How do you guys cope with the fact that the world isn't getting any better?
I'm really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I'll coast right through it. I'll also accept "I don't" and "very poorly" as answers
I realize that it is materially better than it has ever been and it continues to improve, despite very obvious issues and inequalities.
It does, but it's accomplished that over the past century by prioritizing short term growth, long term consequences be damned.
As those debts are starting to come due to collect, while it is still accurate to say that there's been an unprecedented good run, that doesn't mean the fast approaching wall ahead that has everyone else worried is a mirage either.
Both can be true.
In the past we could say that humanity is still doing terrible things but becoming better in the larger picture.
Back then it was hopeful to think like this because the things we did were terrible but not long lasting.
The problem now is that the terrible things we are capable of are now world changing and can affect us globally .... climate change, nuclear war, AI technology, biological experimention (or even biological warfare)
50 years ago we had the capability of making decisions or choices that could cost the lives of millions ..... now our decisions and choices are capable of affecting the survival of our species on this planet.
You might think that if you listen to Steven Pinker, The World’s Most Annoying Man.
I also rejoice that the largest generation of terrible people will all be dying off in the next 20 years, and the millennials will be taking over control.
So you lie to yourself, got it.
I just don't expose myself to the 24h news cycle very much. My life is good, the life of the people around me is good, and nobody is helped by worrying about things I can't change.
This.
News are the reason your mental health sucks ass. The world is doing okay actually if you just look around instead.
Or if you ACTUALLY care about real news:
CRIME is at an ALL TIME LOW in all western world
China and many other countries have taken a billion people out of extreme poverty
Communist dictators are loosing ground in south america
Inflation is back to normal levels
Solar panels and infrastructure IS becoming CHEAP
Etc
Absolutely the way to go. Everyone in my circle is doing better than they were 5-10 years ago. My outlook could be better if my country decided to nope out, uproot itself and settle somewhere sub-tropical, far away from the Russian border we now share, but since I am considering emigrating after finishing training anyway, I don’t worry about that too much.
ignorance is bliss
ya'll are scum
It's getting harder every year.
I remember well the constant fear of nuclear war in the 1980's.
I remember the wonder we felt when the Berlin Wall fell and Soviet Union collapsed. A hope of a tomorrow free of fear.
I remember the dreadful recession of the early 1990's and the steep economical rise that followed it.
I remember the amazing advancements in technology and the standard of living in the late 1990's. And at the same time, it felt like the world was coming to it's senses.
I was 21 in the year 2000. The world was full of promise, technological advancements were just pouring in, old mortal enemies were finding common ground and it seemed that we were slowly heading towards a Star Trek - like post scarcity utopia.
This age of hope eneded by the finance crisis of 2007-2008. Russia tried the waters with the war in Georgia. The general atmosphere of the world turned towards gloom again. And the downward spiral just seems to keeps going and going....
Yet I continue the work I started when I chose teaching as my profession in those golden years of hope. The kids are very different today, any class from 20 years ago would be a piece of cake compared with the problems they have now. But if a change for the better is to come, it will come from the kids. My generation is hopelessly lost in consumer greed and watching mindless "reality" shows that they somehow feel more important than real life.
I alone cannot be the change we need, but I CAN educate a few hundred kids and with good luck, maybe a dozen or few of them will have a some effect for a better future.
By realizing that it IS getting better. We live in a world now where information has exploded out of control. What this means is that we now know exactly what's going on everywhere, and it turns out that's a lot of shit.
That shit was still happening, but until fairly recently it was just out of the picture. The average person didn't know about any of it , couldn't do anything about it anyway, and thus it didn't really impact them.
Fast forward to today you hear of tragedies ALL THE TIME. Bad shit happening to good people for seemingly no reason. The difference here is that you just happen to know about it. The objective truth is that bad shit happens less today than it did at any other time in history. We just see every instance of it, not just our local community instances.
When all the bad information from the news begins to bombard me, I think back to March 2020, when the pandemic hit full swing. That might seem odd to some because many would argue that was the spark that set of the series of events that got us here. However what I see now, years later, with a bit of perspective, it was an amazing time. For the first time in human civilization almost our entire species focused in on one task and overall succeed. An existential threat to our entire way of life emerged, most people got on board and we avoided the absolute worst.
