I’m 25 and I literally saw an increase to heat waves year after year until 80°-90° was the norm in summer for the northern United States. I live in Pittsburgh now and the weather has shifted from raining 70% of the time, we use to have the gulf stream and mild climates. Now we get droughts after droughts, where’s my goddamn lake effect from the Great Lakes. We are eliminating natural habitats at ungodly rates. My dad who was born in the 60s has MAGA blinders and doesn’t see the effects of climate change. We are now fighting LLMs for clean water in a perilous situation that teetering on ecological disaster in many communities with newly installed data centers. Morally bankrupt politicians rather have a dollar in their pocket and vote for the persuasions of the rich like a puppet on a string. I miss bird watching and seeing bugs splatter on the windshield as you drive across the country, now its a mostly dry and barren trip because of overuse of pesticides and lack of habitats to regrow local insect colonies. Also the world is overpopulated as fuck and nobody can get a job in an ethical manner. You literally have to lie and cheat just to get a job that pays you better than shit, you would think the homeless people were violent and in gangs but its actually the goons on the top of the pyramid that have organized cabals and hired hitmen. So if there’s a better world out there it starts with eating the rich and consuming less of the planet. Probably have to destroy the meat industry and the oil industry but if you say that out load people think you don’t want people to have jobs when you actually think sustainable farming techniques should be widely adopted instead. It just feels like common sense and not even socialist, but apparently I’m a commie stoner who worships the devil to Fox News, and to my parents. They literally raised me to not only to be kind to be people but actually want better support systems for homeless people. My entire childhood was spent in a good nature providing free furniture to newly housed people who had nothing and I’m just expected to think Trump is next Messiah what the actual fuck is wrong with Christianity now a days.

Tldr: Yes we should eat the rich before the eat us

The world is not the USA. The USA is getting worse. The USA is an unhinged shit hole. Things are getting better where I live in Mexico. We have a popular leader that is pushing popular social programs and as the US kills itself we’re taking the opportunity to get closer to the rest of the world, build new infrastructure and sort out the American created cartels and chaos. China is getting better, they lifted millions of people out of dire poverty. Much of the rest of the world is doing just fine. There are always problem parts and hope simultaneously.

25 years ago the internet was still easy dial up and smart phones were coming out like you’d go to the library with your friends to check your email

MySpace lol

It is getting worse. Humanity is entering a deeper and deeper crisis. Alienation is growing with each passing year. The inner contradiction in every one of us is getting more intense, which manifests itself in more external conflicts: between people, between people and nature, between everything.

That being sad, this crisis just highlights the slow death of the previous, deeply troubled era and marks the transition to another way of living. The destructive aspect of things, that we all suffer from, is therefore not absolute. It is not going to destroy neither us nor the world around us. It is balanced off by the progress that we’re making.

Take 3d printing, for example. If you think of it, it is actually the (very) beginning of something fundamentally new: local automated production. Automation eliminates the routine part of producing goods, which makes the process creative again, while not compromising on efficiency. This leads to production becoming a means of self-actualisation rather than something that takes away all your freedom. And since the process of making new things gives you value instead of taking it, the need for charging others for using your creations vanishes, giving way to free exchange and collaboration. This, if applied globally, would solve the fundamental issue of our current society, where creating good takes away just as much, making any growth a form of self-destruction. And solving that would spare us of all different kinds of problems, ranging from pollution, wars to emotional abuse.

So I think by getting worse it’s also getting better and these difficult times we’ve happened to live in are still marvelous.

P.S. Apart from 3d printing, there’s, of course, free software movement as well, which in my opinion is also part of the global free production evolution

Climate change alone makes it objectively worse. The widespread rise of fascism also I think makes objectively worse. So yeah it’s bad.

If you’re in the west then it’s worse now because capitalism is reaching the stages of systemic collapse. For people living in countries like China or Vietnam the picture is quite different. They see their lives improving each and every day. They have clean cities, great infrastructure, and a rate of technological progress we can only dream of. Those of us living in the west are living through a similar collapse to the one that happened in USSR in the 90s, but the west is only 13% of the world population.

All of the jokes in early simpsons seasons pointing out problems inside the US are still valid today. Long standing problems have not been solved and if anything the situation has continued to deteriorate.

Apart from politics, which is always pretty up and down, my two biggest concerns for the world are

1. Nobody seems to know how to build things any more. Watching companies fumble around trying to build almost anything that has the same usable life as something built 60 years ago, with fewer materials and almost no computers, is infuriating.

2. The environment is in a MUCH worse state. I was born in the 80s and I can say anyone my age or older who tells you climate change is a myth is either lying or never went outside. I remember seeing large flocks of birds overhead several times at dusk. Now there’s almost nothing. Insect- and bird-life have largely collapsed, forests look sad and unhealthy, we are getting hot days earlier in the year and rainfall is nowhere near as consistent as it used to be. Do humans move farmland to places where rain now falls? Nope, they pump the rivers dry and make even more problems downstream. The situation is unsustainable and, with so many global leaders in the pockets of oil and gas companies, it is going to get a lot worse.

That said, I would say general quality of life, especially through medical advances has made a lot of people’s lives better.

The world is definitely worse for younger people. I’m raising four kids and I weep for them.

Smart phones and social media have a LOT to answer for. I know that won’t necessarily be a popular opinion but that’s where I find the root of the problem. Well, that and FPTP election systems.

the contradictions are piling up and things are more openly fascist, economic opportunities are shrinking in the west, income inequality is off the chart, yeah things are actually worse

The US was better but we were on course for this. Earlier laws restricting suing of international companies, the patriot act, citizens united, etc. Honestly beyond all of this is the lack of shame. Like I don’t think people are necessarily worse than they used to be but there was a vague agreement of what was bad and good and bad people wanted to hide being bad. There was shame. We seem to be living in the age of shamelessness. Like nazi types used to hide under klu klux klan robes but now they make youtube videos about how other races are inferior and the woke members of their race are race traitors. Again the roots go way back like the greed is good thing from the 80’s.

My dad said that everything “went to shit” once they started privatizing hospitals and public infrastructure.

I’ve (36m) asked my mother and grandfather if I’m overreacting.

My grandfather (104 when he died. He was so “dust bowl” he mother died of the dust in the dust bowl. Dust pneumonia. Yeah can’t get more depression era than that without also being a shoe shine boy at a carnival ): I killed the nazis once. I can kill them again

My mother (80f I asked here again just now. Right now face to face): I’ve never seen this cult behavior before. Never in my life. People will bury their trump flags in the ground and deny they ever supported him. Like the nazis did.

Yes this bad. It’s historically significant how bad it is. People will read about this moment in history and think “I hope my grandfather wasn’t a trumpet” as the look up their ancestors. Grandfathers will lie to their families about what they were doing right now. They will even shame me because all I did was comment online.

It’s specifically bad right now.

liberals and republicans

The chickens came home to roost again ✈️🏢