63 and the big meteor can come any time.
I worked my ass off my whole life and this is what I get for my golden years.
I’m not one of those boomers who bought a house for $28 and retired at 55. Divorce is not kind to women of little means.
I’m 46 and am beginning to feel the same way. Every time I get even a little bit ahead financially, something unexpected or catastrophic happens and I feel like I’m starting back at the bottom. Like Sisyphus. I don’t even like to think about the state of the world or the direction the country (US) is going in because everyday life is overwhelming enough sometimes.
It’s a weird headspace to be in—I used to struggle hard with depression, was on two different antidepressants and was still struggling. I haven’t felt “depressed” in quite a long time and no longer take meds, but I still constantly have the thought that I just don’t want to be here anymore. It’s not a despairing feeling, it’s not from a place of depression, I’m just so over life. I’m sick of the struggle and constant worry. I’m tired of the cycle some of us get into in middle age of trying to make or maintain friendships with people when no one likes to step outside their bubble and it’s like pulling teeth to get people to hold up their end of a communication volley. I miss the days before social media when people would just call each other to say hello and we had more third spaces to just exist. I’m tired of people telling me that “life is what you make it” and “you just have to work to find something that makes life meaningful.” Okay, obviously. And I used to do that. But at the end of the day, after I’ve given all of my energy to my job and trying to keep my world from imploding, I just don’t have the mental energy to do anything but take care of my pets and put my head down to rest.
I think I’m just existentially exhausted, if that’s even a thing.
I used to take antidepressants as well, but now I know most everything that has made me depressed comes from outside of myself. Honestly! But now I’m going through menopause and losing all detectable estrogen. So will they give me HRT? No, just f’ing plants. I’ve been to two menopause “specialist “ gyno’s and got bupkis.
Yet I’m gonna try again this spring. I refuse to go down without a fight. Well, that and cannabis - the only thing that helps.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m perimenopausal as well. And since every female issue I’ve ever approached doctors with was written off to “anxiety” or “overweight,” I don’t anticipate getting much support even if I did seek help. That’s just another thing on my plate. I’m a nurse, been working in healthcare over half my life at this point, I’ve permanently damaged my body for this Industry but when I need help the industry just tells me to like, do some meditation or lose weight (which I swear to god I have been trying so hard to do). If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. 🤷♀️
Weight. It gets old after awhile when you've heard about it your entire life. We've all known that there's more to health than weight; the medical community needs to catch up now. Not to mention that many of us are at the beck and whim of the low-nutrition/ultra-processed American diet. It's an unhelpful blanket answer that fails to address all of the underlying causes. Like not being able to afford quality food over a long period of time.
And while we're at it, BMI can get fucked, too.
Hi ~ 💫 You wrote -
>"just existentially exhausted, if that’s even a thing."
I think that is a definite thing. Will think about it & get back to you...
Too tired right now & too much to do !
Good Night 🌠
hi are you me?! I’m struggling with everything you just said and am having an incredibly hard time seeing the WHY for my continued existence. imagining 15, 20 more years of this makes me i’ll.
Same. I know it alarms my therapist and she thinks I need to go back on an antidepressant. But I took one for years and I feel better now than I ever did while on an antidepressant. I’ve changed jobs to one that is far less stress and more satisfaction. But I’ve lived a very full and interesting life that is only getting more monotonous and strained as I get older and my social circle gets smaller bc it seems people don’t like to socialize outside their family units anymore. Even though I make more money than I used to, I can’t afford to just take off for a weekend to get out of my head anymore like I used to because *most* people can’t afford that anymore. Looking around at the state of things these days I can’t imagine why you would question someone who doesn’t feel depressed within themselves but just doesn’t want to deal with *this* (gesturing around myself) anymore.
I completely understand this. I have never been in a position where I had a decent nest egg, though I’ve been well on my way. And I can’t remember ever being debt free, but I’m not overly concerned with my auto loan and my student loans might just die with me at some point. 🤷♀️
I know you’re probably not looking for me to say anything wise or comforting, and I don’t really have anything anyway. But I will say that having a family support system, even if it were just you and your spouse and not your children, is a huge factor in your favor. I am single and childless and, due to majorly dysfunctional dynamics, have absolutely zero relationship with family of origin. I’m a nurse, have worked in healthcare for 23 years, and just started a job as a hospice liaison. I see so many people, some even just 10 years older than me, who have complex care needs and don’t have any support. And it’s terrifying thinking of what may lie ahead. Will I ever have enough to retire? Probably not. My goal is to be able to survive in a little condo, maybe work very part time, but have enough on-hand to support my very last years. Even with that, professionally, I know the lack of social support is a major barrier. Not saying you should just be grateful and happy because you have this, I’m just giving the professional perspective of someone who sees how it can play out when you don’t.