We're not meant to process all the bad things that happen in the world every day. Our primate brains are meant for small communities, not international events. Perhaps the pandemic isn't OPs thing or yours to think about, but I'll bet that almost everyone has some memory that gives them hope. Think about it, hold into it. A hopeful thing happened once, it'll happen again.
This is definitely true. A lot of people fucked around during COVID and made aspects of it worse, but they would have probably done that anyway. Overall, we did a very impressive job worldwide in managing the crisis.
If you ever think the world is shit, disconnect. Turn off the news, get off social media, spend a week interacting with your local community only. You'll see people can be pretty awesome, and you can make a very real impact in the world by helping your local community.
For the first time in human civilization almost our entire species focused in on one task and overall succeed.
Except we didn't. COVID is endemic, and it never needed to be if not for a gaggle of shithead capitalists demanding the gears of the economy be greased in the blood and sputum of "essential workers".
Well as the saying goes, ignorance is bliss. Honestly, I think its healthy to takes breaks from the news and social media if world news is getting you down, just focus on the things that you can control in your life.
I use to think like that in my 20s. But the truth is right now, it's definitely not getting better. I teach in college/univ and the amount of ignorance and entitlement I've seen in the past couple of years is alarming. Elon Musk and Andrew Tates are the role models for many young men now, there is a masculinity crisis and it's affecting everyone.
If you consider serious, global issues with empirical data, such as disease, poverty, hunger, the world is indeed improving, and has been for a while, see e.g. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-cost-of-basic-needs
Maybe it's just because of the people I'm around, but it feels like society's concepts of both masculinity and femininity have continued improving. There are of course the Tate acolytes, but they seem as much like the gasp of a dying ideology as anything. Not sure about Musk, that particular brand of personality cult prosperity gospel never seems to really go out of style.
That was already around. You had the toxic masculine movie stars of the 70s-2000s. Soldiers and fighters have been glorified since the times we've had soldiers and fighters. The only difference there is a wider audience. You also have an increasing number of reasonable voices out there reaching a broader and broader audience too. Violent crimes are consistently down, we just see all that there is.
I don't want to be rude but you really should not continue teaching (at least in the same way) if you are that repulsed or disconnected from your students.
Students will always have different priorities and mindsets than their teacher would like them to have, and most times they'll be wrong; it's a part of life in acads. Most of these youngsters have had very little exposure to the world and it is bound they'll make mistakes. That's what school is for. And they will certainly not remain the same, just like anyone from your generation as well, when they get older.
You cannot just get into teaching and not expect delinquency, that's not how it works. Just focus on getting the subject matter of whatever you're teaching through their heads and ensure everyone understands the concepts, the "bad" idealogues will eventually get sorted out themselves.
Many people in here arguing things "have never been better". It's true to an extent; things are pretty good in terms of poverty, liberties or world peace (for now). It's not great, it's never been great, but it's a decent bit better than it's been in the past. Overall.
We are, however, in an era of unstability and unrest, where it feels like things are constantly on the cusp of changing for the worse (and in some cases, are indeed already changing for the worse, like abortion or LGBT rights in the US, for example). Violence and discrimination are on the rise, global peace is being threatened, democracy is in jeopardy (not just in the US mind you), the 1% are getting WAY richer way faster than ever... To top it all off, climate change is objectively, unarguably as bad as it's ever been, and it's getting much much worse, much faster than even experts can keep up with. Like, we're headed straight for extinction and we keep accelerating toward it.
You have every right to be worried. Yes, it's easy to forget and take for granted the things we have now that we didn't even a mere 60 years ago, but many of them are very much under attack at the moment. Just because shit maybe hasn't quite yet hit the fan doesn't mean everything is fine.
And to answer your question, I've found some refuge in art, both experiencing and creating it. Reading books, watching movies, playing games, etc, especially those that echo that sentiment of fear and uncertainty for the future (or present). Trying to use all that as inspiration for my own work, I think it'd help to express my feelings this way. I am indeed doing very poorly still though, it's a lot to deal with, on top of my own personal problems.
