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
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.
Idk sounds to me like you are the change we need. You’re investing your energy into the future without asking for selfish repayment. You’re good people. From my perspective you are still keeping that hope of a better future alive and burning, nurturing it in the hearts and minds of the young, allowing it to grow strong in a protected environment. You are EXACTLY what the world needs right now. So thank you Internet friend.
But if a change for the better is to come, it will come from the kids.
Here in Finland, the under 25s are much more conservative than Millennials or even Gen X. The most popular party of that demographic in our last parliamentary election was a right wing extremist one – and I do mean extremist: they have multiple literal neo-Nazi politicians, and our Speaker of the Parliament who’s from that party has publicly fantasized about murdering gay people.
I’ve given up any hope of things getting better in my lifetime. I’m actually somewhat thankful I’ve got a medical condition that means I’ve only got about a 50% chance of even being alive in 20 years; dying from multiple organ failure is not something I look forward to, but it seems much more attractive than where we’re heading
Thank you for your well written comment. More importantly, thank you very much for your work as an educator.
I play videogames
Same tbh
Be the change you want to see. I switched things up and took a job where I work to feed hungry people. It’s pretty great and I feel good about myself and what I do. I’m not gonna fix the whole world, but I am making a difference for those who I reach.
You shouldn’t do that! Why don’t hungry people just eat some food?
(/j)
get into areas like solarpunk that hold out hope against the dystopia
Solarpunk is amazing
say more words about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHI61GHNGJM
Andewism has a ton of great videos about it I suggest watching more than just this one to get an idea. That video I linked is a good introduction but its 3 years old so some of the more recent videos have a more evolved view on it.
At the moment Solarpunk is a somewhat small and not very well defined movement, but it’s slowly growing and coming into its own. It started as a call to writers to write more hopeful fiction about the future as a response to the disproportionate prevalence of dystopian fiction, chiefly cyberpunk.
Here is a more comprehensive write-up about it. Solarpunk imagines a future where humanity finds a way to live in balance with nature, technology, and each other, with a heavy focus on being realistic, grounded, and attainable. Politically it’s very socially progressive, environmentalist, anticapitalist, and anti-authoritarian.
Or you could just google it?
100% true. Or i could offer an interested audience to someone that seems passionate about the subject.
What do you mean “the world isn’t getting better”? It definitely is. I mean, just look at, well, uhh… well uhhh… nevermind.
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.
LGBT rights in the US
LGBTQ rights in the US are, generally speaking, progressing.
climate change
I don’t think doom and gloom is warranted with climate change. Many countries have long reached peak CO2. The goal now is net zero. Rich nations also need to pony up to help developing nations that haven’t already spewed a ton of CO2 into the air as part of development. Unfortunately, that’s looking to be difficult with internal politics in the rich countries.
Some of the progress at the recent COP18 looks to be possible ground breaking. The methane related agreements in particular could be enormously beneficial. They could decrease the amount of methane released or burned off as part of fossil fuel extraction significantly. Methane has a relatively low half life, so it will cycle out of the atmosphere faster than CO2.
I don’t think doom and gloom is warranted with climate change. Many countries have long reached peak CO2. The goal now is net zero. Rich nations also need to pony up to help developing nations that haven’t already spewed a ton of CO2 into the air as part of development. Unfortunately, that’s looking to be difficult with internal politics in the rich countries.
This is like standing on the deck of the titanic and being like “meh, we have already scraped by most of the iceberg, so we are fine”.
The damage is done, look at global sea surface temperatures they are off the charts. We could stop everything now and things would still be spiraling out of control climate wise and I am sorry but that is just the reality of it :(
Don’t get me wrong, nothing is “fine” when it comes to climate change. There’s a lot of work to do, much of which has a lot of resistance from people with a stake in the status quo towards ruin. But at the same time, this is a situation that can at least be mitigated, with real work in progress. Humanity is not going extinct from climate change.
