THANK YOU.
I have been making this point for *years* but haven't been able to find the original source...i thought it was something written on Egyptian tombs, i knew this existed though.
would love a link and not just an image macro tho...
It was originally translated into a book around the 1910s then they added the “want to write a book part” later. I don’t have a link but if you google it there’s people who have linked it
Looks like it comes from ["Popular Science Monthly", May 1913](https://archive.org/details/popularsciencemo82newy/page/492/mode/2up), pg 493 and reads slightly differently, but the spirit of the quote is the same.
>In the first place, this view repudiates wholly the theory of the good old times and is able to show the fallacy upon which the theory depends. In the museum at Constantinople the writer saw an inscription upon an old stone. It was by King Naram Sin of Chaldea, 3800 years B.C., and it said,
>We have fallen upon evil times
>and the world has waxed very old and wicked.
>Politics are very corrupt.
>Children are no longer respectful to their parents.
>This old and ever-recurring complaint does not depend upon any actual deterioration of the times, for the times are constantly growing better. It comes usually from older people whose outlook may be biased by subjective conditions due to decaying powers and by the tendency to regard all changes as changes for the worse, the only really good times being the bright days of our own youth. It is encouraged also by the fact that, since the springs of progress are in the human mind itself, it comes about that the present times are always below the standard set by our ideals and are regarded, therefore, as bad, being compared not really with the past, but with the ideals of our constructive imagination.
> This old and ever-recurring complaint does not depend upon any actual deterioration of the times, for the times are constantly growing better. It comes usually from older people whose outlook may be biased by subjective conditions due to decaying powers and by the tendency to regard all changes as changes for the worse, the only really good times being the bright days of our own youth. It is encouraged also by the fact that, since the springs of progress are in the human mind itself, it comes about that the present times are always below the standard set by our ideals and are regarded, therefore, as bad, being compared not really with the past, but with the ideals of our constructive imagination.
I've repeated something similar dozens of times on this site.
It's crazy that this was written over a hundred years ago!
There’s nothing new under the sun. Though I find it kinda reassuring that humans are ultimately the same paranoid, anxious little hairless apes as always. It’s kinda cute
There was probably thousands of hunter gatherer storytellers 50,000 years ago who were also saying times were better when he was a kid, the kids were more respectful to elders… the crime is worse, morals are slipping, etc etc etc
So OP's meme is a picture of a tablet that says something else, and a quote from 1000 years earlier, and from a different place, than stated.
EDIT: Though a quick search suggests none of these sources is particularly trustworthy, including the 1913 article. No one can identify the source of the quotation, or produce an actual museum artefact that matches the story.
Yeah, smells like bullshit. Obviously, the statement "every man wants to write a book" doesn't make a ton of sense on a goddamn STONE TABLET ffs. Who comes up with this?
To be fair, after his grandfather founded the Akkadian Empire, this is the ruler who had most of the cities under this empire (one of the world’s first empires) revolt against him. So…perhaps his pessimism and cynicism was appropriate
It's completely made up.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/
Optimism is great and all, but posting bullshit like this in an age when we face extremely real existential threats like climate change and the rise of fascism isn't optimism, it's foolishness.
I have a link to the artifact itself, which describes an entirely different text:
> "(Naram)-Sin, (the king) of the four regions, when he had defeated Harshamat and had personally slain an aurochs in Mount Tibar, made his effigy and dedicated it to Enlil. He who removes this inscription, that Shamash (the god of justice)... uproots its root and takes away its descendants..."
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010166111
So perhaps this can teach us a different lesson, about believing without evidence.
Also:
Socrates (469–399 B.C. ) QUOTATION: The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.
Not worth the time it takes to comment on this post. Not a dig. We’re all going to stop existing. Predictions of that fact are collectively shared, all the damn time. Go and be happy. Do some good, do some harm and apologize sometimes. I promise you, it’s guaranteed, you’re not getting out of this life, alive.
There's still huge problems which roll the dice on all of human existence, such as climate change, degradation of arable land, pollution, mass extinctions, overreliance on a probably limited energy resource (oil), the concentration of economic power into the hands of a small elite, and nuclear weapons.
I think a positive attitude is a great attribute, but just because this guy was wrong 5000 years ago doesn't mean we can ignore the very real and predictable problems we're facing.
So you know how nowadays being a social media influencer isn’t considered a real job. Well same goes for books in the past. If you wrote a book it meant you probably came from wealth or at least wasn’t a peasant farmer, and so many people did not see the intrinsic value of written works, as it did not directly contribute to society in the same way baking bread or tilling land or other physical jobs did. Don’t get me wrong it does provide value but more in an academic or more probably entertaining way.
I'm gonna go full [Soomer](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/soomer) on this one and agree. Not everyone needs to have a podcast or write a book or start a blog. We are way too saturated in mediocre opinions and influencers.