LGBT rights in the US
LGBTQ rights in the US are, generally speaking, progressing.
climate change
I don't think doom and gloom is warranted with climate change. Many countries have long reached peak CO2. The goal now is net zero. Rich nations also need to pony up to help developing nations that haven't already spewed a ton of CO2 into the air as part of development. Unfortunately, that's looking to be difficult with internal politics in the rich countries.
Some of the progress at the recent COP18 looks to be possible ground breaking. The methane related agreements in particular could be enormously beneficial. They could decrease the amount of methane released or burned off as part of fossil fuel extraction significantly. Methane has a relatively low half life, so it will cycle out of the atmosphere faster than CO2.
I don’t think doom and gloom is warranted with climate change. Many countries have long reached peak CO2. The goal now is net zero. Rich nations also need to pony up to help developing nations that haven’t already spewed a ton of CO2 into the air as part of development. Unfortunately, that’s looking to be difficult with internal politics in the rich countries.
This is like standing on the deck of the titanic and being like “meh, we have already scraped by most of the iceberg, so we are fine”.
The damage is done, look at global sea surface temperatures they are off the charts. We could stop everything now and things would still be spiraling out of control climate wise and I am sorry but that is just the reality of it :(
A lot of weed
Same
I'm going to address your question in two ways it may be read.
The world is worse than it was
I completely disagree, I think the world has never been better. Look back even 70 years and you have the threat of cold war, other wars (Korean War, conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Middle East, ...), much more poverty, starvation (China's Great Famine), illiteracy, a lot more nasty pollutants that we've since moved away from.
To go a bit more US-centric, although much of this is mirrored elsewhere to varying degrees, you had much, much higher crime rates (possibly due to lead in gasoline), women could be raped by their husbands and had minimal rights, gay people were persecuted, black people were killed for fun (lynchings) along with other deplorable treatment, etc.
Right now you live in a world where practically all information is available at your fingertips at minimal cost, where most people will at least tolerate your presence even if you don't fit neatly into their ideal world, where we've made a lot of progress on limiting and reversing environmental damage (ozone layer). We have more medical cures & treatments, longer lifespans, greater nutrition, more education, incredible entertainment options (Netflix, Steam, YouTube, etc.).
The world is better than it ever was, but the pace of improvement has slowed / gone stagnant
Yeah I get the anxiety, things do seem more unstable than they were 10 years ago. I'm super thankful to be living in our so-far-the-best age but I don't take for granted that it can stay wonderful. Much of the benefits we now enjoy were hard-won victories that required hard work, and I suspect that to keep making the world a better place it'll require us to pay it forward by also working hard. But don't take it for a given that we're due for pain and conflict; human events are too complex to follow simple narratives and it's possible in 5 years we'll all be relaxed and thankful that these current problems fizzled out.
I just accept our fate.
Humanity will probably realize we seriously fucked up around 2050 and near the end of the century mass migration will lead to a death count much bigger than WW2 or the chinese civil wars.
The only grace is that most of us reading this thread will die from various reason before the second stage.
I will still do my part by reducing my CO2 footprint but unless we find some miracle technology producing nuclear power plant levels of energy for the cost of a charcoal power plant, shitty world leaders and corporations will ruin everything for fake wealth.
The technology already exists mate. Solar and wind are waaaay quicker to spin up than nuclear. It's a lack of political will due to entrenched industry buying out the political parties.
Solar and wind are not cheap enough
Solar on itself works between a few less than 8 hours and 16 hours depending on the solstice you are the nearest of.
And that's the theorical best.
Reality is efficiency will drop during summer because of the record temperatures each year and in winter we are seeing more sun (Haven't seen snow in 7-8 years btw) but the production is still relatively low.
If you want it to run 24h/24, you need to build batteries which adds more carbon and cost. And that's on top of the maintenance cost for the panels themselves.
Wind can work 24h/24 but you cannot predict it long term.
Wind too strong? We stop the plant. Wind too weak? Subpar production. And with climate change, your expectations on a few years basis can change very rapidly.
So how do you make sure we produce the same amount of energy with certainty? You build oversized farms more expensive than what you theorically predicted.
There is also the problem of land.
A wind or solar power farm requires a lot of land comparatively to nuclear if you want to approach the same power production.
That land can be occupied instead for housing, farming or anything else.
