Question for the older escapists: Has the world always seemed this f**ked to you?

[darthotaku]

the world has indeed always been this fucked. the only difference is that the full effects of our being completely screwed has never been more felt. there is hope, but it requires people to change and so we may very well face extinction soon.

as any species does when it refuses to addapt to changing environments.

 

[dcrane]

History is just repeating itself.

Every decade I've been alive (that's 4 and counting now), the first half of the decade has been an awful, world ending, apocalyptic mess:
70's = energy crisis
80's = interest rate peak (remember the S&L crisis?)
90's = downsizing
00's = tech market crash

And the second half has been sweetness and light. On a grander scale, the world has been experiencing an economic depression about once every 70-80 years, which tends to put a bleak face on all aspects of life.

But with capitalism based on an infinitely expanding economy (an impossibility), this is actually a good thing: these crises essentially reset the bar, not to zero, but back to a level that allows for significant growth.

To avoid the pain of a crash like 1929, extended recessions are now the norm (witness Japan from 1992 to 2006).

The current austerity programs being enacted by governments worldwide (most obviously in Europe with the PIGS, UK, France, etc) was agreed upon at the G20 meeting in Toronto last year, in which each G20 country agreed to draw down their national debt.

The US has been here before under Hoover, but his austerity approach prolonged the ?29 crash.
This time, the goal is ?double dip? recession, or rather a prolonged recession similar to that in Japan which slowly deflates markets and GDPs, effectively resetting us for the next run.

Ironically, given that the world?s powers could not agree on a framework for reducing global greenhouse emissions, a prolonged recession is actually a pretty good solution. Unfortunately, as always, those that will suffer the most from a draw down in public spending will be the poor.

So what can you do? Well, you can either take the capitalist lesson to heart and don?t be poor, or you can change the "reset" button to a "revolution" button and move from TINA (There Is No Alternative ? to capitalism) to a sustainable economic model.

 

[blindthrall]

Born in 1982, so I missed the Cold War. I don't think what we're seeing is so much the end of the world so much as the end of a golden age. What's happening now I think is the slow decline of either The West or capitalism- or both, if you think those two are inextricably linked. Not that I'm saying either will happen soon-I'm thinking at least a century. But we're seeing the cracks start to form. They can still be patched, but people have to give up this bullshit optimism that cripples America and admit there are cracks in the first place. Western powers have collapsed before-beginning with Athens and ending with America-but every time they did, another western power was passed the torch. After WWII, America became a superpower while the British withdrew from their prominent position. Maybe if America goes down in flames, Canada will get its chance. Of course, if the whole world is capitalistic and democratic, then isn't "Western" an outdated term? Then it wouldn't really matter who was in charge.

Two things I see as really bad omens

1. The survival of the Chinese Communist Party. China is asserting itself and demanding a bigger chunk of the pie. Fine. They've got shitloads of people, who deserve a better standard of living than they have. But I don't think you can trust a communist government to be the only superpower. They may not start any outright wars, but if you've read Sun Tzu, you know they'll wreck your economy any way they can. Solution- Domestic overthrow of the Chinese government, hopefully peacefully like USSR.

2. The rise of religion in American politics. I think religion now holds more sway over politics in my country than ever before. Anytime one group of people can force everybody else to follow their own morality it is injustice, but that's downright dangerous in a country as influential as the US. Just look at the attacks on evolution, an issue that was settled in court a CENTURY ago. Solution- A return to the values of the 1950's, when discussing private faith in a public forum was considered rude.

 

[Tyrannowalefish_Rex]

What I sometimes wonder about is relating to the massive time-sink the internet has become. Has the internet increased laziness or just diverted it? Or can some of its many incitements even be regarded as a valid use of time?

 

[eatenbyagrue]

Less right now actually. I used to think we were all doomed back in my emo high school days, but I attribute that to being young and stupid and thinking I know everything about everything.

Nah, the world is a pretty cool place to live in, despite the problems.

 

[Lyx]

But has it always been like this? Im only 18 now so ive only started to notice it recently. Im sure it felt like this during the cold war, or at other difficult times in history. Things are just going to decline. There doesnt seem to be anything at all worth believing in.

It has always been coming, but now that the past overabundancy of space and ressources is depleting, the bill arrives.

My recommendation: Use up less ressources and energy. You really don't need all that junk. The majority of energy, capacity and ressources is spent inefficiently and on stuff that isn't really needed. Take computers as an example: How many of those megahurtz and gigabytes would really be needed, if stuff were done efficiently?

Humans have a tendency to set their budget not by how much they need, but by how many ressources are available - it almost seems that they crave to use up everything they have, regardless of if its needed. Change that, and you've started to fix the actual problem, rather than worked around it.

 

[Choppaduel]

humanity is fucking up...

not big suprise.

 

[Superior Mind]

For some reason humanity is obsessed with how the world is going fuck itself over. Global Warming, Mutually Assured Destruction. Hell, Religions all over have been prediting the end of days for centuries. From what I can tell this is a by-product of the time before the Renaisance. I'm going to blather on for a while now, I hope you keep up.

See before the Renaissance people didn't understand the idea of humanity improving. Nowadays we take it for granted but back then people were sure that things were just getting shittier and shittier until eventually the Apocalypse would come along and end everyone's troubles. The reasons for this view's popularity is obvious, if a ruler or a church, (meaning any religious institution,) could keep the masses complacent when things were bad by effectively blaming everything on a divine plan that demanded that things get bad then you don't have the risk of revolt. This theory was so widely accepted that we got the Dark Ages, a time where humanity's improvement culturally and technologically just sort of stopped due to a consensus of "why bother, we're all fucked anyway".

Now the Renaissance was essentially the end of this view's popularity. People realised, "Hey, we're not doomed - things are actually better than ever! Holy shit look at the neat crap we can do in art, archetecture, literature, technology! Holy crap we're awesome!" Finally the world wasn't just going to Hell, (literally.) The result was the birth of the modern world.

BUT.

This long-held view of global anihillation never ceased to exist it just declined in popularity. For various reasons now, (not just religious ones,) humanity seems fixated by the idea that somehow, somday, we're all going to be fucked, (global orgy at the end of the world anyone?) Lately the popular theory is Global Warming, a secondary theory is that the Mayans knew something we don't and managed to pinpoint the destruction of Earth down to a 24 hour window. I'm not saying that feeling shitty about the state of things isn't warranted, there are wars, corruption, poverty, resource concerns, a global market that can seem to be teetering on a knife edge, crazies in various parts of the world willing to blow themselves up just so they can kill innocent people, corporations using questionable methods to ensure gargantuan profits, pollution is believed to be causing wild weather conditions...

But while its so easy to concentrate on this stuff it should be also noted that despite all of this in the 20th Century mankind increased its average lifespan by 20 years. We've discovered successful ways of combatting cancer and AIDs as well as a multitude of other diseases, on average our standards of living have improved. We have technology now that people just 20 years ago couldn't have even dreamed of. Travelling to other planets has become a question of money and risk rather than possibility. It's not a bad time to be alive. As a species and civilisation we are, as the Renaissance man would have put it, pretty fucking awesome.

The real concerns are things like the popularity of Twilight and Justin Bieber.