[stavros]

> The consensus in the west, online at least, seems to be that everything sucks and is getting worse.

It might be so in words, but it's not so in meaning. I understand what the GP means, the west has a mindset of "things are terrible and getting worse, the elite rule us, but this is still the best country in the world". The eastern mindset is more of a "this country is shit, but there are some nice things, and we try to focus on those".

It's hard to communicate a whole culture in a few comments, but the sentiment is very different.

[Vektorceraptor]

Exactly. One of the reasons why the West feels so empty and artificial is because it has lost this complex understanding of the world and people and acts only according to simple maxims, logical sentences or final conclusions. In principle, all of life has been reduced to the pure logic of political economy and statistics. Language, thinking, arts and freedom become impoverished. Now that life is so simple and can be controlled politically and economically, even the existential problems are being reinterpreted. They suddenly become logical problems themselves, solvable through calculation. Suddenly they are overcome with optimism that they can in principle be solved, and for everyone equally. So we don't have to worry about anything anymore and can just trust that someone will find the algorithm for it.

I think the only reason people can't read between the lines anymore is because they're too quick to get hung up on words that can be used as criticism. This destroys mutual understanding immensely.

[stavros]

> I think the only reason people can't read between the lines anymore is because they're too quick to get hung up on words that can be used as criticism. This destroys mutual understanding immensely.

Unfortunately yes, this has become much more common now. "I'm offended by your words, therefore you have no right to say them" is a thing that is very widespread. Yes, free speech does mean that you allow poisonous ideologies to spread, but a lack of free speech means that you allow them to ossify and persist because nothing can be challenged any more.

[bluetomcat]

It's an ongoing path of over-rationalisation which is developing since early modernity. The current trend of the "appification" of the entire human condition is just a late manifestation of that intellectual lineage starting at least since Descartes and Spinoza. All aspects of life are seen through a rigid, mechanistic structure of institutions, rules and behaviours. "Anecdotal experience" is often discarded for a unique "reputable" source of truth.

[stickfigure]

Wait a second. You accuse the West of being overly reductionist? Isn't that an incredibly reductionist thing to say? There isn't a monolithic "West". There's billions of people with widely divergent attitudes and beliefs.