Was the world always a fucked up place?
For those say in their 60s or 70s here. When you were in your 30’s or 40’s did you have the feeling that the world was a fucked up place? So much has been going on since I entered adulthood in the early 2000s and I feel like it’s getting more and more intense. It’s never ending. Is it unique? Or has it always been this way?
I’m not that old…
But you’re confusing reality for perception.
The world’s been fucked up, it’s just people can see it from their phones when they used to not even hear about it
Being aware of issues doesn’t make them worse, just means we have a shot of fixing them.
OP keep this in mind.
During and 18 month period in the early 1970s there was an average of five domestic terrorist bombings in the US every day. Think about that… five a day was the average.
Ah, that does warm my European heart.
The world is on fire, climate change looks to be a thing that will just happen, wars, everything getting more expensive with no hope in sight… but at least the US has less bombings!
I get that things have been shitty all the time, but generally the direction has been towards better things. I dunno if we reached a point where things are as good as it gets and getting better is more and more difficult, but I personally feel that things are in some sort of a turning point. I know I’m a grumpy fuck, but I’ve really tried to always look on the bright side of life (whistle) but I haven’t really found anything worth looking forwards to. Plaargh.
I’m not your target demographic but it’s not really a stretch to say that pretty much everything that’s happening today has happened before and will keep happening. Like others say it’s mostly because there is more coverage (and maybe some more nuance causing more opinions). Back in the 50s the US started fighting in Korea and pretty much the entire US could see why and supported it. Then when Vietnam happened, there was a bit more coverage which also caused more dissent. Since then I think petty much every 5 years or so the US has been fighting wars in the Middle East. The fight with Iran is nothing new (look up Iran-Contra for instance).
Environmental concern has been around for well over 60 years and yes, we are a lot further along but by now the smart money is on people will never be able to steer it in a positive direction so it’s pretty much damage limitation where possible.
In the end it’s not really about how fucked up global events are, it’s more about finding the light in when they all seem a bit less fucked up than it used to be.
Not an old person. But so to put into perspective:
My maternal grandmother was born in war-torn China after the japanese imperilists wrecked our country. Food was not even a guarantee… farming sucked…
My parents were born during the cultural revolution… the way they described stuff… all they had to eat was 番薯 (sweet potatoes?)… they say my generation had it better off…
I remember rations were said to be a common thing…
By my era, I had stable access to food. I remember being so picky and they scold me for me… “back in my day… all we had to eat was…”
I wanted more things to play with… its responded with… “back in my day… all we had to play with is…” (don’t remember the answer but they played with like rocks or sticks or strings or stuff like that)
Literally… all the food would’ve been a luxury in their era…
So like… in a way… westerners having access to food is already not bad…
I mean y’all are not being invaded by imperial japanese…
y’all not being bombed by russians in Ukraine…
y’all not being bombed by israel in Gaza
so…
(I’m not saying you should accept status quo, just trying to think positively by looking into how bad it could get…)
-From an American Citizen originally born in China in 2002
Edit: I also wanna mention the problem with people who grow up under these conditions… they had to deal with so much “real issues” that the whole topic of mental health is never a thing to them… “just get over it” as my parents say…
UGH WTF…
So yea… the west have mental health acceptance… so consider yourselves lucky…
No, no it was not.
Example: when they found out what caused the hole in the ozone layer, they fixed it.
If we found out now, people would say that you can’t trust Big Academia or Big Science and nothing would be done. And don’t get me started on vaccinations.
We’re sliding rapidly backwards.
Stopping climate change is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE harder than protecting the ozone layer. Protecting ozone requires switching the chemicals we used in refrigerants and propellants to other, viable alternatives. That affected products worth, generously, maybe 1% of GDP?
Stopping climate changing the vast majority of the vehicles on the planet, along with the majority of our electrical power plants. It also necessitates stopping deforestation and overhauling a wide number of industrial processes, including for basic materials like steel and concrete. And that’s not even getting into methane emissions from livestock.
