>I see it everywhere and it literally seems like some kind of one-way entropic process. I can't think of anything that would reverse it. It would be like turning an omelet into an egg.

Thomas Jefferson had some arboriculture advice that seems relevant to this kind of thing.

In addition to separation of church and state, we need separation of corporation and state

If the Founding Fathers were still alive today, I wonder what they would think of all this.

Assuming they were not struck dead by future shock (photo, radio, television, telephone, mobile handsets), they would lose their damn minds that Black people have escaped slavery, non-landholders can usually vote, and the Presidency is (mostly) determined by the popular vote.

I do not think any of the founders, however amorphously the term is applied, would have interesting thoughts about cryptosystems for the examination of private photographs stored in commercial cloud setups.

They would die promptly from any of a number of diseases common to us that they have no natural immunity to.

Yeah I think it wilted a while ago, as fun as it might be to think about.

> Is there something about modern life that just inescapably creates this complacent, servile temperament in most of the population? Or has it always been there and I'm just overthinking it?

I only have anecdotal evidence, but it seems like most people don't care about problems unless they affect themselves personally right now. Also, most of us (HN aside) don't tend to think seriously about how things will go wrong, we're generally optimists that give more weight to the good something will do.