Comparatively, a nuclear plant can easily be circled in a few minutes by foot and produce over 1 Tera Watt of energy.
Once you compound everything, nuclear is the best solution we have at our current technology level but ridiculous anti-nuclear propaganda acts like it is a thing from the demon.(My green party almost closed several nuclear power plants. During the start of the russian war. To open gas power plant instead. Like WTF?).
So what will the rich people do?
Refuse to build nuclear because their fearmongering to push gas/oil backfired on humanity and refuse to build solar/wind because we could build 50 Disneylands in the same area.
I would love them to eat their shit and choose either solution still. But it's only a dream.
Like so:
We can’t capitalism our way out of what we capitalismed ourselves into. It’s socialism or barbarism.
Try this: Don't Believe The Hype
(DarkMatter2525 - Is Society Collapsing)
TLDW: No, things are getting better, some things aren't, but it's not an easy answer because there are 8 billion perspectives to consider. We are living longer and enjoy more technology, so there's that.
I'll watch later. I hope it isn't the same thing as Steven Pinker's "things are better than ever".
I'm also going to disagree on the "things make us happier" argument as well. Because if you're only getting things because they flaunt your wealth, it isn't making you happier.
I recommended it because .. I had just began listening to it then scrolled and saw this post, but also because I admire his critical thinking skills; he could have put out an hour long video of himself running around and screaming over clips of looting and earthquakes while warning us about the apocalypse and which loadout to run...
But he didn't. He created a criteria to answer the question then looked at available data. He could have gotten 2x more views, too..
I'm also going to disagree on the "things make us happier" argument as well. Because if you're only getting things because they flaunt your wealth, it isn't making you happier
Where did they say that?
They said we can enjoy more technology than ever before. That is 100% true.
Do you know how much joy I feel when I watch my little vacuum robot zoom around my house keeping it clean for me? It is so cool and makes me happier living in a cleaner environment.
Bookmarked for later watching
The pandemic is an interesting case because the world stopped because millions of people died. In the past that was normal. Spanish Flu sucked just as hard but people were like "oh well, try not to die".
Every family literally lost one or two children each in normal times. Look at any history of your family and 100 years ago you will see lots of relatives that died at young ages of diseases that are preventable now.
We live in an age of unprecedented health and death is an outlier. It used to be a part of everyday life.
I feel like a spectator at this point. Fully aware of how the system operates and powerless to affect change without grave consequences. Materially, I'm secure. Not reproducing, so I don't have offspring to care about their future. Fuck this timeline, maybe I'll get to return at a cooler time.
Every indivual can actually make a change, you have to realize (and more importandly appreciate) that taking small steps is equally as important to make big impact.
I avoid the news, if it's important one of my friends or family will tell me. Also, if something is going on but isn't actionable (I can't do anything about it) I try not to let it occupy much of my headspace.
Also, if something is going on but isn't actionable (I can't do anything about it) I try not to let it occupy much of my headspace.
That's probably the healthier approach.
Exactly. Do what you can when you can. Everyone needs a hand sometimes. Be that for the people around you. Even if you can't agree on everything.
Fascists took over my country, and now they use a devestating attack as an excuse to start a total war that might evolve to world war, while the rest of the world sees our country as a "faschist genocide machine" our own citizens oppose it, and suffer from it, but still being fooled by propaganda.
I'm teriified. That's the truth.
Don't have kids, save for your retirement.
I don't cope, I go out of my way to make it better: I volunteer my free time to hand out food at any of those food shelter events locally, I walk trails with a trash bag and collect trash, I care for my elderly neighbors by visiting them a few times a month without warning and insist they find me a job to help them around their house and refuse payments (but suggest I accept a piece of candy as compensation), I use my turn signals 100 meters before I make my turns when driving, I call my old friends who live abroad just to remind them I care about them if they aren't feeling good and they can always talk to me. Etc, etc.
Everyone should just ignore the eternal dumpster fires around them and try to make better as much as they can within their local vicinity.
This is it! Even if the world going to shit is as certain as entropy, you can still make things just a little better around you while you are able.
I do communist things.