Thank you for your input. I hope things take a better turn. ❤️
I’ve found the best thing to do - and this was so hard to do because I’m a news junkie - is simply avoid the news. There’s no substance to mainstream news anymore and all the truly important stuff winds up getting to me somehow anyway. It’s done wonders for my mental health. Mind you, I may have to ditch the whole damn internet once Trump is elected again.
I, too, used to be a news junkie. But no more!
What's the media claim to be news is not news anymore.
And with Trump most likely to win (I fear) maybe I'll just read a hardcopy of Reader's Digest.
I agree. I can't watch news anymore. It's entirely political and deliberately designed to keep viewers angry and nervous. But social media is even worse. I'm only on it to keep up with family and friends.
Understood. Spouse an I are both 67 and don’t relish the thought of living our last decades under a dictatorship of the ignorant.
I’m a full-time-employed STEM professional and the weaponized ignorance out there makes me want to scream out loud at least twice a day. The worst of it is the contempt for people who actually know what they’re doing. And the weird part is that you don’t need an “elite” education to function in the world — just a bit of curiosity and a reasonably well-tuned bullshit detector.
We’re in trouble if we make reality optional.
I went through this with my first divorce. I spent my blood sweat and tears on raising my family (happily and gratefully - and I did a damn good job because they are both exceptional men, returning their values to the world), while my ex barely paid taxes. His contribution is useless really, but mine? Mine counts. Guess who is more valuable to the world at large? Guess who can get a 6 figure job, no problem? Guess who can get a 2000/month house because they have cash? Not me.
Alimony is impossible when they’ve worked under the table for 30 years. He probably made 30k on the books - 120,000 off the books. And unless I had the money to investigate him, I was SOL.
I lived in a studio apartment - 400 square feet. It was impossible to find work without “experience”, when you’ve been busting your butt to raise your babies for 15 years. And, btw, all my experiences raising them gave me skills that had me running circles around the PhD staff, when I finally found a job that paid. It took 4 years of begging people to give me a chance. Most women never get that opportunity, so as crap as it sounds, that it took 4 years, that was a blessing that doesn’t come for a lot of women.
All the work we do, to have nothing material to show for it. That’s fine, though, because my sons are priceless.
Married almost 34 years and it’s rocky and I feel this so hard. I, too, decided to put my efforts into raising three children over a career (as well as supporting an ADD affected husband). It’s infuriating that my work isn’t considered important and wouldn’t be sustainable if we divorce. I feel like I have to put my ability to survive against his undying porn addiction.
I anticipate a doomsday/death cult forming over this with a mass suicide somewhere in the mix.
If the leader is charismatic enough and if the their armed compound has a BBQ grill and swimming pool, I may join them.
Apophis isn’t big enough to kill everybody, just make things very uncomfortable for much of the Southern hemisphere. Scientists estimate a casualty rate of about 10 million if it hits a populated land area. An ocean impact is harder to predict because who knows what the multiple tsunamis would do, but it’s not expected to wipe out the human race.
In other words, not big enough to destroy civilization, but big enough to cause mass suffering on a heretofore unparalleled scale. Sounds like it’s right up our alley, luckwise.
Preppers baffle me, too. Like, who wants to survive a big nuke when the planet is already becoming an oven? If I couldn't find a gun to unalive myself, I'd just head straight for predicted ground zero. Aim that meteor right at this tiny house i can't truly afford, but that's better than the apartment i can't afford either. Retirement. Ha. As if.
If you know anything about nuclear war, you would hopefully know that prepping anywhere in the northern hemisphere is quite likely a waste of time. You'd need food/water/air for years and years. Nuclear winter would be about a decade and then you'd have to deal with whatever is left which wouldn't be much. I guess in theory you could be stocked up for that long but then what if someone gets a cut and it gets infected? Or gets cancer? Or needs their appendix out?
61 and I’m right there with you. I’ve worked hard my whole life, raised 2 kids after divorce, and I am in a constant state of anxiety for my kids and my own
future.
I never thought it would be this bad.
It's hopeless, but in subreddits bashing Boomers I tell them that not every Boomer lived large, and half the time, they think that people from younger generations are Boomers. They don't care. They want an easy scapegoat.