LGBTQ rights in the US are, generally speaking, progressing.
as a trans person in the USA
fuck you, ya ignorant removed
I’m not trans, but I’m gay and I have many trans friends in the LGTBQ+ community who have shared their experiences with me. Maybe lay off the insults?
Also, I’m talking broad strokes of history. Think about how the general public’s attitude towards LGBTQ+ people has changed in the last, say, 50 years (since Stonewall). It’s been a rough road with set backs, but we have the momentum. Young people are already much more LGBTQ+ friendly, and demographics is destiny.
I will lay off some insults, yes. If i hadn’t had experience with you before. Your politics are of a most silly kind.
Maybe in europe, but before your people decided to pillage and plunder the world, real civilizations in Native Americas, China, Oceania, and such had far far more progressive cultures than our own.
GenZ is the most pathetic excuse for a leftist generation. Even Boomers had wayyyyy better communists, America just killed them off.
As a trans person on the ground with trans organizers, we do not have the momentum. People’s support means little without active protection. Politics is actively stripping away our right to exist in every country on the globe. Well besides civilized countries like Cuba, Nigeria, South Africa, and China. The west is heading backward materially. Your “popular support” means nothing if no one has the spine to do something with it.
We got where we are with riots and subversion and rage, not pandering and concessions. Concessions are how we get washed away.
I can cite sources if you want them.
I am not interested with bizarre comparisons with Nigeria. I am focused on one time comparison. On average, are attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people trending positive. Let’s say you were born under similar circumstances, but fifty years earlier. Would your life as a trans woman be better or worse? Would the people around you treat you better or worse? Would the government treat you better or worse?
The DeSantises and the so called Moms for Liberty out there are unfortunately currently having their moment in some quarters. It is frustrating to see ignorance and hatred directed at my trans brethren. But I have seen too much positive movement, both historical and current, to expect that we anywhere but the right direction. History will be the judge of those who got in the way.
I’m not talking to someone who gets regularly temp banned for things like anti-semitism
fuck off
You’re talking about the world news mods who will find any excuse to ban someone who goes again a pro-Russia, pro-CCP, or pro-Hamas narrative? That community barely has rules, it’s just excuses for the mods to pick their preferred propaganda.
I believe you probably mean COP28 unless you are talking about one from 10 years ago.
Yes, thank you. I wish they had just numbered it to match the years…
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a tide that will soon raise your boat as well.
like what?
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Does everyone forget we are doomed due to the climate?
Even if the climate crisis was hopeless, and it certainly isn’t by any stretch, what use is giving up?
The only folks I’m aware of calling the game early are the YouTube doomers. Those bottom feeders are pretty clearly just converting fear to ad revenue. Don’t feed them!
There’s still work to be done.
We’re locked in for 6-10C of warming over the pre industrial baseline. That will be catastrophic for most large land animals at least. Best we can hope for now is delaying the warming with geo engineering.
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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.
This kind of thinking feels like just cherry picking the good things to focus on, which sometimes isn’t the worst coping mechanism to have but in this context I think it just leads to complacency. The fact is the general trajectory of the world isn’t good even though some progressive ways of thinking have been normalized in some places, we could be doing much much better, we just choose not to.
You can either count blessings or curses. Both you can probably count endlessly if looked at hard enough. I cannot deny that threats loom over my life such as climate change, totalitarian thinking, gun violence, and a whole host of other ills that I feel completely incapable of impacting. Consider me the boiled frog. I cannot live my life in constant anxiety and fear. I have good things, good things happen to me, today I can breathe, today I can walk. I woke up in my own bed with a healthy body. Tomorrow I am unlikely to be blown up by an artillery shell or to executed by some brown shirt goon of an evil regime.
I can hold both the evils of the world and the good of it in my mind at once. I agree one must not grow complacent at the things that go on. But I also must not become paralyzed by the overwhelming number of things going wrong. At least that is me.
You kind of stole most of my answer! Thanks for sharing.
