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vlovich123today at 5:13 AM2 repliesview on HN

Has the cultural attitude towards shame perhaps shifted?

There was a gilded age in the early 20th century and we appear to have entered another gilded age - do you think something structural or cultural has changed? I have a hard time a president like Trump getting elected in past elections - certainly he models himself after Nixon and even Nixon was a very very different kind of president both in temperament but also being less about self aggrandizement.


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dataflowtoday at 9:24 AM

> do you think something structural or cultural has changed

Obviously it has? For one thing, we have billions more people on the planet. For another, we have far more constrained resources -- from the environment to education to everything else -- even for a constant number of people, never mind for the ever-increasing population size. (And there are more factors, but these are more than sufficient to get the point across.) These make competition more intense... in every aspect of life, for everyone. And it's only natural that more cutthroat competition results in more people breaking the norms and rules.

It would be shocking if this didn't happen. If there's a question at all, it's really around is when this occurs -- not if it does.

ngc248today at 7:19 AM

Yep, shame is the cornerstone of civilization and the scoiety right now seems to be more and more shameless.

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