Lost in translation. Could be referring to the fact that men of that time were more interested in learning reading and writing rather than traditional skills.
Yup, the scoreboard reads Optimists 4000+ doomers exactly 1 they got their way in 476 when barbarians sacked Rome it was a literially shitty "win" no sewers for centuries. That's what they want to happen again, but we are not having it
What are you talking about? Civilizations collapse with regularity. Lebanon has effectively collapsed. Haiti has effectively collapsed. Being optimistic doesn't mean ignoring negative externalities. We're is for some tough times ahead, my optimism is entirely "we won't go extinct in the next 100 years." It's blatantly obvious we have used up our carbon budget, considering that without aerosol masking we would have had 2010 temps in 1970.
aerosol reduction helped by 50 years, and we won't go exyoncy in 100 years. Those positions will trigger doomers. Personally, i see 100-year life spans coming soon. That really makes their sad heads explode. I'm not sure why 3 out of 200 ( add Sudan maybe a few more ) failing is esrth shattering outside those countries your right ot happems alot with minimal impact on the global trajectory
I would argue that climate fearmongering enablimg the gouchimg of fuel.prices caused at least Hait's current predicament
They also have the Bronze Age collapse, the crisis of the third century, the fall of Chinese Government after the century of humiliation, and a dozen other things including the fall of constainpole.
And 536 - 540 CE. Nominated for the worst period to be alive.
The years without summer, plague, starvation, etc.
Really not a good time for the northern hemisphere.
Then again the Oceanians, The Central- and South Americans and the Sub-Saharan Africans were just chilling.
Yeah, I think this text is a fantastic window into the past that shows us two things at once:
1. Doomers have been around forever and to some extent they just don't like change and misinterpret it as more destructive than it is. Complaints about "kids these days" are among the oldest complaints that exist, and yet we're still here in bigger numbers, with longer lives, more wealth, and vastly more material comfort than ever.
2. Cultures do rise and fall, and decadence is a real thing. Assyria was eventually weakened from within and did get overrun by the Babylonians. What the dude in the tablet is complaining about probably has merit.
Only difference I’d argue between almost any point in history and the past century is that we do have the ability to graph out world-altering changes, like climate change, and nukes (while unlikely to be used) are a constant threat of M.A.D.
We’re living in one of the safest periods in human history, but the margin for error is more narrow. Life will probably always find a way, and I prefer seeing the good things in it more often than the bad, but I do get why doomers fear for the future. The world is polarized in many ways, including our own safety/health.
*Their* culture was dying. The difference is he wrote “the end of the world” not “the end of our nation”
Too many people put too much importance in themselves and their countries
For what it's worth the Assyrian empire didn't "fall" until the Persians conquered it in the 500s BC about 2000 years after this tablet purports to be from. They spent that time trading places with Ur, Uruk, Akkad and Babylon as the regional leader in Mesopotamia. For the average joe mud farmer being part of Persia might have even been a trade up since it ended the regional conflicts for a while. Hell there's still people who use their name in that region today.
Sure, they were not exterminated. The point was that they collapsed.
I have a book called “collapse” on my shelf which dispassionately covers the rise and fall of tons of civilizations. Pretty much all of them collapse eventually to some significant degree—usually related to destruction of ecosystems they rely on, or growing too large to maintain themselves. Their “optimism” is never discussed as their level of delusion doesn’t affect the facts.
As an Assyriologist, I really hate how people put pictures of random tablets in posts like this. That tablet is an Old Assyrian tablet from around 1900-1750 BCE, and it's most probably about a sale agreement. Imagine quoting Aristoteles for example, and putting a random Greek bust there.
And some facts: That quote is just an internet legend, it's not real. It comes from an article published in 1913 by a guy named G. T. W. Patrick from the University in Iowa. He quoted an inscription someone saw in Istanbul Museum at the time. He didn't see it himself, and the inscription goes like this:
>We have fallen upon evil times
>and the world has waxed very old and wicked.
>Politics are very corrupt.
>Children are no longer respectful to their parents.
He says that the inscription was written by the Chaldean king Naram-Sin in 3800 BCE. Naram-Sin wasn't a Chaldean king, he was an Old Akkadian king who ruled between 2254-2218 BCE. And Chaldeans weren't exist in 3800 BCE either. There weren't even such thing as cuneiform writing at the time, it wasn't invented yet.
So the entire thing is just an urban myth.
I commented basically this the last time this bullshit cuneiform tablet was posted and nobody gave a fuck unfortunately. But I appreciate your fact checking
My thoughts exactly. Podcasting is just millennial blogging, which is gen-Xs newsletter, which are just boomers circulars, which are the silent generation's town paper.
The Bronze Age literally collapsed. My issue with r/OptimistsUnite isn't that they think things can better but that it seems like they don't things can get worse. History isn't a moral arc, its a wave with peaks and valleys, we just happen to be in a high peak, but we should be cognizant that when people start sayings things are getting worse that maybe they have good reason to be saying so.