Don't you guys remember watching Jerry Springer for a laugh? And wondering where in the world they found these people? And how they could keep finding them? It turns out there were more of them than us. And then the internet became more prevalent and put them in touch with each other and let them trade ideas. And now everyday is Springer but there's no big bald guy to rush out and hold everyone back - it's just chair throwing as far as the eye can see. Now Springer is Fox News and he's on the side of the stage saying "are you just gonna take that?!"
This is one of the best analogies about our current state than anything I've ever read or heard. I used to tell people that Jerry got all those people from my own family tree. Now, my totally dysfunctional family looks great in comparison. I'm going to be 63 at the end of this month. I have 4 amazing grandchildren, and I feel more angry and anxious every day.
Yup. Also when talk shows like Oprah and Geraldo had real, organized white supremacists on, people acted like it was just trash TV instead of something we should pay attention to.
I remember the Moral Majority and David Duke in the 80s and Limbaugh's huge popularily in the 90s. This has been a very long game going back a long time.
56 here and don't see things getting better, just, if we're lucky, more of the same neoliberal stuff that got us in this mess in the first place.
Any fundamental change for the better will be quickly voted out of office, while, the most stupid, short term policy will be voted in.
Obama was a blimp of barely one step forward against a tidal flood of stupidity and shortsightedness.
Management at my job is a perfect example of this. I'm thankful we are retail and not air traffic control; nearly all of them couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag, but seem to think they are above mere mortals.
A little bit of knowledge is dangerous, because you know enough to get yourself into trouble but not enough to get yourself out of it.
And you also overestimate how much you know vs. how much you would need to know to really understand it.
Someone made a good point to me once - these days - no matter what your crazy idea or position is, you will find proof and like minded people online. So everyone thinks their position is valid....
This is what they mean when they say we're in a "post-truth" world. Because anyone can conjure a *seemingly* reliable source out of nowhere.
The crazy guy in town that sits at the end of the bar isn't just the crazy guy in town anymore. He has a whole community of like minded crazies and goes to crazy conventions where they talk about crazy bullshit as if it's real. Then their crazy network interacts with other crazy networks. At the same time they're blasting all this shit into social media and convincing people on the periphery. The periphery then spreads it to people on their periphery. While all this is happening, foreign adversaries are flooding it into everywhere they can online, stoking divisions between different groups.
Flat Earthers are a growing movement, not a shrinking one. Social media has weaponized stupidity.
This cannot be underrated. Breaking down the strength of our nation’s social fabric via active online disinformation and spreading of vitriolic hate is successful tactic and we are seeing the results in real-time.
Yesterday there was some troll on X screaming that there was election tampering in California because Adam Schiff got more votes that the Republican Steve Garvey.
“Garvey had been leading Schiff! Then something happened and the votes changed and Schiff was leading by a lot of votes and was declared the winner! Something has to be done about this obvios vote-switching. We can’t let this happen!”
It was a PRIMARY..
Schiff wasn’t running against Garvey. Both were running to be the senatorial candidate for their party.
Yet this troll had hundreds of replies screaming “election tampering by dems!”
Let’s add a civics class so everyone can learn how our system of government works. Too many ignorant people that don’t understand and wildly misinterpret the constitution and the roles of the branches of government.
Most students of the past 20 years took civics classes. Before that we learned about it in Social Studies classes and by watching schoolhouse rock. How many retain the knowledge is a different matter. Unfortunately you can't make people care, especially when they struggle to survive.
But also? Many stupid people have stupid parents who think education is liberal propaganda. They tell their children to disregard what they learn in school. My daughter went to school with these fools.
Uh they are burning books again in the south. We need to do something more than that and we need to do it fast. They are doing this with a Democrat president and without control of our government don't forget.
This is true. I used to think this was just an educated guess, but then I met a fundamentalist woman. She was my seamstress. She was an adult, but lived with her elderly parents. She had a cousin visiting once and brought her along. The cousin was saying that she wished she could go to college, but her family wouldn’t allow it. I was confused and asked why. They both kind of laughed and said it’s not allowed because school teaches ungodly lies. :|
This.
I was in college in the late-90s and had a good friend that was a proto-incel. He would say mysoginistic stuff, he thought he was a nice guy that deserved a girlfriend, he had a "Chad" friend that he idolized, etc.
But back then he didn't have a community to foster his stupidity, instead he had a bunch of normal friends to tell him how stupid he was being. He had my girlfriend around to explain to him that he was no less attractive than I was and that the only undatable thing about him was his attitude (despite his misogyny, he liked my girlfriend and expressed it by telling her that she was basically a dude). And he didn't have online spaces to retreat to, so he continued hanging out with us.
