Current Events > Do you think the world is getting better or worse?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The world's people are linked to the state of the world. As the physical world gets worse, it will bring out more of the worst in people.

The increasing prevalence of social media algorithms that feed on negative emotions for profit and AI being used in harmful ways is not helping either.

It's not getting better or worse, this is how it's always been. But with the advent of the internet, people assume things are either always getting worse or always getting better depending on the type of content they seek out along with their own confirmation bias.

Worse in some ways better in others.

By most metrics the world is improving

world is dying, capitalists are tightening their stranglehold, rightwing terrorists are emboldened by the day

almost everyone i know cant afford to live

certainly seems worse to me

C_Pain posted...

By most metrics the world is improving

Please describe.

In the event you cannot, you are free to respond with the domain name of this link instead.

https://www.okdoomer.io/10-reasons-our-civilization-will-soon-collapse/

Worse.

We can make all the wealth gains and technological advances we want, but we're still a ticking time bomb with global warning as evidenced my worsening extreme weather patterns year to year.

daftpunk_mk5 posted...

Worse.

We can make all the wealth gains and technological advances we want, but we're still a ticking time bomb with global warning as evidenced my worsening extreme weather patterns year to year.

The "best" part is: climate change weather is the least bad part of, well, the results of the climate change. Its all the aftereffects that are going to make this look more and more like the opening parts of "Delivery Us Mars" on a good day.

Honestly, that game may well be optimistic if we get a Blue Ocean Event before the 30s. (Edit: I mean besides the random energy supply tech the world is supposed to be using in that game)

Over the past 5-10 years, worse.

Over the past 50-100 years, much better still.

Everybody, from every generation thinks the world is getting worse/can't get worse than they have it at the time they have it while they're alive.

Every war. Every conflict. Every big event is the harbinger of end times. Every new thing is a sign of the debauchery of the youth and a distancing from God or whatever ingrained belief system for the culture is.

That's to say.

The world is the same as it's ever been. We're just living the human experience.

That isn't to say there aren't (important) metrics where we can definitively say things are getting worse. However, this generalized view that "things are getting so much worse" is nothing new.

I picked worse without reading. I am part of the problem.

I will say that the world is physically worse because people are worse.

Worse

Ive got to admit its getting better, a little better all the time.

wackyteen posted...

That isn't to say there aren't (important) metrics where we can definitively say things are getting worse. However, this generalized view that "things are getting so much worse" is nothing new.

Putting aside the doomer stuff, it is worse simply from a "what it takes to merely live in today vs the 1950s." It has been sliding downward most of that time. You used to be able to have a nice house all to yourself with a 40 hour a week job and a partner who didn't need to work, and you could raise a couple kids too. That has slowly but steadily changed. Now both partners need to work 60+ hours a week to rent an apartment and raise a kid.

Are there any metrics that matter to the common person that have NOT gotten worse since the rebuilding from WW2 finished in the western world (other than whatever numbers the stock market or other greed metrics indicate)?

Life is more interesting now than it was in the 50s. Based on what I do now in my free time I would have been bored out of my mind in the 50s

It's still somewhat better than it was during the Cold War era, when the planet was polarized between two deadlocked superpowers who brought the human species to the brink of an extinction-level event, who fuelled and fought proxy wars around the globe that killed millions of people in Asia, Africa and the Americas and tore whole societies to sheds.