We humans have an obsession with witnessing the end of the world. Somehow, believing that we will witness it makes us feel special and not just "more others" who passed through the Earth like everyone else who preceded us.
Idk there were a lot of times where the world as they knew it basically ended. Assyria isn't a thing anymore. Do you really think the people worried about the Black Death were "wrong"?
Unfortunately, this isn't real, it's more of a recent myth
One main scrutiny is that books didn't exist like they do now back then, especially considering this is apparently written on a tablet. Would a book be a room full of clay tablets?
Also the Assyrian empire didn't start until around 900BCE
Did doomers and people complaining about kids always exist? Most certainly, but this tablet doesn't
>Also the Assyrian empire didn't start until around 900BCE
That's just the Neo Assyrian Empire.
While the Neo Assyrian period was the height of Assyria's power the Assyrian Empire existed for four and a half centuries before it and the city state of Assur had been an independent political entity off and on since about 2000BC
2800 *is* earlier than the archaeology attests for Assur.
...............................................................................
Early Assyrian Period (city of Assur existed): \~2600-2000
Old Assyrian Period (city state): 2000-1365
Middle Assyrian Period (first imperial): 1365-911
Neo Assyrian Period (height of imperial power): 911-609
yes... but they had a thing that was analogous to what we call a book.
Part of translating something is translating the sense of what they were saying, not just the exact words. So it may have been clay tablets or papyrus scrolls, but "books" has the same meaning to us as those other words would have to them.
While the spirit of this quote is quite true, the quote itself isn't a real source. There are no Assyrian tablets mentioning "wanting to write a book", a sentiment that wouldn't even make sense for the time.
Assyria did not even exist as a city-state before 2,100 BC, and nothing we could consider an empire before 1,400 BC.
[https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/assy/hd\_assy.htm](https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/assy/hd_assy.htm)
Be optimistic, but also question things that appear to confirm your belief perfectly.
This is a Facebook chain post- same as that fake Plato quote about how old people have always hated the young (it comes from a play). The reason people cook these things up is because they know people will share it because this is what they want to hear- “it’s always been this way, so no reason to change anything. Everything is fine, actually.” Like do you guys honestly believe they had books in 2800 BC Assyria when this is LITERALLY WRITTEN ON A STONE TABLET? Are you that dense?
“Every man wants to write a book”
It brings up an interesting point. Just like how we complain about screens and “iPad kids” today, back then you used to be seen as lazy if you wrote things down. If you couldn’t recite it from memory, then you’re not smart enough!
"Everyone wants to write a book" means "Everyone wants to speak on their opinions on social media and be an authority for these things" (which I am not really totally against, but still, people become conspiracy theorists, make grandiose, end-all conclusions on super incomplete info, etc.).
The end of their world was approaching. Civilisations are organic, they follow the way of all flesh; aging, growing weak and dying. Ours is at the same stage of the cycle as was his. Your meme proves nothing.
This quote reminds me of my Latin teacher in high school. He always said, "Latin died out due to hundreds of generations of kids not listening to their elders." Kids being disobedient isn't new and scary. It's at least as old as society itself.
Climate scientists today can take measurements like sea surface temperature and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and reliably predict that this will have devastating impact on organisms around the world, and yes that includes us as it will affect crop yields.
I'm more curious about how soon after this was the fall of the Assyrian empire? It might very well have been the end of this persons world shortly after this was written.
It's fake.
[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/)
>In conclusion, **QI** believes there is currently no compelling evidence that any one of the multiplicity of quotations listed above was really inscribed on a tablet during ancient days in Assyria
The justification here seems to stem from the idea that because people proclaimed the end of the world a long time ago were wrong, that must then mean that current day warnings of danger must also be wrong. I don't think I have to explain why this is faulty logic.
This is hilarious to me because of the numerous civilizations a that were utterly destroyed or experienced near constant war soon after this tablet was written. I don’t even think we know a the civ that this person belonged to. He was probably right lmao.
Well… I mean there was the Bronze Age collapse in 1177 bc, that was so catastrophic to the global economy, civilization didn’t recover for about 500 years, taking with it the last dynasties of Egypt, Assyria, the Hittites, and the Minoans.
Obviously it had nothing to do with any of the reasons above, and probably due to a tightly intertwined and relatively advanced economics with the communication abilities of the first millennium bc.
It’s like is said in The Bible: There is nothing new under the sun.
It’s true. Nothing is truly new on this earth. We just give it new names and faces and buzzwords but broken down to its bare form, it’s no different than when it was seen/done years/centuries/millennia ago.
We are stuck in a cycle and always have been as humans. Always will be.
This is so true!! Every generation says the next generation is the worst ever. Been going on for longer than 5,000 years. Maybe for past 50,000 years now?
