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?
You’ve never had smallpox.
You probably have never been hungry. Famine used to be a thing that just happened every ten years or so.
You’ve probably always had ready access to drinking water.
There’s always been wars, people doing terrible things. Slavery and genocide are pretty much par for the course whatever the ethnicity/region.
By most metrics this is the safest time to be alive.
But ya, shits pretty fucked still. So I say we all wake up tomorrow and try and do a little better.
Didn’t know I needed some good old fashioned pessimism to ground me today. Thanks!
Always has been, the big difference is it wasn’t streamed straight into your eyes in real time
Im 59, it was just easier to plead ignorance back then. Hell, beating gays was seen as ok, raping your wife was quite legal, fucking kids was mostly ok, racism was seen as humour, my mother took up teaching as she said the other career she considered forced you to leave if you got married (bank teller).
We slaughtered people all over the place with impunity, overthrew governments. Same as today really.
My mistake? I assumed it would get much better when my cohort of Gen X came through, same as young millennials think today. It’s not worse, it’s just we’re more aware.
I assumed it would get much better when my cohort of Gen X came through, same as young millennials think today.
TBF the same generation has been in power for 30-40 years now. If the torch had actually been passed it would be a different timeline.
I mean, your cohort still hates trans people and isn’t sold on the rest of the rainbow even if you aren’t rabid homophobes anymore
edit: ooo, downvotes from folk whose favorite game growing up was smear the queer
smear the queer
I doubt. Maybe I can’t generalize from my own ignorance, but we had no idea what this was referring to. It was no different than “kill the guy with the ball”, but my mom didn’t like us talking about killing our friends and brothers
ignorance is no excuse for your bigotry
It’s exactly analogous to someone using the n word because that was common usage at the time time, compared to using it now when all the negative associations are clear and (most) usage is not acceptable. Not the same at all
True story: growing up i thought « to gyp » was just kid’s language for « to cheat someone ». i had no idea it was pejorative until i was an adult. no one was telling me Roma people were bad - i didn’t even know the connection. young people today would probably call me a racist for using that term as a kid, but i legitimately had no idea, and i will never use the term again now that i know.
damn, you went straight from Queer to Nigg–? what the fuck? you are not slaves and not that oppressed. get over yourself
Not at all. I’m a sheltered white dude, oblivious in my security. But it’s important to point out that ignorance is a thing: we should know better but didn’t always.
Using offensive/insulting terms ignorantly may be wrong but it’s not the same as intentionally
that comparison is incredibly offensive and you should know better. You have never been ripped from your continent and your history and enslaved just for loving people. Black people have for the color of their skin. Queer does not equal Nigg-- and you fucking know that
or you don’t and you’re a racist maga. pick. this is one of those things that ain’t got middle ground.
ooo, downvotes from folk whose favorite game growing up was smear the queer
I’m not downvoting you, but you have to understand: yes, I vividly remember playing the game. I didn’t even know why it was called that, or what it meant. We were kids and we played a playground game (which was pretty fun). Looking back on the name, yeah, yuck. We also played a game called “Barf It”; the game had a name and the words didn’t mean much.
There are lots of Gen X allies out there and things that were a product of the time don’t define us all today.
There are lots of Gen X allies out there
yeah, i just had to talk a gen X “ally’s” son out of suicide because they’re great with the LGB but T? get the hell out of our house and the son is ftm. and this shit is not uncommon. miss me with this ally talk
My dad regaled me with tales of the 60s/70s once. The JFK assassination, Vietnam war, the gas crisis, hyper inflation, 20% mortgage rates.
The older you get, you realize everything isn’t a world ending crisis. I think our 24/7 outrage-based media is responsible for a lot of FUD.
YES. But a big chunk of people have been sheltered from that fact.
That’s why we have people: wanting civil war, because they’ve never had to personally suffer the loss, privations, and terror of a real war. Are anti-vax, because they haven’t had plagues of smallpox, the flu, or polio kill their kids, friends, and relatives. Pro-authoritarian, because they’ve never lived under a series of shitty power grifters and a corruption-based economy where absolutely nobody does well except the richest. Anti-social programs, because they’ve never faced homelessness or a disability.