All of these things add up to a massive chunk of the planets GDP. It’s an extremely heavy lift, and it’s not fair to say that the world has gotten worse because we’re struggling more with climate change than the ozone hole.
My local grocery carries deposit-bottle drinks of some varieties (mostly milk and soda, both of which are produced locally, sometimes tea and other drinks), so they are still around in some cases. I’m also a big fan of grolsch beer because it comes in nice swing-top bottles that are great for use as a home brewer, or for making sauces or whatever you may like them for. The beer itself isn’t that good imo, but it’s basically free with the purchase of bottles, as that’s basically the cheapest way to get swing-top bottles of that size.
Very importantly, only the one grocery store carries the glass bottle soda, though there are 4 others within a 10-minute range. So it’s entirely possible that there is somewhere near you that has it and you just aren’t aware of it.
No one could see the ozone hole. We had to believe science and everyone did.
meanwhile climate change is not just easier to understand, but becoming apparent in everyday life. There’s been an overwhelming consensus in science for half a century. How do people still doubt? Or what kind of hatred could make you actively resist changes to mitigate it?
You’re right on both counts.
Like most things though it depends what metric you’re using.
Access to medical care for example is better than its ever been.
Access to medical care for example is better than its ever been.
Only in specific parts of the world. Other parts have always been behind, or straight up non-existent, and in one country access to medical care is actually getting worse when it really has no reason to.
Pick a metric of badness like rates of war death, childhood mortality, communicable disease, or extreme poverty.
They’re all low now compared to most points we can estimate in human history. Look at an interval of a decade instead of a year to smooth out spikes from relatively small events.
Over half a million people have died in the Gaza and Ukraine wars, and that’s terrible. It seems like now is pretty bad as far as war goes. World War 1 killed about 20 million. World War 2 killed about 80 million. The perspective is staggering.
A couple centuries ago, half of all children died before adulthood. Now it’s 4.4%. One in 20 children not surviving their childhood is certainly tragic, but far less so than one in two.
All people will die, so does it really matter if its sooner than later? When the prospects of actually living are under the global control of the few? Their chances of having food, a stable climate, and freedom are getting reduced every year? When they will likely face servitude to those with wealth, a surveillance state, mass incarcerations, and if lucky simply become a wage slave?
Twenty years ago I might have agreed with you based on statistics. Now I don’t think so.
Since you mentioned infant mortality, for the first time in twenty years the rate is getting worse. Worth noting that in the US Mortality rates are especially high in states where laws were passed to restrict abortions after overturning Roe V Wade. In Mississippi there was actually an emergency declared when the rate nearly hit 10%. It skews the statistics, but the point is that people are making horrible decisions.
This is not the US alone, although they are leading the way in misinformation, anti science, and populism for power. Its a global phenomenon, and does not bode well for people at all. Diseases are coming back, war is back, and the consequences of global energy and food dependence are extreme compared to the past.
Globally estimate about 7 million people will die prematurely every year from air quality alone. That means in just 3 years, more people will die from breathing than in WWI. And we are not doing anything about it, in fact globally it is just getting worse.
We have breached the boundaries of climate change, freshwater use, ocean acidification, and biological diversity. There has never been a worse time on the planet than right now.
All people will die, so does it really matter if its sooner than later?
I think most people would rather die at the age of 90 from heart failure than at the age of 9 from smallpox.
Their chances of having food, a stable climate, and freedom are getting reduced every year?
Those are valid concerns, but the trends were moving in the right direction until recently. I’m concerned about backsliding too, but it’s not clear whether we’re seeing a long-term reversal or just some turbulence.
We have breached the boundaries of climate change, freshwater use, ocean acidification, and biological diversity. There has never been a worse time on the planet than right now.
This is a picture of the Cuyahoga River on fire in 1969. Here’s a look at the air in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
We’ve come a long way on environmental protection in the past half century. We still have a long way to go, and as with other issues, there has been some backsliding. I’m pretty optimistic about the long-term trend.