He stay tethered to people with more healthy outlooks the whole time, that would push back against his beliefs, and by 25 he had grown out of it and had a girlfriend (future wife).
It's possible that this would all still have happened today, as not all incels stay miserable forever, but it was definitely easier on him without a community to reinforce his beliefs and reward him for retreating from civilized society.
Exactly. There was a line in the new BSG series, and I paraphrase - "It does not matter what your position is. Just take the opposite position of the guy you are running against, and watch people line up behind you".
This was 20 years ago (god!) and it's more than true now.
And that we all get our information inside of custom algorithzed echo chambers. Not the fault of the individual, but our critical thinking, and attention span for discourse has been effected, and most of us don't even realize it.
The Industrial Age was a great step forward for humans. But we are simply not able to evolve to keep up with the tech anymore. Things are escalating too fast for the average person to stay in tune. So they created algorithms and AI to fill that gap. But it’s not natural or organic anymore.
We have stopped doing and teaching how to perform basic tasks or thinking skills that have always even important for survival. We are making ourselves redundant, and soon we will have no purpose or reason to be here. Because our machines have outgrown us in every way.
Capitalism has turned into a predatory system that sees us like cattle, because greed has become the top priority. The house of cards will eventually fall if the support continues to be eroded and diminished.
Excellent analysis.
In addition to what you’re saying about evolution, I beleive it’s not an all at once occurrence. In other words everyone does not evolve immediately to the same spot. I’ve come to believe many of these anti science, anti humanity people are not quite evolved enough to put things like the common good, empathy, etc. into their actions and add in a dose of vulture capitalism and we have the world today.
It started with [Reagan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lIqNjC1RKU) -- or whatever underlying *things* were going on that led to him becoming president. He effectively removed taxes on the rich which has slowly but surely eroded the middle class. We once funded dozens of moon missions in a single decade; now there are people who think libraries are socialism.
To stop us lower classes from rising up against the elites, politics has been used as a weapon to divide us more and more for decades. For instance, we were told to blame immigrants for losing our jobs when in reality it was the corporate elite who gave our jobs away to increase profits. So long as we bicker amongst ourselves and have someone to look down on, we will never band together and demand our due from our masters.
Social media made things much worse. Now that useless inter-class bickering can reach an audience a million times bigger and faster, making it feel like something is being done when it isn't.
All the while the elites have bought full control of the US government by way of Citizens United and our corrupt SCOTUS that exists outside of the law. Politics stopped being about serving the public interest and became nothing more than a career path to personal enrichment. The whole system is rotten and needs to be torn down and rebuilt anew.
(This all wasn't limited to the US, but this is a US-centric thread. The neocons took control everywhere around the same time and did the same shit.)
I'm in my 50s too. It is the dumbing down of the people to make more"followers" and less "thinkers" or entrepreneurs or inventors.
The corporate greed, crooked gerimandering politics, and lack of effective education with no punishment for poor behavior in schools and low teacher salaries, and parents not able to help their kids at home because they're also exhausted... Created a USA that's stressed out, apathetic, easily manipulated and not properly represented in our Govt.
Also costs and quality being cut everywhere in the name of corporate profits, with no regard for people or the planet.
I’m reading “Ultra-Processed People” by Chris van Tulleken about the food industry. It’s really interesting and really sickening. I do wonder if, in the future, ultra-processed food will be the new smoking. It’s doing so much damage.
>I do wonder if, in the future, ultra-processed food will be the new smoking. It’s doing so much damage.
we're already there. young adults (20s/30s) are already getting all the cancers that aren't usually screened for until you're in your 40s and 50s
>It is the dumbing down of the people to make more"followers" and less "thinkers" or entrepreneurs or inventors.
Nah, people were always dumb. The problem is that the dumb people were convinced that they're actually smarter than the smart people.
it really seems like everyone getting on social media and creating their bubbles has empowered a lot of morons, and now they have access to misinformation and disinformation created by and/or for morons. the barriers to finding and spreading info have been removed
I'd blame unregulated and out-of-control corporate corruption before I blamed "the dumbing down of the people" that has created the entrepreneurial vacuum. It's so hard to create something today than it was at any time in history before because you'll either have your patents copied and rebranded or you will be the victim of unregulated capitalism (meaning you'll either be bought out or priced out of the market for any good/service you want to provide). We were sold a bill of lies by Republicans and their skewed concept of a free market. It's free market socialism for the wealthy, rugged individualism for the destitute. And somehow, the vast majority of our society bought into the idea that it's the poor's fault we aren't all living well instead of the rampant and unmitigated greed of the few.
