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?
Always has been, the big difference is it wasn’t streamed straight into your eyes in real time
Yep, only in my 50s but this is correct. All the shit under Reagan, Nixon etc, decades of meddling in the middle east before that. A century of oppressing South America. All the labor struggles. It’s like the increase in the diagnosed cases of autism. The number of cases didn’t increase. Only our awareness.
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!
The world was always fucked up, but we had a sense it was improving. That’s what has changed, majorly. We started having the feeling that as bad as it is, it is only going to get worse.
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?
At least in the US there are more trees now than when the settlers landed at Plymouth Rock.
I don’t think that’s true, we have more trees than we did 100 years ago but I couldn’t see anything about more trees than pre-European settlement. I am inclined to doubt that.
People said the same we can’t fix it about the ozone layer.
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.
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 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
It’s not nice to generalise people. That’s why you’re getting downvoted.
by people like you who are unfamiliar with the word cohort? that’s fine.
maybe, just maybe, go look at statistics around this shit. i have worked for years in homelessness. i know exactly what i’m talking about. gen X wants to think they solved their homophobia problem, how did they treat their queer peers in school? could their classmates come out? Fuck no. Not until after graduation. How DO they treat their queer family members, siblings and children? do they accept them or shun them? less than 30% of gen X parented families accept them in our area. I’m in the san fuckingcisco bay area and gen x folk fled here to texas because they were not accepted. We’re known for being the one of gay capitals of the world but local gen x queer kids have had to flee because of their families. don’t even start
So, by your own admission, a percentage of Gen X parents are accepting of LGBTQ+ kids.
I don’t care where you’re from, some people will be dick heads and some won’t.
remind me, how many posts are you upvoting and cheering on about all americans being idiots because 22% of the population voted for trump
I’m friends with a few USA people. I know that they aren’t all idiots. So….next.
so call them out when you see them and take the lumps. stop being part of the hivemind. what does the percentage have to be for you to care? or do you just have to be part of the group that’s called out?
You make up whatever you like in that little head of yours, my friend.
my dude, i don’t lie. just because some of us have actually done shit with our lives, it gives us access to this kind of information. programming, uh, you get to draw catgirls and i see why you don’t understand.
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
So there are a lot of allies, but this guy’s asshole family isn’t actually one. Just because this is common doesn’t negate the existence of actual allies. Remember, anecdotes are not statistics. It can be a reason to be cautious, but it is not a reason to deny the existence of a group.
my dude, that was one incident. i am posting all up and down the fediverse about working with homelessness. why do you think i was talking with the son. how many of these do you want because i have hundreds. i have been doing this since i was… fuck. i can’t remember not working with homelessness charities. it’s just something my family has done. the biggest shelter in town is literally on a street named after me.
Goddam, Minnesota. Huge props to your work. You have my admiration.
For it to be data rather than anecdotes, you need to gather the data. Survey not just the examples you have, but the people outside of the demographics you work with. Form the questions in a way that gathers the data you really want - split it out to give you granularity. Are you a member of gen X? Are you LGBT+ yourself? Do you consider yourself an ally? Do you support the gay community? Do you support the lesbian community? Do you support the trans community?
Right now, the cohort you have the most experience with is the people who have suffered, which will skew your conclusions. However, this is the anecdotal evidence that tells you something is fishy. The next step is to get actual statistics.
my dude, i ran the organization for two decades (it’s why they put the shelter on a street with my name on it) i have the statistics. just the ones i have are a decade old. I had to retire due to disability.
this is literally my wheelhouse.
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.
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.
We didn’t start the fire was written for this exact reason. Billy Joel was talking to someone 20 years younger than him who said that when he was 20 more stuff had happened than when Billy Joel was 20, so he just started listing all the stuff that had happened before he was 20 and then expanded it into the song.
If only Fall Out Boy wrote the update better.
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.
It was part of the spectacle and formality of the peaceful transition of power, something that got shot to hell around 2020 or so for some reason or other.
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
I’ve just finished reading a very detailed book on 13-16 century renaissance history and yes, always fucked. Though less dark ages than you’d think and more fucked politics, same as now.
Plus we only really know the history of rich people up until very recently, so no telling how fucked the poors were.
Well fucked.
All part of the “worship the rich” thing, wouldn’t you say? It’s like, how many stately homes do you know of, versus working class houses for a particular period or relevant to when the local slate mine was open, for example, do you know of?
I wouldn’t fully agree with that. There is some of that, but then also there’s very little historical record of poor people. Up until like 1850ish, only rich people could really read/write, and their books and correspondence is what a lot of historical research is based on. And the rich people themselves didn’t write about the filthy poors a lot. And there are historians that would very much like to study this topic, l but it’s exceedingly difficult for lack of resources.
Now that said, there is quite a bit of bias still. Not just toward poor “unimportant” people, also towards women. E.g. Milan was ruled by the Visconti family, which was a powerful name back then. The last Visconti ruler died, leaving his son in law in power. He’s called “Francesco I Sforza” in most history books, even though Sforza was kind of a minor name back then, and he himself would sign letters with the Visconti last name of his wife, Bianca Maria Visconti. And even his sons (and I think Grandsons) would still use the Visconti name. But because 18th and 19th century historians thought it’s no good to refer to a man by the last name of his wife, and that the wife must have been unimportant anyways, this was the new Sforza reign, not the continued Visconti reign. But we have letters of her managing the whole city while he was off, of her disagreeing with him quite strongly and openly in letters, leading everything when her husband was ill, dealing with diplomacy and military affairs etc. So in a lot of ways they were reigning together, not one single strong man doing everything.
There is a growing group of historians that do study these kinds of things and it is slowly shifting. And I don’t doubt that this also happens in regards to poor people, just less so due to lack of available sources. But of course there’s also institutional pushback, nationalistic infighting, funding being assigned based on biases etc. it’s not all rosy.
And I’m no historian, so this in large part based on the “inventing the Renaissance” book by Ada Palmer(History professor at Uni Chicago and also a really good scifi writer). It’s an amazing read, not just about the period, the different power dynamics and personalities, stuff like homosexuality and atheism in the period etc., but in large part also on how historians work, how perceptions among historians changed through the ages, how some misconceptions (like “women aren’t important”) persisted for centuries. It’s without a doubt the best history book I read in a long time and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
This gave me a bit more understanding and made me reconsider my biases.
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.
It used to be a lot worse for the vast majority
This is actually one of the best times in human history.
Exactly how?
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, it is estimated that 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.
Edit: this doesnt even begin to cover the issues of chemical persistence or plastics in nearly everything including our bodies. Nevermind PFA’s and other forever chemicals.
Part of the issue isn’t necessarily any one of these things, but seen as a whole, there is little to no will to fix it. Profit matters, and those with the most profit are setting the rules.
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.
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.
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…
My take is that everything was worse back in the day, except for two things: climate change due to an unprecedented rate of global warming, and the ability to bomb ourselves out of existence with nuclear weapons, which simply did not exist before 1945. I worry about the first more than the second.