The world is getting better in a lot of ways but this is despite the US, the primary state agent of death and destruction. What we can do is organize together against that while also building local class consciousness and support structures so that as that violent apparatus turns more and more inwards, our neighbors will be (1) less horrible to one another and (2) safer overall.
Is it getting worse? How do we measure the goodness or badness?
One measure of economic indicators suggests we are relatively stable.
I'm sure there are a variety of measures that are up and down.
I would argue that most measures are generally trending upward, and have been for a long while. The big difference is that now people spend their lives looking at negative ragebait articles.
It’s large emotional. Many people long for the “good old days”™, fail to appreciate what’s here now and fear the uncertain future.
With some ways of looking at things, the world as a whole is getting better, rather than worse.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190111-seven-reasons-why-the-world-is-improving
I'm pretty sure long covid and climate chaos will put a stop to that soon enough but we'll see. For now, some stuff is getting worse and some stuff is getting better.
Who should listen to oligarchs like Bill Gates? Philanthropy Is a Scam
Stoicism, move somewhere else, get active, make the small world around you better and stop reading national/world news.
This is my approach as well. If I can't change it I don't let it occupy my mind. I focus on actions I can take to make things better/mitigate problems for myself and the people I care about and that's it.
I too think that this is the correct approach. I mean if you can't change something, you can make a decision to either let it drag you down, or avoid it. I always try not to focus on negativity and I don't like drama.
Granted, this isn't always easy. And I don't know if this applies to (for example) the political situation and society in the US. I can't relate to that too much. I mean there is so much populism and I don't know what I'd do if half of my neighbors were in the mindset to vote for right-wing a-holes, there were hundreds of school shootings each year, my medication was unaffordable to me and women's reproductive rights were cancelled. I mean you can't really 'avoid' that. I don't want to bash the USA but it's somewhat beyond my own reality. I struggle with other things in my life. But all of that isn't my achievement. I was simply born someplace else.
Drugs, BDSM, and the smug satisfaction that I was always right.
So yeah, the USA isn't the world but if the place you live in is falling apart its understandable to shrink your worldview down to the that which affects you most or that you witness the most often.
Also, the world is a complicated place with lots of different actors. China is doing some pretty cool and good things. There's a lot of scary situations that probably will lead to positive change in Africa and South America right now.
Read the last paragraph on page 3. Things are not getting worse. Your perception of the world around you is cynical as a by product of our evolution and saturation of news/media.
I deliberately avoided having kids and I don't have any particular existential dread, so I'm just sort of sitting back and bemusedly watching it all play out. I just read the latest bit about one or another obscenely wealthy and/or powerful blatant psychopath doing or saying something gibberingly insane and I marvel yet again at the fact that the world is run by literal lunatics and nobody seems to even notice.
And when it stops being cynically amusing, I shut it off and go do something else.
The knowledge that it was always bad helps me. The only difference is that in generations past- we didn’t have such easy access to everyone on the internet screaming about all the different ways the world will end.
What do you mean "the world isn't getting better"? It definitely is. I mean, just look at, well, uhh... well uhhh... nevermind.
Your perspective is distorted, things are incredible and getting better by most metrics.
While we certainly have our challenges to overcome, like climate change, wealth inequality, and social problems, let's not forget how good we have it.
The snark it is strong, I can't hold it in today. I have to say, yeah, and the world economy, particularly the U.S. housing market, was incredible in 2006. Okay, that out of the way, for perspective:
All in all, I agree that we have had it pretty good for the past 70 years, and we should not forget that. But let's also not breezily dismiss the looming disasters we face, because if the world were a Titanic metaphor, we've just hit the iceberg. The buffet is still laid out, the band is still playing, the lights are on, and the champagne is still bubbling, but it'd be ridiculous to dismiss fellow passengers' anxiety.
Some might say that "your perspective is distorted." things are incredible for the top 10% of the socio-economic scale and getting better by most metrics (do not look at the numbers for maternal and infant mortality).
While we certainly have our incredibly massive, systemic challenges to overcome, like climate change (ha!), wealth inequality (ha ha!), and social problems (hahaha!), let's not forget how good we (when you say we, you certainly mean your ingroup) could have it if we tore down this corrupt edifice and built an efficient, sustainable, just world.
This is a great outlook. It's important to not lose sight of the problems that do exist and try to work towards solving them, yes. But don't lose sight of the positives, either.