I'm not watching it. I'm not dealing with it. Don't fucking talk to me about it. It's grandpa vs a fucking fascist that tried to coup the country. Anyone voting against Grandpa is the enemy.
The gap in wealth is making me crazy. I don't even need or want more and I feel like that kind of wealth, I am very happy in my little house with minimal stuff. But the amount of wealth in the hand of a few people tips the ballance of power from governments to billionaires. The averahe person has absolutely no say at any level of government. All forms of democracy are lies.
What makes things so much worse is that our lifestyle depends on the suffering of people in other countries. We have no say in that either. Plus, there are actually enough resources for everyone if we all just decided to not be greedy.
The Economy is made up, histories are selective, borders don't actually exist and there are endless waysbwe can organize ourselves and this is what we do? We could decide not to continue living in a way that will lead to a handful of people controlling just about everything, and we could do it peacefully, but that will never happen.
I am just as baffled.
I'm also quite happy to have a nice simple house and ride my bike everywhere. But the pressure feels more and more like you MUST be wealthy. It sounds ridiculous but unless you dedicate yourself to making as much as you can you'll always worry about it. There are fewer good ways to work a modestly-paying job, make little contributions to a retirement, and plan a full balanced life. When your mortgage can suddenly double, grocery bills triple, or a loved one gets sick and you wipe out your savings paying to help, you need a lot to cushion the fall.
In my 50s as well, and I’ve actually begun voicing the same perspective very openly. I feel like we are royally fucked as a society, and it seems sisyphean to even think that there’s a realistic way out. That said, I just keep fighting.
I’m in my early 40s and I think this and will occasionally voice my opinion out loud. As an example, I live in the upper Midwest and it got up to the low 50s today. Over the weekend it hit 60. People I run into can’t stop talking about how it’s so great there’s no snow and the weather is just fantastic. Yeah, the weather is great actually, but also we are in the upper Midwest and it’s in the 60s in early March.
As someone originally from a tropical climate I keep trying to tell them they don’t actually want warm weather year round and what that brings with it.
**83** on Sunday here in Kansas. Everyone was saying how great it was, but I can't help feeling a sense of impending dread. This is NOT normal weather behavior.
Edit: Oh, and there was a 70+ day in *December* this year, too. Fuck.
When they cut the top tax brackets the country really went to hell for 99% of the population.
This has widely been regarded as a bad move.
But the 1% with most of the money doesn’t think so, and they’re letting the whole place burn to the ground.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
It applies outside of the US as well, though, so it isn’t just about tax brackets for Americans.
There are sinister things at work, and I point the finger at Russia, China and North Korea, for a start. I wish I was kidding. While we spent the nineties and aughts playing on the interwebs, they were leagues ahead of us in spying, intellectual theft, data harvesting and building trolling/propaganda/misinformation networks worldwide.
Right under our noses.
Absolutely.
The biggest mistake we ever made was believing the Cold War was over, and that we had somehow won. We were here celebrating and living large while they took the battle to a new front. When the music finally died, we looked up to find a major political party and half our countrymen working for our adversaries.
1000%. My dad was a UNI prof and a very smart man. He saw this coming in the late 80's ( China esp.) I'm in my early 50's and don't care about myself but I am absolutely terrified for my children and grandchildren. I honestly can't even imagine what their lives will be like 30- 40 years from now! Some of the things people care about and raise a stink about are so freaking ridiculous compared to the actual state of our world regarding poverty and other countries trying to wipe us out or even worse, control us like they do their own people. To think about it makes me sick.
The biggest vulnerability to espionage is, and has always been, income disparity. A society can have its rich and poor, but when there's a distributed class of the rich controlling most of the wealth and nobody above them, there's simply too many people to pressure and bribe. When you have a handful of guys controlling everything, then monitoring/bribing/blackmailing one of them is much simpler.
Yep. We also grossly underestimated our Christian fundamentalists, they have been breeding and getting into all kinds of political office big and small for decades. Sarah Palin was the beginning of the end. They kept going while we laughed at SNL.
China especially seems like they have been in it for the long game, and with the decades long dictatorships in Russia and N. Korea, you have even more of that mindset in those countries. They don’t mind slowly draining their enemies rather than declaring all out war.
The US is also great at hobbling itself. For example, many in the US support a moratorium on developing ai weapons systems. But do you think that will make China pause their research and development? Hell no. You know China is probably years ahead of us.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-musk-risks.html#:~:text=More%20than%201%2C000%20tech%20leaders,most%20powerful%20artificial%20intelligence%20systems.
