Do we dream smaller now than we did decades ago?

Submitted ⁨⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨atro_city@fedia.io⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Maybe this isn't right, but I remember reading that most young boys 50 years ago dreamed about becoming astronomers, scientists, firefighters and policemen. Now young boys dream about becoming influencers, streamers, and rich personalities. Was Idiocracy written by a time-traveller? Are we working hard to make it a reality?

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lordnikon@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
yeah caused you know what boys had 50 years ago strong Unions. Today your only chance of making it is by scamming kids and lonely people out of their money by creating a parasocial relationship with lots of people like some kind of prostitute.

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Apytele@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
“They used to sell gladiator sweat as a beauty treatment, they would sell it in souvenir pots.”

“It’s the worst of me … I never do pay my bills. Have been so from a child!”)

“Matters came to a head at a ball in honour of the Duke of Wellington when Byron publicly insulted Lady Caroline, who responded by breaking a wine glass and trying to slash her wrists.”

TLDR; no we’ve pretty much always been unhinged.

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- lousyd@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  But OP asked about “decades ago”. What if humanity was actually making progress in the 20th century, becoming better, and now we’re backsliding to where we were during gladiator times?
  
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  - Apytele@sh.itjust.works ⁨45⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    More of a cycle, I would argue. Part of the rise and fall of empires or whatever.
    
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Onyxonblack@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It’s all the corruption of the planet. We are just a part of this living system. But we have poisoned it and now it’s A warm stew of rancid sewage. Micro-plastics, MechaHitler, Orange-Hitler, Global Warming, disease and war, famine, Pfas, Lead, toxins everywhere. We’re almost done destroying it all… So no, there is no more dreaming. My childlike hope of a Star Trek Future is now like a Reverse-Aliens movie. We must do everything possible to prevent mankind from escaping this planet alive. Kill the Virus before it spreads.

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MuttMutt@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I think it’s more about what children see in front of them and what they see as role models. With the internet age we see people making tons of cash fast. Many years ago we had cops and doctors on TV among other things and that is what kids wanted to be.

Simply put kids emulate and want to become what they see. That is part of the reason why some parents want more control over what things their children are exposed to. Many of those parents also want to sit in front of a screen vs actually spending time with and teaching their children.

It doesn’t help that everyone is more worried about making a fast buck vs doing something that will help others lives be better. I just wonder what kind of abuse will be handed out by parents from a generation that is almost completely self centered.

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GrayBackgroundMusic@lemmy.zip ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Nah, you’re showing selection bias or something. Kids have always wanted to be rock stars.

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neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
As a kid I always said I wanted to “work on the computer at home so I could take care of my farm”.

Which coming from where I grew up was about as realistic as owning the moon.

I do think dreams have gotten more generic with a lot of kids aiming for that influencer life, but the other day I heard a neighborhood kid say he wants to be a deep sea monster truck driver. I’m not sure what that means but I love it.

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givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Was Idiocracy written by a time-traveller?

It was the logical and expected result from the current course of America…

But what people miss is that Idiocracy is always real for a surprising amount of people. Joe didn’t magically get smarter, his frame of reference stayed the same. But everyone around him became a lot stupider. We adjust IQ scores when they drift so the average is always 100 because of that.

And adjusting it at 100, also adjustes the cutoff at 70 for having an intellectual disability. Because the real issue isn’t a line of how smart someone is in a vacuum, it’s that an IQ difference of 30 points or more is enough for both people to realize something is off and communication to be hindered.

An IQ of 145 isn’t that rare, about 1 in 1,200. And that’s the cutoff for what an IQ test can reliably measure so it’s a good reference point. Most people who score over the test limits never get the bigger test, because that bitch can take multiple days and the numbers pretty much stop mattering.

For someone over that line though, over 80% of humans are more than 30 points below them, the majority much lower. To them every day of their lives has been Idiocracy, and they have existed at a relatively stable percentage of humanity for all of our past and will for all of our future.

What people are noticing when they think Idiocracy is coming true, is a widening gap in education. IQ just honestly isn’t that noticable except for a statistically insignificant amount of people at either end.

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Solumbran@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Fascism is growing. New communication media are allowing for large scale, in-depth brainwashing.

People now strive more than ever to be part of the “norm” and eliminate all the rest. Capitalism keeps everyone so busy and self-centered that morals disappear. “Charismatic leaders” spearhead the new trends in a sect/religion approach.

It’s not stupidity of the masses. It’s an engineered death spiral, where the stupid people are the ones engineering it thinking that if it’s good for them, it is good.

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Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
My dreams are so big, them becoming reality isn’t even possible or at least won’t be possible in my lifetime.

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chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I dream just as big. My path to realizing them has only gotten more narrow.

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spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Sounds like they are just dreaming about different things. Back then they also dreamed about being rich celebrities like actors and actresses, which is comparable to streamers and rich personalities.

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