How do you guys cope with the fact that the world isn't getting any better?
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
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Your perspective is distorted, things are incredible and getting better by most metrics.
- The average person today lives better than kings of old.
- We have abundant water, food, and sanitation. In America, food is so subsidized that it is ridiculously cheap by historical standards.
- Your odds of dying to violence or disease have never been lower in all of human history.
- You have all human knowledge at your fingertips, and technology is expected to keep improving our lives in novel ways.
- You can visit any place on Earth in a matter of hours and have access to cheap exotic foreign goods.
- Civil rights are protected a lot more today than they were in many/most civilizations of the past.
- Entertainment is abundant and cheap, and takes forms that people of the past could only dream about.
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:
- The standard of living for most of the world has declined in the past couple of years, and the trend seems likely to continue.
- We don't have enough water in the U.S. Some of that subsidy that makes food artificially cheap is in the form of fossil water from rapidly-depleting aquifers, or surface waters that are facing long-term decline, like the Colorado River. The populous western United States was settled during a relative wet period, which is drying out. It only seems abundant now because we're not conserving it for the future.
- The odds of dying to violence seem poised to increase dramatically in the very near future, what with conflicts emerging around the world threatening to turn into regional wars, the prospect of climate migration and contention over resources (especially water) increasing conflicts, and the real prospect of the collapse of democratic government in the U.S. As for disease, the infectious disease experts tell us that the prospects for another global pandemic in the coming years are good.
- The means exist to visit any place on Earth in a matter of hours, true, but they are not equally available to all people.
- Civil rights are under active attack and in steep decline.
- The year in which the number of books published exceeded the number than a human could possibly read occurred centuries ago. The abundance of entertainment options is really a non-sequitur to quality of life.
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.
I agree with all of this whole heartedly. I particularly like the titanic metaphor.
It seems absurd to me to say that "things are going great! we have abundant food & water!". Science is telling us very clearly that water scarcity is going to be a huge problem in the near future.
We're presently living through a mass extinction event also - very concerning as regards food stocks.
water scarcity is going to be a huge problem in the near future.
How near?
Judging by the skyrocketing prices of arable land in high rainfall areas... now ?
Don't forget accelerating global warming that will get catastrophic in just a few decades, even if we went carbon negative right at this second
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).
- The average person in a G7 state today lives better than kings of old.
- We in G7 countries have abundant water, food, and sanitation. In America, food is so subsidized that it is ridiculously cheap by historical standards.
- Your odds of dying to violence or disease have never been lower in all of human history unless you are one of the world's 100 million refugees, live in Africa (pop. 1400 m) or Central America (pop. 52.7 m), or in one of the world's 27 [1] current conflict zones (approx pop. 2800 m)... that's over 4 billion people or half of humanity
- You have all human knowledge at your fingertips, and technology is expected to keep improving our lives in novel ways as long as you can afford it.
- You can visit any place on Earth in a matter of hours if your passport permits you to do so and as long as there is jet fuel and have access to cheap exotic foreign goods which are unreliable, break easily, produce garbage, and are slowly killing the planet and its peoplr.
- Civil rights are protected a lot more today than they were in many/most civilizations of the past unless you're trans-, or black, or a woman, or a black trans-woman.
- Entertainment is abundant and cheap, and takes forms that people of the past could only dream about.
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.
Facts
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.
Preach