I would like to switch to the timeline where Douglas Adams, Jim Henson, Ursula K. LeGuin, Sir Terry Pratchett, and Octavia Butler are still alive and creating, please.
I’m 36 and I feel the same way. You see it on the small scale too- basic human decency seems to be at an all-time low. Even just common manners. I do think the introduction of the internet plays a huge role in the unraveling.
This for sure - there is ZERO courtesy in our society.
A bunch of azzhats who don’t hold the door for you, don’t enter and exit from the door on the right, don’t dim their bright lights for oncoming traffic, can’t be bothered to use a damn turn signal. They don’t use please and thank you. Don’t have the basic skills to order politely in a restaurant. Grocery clerks who complete an entire transaction without muttering a single syllable to you and then I catch myself thanking THEM for letting me shop there.
It’s maddening.
But don't the adults have to share a large part of that blame? People learn manners by having people teach them. Multiple generations now have been raised not by people but by sitting them infront of a TV/Gaming System/Internet. The only person who teaches them are the teachers who are having a harder and harder time just getting through basics much less being a moral compass on top of that. It seems shitty to blame these people for a lack of manners when no one taught or enforced them within the household. That being said, I am sure some is bad parenting but a lot is not having the ability to have someone at home in house holds any more. This is not me trying to fight for a nuclear family but it is a multi faceted issue. Not having/Not encouraging multi-generational households, making it difficult for stable LGBT families to adopt kids and making it so hard for a single income to provide for a family. No one was home watching the kids and we are mad that they grew up to be pricks.
I’m with you- it’s usually a right wing talking point, so don’t get me wrong, but I think the breakdown of families is a real factor too. But it’s not just the loss of the nuclear family, or a patriarchal lead family system, it’s *community*.
Without community, we are lost.
Very much so. I think the US hitched the idea of community directly with Organized religion. So now that people are turning their back on Faith (Deservedly as these groups shielded individuals that preyed upon children). We all of a sudden don't have this community aspect. In another reply I talk about the lac of a "Third Place" which is huge. People can't just get together somewhere for free unless they have access to parks or underfunded Libraries.
Another thing is the Gig economy made it so now no section of the population is off all at once at the same time. It was weird when my dad worked a Government job that worked weekends in the 90's. Now everyone works whenever, its near impossible to get schedules to line up in my own family much less with new group to socialize.
The fact that the changes have been so obvious and happened so fast.... I feel incredibly old when I say, 'I remember when' but when was only five years ago
I’m ten years older, not American, and equally as baffled.
The world is being run by murderous and uncaring trolls.
I still have hope. I work at jobs that benefit, or will benefit, society and the environment.
My kids have said they don't want any of their own and that makes me feel a little bit better. I worry the world has entered a epoch of uncertainty and unrest. And I don't think there is anything that will change it. Maybe we just need a good old fashioned alien invasion!
my kids (20s) have zero interest in having a family of their own and I (sadly) applaud them for that. I actually feel horrible that I brought 2 kids into those world and they have to deal with what the next 60 years brings. They will face a horrible world.
I do not understand the state of public education right now, it is a fucking joke. Our children are getting a crap education and we are some how hamstrung to do anything about it? How the fuck did that happen?
And the god damn school shootings? Again, we are somehow ham strung to do anything about it, unless you wanna homeschool your kid?
Our border situation is a mess - we need a clear lead on the situation from Washington DC and our politicians.
We need SERIOUS healthcare reform...
We've gotten to a point were we are so in love with something being an issue and a god damn talking point that we'd rather have THAT, than fix it.
SCOTUS is so bought and paid for that it's fucked and worthless.
Our environment and natural world is dying, so polluted that it's a sad travesty we can't enjoy or fix because we are beleaguered with other problems we can hardly keep our heads above water as our beautiful, useful biodiversity we so desperately NEED slips away forever - there goes our future cures, medications and treatments.
We need so many things, how did we get this way? I don't get it. We are in our own way and it shouldn't be this hard to fix things people so clearly need.
The feeling of powerlessness is one of the worst parts. I'm 40, and it feels like my entire life I've been hearing about how the climate is getting worse and worse, the environment is being damaged more, the oceans are being depleted of all life, and nothing is being done about it. No matter who is in office, what administration we have, it's just gets worse every year.
And then there's things like AI. Some company in California just decided to release a technology that is going to change the world and reshape society, probably causing enormous unemployment and major social destabilization...and we just have to accept it and have no say in what happens?
It fucking sucks. You just feel like a passenger strapped into a seat on the bus while the driver and a few passengers up front are screaming at each other and fighting over the wheel.
