Absolutely. And in so many way. I’m only in my 40s and I feel like I’m living in a vastly different world than the one I was born into.

The rate of change is unlike anything humans have ever had to cope with in our 2 million year history.

For almost all of human existence, there wasn’t even a CONCEPT of progress… no sense that humanity was going anywhere. Your life was virtually identical to that of your great great great grandfather, and would be the same experience had by your great great great grandchild.

I remember a world of rotary phones, small towns with personalities before chains homogenized the world. I remember how the United States had a whole different personality before 9-11. I remember when Republicans had actual plans for governing (OBAMA’S affordable care act was basically a clone of Bob Dole’s plan). I remember the world before the Internet, when malls were packed and buzzing, when shopping in stores felt magical and not like a ghost town.

I remember analog and even black and white TVs. I remember the first video games and PCs,b dial-up Internet, browsers before tabs were invented.

I remember when acid rain was there number one environmental concern, and how we actually accepted the science and made policy to fix it.

I remember the bugs.

I remember so many more bugs. The night alive with fireflies. Windshields plastered with splatters on the highway.

I remember paper maps! FM radio. Cassette adapters.

The world is so, so, so different. It changed so fast.

Republicans became a suicide cult.

The government stopped breaking up monopolies, and started bailing out too-big-to-fail banks.

The United States tortures people now. People never charged of a crimes were tortured at Guantanamo Bay.

I grew up in a home that my parents bought cheap. They had two cars. They took us on vacations every year. They saved up for retirement. My dad had a PhD. He did well.

I have a law degree. I will never own a home. I will never be able to afford even a single vacation. I will never be able to retire.

They rolled back Roe.

They staged an insurrection.

I’ve been working with GPT-4 night and day since it was released to the public. I’m 100 percent convinced that with a little supplementation, it is the first artificial GENERAL intelligence.

It can already create better writing and code than MOST of the human population.

Where will it be in 5 years? 10? 20?

It’s going to be smarter, funnier, more creative, more thoughtful than all of us. In our lifetime. WHY, then, are we even HERE at that point? Why do we even exist?

These were questions for science fiction. For the future.

It’s happening NOW. WE, of all humans in the span of history, are the ones who will see our species become obsolete.

So yeah. Let’s take moment to realize how cosmically, historically insane it is to live in this moment.

You ever watch movies from the 90’s to 2001? Notice how they are so damn light, jovial, inconsequential, happy, and just plain old fun? I’m talking American Pie, peak 90’s humor, plus like Adam Sandler movies that were actually funny like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, Dumb and Dumber, Road Trip, Dude Where’s My Car, things like that. They really capture the spirit of the 90’s. There was this sense of optimism and joy that the cold war was over, technology is taking off, maybe we’re about to enter this utopian future that Star Trek is always talking about.

Then boom, 9/11. Those first few days and weeks were something else. Unity like I’d never experienced before, it was incredible, absolutely dominated every conversation like nothing I’ve experienced since until Covid.

Then we started to fundamentally change in horrible ways. The Patriot act. Warrantless wiretapping. Torture. Illegal aggressive wars. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive first strikes. “You’re either with us or you’re against us.” Free speech zones. Military WORSHIP where if you said a single fucking word against the military you are basically a treasonous bastard who should be shot. It was so fucking terrifying.

America is basically a textbook example of someone who went through a major trauma, had everyone’s support almost universally, and then instead of getting therapy and working through it and resolving the issues that caused the trauma, it started spiraling out of control. Pushed away friends and allies, started fights it couldn’t win, got more and more aggressive and closed minded. Radicalized.

It’s a shame you didn’t get to know America before 9/11. I was 19 on 9/11 and I barely got to know the country. It was far from perfect and everyone knew it, but the place we are at now is DIRECTLY related to 9/11 and I fucking hate it.

Going to copy-pasta my response to the other reply, but it rings true to your reply as well:

I could definitely see that, thanks. It’s been a great frustration of my life to see “American the brave” which regularly seems to be “America the scared”, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve increasingly found it (and many post 9-11 policies) ridiculous. I hope we can fix this in the coming decades, I wasn’t old enough to speak up or understand what was going on then… I am now.