My answer to the question asked would likely be, I've been depressed my whole life, what's another problem. Lol
But we do have to recognize that in spite of all of the bad we can list, there's a lot of good as well.
Facts
Preach
How do I cope? Poorly
I chose to leave after Trump got in office—& it took like two years of planning/saving. It’s had real ups & downs but overall the best major life decision I’ve made.
Where did you go? I would like to live elsewhere, but I worry about ending up in an economy where I could no longer afford to travel or retire.
SEA will probably stay affordable for a while
I look at the long arc of history and see that progress is not monotonic (always increasing or decreasing). We are experiencing setbacks to overcoming our challenges, as have those who came before us. But while we can read about years passing in a paragraph in a history book, we have to live and experience those years. And with all the challenges comes new technology and drive and awareness to solve problems. As unfortunate as it is trouble breeds innovation and commitment to change far better than comfort and easy times.
Focus on the things you can control. My emotional state has significantly improved when I decided to do this.
I just stopped caring. I just want a meal a day and do stuff to not be bored.
I mostly just pretend that thing's can get better, if I just communism hard enough. Also sex and drugs.
god I wish I could get sex and/or drugs
Not really having the option to not cope. Or not knowing how to actively choose to not cope. One of the two. For what it's worth, Tolkein genuinely was on to something with this one.
I fully embrace the fact and wonder what will be ruined next.
It sucks that it's like that.
Some very good replies here. I share some of your worries, but with some recent issues I have also gotten a lot of practice seeing the good in things. Consider these 2 angles:
First is the Louis CK routine that includes “Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.” I think it comes down to humans getting used to things that work well and taking them for granted. Compared against most people who have ever lived, we are genius magical wizards who live in luxury. Unfortunately some of our magical technologies let us see the bad shit all around the world (and close to us) that our brains haven’t evolved to deal with.
Second is how absurdly unlikely and unique the existence of our consciousness seems. We are a collection of atoms forged in inconceivably massive exploding stars billions of years ago, aware of its own existence. We are literally the universe experiencing itself.
I find great comfort in history personally. Dan Carlin (a favorite podcaster of mine) always says we must grade history on a curve. Sure, to us it looks like everything is falling apart and existence is pointless. But by very real measures things are better than they have ever been. My favorite is violence against children has been normalized as being bad.
Within living memory it has gone from being completely socially acceptable to beat children as being the preferred method of parenting to people getting thrown in jail for that behavior. What does it mean that previous to 100 years ago all of society could have been considered battered children? We are extremely aware of the negative effects of violence against children and for the very first time we are seeing a generation raised in an environment that kind of behavior has carrots and sticks motivating parents to behave properly. Of course all manner of horrid things still happen, but I call it progress that it have become widely condemnable to beat a child with a stick or take them to public hangings. It's a small victory, but it gives me hope for the future. That we may yet still build a better human being capable of taking on the heroic task of fixing this world.
Further, history has shown to me low points that I am glad to have missed. I never knew how ghastly WWI was. I am currently in a warm bed and not in a trench filled with mud, flys, dead body parts, with shells exploding constantly, seconds away from needing to charge out into near certain death. But my great grandfather knew that feeling. He watched as whole generations of young men were gassed to death and blown up uselessly. The numbers who die in war are less now. Still tragic, but less. Again, we must grade on a curve.
Death, despair, and hopelessness may be in 8K live streamed constantly now, but I assure you the analog version was something to behold. Not saying the horror of the past makes living any easier now. It is not to minimize your own pain. I just find hope that others managed to break the back of an unshakable world and hope for a better one while surviving a suffering I have not yet known. I am made of the same stuff. That gives me strength.
I'm doing good. I'm doing things that I enjoy, and I strive to improve. I believe we'll sort most of our shit out, it will never be even close to perfect, because we're dumb, materialistic, belligerent apes by nature, but it will be enough.
Being the history nerd I am, I tell myself that this has happened before. Think of the Bronze Age Collapse or the Fall of Rome. For people who lived back then, it probably felt like the end of the world. But after many generations, they still managed to rebuild. I must keep going in order to document as much history as possible for future generations in the case that humanity survives all this crazy shit that is going on.
