Not all innovation makes things better. I doubt that WWI would have been as bad if not for the invention of guns. If soldiers had still used swords in 1914, it seems unlikely that trench warfare would have dragged on for 4 years, with nearly 10 million deaths.
At the same time, war has been around for thousands of years, and the percentage of humans dying in war seems to be trending downward over the very long run. So technology is not the primary problem.
This story on cancel culture in China made me wonder whether social media is sort of like guns, a dubious form of “innovation”:
Censors have not only kept their grip on entertainers with rules. Lately, the very nature of the modern Chinese internet, a hyper-commercial place patrolled by thin-skinned bullies, is helping them succeed. This is a perilous time to be famous in China. In the first few weeks of 2021, fans, prominent bloggers and state media have united to rebuke so many celebrities that a recent item on Tencent News, an online platform, was headlined: “The era of stars saying sorry is upon us: whatever you did wrong, apologise.” Those who have said sorry this year include an actress accused of abandoning two infants born via surrogacy in America and a comedian who made a sexist advertisement for women’s underwear. Other apologies have come from a comic actress who posed in a cardigan over the caption “husband-snaring gear”, leading to charges of objectifying women; and from a 20-year-old Tibetan horseman caught smoking on camera. Months earlier his good looks and shy smile had shot him to fame and helped him into a job as a goodwill ambassador for his hometown.
When market forces help the Communist Party to rule
Chaguan spoke recently to entertainment-industry veterans. They described famous friends on medication for depression, and explained why. Once, stars were on show only when they made a new film. Now, fans want to scrutinise every detail of actors’ lives on social media, and expect perfection from their idols.
Back in 1968, there were massive student protests in places as diverse as the US, China, Mexico, France and Czechoslovakia. Within each country, people focused on the specific factors motivating domestic dissent, and thus missed the bigger picture of how modernization was reshaping society.
Within the US, cancel culture is often seen in narrow parochial terms. Woke people trying to impose their definition of anti-racism, or conservatives trying to cancel professional athletes for insufficient patriotism. But I wonder if that misses the bigger picture.
People have always wanted to physically harm other people, and guns provided a more effective way of doing so. People have always wanted to verbally bully and shame other people, and social media gives them a more effective tool for doing so.
It’s not surprising that the US and China have cancel cultures; what would be surprising is if there were a country that did not have cancel culture.
PS. Tyler Cowen links to a study suggesting that things are getting worse in America:
The worsening physiological and mental health profiles among younger generations imply a challenging morbidity and mortality prospect for the United States, one that may be particularly inauspicious for Whites.
I’m agnostic on the question of whether happiness in America is increasing, decreasing, or staying about the same.
READER COMMENTS
Frank
Mar 27 2021 at 7:34pm
We were not made to be happy.
Charlie Darwin will take care of all this. 🙂
Scott Sumner
Mar 28 2021 at 1:12pm
It sure looks that way.
Phil H
Mar 28 2021 at 12:32am
I’m not sure about this, particularly in China. They still have 1984-style government disappearances of people the government doesn’t like. I think it would be a serious mistake to claim that the problem here is micro-celebs who lose their micro-celebrity…
But better to be absolutely upfront about the difference of opinions here. I don’t think that Chinese celebs getting cancelled is a lesser harm. I think it’s literally the least possible harm. I’m sure that a celebrity who loses a contract because of an advert that some people don’t like feels bad. But that’s how fame markets work. I… do not see any reason to think that a fame market is any worse than a market in any other business. I’m sure people whose restaurants fail feel bad as well. But that’s an inevitable feature of working in a market, which everyone on this site agrees is a good thing, right?
Scott Sumner
Mar 28 2021 at 1:14pm
I agree that cancel culture is not one of our biggest problems.
Michael Stack
Mar 28 2021 at 10:14am
People have always tried to manipulate their own status, and the status of their rivals via gossip. The trouble is that social media has given gossip a massive amplifier, and society has not yet adjusted.
I stopped using social media for the most part about a year ago, and have been much happier as a result.
Andrew_FL
Mar 28 2021 at 2:38pm
I dispute that the invention of guns-really, the invention of gunpowder-must necessarily have been a net negative, as you seem to imply. Guns, or specific kinds of guns, may make warfare worse. They also make hunting better and sport shooting more interesting. They are a more effective form of self defense than swords or bows and arrows, and I mean defense against other people with weapons and without but also against wild animals (nearly invariably without). And gunpowder has other uses (and guns are pretty much inevitable with gunpowder).
Maybe humanity would be better off without gunpowder ever having been discovered. One might conceivably say so for any invention that can be dangerous depending on the context of its use. They called Alfred Nobel a Merchant of Death, after all, for the weaponized uses of dynamite. But it is not at all obvious.
Scott Sumner
Mar 29 2021 at 12:50pm
Ten million dead in WWI and you talk about sports hunting. And I regard hunting with bow and arrow to be more “interesting”.
Andrew_FL
Mar 29 2021 at 4:08pm
Yes, I do, because even if I accept that 100% of WWI deaths would not have happened in a world without guns, it is not obvious that the cost of ten million lives once outweighs small benefits every year across billions of people in perpetuity.
Or aren’t you a utilitarian?
Floccina
Mar 29 2021 at 11:31am
I see the problems with our remote communications but I must admit that I love it. I, for example, enjoy commenting here. These new communications methods have enabled me to communicate with the few interested in this sort of stuff.
Mark Z
Mar 29 2021 at 2:22pm
“If soldiers had still used swords in 1914, it seems unlikely that trench warfare would have dragged on for 4 years, with nearly 10 million deaths.”
I seem to recall a bunch of steel-sword-based wars with ominous names like The Thirty Years War, the Eighty Years War, the Hundred Years War, etc. The Thirty Years War killed around 20% of Germany’s population (firearms were used then but I believe most fighting was still melee combat).
I’m sort of playing devil’s advocate, but improved military technology may reduce incentives to start wars and make wars more decisive and shorter (WW1 and WW2 were probably quite short by historical standards), cancelling out the fact that the fighting itself is deadlier, like nuclear weapons but to a smaller, less obvious extent. Maybe military technology isn’t just ‘not the primary problem’ but a factor in why war deaths (as % of total) have not increased but decreased in the modern era.
Scott Sumner
Mar 29 2021 at 7:41pm
In my view, warfare declined because we got richer, and perhaps more educated. That would have happened even without guns.
David Seltzer
Mar 30 2021 at 6:36pm
Scott said, “In my view, warfare declined because we got richer, and perhaps more educated. That would have happened even without guns.” Good point. I suspect warfare has declined as democracy has increased globally. Democracies seldom if ever attack other democracies. In free markets, as it were, Costco hasn’t attacked Walmart for turf.
jj
Mar 29 2021 at 4:04pm
I hadn’t thought of “social media” as a technology, but I like that. Technologies amplify human nature, for better or for worse. What’s striking to me is that the balance between better and worse has been maintained over thousands of years of technology — or so it seems to me, it’s really hard to judge. As you point out, despite massive increases in warpower (guns, nukes), the overall death rate due to war is nearly constant (within an order of magnitude, at least). One good nuclear exchange would probably tip the balance, though.
I won’t even try to assess the level of social shaming across history. I guess it varies from “absolute” to “none”, depending on where and when you are.
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