you're sure it's 1978, not 2021?

Probably not.

> it just seems like restating a fairly obvious fact about what happens to human society

obvious and sad fact.

>as it grows.

why as it grows?

When it comes to prescient-ness, reading some ancient Greek history (contemporaneously written) really changed my view in that if you read what (IIRC) Thucydides is writing about it's pretty much exactly the same as today ("An old man complained in the streets that the youths are spending too much time lounging around instead of fighting") but slower.

One of the import speeches made in the USA in second half of 20th century.

"But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening."

Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov has been assassinated by KGB in 1978

a) Is a great example of whataboutism

b) Totally irrelevant to the discussion

c) Is just not true

a) b) Of course it's relevant. If you condemn one but not the other you are engaging in a double standard.

Yet it was still the Soviet Union and people disappeared.

I do, of course, admire Solzhenitsyn's courage and work. Part of the speech's moral force is probably lost because I read it instead of seeing him speak it. But as a piece of writing, I struggle to find anything new or incisive in it.

Oh, and fun fact I learned reading about him this morning: his son did his undergrad at Harvard, and is (or recently was) a senior partner at McKinsey in Moscow [1, 2].

[1] https://www.castelli-international.it/online-interview-with-...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20180614021146/https://www.mckin...

I instead found insight on the strong spiritual characteristic of the East that the West lacked.

-of America's inability to decisively win wars after Vietnam

-of its future alliance/allegiance to China, which is more economic, but we see the exact same problematic outcome

-of the similarities of the outcome of censorship produced by Western media and groupthink compared to Eastern state controlled media, where unpopular ideas might as well be censored as they will never reach anybody.

-the problem of humanism without much 'spirituality', and how that drives forward America's mediocrity by its adherence to the letter of the law without much moralism, and how that cold adherence has led to a society that is prosperous yet at the same time quick to looting as soon as electricity is gone for a few hours.

-his questioning of the West's backbending subservience to former colonies

-the notion that communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat in the East, but the West's infatuation with it continues to allow it to persist.

-He actively critiques the 'forefathers' (as you put it) as well. Elaborating that the Western born view of the world developed during the Enlightenment and Renaissance has inevitably led to this self centered materialistic worldview.

I suppose this summarizes his main prevailing hope:

"If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it"

In this context, whether Solzhenitsyn was either admirable or would have any lasting influence is beside the point.

Article does bot substantiate what the headline wants to insinuate.

Beria died in 1953. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the prize in 1972.

A concern over Solzhenitsyn's movements being constrained is even harder to paint as alarmist than concerns over his physical safety.

Another example might be Sayyid Qutb: was 1940s USA really that heinous for an ordinary Egyptian, or did Qutb just feel ill at ease during his time in the country and direct that frustration in an unhealthy direction?

Would you consider a society in which metal detectors at school entrances are a widely accepted norm "spiritually enlightened"?

Advertising has been warping the West since Gutenberg, but it really took off exponentially after 1900.

You drop anyone from former centuries (or more insular/insulated cultures) into the late XX century, they'll go into shock.

Anyone with current average Western beliefs, as induced by media, would be considered mentally ill in the not too distant past.

The man had, word for word, given a concise description if the internet platforms in 2021 and the last 5-6 years.

With a few notable exceptions, such as HN, a different opinion/worldview is wholly unacceptable. The power of these platforms to silence dissent would have probably made the likes of Joseph Goebels salivate and smack his lips in approval.

Not to say there isnt a hivemind, there is but conversation rarely disintergrates into mindless name-calling.

There is space to disagree. And anecdotally I tend to disagree with a lot of things but I've never been banned/silenced.

- If the article is about Bitcoin or crypto and there are a large number of people talking about externalities. If someone says something that's perceived as being not in line, it's getting heavily downvoted.

- If the article is about the stock market and there are a large number of people who are recommending index fund dollar-cost averaging. Someone says they picked stocks. Bye-bye, comment font contrast against the background. Greyed. Those grey comments are probably mine in this example.

- If the article is about a recent event around a cancellation such as a firing or a conversation around misinformation, anything perceived as questioning that (such as using the word censorship in the comment) has a near-guarantee of downvotes. There is no way to ever come to the defense of someone who said something that has been deemed misinformation, a conspiracy theory, or such, without being associated with the cancelled. It's almost dangerous to even opine at this point if you have feelings around freedom of speech. Note: I'm not talking about the opinion itself, but the right to air it, and coming to defense of that. It's poorly received.

- Criticisms of Google, curiously, and I've seen Facebook as well (although I think Facebook fell out of favor in the last few years). I have a theory about many employees coming to the defense of their employer out of loyalty.

There are probably many other examples of dangerous topics that provoke the group. I think there is something in people's mind that lets them justify this as follows:

"If you question the popular wisdom here, when you have a group saying A, and you say B, you must be a troll out to provoke people."