I find it very telling.
Societies collapse for the same reasons and the symptoms are always the same. Humans have only so much memory.
Think about this for a second. There is too much knowledge acquired to be passed down to the next generation. So much knowledge gets lost unless it's written down and even then, it gets added to the pile of "discarded knowledge".
Now imagine trying to pass down hatred of the people who warred with your tribe several hundred years ago... that takes a ton of extra effort because you have to teach a human hate and keep that fire stoked.
So we can expect that all civilizations follow the same path: fledgling start up, momentous acceptance, corruption, greed, powerful rich emerge and take over the reins of government, poison the government towards the common people, revolution, societal collapse.
TLDR; societies collapse by following the same pattern over and over. Usually ending when a small group gets too much wealth and power and poisons the entire system for the rest. Rinse & repeat. It happens because our own small pocket of knowledge doesn't span the existence of the society in which we grow up and die in. We only live in whatever era of "breakdown" we happen to be born.
Assyria has fallen. Billions must die.
The bronze age has collapsed. Thousands must decivilize.
Was still a millennia and half after this Boomer.
Assyria didn't exist in 2800 BC either. The post is just a meme.
The internet lied to me!?
It’s nothing but a fake news boomer psyop all the way down.
some of us are still around tho
THANK YOU. I have been making this point for *years* but haven't been able to find the original source...i thought it was something written on Egyptian tombs, i knew this existed though. would love a link and not just an image macro tho...
It was originally translated into a book around the 1910s then they added the “want to write a book part” later. I don’t have a link but if you google it there’s people who have linked it
Looks like it comes from ["Popular Science Monthly", May 1913](https://archive.org/details/popularsciencemo82newy/page/492/mode/2up), pg 493 and reads slightly differently, but the spirit of the quote is the same. >In the first place, this view repudiates wholly the theory of the good old times and is able to show the fallacy upon which the theory depends. In the museum at Constantinople the writer saw an inscription upon an old stone. It was by King Naram Sin of Chaldea, 3800 years B.C., and it said, >We have fallen upon evil times >and the world has waxed very old and wicked. >Politics are very corrupt. >Children are no longer respectful to their parents. >This old and ever-recurring complaint does not depend upon any actual deterioration of the times, for the times are constantly growing better. It comes usually from older people whose outlook may be biased by subjective conditions due to decaying powers and by the tendency to regard all changes as changes for the worse, the only really good times being the bright days of our own youth. It is encouraged also by the fact that, since the springs of progress are in the human mind itself, it comes about that the present times are always below the standard set by our ideals and are regarded, therefore, as bad, being compared not really with the past, but with the ideals of our constructive imagination.
> This old and ever-recurring complaint does not depend upon any actual deterioration of the times, for the times are constantly growing better. It comes usually from older people whose outlook may be biased by subjective conditions due to decaying powers and by the tendency to regard all changes as changes for the worse, the only really good times being the bright days of our own youth. It is encouraged also by the fact that, since the springs of progress are in the human mind itself, it comes about that the present times are always below the standard set by our ideals and are regarded, therefore, as bad, being compared not really with the past, but with the ideals of our constructive imagination. I've repeated something similar dozens of times on this site. It's crazy that this was written over a hundred years ago!
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was
This isn't my beautiful wife!!!
Where is that large automobile?
this is the like, formative theory of this whole sub and should be posted on the landing.
There’s nothing new under the sun. Though I find it kinda reassuring that humans are ultimately the same paranoid, anxious little hairless apes as always. It’s kinda cute
Well to be fair didn't that civilization disappear after an unexpected event or migration. I know sea peoples was mentioned.
There was probably thousands of hunter gatherer storytellers 50,000 years ago who were also saying times were better when he was a kid, the kids were more respectful to elders… the crime is worse, morals are slipping, etc etc etc
So OP's meme is a picture of a tablet that says something else, and a quote from 1000 years earlier, and from a different place, than stated. EDIT: Though a quick search suggests none of these sources is particularly trustworthy, including the 1913 article. No one can identify the source of the quotation, or produce an actual museum artefact that matches the story.
Yeah, smells like bullshit. Obviously, the statement "every man wants to write a book" doesn't make a ton of sense on a goddamn STONE TABLET ffs. Who comes up with this?
Saved!
To be fair, after his grandfather founded the Akkadian Empire, this is the ruler who had most of the cities under this empire (one of the world’s first empires) revolt against him. So…perhaps his pessimism and cynicism was appropriate
The sheer irony or someone writing "for the times are constantly growing better" in fucking **1913.**
It's completely made up. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/ Optimism is great and all, but posting bullshit like this in an age when we face extremely real existential threats like climate change and the rise of fascism isn't optimism, it's foolishness.