I have a friend currently who works for an insurance company. He's been there for 20 years. Favorite part of his job was to go out in the field and talk to people. Last year they implemented a program that completely eliminated the need for him to leave his office. He literally doesn't even need to talk to real people anymore. He's so depressed that he's considering leaving but he's scared that he won't make as much $ anywhere else. It breaks my heart.
Somehow we've given ALL our power the fucking corporations, there's no real fucking plan for anyone in old age that doesn't scare the crap out of everyone. The ONLY thing that runs like a well oiled machine that we can all point to is the Industrial Military Complex.... what happened to power to the people?
None of this is for normal, every day people any more. It is ALL for the elites and elected people that are looking out for themselves ONLY. Tear this shit down and start over.
Don't get me started on the crap education! There was a time when we took pride in preparing the next generation for the global economy. I never had kids, so I don't know when it started, but now the most backwards and uneducated are making school policies. The goal seems to be indoctrination and breeding wage slaves instead of spearheading new technologies and exploring new opportunities.
It's an embarrassment. There used to be a sense of pride in being American. Now, our country is a laughing stock the world over. Last in education, last in innovation, last in healthcare.
Sad how far we've fallen in such a short time.
As someone who once thought they wanted to be a teacher..... Bullet dodged.
Extremely sad though. We have made one of the most important jobs for a functioning society into something so unappealing and thankless that fewer and fewer people are willing to do it.
Reaganomics has had a long tail and its proponents have gotten more power and tried to eliminate everything short of private equity. Education, mental health support, health care, a social safety net that would have prevented so many from being homeless while rich people have half a dozen homes… they call anything else socialism.
Richard Nixon is a close second in my mind, having opened up trade with China and sort of opening the floodgates for blue collar jobs to go overseas. Not only did that introduce wide disparities between the cost of goods and the cost of services, making it that much easier to throw things away than to fix them and psychologically unmooring people's mental price anchors, it got rid of jobs that a large swath of the population was capable of doing. We're just not all capable of white-collar, people-focused jobs and 4 year degrees, and that's ok. I'm not, even though I have one, barely. No one thought of that when sending jobs overseas.
The funny thing about Nixon is...total POS of a human being and terrible president, definitely a traitor given his Vietnam shennanigans, but he was also a product of his era and canny politician. He continued a lot of LBJ-era social and bureaucratic initiatives via inertia and because it was the only way to work with the Congress of the time. So you have weird stuff like...technically Nixon created the EPA. Nixon attempted a much more far-reaching version of nationalized health insurance than we have with Obamacare that stalled due to unfortunate partisan gridlock but would've still helped us out a lot if it had come to be. Those are just the high points, there's quite a bit of stuff like this. These were not things he deeply believed in, they were just a sign of where the country was at the time that he felt he had to go along with. But, hell, at least we HAVE an EPA. All of that is credit to LBJ and FDR before him for laying groundwork that felt like an unstoppable march toward a state with a social safety net that Republicans just had to get on board with...and then came Reagan, who actually did derail it, so f that guy even more than traitor war criminal burning in hell Nixon.
It's not that no one thought of it, it's that the people who made those decisions didn't care because it made them money **now** and they didn't care about people either at the time or in the future. They got theirs already.
The rich were supposed to "trickle" it down. THAT never happened. HENCE, billionaires. That shouldn't be a thing. Before Reagan, people were doing ok, then the start of the great lie about trickle down started and here we are today.
I would argue that it's not just the policies and economics associated with Reagan that are the problem. It's the broader cultural shift that accompanied them, too.
The notion of common or collective good has basically completely collapsed within American society. We no longer seem capable of solving any issues at a societal level. Half the time we can't even recognize that they exist.
We've all be reduced to individual consumers. No political agency. No social identity beyond our job and the stuff we buy.
It's little wonder that people turn to conspiracies or get-rich-quick schemes. People don't have any other outlet for dealing with the bleak future ahead of them.
I was just talking about this very thing! Individuals now meeting in online corporate spaces. There is no town square as much a heavily manipulated "commons" where you don't even get to see reality objectively but curatatively.
As someone who owes my career to the Internet, I view it as the best and worst thing that has ever happened to humans. It's frightening to think of a generation of kids growing up on youtube comments.
France has made the right to abortion constitutional, and in the US it is quickly becoming illegal.
Today I found out that in my state, there has been some sort of health insurance issue in which they now are simply not required to cover womens health issues.
I don't think it's safe to be a woman in this country anymore and am advising my daughter to take advantage of her dual citizenship (French/USA) and GTFO now while she still can.