> "If you question the popular wisdom here, when you have a group saying A, and you say B, you must be a troll out to provoke people."

The HN moderation team holds to this "principle" and has thereby essentially developed a community around it. That is, this isn't a bug, it's a feature.

I don’t see any difference on Hacker News. Dang does an amazing job moderating and people are somewhat more civil to each other and more curious on average but the culture here strongly weeds out people who are not comfortable with aggressively stated opinions.

I like it here but Hacker News has a culture that suits the people who come here. Only approved non-conformity is tolerated. This is true of every community, to pretend otherwise is kind of silly in my opinion.

Or maybe it's that human society doesn't change as quickly as our technological innovations make it feel, so accurate observations about the present tend to hold true centuries after they're made.

It must be terrifying for people like this (and those in this same thread trying to make statements from the late 70s sound like prescient warnings for the 2020s) to see the world turning away from their writings or simply deciding that they were not as important or significant as society once thought. When the crowd goes one way and you desperately want it to follow in the direction you are trying to lead it must be quite frightening and depressing.

Plato does this too. Was his head also up his ass? Anyway, he was right, no? He was writing at the end of the Classical period.

The truth is just that there's a constant struggle between past and future, tradition and innovation, and to go all in on one side or the other (which is what we are all drawn to) is insane. Pointing out the downsides of innovation is not wrong unless you're arguing for doing away with it altogether.

If you discount that factor: these sentiments are also a pretty normal reaction to any society that has experienced substantial improvements in the average person’s well-being within the speaker’s lifetime. If you’ve watched your country emerge from pre-industrial poverty, then of course your forebears are going to seem (in retrospect) powerful and resilient to harsh conditions, while your contemporaries are going to appear relatively soft and materialistic. That doesn’t necessarily mean you want such people leading you into the future. Indeed, Solzhenitsyn‘s late-life endorsement of Putin shows the peril in that.

It would be hard to find a point of view that can't be found in print or on line today.

Simple example: A huge portion of the US population has no clue of the tragedy unfolding at the US/Mexico border.

Why?

Because the media is actively suppressing coverage. If they don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist. Out of all the reporters in the White House briefing room, only one asks questions about this, and the answers are a study in political avoidance.

Did you know kids are being found dead on a regular basis? Drowned, dehydrated in the desert, etc. And, of course, girls are being molested, abused, raped and trafficked.

No, this didn’t come from Fox News. We watch the Hispanic new networks every morning. They are reporting some of this on a daily basis. Just a couple of days ago they found four little girls in the desert, one if them thought dead and later survived.

These events alone should be reason for mass demonstrations against the abject incompetence and callousness of current border policies. And yet, because of the overwhelming alignment of the media with the current ideological bend, the death and suffering continues.

Had this happened during the last four years you would have 24/7 coverage of the carnage, including live helicopter video of dead kids in the desert.

That’s how bad it is. This is precisely what the quoted portion of Solzhenitsyn‘s speech was referring to.

I understand his frustration. Having come from a place where military rule controlled it all, it is disheartening to see the US in the grips of ideology through a less centralized mechanism. This society is supposed to be “free” and yet people are afraid to speak up because their lives or livelihoods are at very real risk. This is sad to watch.

I meant I could be wrong, but given the historical disinterest that the media has shown about the border drama, I would imagine this is more the same apathy than a concerted effort to suppress coverage, and I would in fact argue that the sudden interest by conservative media is only because this is something that can be blamed on Biden.

Migration is a complicated business, and I definitely agree that uncontrolled migration can crash the economy. I don’t think conservative media cares about the border crisis more than just as a power grab.

If I remember correctly, last jobs report we created somewhere in the order of 250K jobs. The expectation was in the order of one million. That did not happen. We have somewhere in the order of ten million people unemployed. Do we really want to add another million or two per year through uncontrolled migration.

The principle is very simple. Under ideal conditions, if we want to allow N million people to come into the country (legally or not) we ought to have N million jobs waiting for them. If we cannot generate jobs IN EXCESS of our baseline, we should cut down on migration (legal or not). If we don't, all we are doing is adding unemployed without controls. Aside from the fact that they will require assistance we just can't provide, this isn't a formula for long term success.

When my parents emigrated to the US they went through a series of interviews at the US embassy and had to prove they would not be a burden to US taxpayers for five years. Like it or not, that's the way a country manages immigration responsibly. Yes, of course, you make some allocations for those who need help. That's just being nice people. However, you can't have 50% of your immigration come in without sensible controls. This is the very definition of insanity: You are importing unemployment, which can't lead to anything good in the long term for both the people coming in and the nation.

