get into areas like solarpunk that hold out hope against the dystopia
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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Asklemmy
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
Exactly. Look at any graph from the last 50-100 years from live births to life expectancy, from crime rates to living standards: life is objectively better and better, at least in the Western world.
Stop feeding yourself with negativity all day long. Grab a beer, watch a movie, go hiking with your friends etc. Do this regularly without reading too much "news" and you'll feel it soon enough.
It very much varies depending on where you look, but your timescale is skewing your comparison. If you were to look at the Japanese economy today compared to the past 50-100 years, it would look like everything is amazing because of the massive economic boom in the 80s. But that only lasted about a decade before stagnating for the past 30-40 years, and that stagnation has become so bad that Japan is very much at risk of deflation destroying their economy. The life expectancy in the US has fallen several years in a row since COVID.
There have been major improvements in society in the past century, but that means little to the man who can't afford insulin anymore because the pharmaceutical company decided to increase the price by 1,000% because the US government won't do anything to stop them, or the millions of Americans saddled with absurd amounts of college debt that will even follow them through bankruptcy - the only form of debt that does - because they changed the laws in the past 15 years to ensure that it does. In the US, generations post Baby Boomers are objectively doing worse than their predecessors across many aspects used to measure quality of life - largely those related to finances in any way, shape, or form. I just watched a video about the infantilisation of Millennial women that spent a long time talking about how the entire generation's inability to hit the same metrics considered for "success/adulthood" in life compared to their parents has given rise to stuff like the use of "adult" as a verb instead of a noun (adulting - a thing you do on occasion instead of a thing you are).
Noteworthy quotes from the video relevant to this discussion:
- There are arguably four main markers that constitute traditional adulthood: housing, finances, marriage and parenthood, and agency.
- According to a 2021 study in the US, Millennials had the lowest home ownership rate of any adult generation. Only 43% of Millennials were homeowners, well below the average of 65%.
- There's been an almost 15% rise in the number of non-dependent adult children living at home in the past decade. About 30% of 25 to 29 year olds now live with their parents and more than one in ten adult children age 30 to 34 do.
- According to Forbes, 52% of non home-owning Millennials aren't saving for a down payment. And of these, many cite underpaying jobs or joblessness as the reason. So it isn't just that homeownership is becoming a reality for Millennials later in their life than the previous generations, because for many it isn't considered a reality at all.
- It's not exactly news, but it is worth including that wage stagnation and rising house prices mean the income levels and therefore purchasing power of the average Millennial is much less than it was even a couple of decades ago. According to reporting from the Urban Institute, those earning the median income in the US or below can only afford 20% of the properties on sale in the US. Compare that to the roughly 50% of homes that they would be able to afford in 2016, and you can see the pattern here. And this is especially impactful to those on minimum wage.
- According to 2019 research by the Economic Policy Institute, the federal minimum wage was worth 17% less than in 2009 and 31% less than in 1968. If minimum wage had kept pace with productivity since 1968, it would now be $24 an hour instead of $7.25. And we see this across the Millennial experience. Hobbies become side hustles as the need to monetize spare time to keep up with the rising costs of living means salaries aren't enough anymore.
- Journalist Sarah Hayford investigated the birth rate in the US across the decades and found "After the highs of the baby boom in the mid-20th century and the lows of the baby bust in the 1970s, birth rates were relatively stable for nearly 50 years. But during the Great Recession, from 2007-2009, birth rates declined sharply - and they've kept falling. In 2007, average birth rates were right around 2 children per woman. By 2021, levels had dropped more than 20%, close to the lowest level in a century."
- Finances of course play into this. Weddings are expensive and children even more so. In America, without access to a nationalized health service, even birth itself can be unaffordable. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, labour costs on average are more than $4,500 per childbirth even if you're insured and the price of maternity and newborn surgeries has risen by 60% over the past decade. That's not to mention childcare costs.[...]One survey of almost 600 millennials found that nearly three in five of those without children said they didn't have any because of their financial situation.
- Figures from the Office of National Statistics in England and Wales showed that only 213,000 heterosexual couples had married that year, down more than 50% since the peak in 1972. The number of 25 to 35 year olds who are unmarried had more than doubled since 1991.