There are so many things that people have had the luxury of avoiding that they’ve forgotten how shitty the world is. Spoiled children, they are.
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.
People who say it isn’t are just too lazy to do anything.
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.
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 must realize terrible stuff was happening over that time period too. Yes, there is a ton of regression happening right now, but compared to any other time in history some things are better some are worse. One can probably select any two points in modern history and say the same. There are always great and terrible things happening.
I’m 57 in the US and up until the last ten years I always thought that things would get better in my lifetime and that ultimately my country would eventually choose the right financial and moral paths. Now I not only don’t believe that will happen in my lifetime but I doubt if this nation will bounce back in my kid’s lifetime, if ever.
Same age, same thoughts. The past was violent & sucky but it really felt like we were making progress, things were getting better. Some things have, there’s a lot less violence where I live, and more to do, the city has progressed.
Honestly I think the slide started after Bush vs Gore, and very often wish I had been in the other timeline, where the votes got counted before he conceded, Gore seemed conceited but smart, geeky and took good ideas seriously.
I’ve never understood the concept of conceding an election before all the votes have been counted and verified. It’s like the voters and their votes don’t matter. And instead all that matters is the spectacle of it.
Fortunately there’s less of that here than in the US.
Yeah, Lemmy was always so pessimistic about the future, but everything was looking up. Lots of reasons for hope that tomorrow would be better than yesterday, my kids would inherit a better world and make it even better.
Then it all fell apart. The scary thing is not how ugly, immoral, hate filled, corrupt it is, but how quickly and easily it fell apart yet still has people supporting it
This is actually one of the best times in human history.
Not anymore. Conflict around the world has statistically shot way up. There’s also a significant increase in political polarisation around the world.
I question that. In colonial times and in tribal times, there were huge amounts of conflicts. And conflicts is only a tiny part of how the world is running. Slavery, human rights, minority treatment, just laws, poverty, standard of living, etc. On average world wide, we are far better off. The majority of the people in the first world have luxuries that only kings and nobles used to have.
Between the end of World War 2 and 2016 the world has seen a steady and significant decline in global conflict.
Immediately after 2016 that statistic has been shooting upward rather steeply.
That acounts for 65 of the 300 000 years humans have been alive.
If you’re comparing to a decade ago, yes. However, even with the increased number of wars, it is still more peaceful than before 1945.
Not more peaceful than 1945. The way things are going to total death toll of war will become comparable to WWII.
But between WWII and 2016 we have seen a decline of conflict. Now we’re seeing an incredibly steep increase.
before internet, local problems remained local though. now everything is kind of in the same pot. I guess there are objectively less problems now than before, but before individual people had to deal with only local problems and maybe some from further away if things got really bad there.
It used to be a lot worse for the vast majority
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…
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
there a pretty good documentary called outfoxed the Rupert Murdoch story about how the media landscape has been turned in to silos/echo chambers, there just isn’t so much of a generalised viewpoint anymore, people have been led into camps of thinking and it’s really hard to get out once in.
-
Well, as an American, I can only speak for my lifetime…
Late 60s/Early 70s - Vietnam/Nixon - Pretty fucked up.
Late 70s - Iran hostage crisis - Fucked up.
80s - Reagan/Bush - Iran/Contra - Recession - Iraq War I - Fucked up.
90s - Clinton era was pretty good. Big scandal was a blowjob. People actively talking about blowjobs all the time.
2000s - Bush II, 9/11, Iraq War II, Abu Ghraib, 2008 financial crash - VERY fucked up.
Late 2000s - Obama - Not awful. He should have ended Bush’s drone program, but not awful.
2017-2020 - Trump. Covid. 1,000,000 dead Americans. INCREDIBLY fucked up.
Early 2020s - Biden - Fucked up inflation. Covid weirdness.
Now? (gestures)
It’s always been this way, just the internet has made global awareness easier
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.
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.