Not really having the option to not cope. Or not knowing how to actively choose to not cope. One of the two. For what it’s worth, Tolkein genuinely was on to something with this one.
It is getting better though. We are all just facing the issues of our era’s.
Tech keeps going up, we are slowly making progress on climate change, the space race is back on, and superpowers don’t directly fight eachother anymore. Hell, we’ve proven to beat once in a century pandemics in a few years with relatively speaking barely any deaths. Life’s good
Yes, we have squabbles in the middle east and Africa, but that’s par for the course and not an indicator for human development. The only thing that has really gone backwards is that war has been brought back to europe
superpowers don’t directly fight each other
Yeah, this one shouldn’t be underestimated. The world powers, not just superpowers, just don’t have much of an appetite for head-to-head war anymore. Most wars are civil wars with the occasional proxy war thrown in. World War I killed 17 million, World War II killed 80 million. We just don’t have wars at that size anymore. For that matter, there’s a generous smattering of multi-million death wars through the 19th and 20th centuries, both civil and between nations. But as you get to the 21st century, that just doesn’t really happen anymore.
Even my much maligned city, with its poop piles, tents and opiate zombies, is so much better-off than it was when I was a kid.
We just bumped into the 1.5 degree mark, how are we “making progress” on climate change?
Sorry. Just so hard to be optimistic. 2023 has been BANANAS for global temperatures.
I take comfort in getting older and getting closer to being dead.
I can barely wait. The comfort of nothingness is a great help.
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.
Much the same for us. The toxic attitudes here in Appalachia are shocking. We’ve sure tried to give back and make ties, but authentic ones have been exceedingly rare. Something awful in the zeitgeist here now that makes it nigh impossible for folks to get along for the simplest tasks/clubs/gatherings.
I do communist things.
The world is getting better in a lot of ways but this is despite the US, the primary state agent of death and destruction. What we can do is organize together against that while also building local class consciousness and support structures so that as that violent apparatus turns more and more inwards, our neighbors will be (1) less horrible to one another and (2) safer overall.
Just trying to be a lamp in the darkness.
By realizing that it IS getting better. We live in a world now where information has exploded out of control. What this means is that we now know exactly what’s going on everywhere, and it turns out that’s a lot of shit.
That shit was still happening, but until fairly recently it was just out of the picture. The average person didn’t know about any of it , couldn’t do anything about it anyway, and thus it didn’t really impact them.
Fast forward to today you hear of tragedies ALL THE TIME. Bad shit happening to good people for seemingly no reason. The difference here is that you just happen to know about it. The objective truth is that bad shit happens less today than it did at any other time in history. We just see every instance of it, not just our local community instances.
When all the bad information from the news begins to bombard me, I think back to March 2020, when the pandemic hit full swing. That might seem odd to some because many would argue that was the spark that set of the series of events that got us here. However what I see now, years later, with a bit of perspective, it was an amazing time. For the first time in human civilization almost our entire species focused in on one task and overall succeed. An existential threat to our entire way of life emerged, most people got on board and we avoided the absolute worst.
We’re not meant to process all the bad things that happen in the world every day. Our primate brains are meant for small communities, not international events. Perhaps the pandemic isn’t OPs thing or yours to think about, but I’ll bet that almost everyone has some memory that gives them hope. Think about it, hold into it. A hopeful thing happened once, it’ll happen again.
This is definitely true. A lot of people fucked around during COVID and made aspects of it worse, but they would have probably done that anyway. Overall, we did a very impressive job worldwide in managing the crisis.
If you ever think the world is shit, disconnect. Turn off the news, get off social media, spend a week interacting with your local community only. You’ll see people can be pretty awesome, and you can make a very real impact in the world by helping your local community.
For the first time in human civilization almost our entire species focused in on one task and overall succeed.
Except we didn’t. COVID is endemic, and it never needed to be if not for a gaggle of shithead capitalists demanding the gears of the economy be greased in the blood and sputum of “essential workers”.