- Adulthood is often perceived through the lens of you "leaving the nest" - when someone goes out into the world and makes a life independent of their parents; no longer living at home, depending on family income, or being under their parents' control. Adulthood in this way is marked by a kind of agency and competence that you don't have as a child or teen. You can make your own decisions, create a life for yourself that's built around your own sense of self and your own values. The three previous markers of adulthood I talked about - stable housing outside your family home, healthy finances, marriage and parenthood - they're all linked. They interweave and compound each other. They allow a sense of this adult independence and agency; but once one drops off, the others come tumbling down as well. If you have no stable place to live, no stable income, no stable sense of family, what does a stable sense of adult self look like?
The rest of the video isn't really relevant to this topic, but it's an interesting watch with a good perspective on the experience of Millennial women so I'll link it here. It even has stuff like a section about how all this affects queer women specifically and how the LGBTQ+ community has a different sense of time compared to cis/hetero people due to the environment they grow up in.
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Burying one's head in the ground is a terrible response. If everyone were to do that, nothing will ever get better. We need to be aware of the things we can change and work towards that goal.
Also, living longer is not always better. Go visit a memory care facility or a person who has been brought back from the brink of death only to prolong his suffering.
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.
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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.
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.
Don't have kids, save for your retirement.
I don't agree with the premise. The world on average is better than it has ever been and it just keeps getting better every year. It's understandable that heavy consumption of news might make it seem otherwise but virtually every metric you'd use to track this shows that things have been improving and keeps doing so.
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.
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.
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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.
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?
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 βEverything is amazing and nobody is happy.β 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 havenβt 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.
Stoicism, move somewhere else, get active, make the small world around you better and stop reading national/world news.
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I just try to enjoy each day as I can without making the world any worse than I can help.
What do you mean "the world isn't getting better"? It definitely is. I mean, just look at, well, uhh... well uhhh... nevermind.
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!
How do I cope? Poorly
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.
I just stopped caring. I just want a meal a day and do stuff to not be bored.
Stoicism. Is there something that I can do about it?No. Is it under my control to change this? No. Then I move on and do the best I can be a better person and be more empathetic.
Like so: 
We canβt capitalism our way out of what we capitalismed ourselves into. Itβs socialism or barbarism.
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.
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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.
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I focus on the areas I can impact. So far that's going OK. As for the state of the world I tell myself that it's probably not as crazy as the media makes it out to be and most of the time that's true. I'm not American so it makes it easier to dismiss American issues.
Pretty well. The resistance lives. We are all part of it.
Well I eat quite unhealthy, so I'm thinking I'll probably die earlier then most. Sooo I guess I got that going for me.
Thatβs a very relative and personal question. Because for me the world is getting better. Not everyone lives in the US, here we graduate university with money saved instead of being in debt
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Personally I am not really worried. Maybe I am in denial but I think a lot of the negative stuff is way over exposed with 24/7 news cycle and crazy social media.
Bad news and anger drive engagement metrics the best so that is all you will hear about.
So everything I hear I just automatically assume it is way over blown and I should lower the worry factor.
If it is getting overwhelming I would recommend you unplug yourself for a little while and do something you enjoy.
2023 has some amazing games come out maybe pick on of those up and give it a try?
I just hope no wars will be started over here (western Europe) in the next ten years, so my sons won't get drafted.
the fact that the world isn't getting any better
I think you've beggared (begged) the question.
I try my best to understand it better and change the little things I can. I know that won't change the world much so it isn't very fulfilling. Anyways I often think "at least it wasn't my fault and I tried".
In the same position as you, I'm quite privileged living here in Europe, if it all goes to shit I will be fine. I hope I can make the world more fair for everyone anyways.
The world is getting better in a lot of ways but the uplifting headlines donβt garner clicks and views. A lot of people only post the doom-and-gloom headlines.
Lemmy hasnβt been any better than Reddit in this regard.
Title mentions the world.
Body worries about the US.
Nice US defaultism.
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I've been reading about increasing unionization and strike activity, leading to better deals for large groups of workers. The industry-level negotiations we're already seeing are helpful in isolation; but that's also the kind of energy that can lead to economic reforms that have a real impact on quality of life. Workers seem like the little guys, until a lot of them are pulling in the same direction, and then suddenly their demands become existentially important.
About a century-ish ago Americans were worse off than they are now. That led to desire for change, which led to decades of trust-busting, unionization, and regulation. We got things like weekends off, and a livable minimum wage. And not entirely unrelated, we also got national parks, the EPA, and endangered species preservation. We've back-slid a lot since those advances. But we can get them back, and push the needle even further next time. We did it before, we can do it again.
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