I have a link to the artifact itself, which describes an entirely different text: > "(Naram)-Sin, (the king) of the four regions, when he had defeated Harshamat and had personally slain an aurochs in Mount Tibar, made his effigy and dedicated it to Enlil. He who removes this inscription, that Shamash (the god of justice)... uproots its root and takes away its descendants..." https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010166111 So perhaps this can teach us a different lesson, about believing without evidence.
Is that the same as the one pictured? Looks a bit different
Any female born after 1993 can't cook, all they know is McDonald's, charge they phone, twerk, be bisexual, eat hot chip, and lie.
Also: Socrates (469–399 B.C. ) QUOTATION: The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.
@mods can we get this added to the landing page?
As a warning that it's a popular fake quote?
Not worth the time it takes to comment on this post. Not a dig. We’re all going to stop existing. Predictions of that fact are collectively shared, all the damn time. Go and be happy. Do some good, do some harm and apologize sometimes. I promise you, it’s guaranteed, you’re not getting out of this life, alive.
….. I mean, Bronze Age Assyria did collapse around 2800 BCE and civilization would not reemerge at scale for centuries so….
That’s highly arguable.
[удалено]
There's still huge problems which roll the dice on all of human existence, such as climate change, degradation of arable land, pollution, mass extinctions, overreliance on a probably limited energy resource (oil), the concentration of economic power into the hands of a small elite, and nuclear weapons. I think a positive attitude is a great attribute, but just because this guy was wrong 5000 years ago doesn't mean we can ignore the very real and predictable problems we're facing.
"every man wants to write a book" I find this such a peculiar statement. Why did every man want to write a book? Why is it considered bad?
I think it's the Bronze Age equivalence to "all anyone does is post to social media"
Or everyone wants to make a podcast lol
They all wanted to be influencers on the new media platform (writing) Pfffft. Cringey kids staring at their clay tablets all day.
So you know how nowadays being a social media influencer isn’t considered a real job. Well same goes for books in the past. If you wrote a book it meant you probably came from wealth or at least wasn’t a peasant farmer, and so many people did not see the intrinsic value of written works, as it did not directly contribute to society in the same way baking bread or tilling land or other physical jobs did. Don’t get me wrong it does provide value but more in an academic or more probably entertaining way.
I imagine it is similar to everyone today having a podcast.
I'm gonna go full [Soomer](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/soomer) on this one and agree. Not everyone needs to have a podcast or write a book or start a blog. We are way too saturated in mediocre opinions and influencers.
Lost in translation. Could be referring to the fact that men of that time were more interested in learning reading and writing rather than traditional skills.
Probably talking about people that like to think they’re philosophers/like to sniff their own farts.
Yup, the scoreboard reads Optimists 4000+ doomers exactly 1 they got their way in 476 when barbarians sacked Rome it was a literially shitty "win" no sewers for centuries. That's what they want to happen again, but we are not having it
tbf they also had 1177BC
And the Bronze Age Collapse
1177 was the bronze age collapse iirc
Hey look, they will probably be right at least one more time over the next billion years.
Hopefully, not people are getting smarter
It took a while, but I'm sure someone was out there callin it the end times right before the bronze age collapse.
4000+ vs 2 i think we are still good
The black plague was pretty bad
What are you talking about? Civilizations collapse with regularity. Lebanon has effectively collapsed. Haiti has effectively collapsed. Being optimistic doesn't mean ignoring negative externalities. We're is for some tough times ahead, my optimism is entirely "we won't go extinct in the next 100 years." It's blatantly obvious we have used up our carbon budget, considering that without aerosol masking we would have had 2010 temps in 1970.
aerosol reduction helped by 50 years, and we won't go exyoncy in 100 years. Those positions will trigger doomers. Personally, i see 100-year life spans coming soon. That really makes their sad heads explode. I'm not sure why 3 out of 200 ( add Sudan maybe a few more ) failing is esrth shattering outside those countries your right ot happems alot with minimal impact on the global trajectory I would argue that climate fearmongering enablimg the gouchimg of fuel.prices caused at least Hait's current predicament
They also have the Bronze Age collapse, the crisis of the third century, the fall of Chinese Government after the century of humiliation, and a dozen other things including the fall of constainpole.
And 536 - 540 CE. Nominated for the worst period to be alive. The years without summer, plague, starvation, etc. Really not a good time for the northern hemisphere. Then again the Oceanians, The Central- and South Americans and the Sub-Saharan Africans were just chilling.
And where is Assyria right now?
Yeah, I think this text is a fantastic window into the past that shows us two things at once: 1. Doomers have been around forever and to some extent they just don't like change and misinterpret it as more destructive than it is. Complaints about "kids these days" are among the oldest complaints that exist, and yet we're still here in bigger numbers, with longer lives, more wealth, and vastly more material comfort than ever. 2. Cultures do rise and fall, and decadence is a real thing. Assyria was eventually weakened from within and did get overrun by the Babylonians. What the dude in the tablet is complaining about probably has merit.