We still don't really know what caused the Bronze Age Collapse, just that it happened and that we survived it, though it took several centuries to rebuild. The Fall of Rome happened so slowly that it was nearly invisible. Hell, there are still a few countries out there claiming the "Emporer" title and all are valid successors of the title.
This thing that is happening now is different. We know what's causing it. We know how to stop it, we're just not. And it's coming at us. Super fast. Who knows if we will survive this?
Friend, we are nowhere near the Bronze Age Collapse or the Fall of Rome. Continue to document away, as that is a noble pursuit, but we are far closer to a Great Depression or Great War than total societal collapse. Yay!
I cope with the US falling further by not living in the US, unfortunately I'm just privileged like that, sorry.
I have a few friends over there, and the state of things absolutely breaks my heart.
Sadly, I have taken moves to grow as much as I can, tend to chickens for eggs, and start just pulling back from my community because they are really terrible. Really, I should be building the community and mutual aid but the amount of people that care about nobody but themselves around here is just too high.
Depends on perspective. Ask my grandma who lives through the second world war whether it is better or worse. Our modern problem seem trivial to her comparing having no non-bombed house, very little food and very little way of taking care of her family.
Yeah take the long view and realize 100 years ago TB would be a major cause of death, prohibition would be in full force and the Mob would be powerful, we'd be 5 years post-WWI, 6 years from the Great Depression, and 16 years from WWII.
Reminds me of that Doctor Who christmas special with the soldier. "Now let's get you back to your first World War" - "What do you mean, FIRST World War?!?!!" - "Oh. Sorry. Spoilers."
The world is getting better. There are some setbacks, yes. But there are lots of normal people making the world a better place, like the guy who figured out how to make artificial glaciers with river water in India, or the guy who recently built a forest on arid land by refining local techniques in Burkina Faso. Things will be okay!
It is getting better though. We are all just facing the issues of our era's.
Tech keeps going up, we are slowly making progress on climate change, the space race is back on, and superpowers don't directly fight eachother anymore. Hell, we've proven to beat once in a century pandemics in a few years with relatively speaking barely any deaths. Life's good
Yes, we have squabbles in the middle east and Africa, but that's par for the course and not an indicator for human development. The only thing that has really gone backwards is that war has been brought back to europe
I just hope no wars will be started over here (western Europe) in the next ten years, so my sons won't get drafted.
We hope the next inevitable American civil war doesn't spread across the northern border to Canada. The ideologies already have and it's not good.
I take comfort in getting older and getting closer to being dead.
I can barely wait. The comfort of nothingness is a great help.
shrug and say that things will have to get worse before they get better
Life's pretty good here in Australia. No neighbours on the border causing problems, weather is generally good, lots of wide open empty nature to get out of the city, average salary is $93k and unemployment is low, crime is low. Inequality is a problem although our Gini coefficient has actually lowered recently. There's a lot of life to enjoy, and really the endless stream of negativity is only experienced through the media, not in real life, so I switched off the TV and just focus on what's going on around me, enjoying the people, places and activities that I like, and things feel quite positive.
Turn off the news, it's bad for the psyche.
The average salary is around $68k source
edit I should say median, not average.
I'd say median is generally more telling.
There's plenty of bad shit here too.
The country voting to not recognise that the traditional owners deserve a voice.
Our government continuing to fuel the climate apocalypse.
Housing affordability is locking basically every young person out of the market.
A lot of my friends are losing their jobs because the economy says they aren't profitable enough to employ.
Federal and state governments enacting policies to make it harder for independents to challenge them by restricting funding.
Fucking NIMBYs everywhere.
Detention centres still exist for some fucking reason.
...
Isn't Australia facing a significant housing shortage / pricing bubble?
Get out of your bubble mate, it's bad for everyone.
I just try to enjoy each day as I can without making the world any worse than I can help.
There are a lot of good news all the time. For example: I'm pro veganism and always heard that vegans make up about 2% of the population. Recently I heard that specifically in my city about 8% are vegans. That's amazing!
I really hope veganism becomes more widely adopted, or at the very least less derided than it is today. Animal agriculture is one of if not the biggest contributor to so many global issues.
Being vegan makes you better -Envy Adams