Believe me, I like your optimism.
We’ve come a long way on environmental protection in the past half century
If you are talking about the US, it is actively dismantling those protections now. I mean look at the fact that they are still growing corn(!) to make ethanol to put in gasoline. What a waste.
I agree LA looks better now than in the 70’s, but even with all the effort it still is US’s smoggiest city for 25th time in 26 years.
But look at all the other places were the pollution is dust and heavy metals like the Salt Lake in Utah. All the water diversion, and climate change, is going to come to a reckoning. Look at the water system that feeds LA (Owens Lake), it is the largest human-caused dust storm sources in the United States. They are trying to fix it, but what can be done?
This is happening all over the world. I think we are well beyond being able to mitigate this.
Warmest artic temperatures ever, with more than double the global rate of temperature change. Melting of permafrost and ice at an all time record high rate. Lowest sea level ice, June snow cover extent is half what it was 60 years ago. 200 Alaskan watersheds are now orange with iron and other elements that are polluting them that were not there a decade ago. Whole communities are being relocated and we are just starting to see the effects. Something like 250 million people will be displaced from rising water by 2050. 45 million people were displaced in 2024 from heat, with a projection of 2.8 billion likely to become heat refuges. The worst part of both of those things is that also means crops are going to be displaced too.
I believe all of this will cause the wealthiest to see opportunity to extract and plunder instead of understanding the implications and trying to mitigate it. I believe people will be convinced that they need to take it before someone else does. People seem extremely stupid or selfish. It makes me wonder if we aren’t seeing long term covid brain at this point.
We could go on and on with environmental problems, and we are stating to see impacts like I mentioned before:
Youth and Young Adult mortality rates are increasing. Heat related mortality for people over 65 is up 85% since 2017. That’s half a million people a year from it being too hot to live where they grew up.
I think we are way past the point of no return.
As a little preface here, I teach philosophy and world religions at community colleges for a living, and so I spend a good bit of time reading texts from ancient cultures.
The relevant thing here being that it’s pretty common to find writings from just about every point in human history that talk about their own time as one of terrible injustice, iniquity, etc. often in ways that sound like they could have written today.
So, I’d wager it’s always been this way, and not just in the last century.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail
The Middle East has definitely gotten worse.
It really depends on how you define it. There have always been locations and groups where things were terrible and there have been locations and groups where things were good. Often the locations were the same but the groups were different.
In the US, there was a general sense that things were gradually improving that may have gone back as far as World War II and lasted through the 70’s. Not that there weren’t a lot of problems, just that society seemed to be recognizing and working on them. The conservative resurgence in 1980, lead by Ronald Reagan and Newt Gringrich, pretty much ended that positive trend. Since then we’ve seen active efforts to divide people, to encourage prejudices, and, especially, to destroy the education system. That last is critical, because it makes propaganda and other forms of social manipulation far more effective.
The US is now living with the result of allowing those changes. There are vast disparities in education, wealth, and power across the population. Many people on the low end of those distributions have been convinced to blame other groups that are also on the low end. That has allowed those at the high end to corrupt our political and economic systems to their advantage.
The current situation is not sustainable, but it will do incalculable damage to hundreds of millions of people while it exists. And we don’t know what will follow it.
There is strong evidence that humans became successful as a species because of their ability to put interests of the group before their own. Those instincts have been subverted, but they are not dead. That is what gives me hope for the future.
Generally, things were always fucked up. However, two major changes between this generation and previous ones:
Leaders were generally portrayed as being more competent than now. Even leaders who were considered dumb at the time kept themselves to a far higher standard than now.
The media landscape is more fractured now than before. It was common for television shows to be seen by a third of the country. It made things more uniform culturally. A lot of that is gone
assumed the vast majority of people still wanted it to be better for everyone.
You’re still right. They’re just propagandized into believing that what’s better for a tiny minority of rich people will make things better for everyone else.
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