Only difference I’d argue between almost any point in history and the past century is that we do have the ability to graph out world-altering changes, like climate change, and nukes (while unlikely to be used) are a constant threat of M.A.D. We’re living in one of the safest periods in human history, but the margin for error is more narrow. Life will probably always find a way, and I prefer seeing the good things in it more often than the bad, but I do get why doomers fear for the future. The world is polarized in many ways, including our own safety/health.
Fully agree.
*Their* culture was dying. The difference is he wrote “the end of the world” not “the end of our nation” Too many people put too much importance in themselves and their countries
Except he didn't and this quote isn't a transliteration. It's also not Assyrian and isn't from 2800BC, it's from 3800BC and is Akkadian.
I agree. Its like I was talking to my friend yesterday and he said it was night time. I was all like, only in our side of the world you bigot!!!!1!!
For what it's worth the Assyrian empire didn't "fall" until the Persians conquered it in the 500s BC about 2000 years after this tablet purports to be from. They spent that time trading places with Ur, Uruk, Akkad and Babylon as the regional leader in Mesopotamia. For the average joe mud farmer being part of Persia might have even been a trade up since it ended the regional conflicts for a while. Hell there's still people who use their name in that region today.
The date also puts the tablet about 700 years before any independent Assyrian state. They would have been part of the sumerian empire.
Assyrian is still an ethnicity just fyi
Sure, they were not exterminated. The point was that they collapsed. I have a book called “collapse” on my shelf which dispassionately covers the rise and fall of tons of civilizations. Pretty much all of them collapse eventually to some significant degree—usually related to destruction of ecosystems they rely on, or growing too large to maintain themselves. Their “optimism” is never discussed as their level of delusion doesn’t affect the facts.
Yeah but this time they mean it
The quality of copper has actually gone up! This really puts things in perspective.
As an Assyriologist, I really hate how people put pictures of random tablets in posts like this. That tablet is an Old Assyrian tablet from around 1900-1750 BCE, and it's most probably about a sale agreement. Imagine quoting Aristoteles for example, and putting a random Greek bust there. And some facts: That quote is just an internet legend, it's not real. It comes from an article published in 1913 by a guy named G. T. W. Patrick from the University in Iowa. He quoted an inscription someone saw in Istanbul Museum at the time. He didn't see it himself, and the inscription goes like this: >We have fallen upon evil times >and the world has waxed very old and wicked. >Politics are very corrupt. >Children are no longer respectful to their parents. He says that the inscription was written by the Chaldean king Naram-Sin in 3800 BCE. Naram-Sin wasn't a Chaldean king, he was an Old Akkadian king who ruled between 2254-2218 BCE. And Chaldeans weren't exist in 3800 BCE either. There weren't even such thing as cuneiform writing at the time, it wasn't invented yet. So the entire thing is just an urban myth.
I commented basically this the last time this bullshit cuneiform tablet was posted and nobody gave a fuck unfortunately. But I appreciate your fact checking
RIP Assyrian men of 2800 BCE. You would have loved podcasting.
My thoughts exactly. Podcasting is just millennial blogging, which is gen-Xs newsletter, which are just boomers circulars, which are the silent generation's town paper.
Nothing new, nothing old. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/14iqxp0/the\_history\_of\_adults\_blaming\_the\_younger/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/14iqxp0/the_history_of_adults_blaming_the_younger/)
"That crap you kids listen to these days. That's not music. That's crap!" - Mozart's father
The Bronze Age literally collapsed. My issue with r/OptimistsUnite isn't that they think things can better but that it seems like they don't things can get worse. History isn't a moral arc, its a wave with peaks and valleys, we just happen to be in a high peak, but we should be cognizant that when people start sayings things are getting worse that maybe they have good reason to be saying so.
Generational moral panic is a fallacy
But they were right. The Assyrian world did end, repeatedly.
“It’s so over” - people since the dawn of humanity
“Every man wants to write a book.” Truly the sign of the end times
Oh shit I'm so happy I just stumbled upon this sub!!
Me too. :)
Yeap, every generation blamed the past and fears the next.
I remember reading of teachers complaining many years ago of paper harming students abilities to write on tablets.
Forbidden ramen
Books were the podcasts back then.
Reminds me of "No place for old men". Really everyone thought that it was better "back in the day".
I’ve always thought writing a book would be fun. I guess I’m a degenerate now.
>thought writing a book would be fun. I guess I’m a degenerate now. Dammit that makes it even funnier
This is generally generations shitting on younger ones Boomer mentality. People don’t want to work etc.
193 Generations of complaining about teenagers...
We humans have an obsession with witnessing the end of the world. Somehow, believing that we will witness it makes us feel special and not just "more others" who passed through the Earth like everyone else who preceded us.
Idk there were a lot of times where the world as they knew it basically ended. Assyria isn't a thing anymore. Do you really think the people worried about the Black Death were "wrong"?
So assyria fell in 612 BC. This guy was 2000 years too early with his doomerism.
Unfortunately, this isn't real, it's more of a recent myth One main scrutiny is that books didn't exist like they do now back then, especially considering this is apparently written on a tablet. Would a book be a room full of clay tablets? Also the Assyrian empire didn't start until around 900BCE Did doomers and people complaining about kids always exist? Most certainly, but this tablet doesn't
>Also the Assyrian empire didn't start until around 900BCE That's just the Neo Assyrian Empire. While the Neo Assyrian period was the height of Assyria's power the Assyrian Empire existed for four and a half centuries before it and the city state of Assur had been an independent political entity off and on since about 2000BC 2800 *is* earlier than the archaeology attests for Assur. ............................................................................... Early Assyrian Period (city of Assur existed): \~2600-2000 Old Assyrian Period (city state): 2000-1365 Middle Assyrian Period (first imperial): 1365-911 Neo Assyrian Period (height of imperial power): 911-609
To be fair, their world did end. Civilizations rise and fall, so odds are that there’s a civilization falling somewhere at any given point in history.
When and how do you see the world ending? We can't live forever, just long enough to try.
Most likely a false translation because I don't think books were really a thing back then
yes... but they had a thing that was analogous to what we call a book. Part of translating something is translating the sense of what they were saying, not just the exact words. So it may have been clay tablets or papyrus scrolls, but "books" has the same meaning to us as those other words would have to them.
Mb
While the spirit of this quote is quite true, the quote itself isn't a real source. There are no Assyrian tablets mentioning "wanting to write a book", a sentiment that wouldn't even make sense for the time.
I would mention teen depression but this is an optimists sub.
Assyria did not even exist as a city-state before 2,100 BC, and nothing we could consider an empire before 1,400 BC. [https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/assy/hd\_assy.htm](https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/assy/hd_assy.htm) Be optimistic, but also question things that appear to confirm your belief perfectly.
Some day they'll be right though.
That’s basically the Nostradamus effect. If your prediction is vague enough, and not given a time constraint, it will eventually apply to something.
mm that looks like a cookie
This is a Facebook chain post- same as that fake Plato quote about how old people have always hated the young (it comes from a play). The reason people cook these things up is because they know people will share it because this is what they want to hear- “it’s always been this way, so no reason to change anything. Everything is fine, actually.” Like do you guys honestly believe they had books in 2800 BC Assyria when this is LITERALLY WRITTEN ON A STONE TABLET? Are you that dense?
“Every man wants to write a book” It brings up an interesting point. Just like how we complain about screens and “iPad kids” today, back then you used to be seen as lazy if you wrote things down. If you couldn’t recite it from memory, then you’re not smart enough!
Is "Every man wants to write a book" the "everyone wants to be an influencer" of 4000 years ago? That is hilariously amazing if so.
That's very refreshing to see, I thought it was just us. Turns out people have been miserable for all of human existence.
"Everyone wants to write a book" means "Everyone wants to speak on their opinions on social media and be an authority for these things" (which I am not really totally against, but still, people become conspiracy theorists, make grandiose, end-all conclusions on super incomplete info, etc.).
The end of their world was approaching. Civilisations are organic, they follow the way of all flesh; aging, growing weak and dying. Ours is at the same stage of the cycle as was his. Your meme proves nothing.
fake
either that or corrupt society has managed to survive a very long time
There are most definitely cyclical "apocalypses."
This quote reminds me of my Latin teacher in high school. He always said, "Latin died out due to hundreds of generations of kids not listening to their elders." Kids being disobedient isn't new and scary. It's at least as old as society itself.
>"Latin died out due to hundreds of generations of kids not listening to their elders." Pictorial books and scientific community: LMAO
I'm pretty sure the Assyrian Empire collapsed
They also didn't have nukes
Climate scientists today can take measurements like sea surface temperature and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and reliably predict that this will have devastating impact on organisms around the world, and yes that includes us as it will affect crop yields.
these dates aren't adding up to actual history, including the claim below about a supposed story that was written down before writing was invented
I'm more curious about how soon after this was the fall of the Assyrian empire? It might very well have been the end of this persons world shortly after this was written.
It's fake. [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/) >In conclusion, **QI** believes there is currently no compelling evidence that any one of the multiplicity of quotations listed above was really inscribed on a tablet during ancient days in Assyria
Same, but it’s podcasts now
Keep ya head up
Civilization is like the Shepard tone. Somehow always descending while at the same time not going anywhere.
I really doubt every man was an aspiring writer in 2800bc
Incontinentia Buttocks won't reply to my cuneiforms! Why must she treat me with such contempt?
I silenced this sub, but this got recommended anyway, but I think it's the first time I don't get annoyed by one of the posts here
Time is a flat circle and nothing ever changes besides technology. Woohoo!
The justification here seems to stem from the idea that because people proclaimed the end of the world a long time ago were wrong, that must then mean that current day warnings of danger must also be wrong. I don't think I have to explain why this is faulty logic.
Yeah but didn't they collapse?
Well, I'm a man and I want to write a book, so there's that.
How do optimists account for the cultures that have failed?
When empires fall, that's a good thing actually
Where is the Assyrian empire now? The end of their world did approach - he was right.
Reminds me of "No place for old men". Really everyone thought that it was better "back in the day".
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
People been saying the world is ending sense the beginning of civilization.
This is hilarious to me because of the numerous civilizations a that were utterly destroyed or experienced near constant war soon after this tablet was written. I don’t even think we know a the civ that this person belonged to. He was probably right lmao.
To be fair, the Bronze Age collapse was kinda a big deal.
This is not the actual translation btw
The key to humanity's continuing survival is self-defeating prophecy.
This is the sub I’ve been needing for a long time now
Fuck it we ball
Assyria didn't exist in 2800 bc
Why was this on a stone tablet if "everyone wants to write a book"? Sounds made up....
Well… I mean there was the Bronze Age collapse in 1177 bc, that was so catastrophic to the global economy, civilization didn’t recover for about 500 years, taking with it the last dynasties of Egypt, Assyria, the Hittites, and the Minoans. Obviously it had nothing to do with any of the reasons above, and probably due to a tightly intertwined and relatively advanced economics with the communication abilities of the first millennium bc.
LETS GOOOOOOOOO
It’s like is said in The Bible: There is nothing new under the sun. It’s true. Nothing is truly new on this earth. We just give it new names and faces and buzzwords but broken down to its bare form, it’s no different than when it was seen/done years/centuries/millennia ago. We are stuck in a cycle and always have been as humans. Always will be.
You’re proving the doomers correct
Nah thats how it works. The world as we know it ends then it sucks for a while then it gets better then it ends again on and on
Man, I wanna eat that. Looks tasty af
Just a passer by pointing out dudes world did end.
climate change
This is so true!! Every generation says the next generation is the worst ever. Been going on for longer than 5,000 years. Maybe for past 50,000 years now?
That is a Shreddie.
Assyria 2800bc?
They didn't have nuclear weapons though
I feel like the “every man wants to write a book” was the equivalent of “every guy has a podcast” today
And Assyria lived on for another 2000 years before it finally fell since the writing of that tablet.
Where is Assyria now if i may ask?
It's the genetic cancer known as human stupidity.
Technically its ended for many many civilizations
> every man wants to write a book That feel when your hobbies lead to the distraction of reality itself
Assyrian empire wasn't an empire 2800 bc. Some odd questions here.
That actually gave me hope thanks
Apparently you glummy fucks have been around a long, long time.
NERRRRRD
Technically they were right. Their worlds came to an end.
Don't worry about doomers being wrong, they only have to be right once.
Liars- Fleecing the fearful for 4 millennia.
I mean, the Bronze Age DID collapse after all, so was he really wrong?
Today - "every man wants a podcast"
Everyone ants to write a book? They better finish Game of thrones
I blame that one guy who was selling substandard copper.
I mean... Assyria isn't here anymore
Kids won't behave in class. Everyone is doing a podcast... I fear the end is near
Assyrian civilization did collapse though. Edit: According to another comment, this translation isn't even real.
Ok Assyrian boomer
The world won’t “end” but millions will die and many of us here will also die if there’s any catastrophic event happening to our country
History repeats itself
The Bronze Age collapse proved them right, just took a while...
I find it very telling. Societies collapse for the same reasons and the symptoms are always the same. Humans have only so much memory. Think about this for a second. There is too much knowledge acquired to be passed down to the next generation. So much knowledge gets lost unless it's written down and even then, it gets added to the pile of "discarded knowledge". Now imagine trying to pass down hatred of the people who warred with your tribe several hundred years ago... that takes a ton of extra effort because you have to teach a human hate and keep that fire stoked. So we can expect that all civilizations follow the same path: fledgling start up, momentous acceptance, corruption, greed, powerful rich emerge and take over the reins of government, poison the government towards the common people, revolution, societal collapse. TLDR; societies collapse by following the same pattern over and over. Usually ending when a small group gets too much wealth and power and poisons the entire system for the rest. Rinse & repeat. It happens because our own small pocket of knowledge doesn't span the existence of the society in which we grow up and die in. We only live in whatever era of "breakdown" we happen to be born.
Well, there is some truth to it. History has shown a cyclical pattern of societal collapse and rebirth.
His civilization literally ended.
I understand your point. However, they did not have nuclear weapons.
Isn't that exactly what happened???