Please note that I am not injecting Democrat vs. Republican analysis here. You can do this purely by the data and with some common sense peppered into it. The US immigration system currently accepts about 675K people per year into the country legally [0].

Is this number too low? We could explore this argument. What metric do we use? In other words, other than "feelings", how do we objectively assess how many people per year a country --any country-- can or should accept?

The easiest argument to make is: People who can come in and make a substantial job-creating investment should be allowed in because this expands the jobs marketplace. Of course, we have to make sure the investment is actually going to create jobs. Someone coming in to buy ten million dollars of properties isn't going to create a single job. Those properties already exist and all the trades servicing them are working on them. No new jobs.

Beyond that, I think you have to look at the employment situation and see where the country might have gaps. This would change from year to year. For a period you might need doctors, welders, engineers or farm workers. Fine, have legal immigration policy reflect that.

Again, I am talking about ANY country on earth, not the US. This removes the bothersome Democrat vs. Republican arguments. Responsible immigration policy should look after both the nation and immigrants in order to ensure that immigration does not become a burden for one and a tragedy for the other.

Of course you have to allow some number of people to migrate on humanitarian basis. That's just being nice people. It can't be millions though. That's just a sad reality of the equation any nation faces.

And so, as one goes through this analysis, one never encounters a "let's allow millions of people per year into the country without controls". And that is because this makes no sense whatsoever for any nation on earth.

What I find interesting is that nobody argues with the immigration rules of countries like New Zealand or pretty much any other nation in the world. I mention New Zealand because I have a friend who moved there. They had to go through a points-based system and all the legalities to get in. And they did. The funny part is that they did not object to that system at all and actually thought it was sensible. And yet, with the other side of their face, when it comes to the US, they are full-on open borders supporters. I have to admit I don't understand this at all.

Love or hate Trump, his strong southern border illegal immigration position was the correct one for a nation that IS NOT CREATING EXCESS JOBS. We are on a fight for survival. More and more industries and jobs are being eroded by China and other global competitors. Sorry, we just can't have millions of people come in without controls. It makes no sense for the nation or those coming in.

We can't use past examples (50+ years ago) of illegal immigration as a metric to justify what's going on today. Why? Because of the thing I have been repeating: We are not creating jobs in excess. Back then things were very different. China was an agrarian economy. Today they are the second largest economy in the world, are landing drones on Mars and are sucking jobs from every nation in the world. Fifty years ago we were exploding with jobs and growth. Today we are shrinking, and, sadly, it is likely to get worse.

I don't know how to solve this equation without saying that illegal immigration at the current scale is nothing less than insanity.

[0] https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/how-unit...

My point is that on the other side of the border, I fail to see this “open border policy”. If I wanted to migrate to America (which I don’t), I would have to go through the same as your parents, my friends who applied for a Work visa, had to go through the same stuff. Just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine who is a lawyer, who has his own practice and earns a decent amount of money, got his tourist visa denied at the embassy. The legal way is already hard, those who I know nowdays who are illegally, entered legally because crossing the border is deemed too dangerous and only for desperate people.

So you think the amount of people America can house is lower than current immigration, well I don’t have the numbers but I don’t disagree with you. The thing is migrants on the southern border are already risking death. A couple of more border patrol officers might do a nice anti immigration rhetoric, but I don’t really think it’s discouraging enough, and still doesn’t address the problem of people overstaying their visa. So in my eyes, this policies, the critics of “promoting uncontrolled immigration”, and the concern about the humanitarian crisis on the border is more a political argument than something that really address the immigration problem, something that -I might need to reiterate- I agree that should be controlled.

It is far more insular than most social media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Group#1991_Soviet_coup_d...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat...

The gist of it is in August of 1991, hardline Soviet leaders, opposed to political reform, attempted a coup. As part of this coup, the elimination of Yeltsin was planned. Yeltsin was inside the Russian White House, which was surrounded by a very large crowd of civilians who opposed the coup. KGB chairman and leader of the coup, Vladimir Kryuchkov, ordered the KGB's spetzna (Alfa) to fight their way through the crowd of civilians into the Russian White House to eliminate Yeltsin. Alfa showed up to do the job, but upon seeing and mingling with the crowd of civilians, decided against slaughter.

Incidentally, Alfa is also the group that in 1979 stormed the Tajbeg Palace in Kabul and assassinated Hafizullah Amin, starting the Soviet-Afghan War.

Thank you!

Generally speaking, it seems to be clear that accusations of "antisemitism" have become a way to shutdown discussion and make someone you don't like an untouchable. It is a form of ad hominem. (A small historical note: the term "antisemitism" comes from the 19th century and refers to a racial prejudice against Jews, whereas the traditional antipathy toward Jews qua Jews was largely theological, moral, and social in nature, but certainly not racial which is a later development.)

    We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevik revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without.[35]"