Comment is WIP. I may add more comments in or below as I think about it.
Totally. Well identified. I'd always been dimly aware that this was a thing but your words really brought it into focus for me. Thank you. Sometimes discussions on hn can really be enlightening.
Thinking more about this I had the inspired thought that perhaps this is about a sort of civilizational decline in that instead of coming up with new stories, (inspirationally new tales of new things) we are just like a snake eating its own tail, like endlessly copying (a copy of a copy of a copy, in the fight club lingo), like the criticism that we hurl at the East (they are endlessly copying things) but in fact we're just endlessly copying things in our in our own culture. rather than delivering new, We're just constantly deconstructing.
and that might be a symptom or even a cause of the sort of decline that we're in...
Very interesting reflections and nice to be inspired by your comment to draw these two points together: the sort of civilizational decline of the West, and this trope about endlessly deconstructing histories that we're obviously engaging in.
Tho I get if you don't find that interesting. But that seems to be willfully looking away from something that's happening in the culture. okay
It wasn’t this guy, Bob, it was this team; it wasn’t this team, it was really their moms who gave them a healthy breakfast each morning; it wasn’t really their moms, it was the vision and leadership of this guy Bob who was very troubled; it wasn’t this guy Bob but a woman and another guy on his team who were robbed of credit despite their struggles; it wasn’t the woman and the guy, the sugar industry lobby conspired to keep you from knowing the real story; damn, but this guy bob was cool; Bob was enabled by an industry supported by child labor.
By unproductive I mean not adding much of substance but looking for rando new angles to make the story “interesting”. One of those angles comes with the accusation that you’ve been a willing victim of perpetuating untruth but here’s the REAL story.
And I fully realize I’m old man yelling at cloud here. This is the way of popular culture story telling, but there’s some unspoken bargain in the dynamic with the audience that I feel is a bit insulting. That history need spicy new angles or interpretation to be of interest; that these layers are so often pitifully thin takes; that you stick around long enough you see it go full circle more than once. It’s a distraction from real learning.