I never said we avoided everything, but regardless what are you saying? I’m wrong? I’m just sharing one thing that we can all relate to that makes me hopeful. I even said that it might not be for you. It takes a real immature and sinical person to say your wrong for finding hope.
If you’re gonna insult a person, at least fuckin spell the word correctly. And a pandemic going endemic in a nation that had prior, eradicated a couple pernicious viruses before through both strength of medicine and actual social cohesiveness, is an abject failure.
tl;dr You’re not just wrong, you’re either dangerously wrong through this toxic positivity nonsense, or actively washing your hands in the blood of those who died to this virus like "didn’t happen to me tho, so we beat it; score!"
I don’t know which disgusts me more.
I use to think like that in my 20s. But the truth is right now, it’s definitely not getting better. I teach in college/univ and the amount of ignorance and entitlement I’ve seen in the past couple of years is alarming. Elon Musk and Andrew Tates are the role models for many young men now, there is a masculinity crisis and it’s affecting everyone.
Maybe it’s just because of the people I’m around, but it feels like society’s concepts of both masculinity and femininity have continued improving. There are of course the Tate acolytes, but they seem as much like the gasp of a dying ideology as anything. Not sure about Musk, that particular brand of personality cult prosperity gospel never seems to really go out of style.
That was already around. You had the toxic masculine movie stars of the 70s-2000s. Soldiers and fighters have been glorified since the times we’ve had soldiers and fighters. The only difference there is a wider audience. You also have an increasing number of reasonable voices out there reaching a broader and broader audience too. Violent crimes are consistently down, we just see all that there is.
From my perspective, toxic masculinity has been more assertive than ever in recent years. As mentioned in another reply, I had to intervene to protect female students from male behavior for the first time in my career this year. One of my colleagues was harassed by a student in full view several times this session. This is new for us. We have both extremely open, sensitive and respectful students, and the opposite, but the main difference is that the second group is now uninhibited and not shy about putting himself in the spotlight.
You’re using anecdotal evidence, from one perspective. You’re a university professor, surely you can see why this isn’t exactly a compelling argument compared to hard evidence, right?
I don’t want to be rude but you really should not continue teaching (at least in the same way) if you are that repulsed or disconnected from your students.
Students will always have different priorities and mindsets than their teacher would like them to have, and most times they’ll be wrong; it’s a part of life in acads. Most of these youngsters have had very little exposure to the world and it is bound they’ll make mistakes. That’s what school is for. And they will certainly not remain the same, just like anyone from your generation as well, when they get older.
You cannot just get into teaching and not expect delinquency, that’s not how it works. Just focus on getting the subject matter of whatever you’re teaching through their heads and ensure everyone understands the concepts, the “bad” idealogues will eventually get sorted out themselves.
I dont want to be rude but you dont seems to have any no clue about what teaching is, even more so at a university. I’m a good teacher. I teach them things that are fundamental to our field and that will serve them for the rest of their lives for those who graduate. They tell me. I have a good relationship with most of my students, they like me and I like them (I’m not a dinosaure, I was in their shoes 15 years ago). Still, the reality is that each year we have to lower the pass threshold, both at the High school (my wife teaches) and university level. The level of entitlement and the view that teaching is a business like any other, on the part of both students and the institutions, reduces the level and value of learning. For the past few years now, we have been graduating students that I would never hire because they lack fundamental skills. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t even blame them, I’d blame their parents instead, because they’ve been guinea pigs for malicious technology like social networking and ubiquitous cell phones. In terms of values now, the only thing I will add is that this year, for the first time, I had to intervene to protect female students from the toxic behavior of male groups. More then once. And also It’s funny because the tone and confidence of your message actually reminds me of certain students.
this year, for the first time, I had to intervene to protect female students from the toxic behavior of male groups. More then once.
Is it that bad? Sorry, I genuinely thought you were only complaining about the kids being undisciplined in class and the like. What you’re describing is scary, may I ask what were they doing? Are today’s kids entering criminal territory of harassment? I thought things like bullying have been progressively declining over years?
