. | |
| Feb 7 at 10:34 | comment | added | Mutoh | @NotThatGuy also higher rates of loneliness, of mental illness, of suicide, of divorce, of children born out of wedlock or in divorced households or being raised by single parents (all of which are correlated with negative effects), fertility below replacement levels, people have less friends (including more reporting no friends at all). Notwithstanding facts less related to OP's question, such as increased pollution and deforestation. With enough cherry picking anyone can paint a rosy picture of the world, and it won't do to downplay these issues, they prove Ted's point. | |
| Feb 7 at 8:32 | comment | added | Eric Duminil | @NotThatGuy: 9 examples, among many others: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries | |
| Feb 6 at 20:00 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @Mutoh Compared to 50-200 years ago, we have less extreme poverty, higher GDP per capita (both adjusted for inflation and cost of living), much lower child mortality, higher life expectancy, lower rates of undernourishment (only recent data available), improved literacy rate, improved access to water and sanitation (only recent data available). Happiness is harder to measure, but here's some data that generally supports my case. Where's your data and what am I "sweeping under the rug"? | |
| Feb 6 at 19:18 | comment | added | Mutoh | There are many metrics which are actually worse off today, specially in more "progressive" societies, and which often are caused by (or at least correlated with) the breakdown of the traditional family (others, more directly by technology). They are just underplayed and swept under the rug like OP does. | |
| Feb 6 at 19:00 | vote | accept | Nitin Sheokand | ||
| Feb 8 at 17:38 | |||||
| Feb 6 at 17:49 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @DavidS My second point is that technology can also bring people together, which most certainly does not support the point that technology pulls people apart. My point is that technology does what people want technology to do. You could maybe make the case that people have been using technology in ways that harm local community, but this doesn't mean technology inherently does this, as is demonstrated by my examples of people using it to strengthen local community. It also doesn't mean that any harm to local community is necessarily bad, as my first point demonstrates. | |
| Feb 6 at 17:49 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @DavidS The main pre/no-technology alternatives to kids getting kicked out and them finding other communities through technology is (a) them living on the street, (b) them trying to keep their head down while suffering through years of physical and mental abuse, and (c) them committing suicide. We see all of those happen in the modern day, and I can only hope that you wouldn't advocate for any of those alternatives above a child using technology to find happiness in another community. Just because kids were more likely to keep their head down in the past doesn't mean that was better for them. | |
| Feb 6 at 15:27 | comment | added | David S | This answer is very much from the perspective of what I presume Ted would call a technologist. Your 1st and 2nd "issue" with Ted's points actually support his position. Your 1st point, kids getting kicked out, would need to compare today's society in child rejection and dis-ownership to a time before you were born. Current anecdotal stories exist in the technological society already, where the influences Ted talks about have already taken place. Your 2nd point illustrates technology making up for local communities being broken apart, not bringing them closer than they were, say, 200 years ago. | |
| Feb 6 at 9:13 | comment | added | Trang Oul | "Capitalism seems to be least harmful if supported by regulation and welfare," - this is no longer (pure) capitalism. But that's a completely different story... | |
| Feb 5 at 13:34 | vote | accept | Nitin Sheokand | ||
| Feb 6 at 18:59 | |||||
| Feb 5 at 13:16 | history | edited | NotThatGuy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 5 at 13:03 | history | answered | NotThatGuy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |