Originally Posted by Thorn

I'll take the hardship of having peaceful nonconformists over fighting and war any day, the idea that we need our life threatened because people are annoying on Twitter is pathetic

Originally Posted by fudgiebalz

is this saying that life needs to be violent to be normal?

Originally Posted by Ele

No.

It's saying that our identification of 'violent'/'problematic' acts becomes broader and more encompassing over time, for a variety of reasons. That's concept creep (the first article).
The other part of this is that as things become rarer, if we're looking for them, we can still find them even when they're not there, solely because we are trying so hard to look for them. That's prevalence-induced concept change (the second article).

If you take these two articles together, it explains something that's happening in our culture. We look for shit to complain about in the absence of really big smelly shits (we complain about farting perhaps, which isn't even shitting).
We whinge and cry about stuff that people who've dealt with actual existential threats would brush off. We get mad at Smaiva for making a 'did u assume my gender' joke.

"Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood."

Modern living absolutely has its problems. I'm not denying that. I am asserting, however, that some 'modern problems' are only problems because people are looking to make mountains out of mole-hills (pathologizing everyday experience).

My recommendation for everybody to go get punched in the face is aimed at getting people to put their threats into perspective. Life doesn't need to be violent to be normal, but having some violence in your life can put things into perspective.

Originally Posted by sirkill1

Lol you say all this like it's a bad thing that life becomes easier for future generations, I'd love to see your attempt at surviving a cold winter in 1785 Russia, starvation style.

Originally Posted by Ele

Certainly not. Just that we become softer as true threats become scarcer, and in this scarcity of true threats, we start to broaden the idea of what a true threat actually is.

I wouldn't want to live 100 years ago, and you wouldn't either (as you said), because we both recognise the difference between true threats and soft threats.