site banner
MelodicBerries  virtus junxit mors non separabit  1yr ago (freddiedeboer.substack.com)   3922 thread views

It's So Sad When Old People Romanticize Their Heydays, Also the 90s Were Objectively the Best Time to Be Alive

freddiedeboer.substack.com
18
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It helps, I think, that misplaced nostalgia for the 50s was getting sneered at around the time I got inseparably attached to nostalgia for the 90s. But really, I have no illusions about the overall societal situation or whatever. I was 2-11 years old and living in a city/town that still can't decide if it's rural or suburban or a college town or what. My exposure to the outside world was basically TV and movies, wherein NYC was a city of perpetual nighttime muggings and superheros, everyone in high school was indistinguishable from jock/nerd/cheerleader stereotypes played by conspicuous adults, and drugs were bad, 'mkay?

9/11 might have functionally ended the 90s from the perspective of the West having won history, but history was basically mythology even while I was watching it unfold. 9/11 for me was mainly testing my attitudes Vs the mainstream on matters of justice / vengeance / mercy / whatever. Using 9/11 as a Jedi Mind Trick to get people to support Operation Iraqi Freedom was America failing the test, and teenaged-me getting an inflated ego for feeling like the only one who saw it that way who wasn't on MSNBC. Then I slowly got better at something resembling theory of mind, discovered that being insulated in a school-sized sandbox with "peer pressure is bad, 'mkay?" discouraging socialization, and never actually learning how to try, left me woefully unprepared for anything beyond high school, and oh, look, the "reasons this decade is worse than the last" list got longer, and it still has nothing to do with the general quality of said decades for civilization in general.

My soul can live in the 90s, and my personal Utopia can be "the 90s, but better," and post-9/11 America can have revealed ugliness that I was previously unaware of (what with being an isolated child prior), and none of that adds up to the 90s being better (or worse) than neighboring decades from a broader perspective. If our AI overlords can create multiple Utopias and justify giving me access to 90stopia, that'd be nice, I suppose, but I'm not going to evangelize it, or suggest that everyone be forced to join me there. Objectivity when judging decades you lived through isn't exactly easy.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats