Editing Blog/2026-02-08/Nominative Inversion (section)

== Cultural Homeostasis ==

The [[wikipedia:hedonic treadmill|hedonic treadmill]] is a hypothesis that we have a personal fixed point of happiness that we return to after some event that shifts us from it. But what if there is such a thermostat at the societal level. In an era where global thermonuclear war seemed entirely possible, where America and the USSR were at each other's throats, and normal Americans were being mobilized into combat, science fiction authors wrote about Mankind conquering space and exploring distant lands.

Now, when [[Blog/2024-06-06/It's A Good Time To Be Alive|life is better than it has ever been in the past]], out science fiction mostly seems to be about how everything can go wrong. Most speculative fiction these days seems dystopian, and certainly that is the case for the most popular of spec fi.

This isn't the only possible explanation, or even the most likely one, but I like the idea of self-similarity very much, so it appeals to me that [[Multicellular Mankind|groups of humans have emotional behaviour mimicking individual humans]].


{{#seo:|description=This article explores the phenomenon of nominative inversion, where place names with positive connotations often denote unpleasant locations, while more}}

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