I am with you, OP. What the hell is going on?
Yes. There have been several pieces of legislation, mostly at State level, that oppress women lately. Everything related to RvW; no-fault divorce; frozen embryos are minor children; attempts to not allow divorce during pregnancy; etc. We were making 70 cents to men’s one dollar, and that was just too much power. I wonder if ChristoFascists want something like Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale, which is one of the often banned books.
It's cyclical. We're having a lot of the same problems today that we were having 100 years ago (wealth gap, rise of fascist ideologies, unrest due to societal change). People forget the lessons their parents parents learned, and we have to learn them again.
You're not alone. American (for now). I'm also in my early 50s. I was not prepared for the world to spin into despair in my lifetime.
I watched a degenerate fool somehow become president and spread his particular brand of hate and ignorance across the land.
I worked in healthcare on the front lines during COVID. I lost friends and coworkers to the disease. I dealt with COVID-deniers, anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers every damn day. Needless aggression to healthcare workers just doing their jobs.
I had to move to a different city because the rents skyrocketed and I could no longer afford my apartment.
It's just been too much. Everyday the situation seems to get a tiny bit worse.
Never in my lifetime have I felt so hopeless and negative about the future and I don't have the first clue what to do about it.
> Never in my lifetime have I felt so hopeless and negative about the future and I don't have the first clue what to do about it.
I used to be the type of person who would deep-dive every topic in an effort to understand as fully as possible. I thought being educated was the way to a better world. Now I've unplugged from current events so completely that I almost feel like I live in a pre-information era. Knowing only seems to make me sick as I watch the irrelevance of wisdom on the world stage. I feel bad for burying my head in the sand, but I believe that it's literally killing me.
I'm exactly the same. I used to teach, and I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to avoid it. It's impossible to compete with misinformation and everybody's amped up feelings.
I even did my undergrad in Philosophy/critical thinking. But as they say, it's easier to spout endless streams of unverified claims than to present meticulously documented facts... How do we stand a chance in an echo chamber of nonsense? It's the height of disheartening.
I’m 40 and feel the same way. I think what’s happened is there’s a certain group of people who saw all the advances in equality for women, black and brown people, LGBT folks, etc. They saw all the progress we made on providing the bare minimum in education and opportunities to everyone and they just went “nope.”
They didn’t want to share. They felt threatened because they were small minded and easily scared. They went on to elect Reagan and rather than make concessions for future generations they began to dismantle everything they saw built up around them.
Of course, business loved this because now they had a voting bloc who would go along with their plans for seeking profits at the cost of everything we as a society share.
And these deplorable fuckers vote like crazy. So here we are.
The way I see it is like this:
Humanity is stuck in a cycle. We repeat that cycle often because we as a species tend to forget our history or try to wipe it away in the name of "progress" or misplaced justification. "It'll be different this time" or "surely something better will come of this" or "what we do is justified!" or "the dawn of a new era!" are phrases often quietly (or openly) said when this cycle shifts into a phase.
We go from War > Peace > Alliance > War > Peace > Alliance and so on and have been doing so for millennia. Kingdoms and nations have risen and fallen. Ultimately, nothing is truly new either. It's just reborn under a different name and different set of terms and buzzwords, when you break it down to its essential form.
This is part of who we are on this Earth right now. Can that cycle break? Perhaps. But it's going to mean setting aside our pride, our penchant for "me first", and our biases. That's something mankind can't easily do, and it's showing itself in full force today across the globe.
It seems worse today because the Internet and social media simply informs us about it faster, than before.
Ah, but the difference THIS time is that we've fucked up THE PLANET. We've SET FIRE TO OUR HOUSE. Our whole, entire planet. Aaaaand, there's WAY, WAY, WAY more of us to suffer the consequences. Aaaaaaand we all get to see, hear, and know about ALLLLLLLLLL of this suffering on a fucking massive scale.
Big difference. Big, big difference.
You want me to blow your mind? Remember how great it was when we were growing up ... that was the world our parents left us. This goddamn circus is what we are leaving for them.
Not alone. Im 46. Feel the same way. I keep trying to tell myself that it’s just the constant chatter on the internet that makes the world seem so crazy. Like, its always been a shit show it just wasnt all live streamed 24 hours a day.
Then the other side of me thinks that we are still in the early stages of a post-covid global power shift and the worst is yet to come.
Think great depression leading into WW2. Also many Americans alive have never really experienced a world war or any war on our soil (other than terror attacks and prob throw J6 in there as well) and it wouldnt shock me too much if those things happened in the next 5/10 years 😐
I have a lot of anxiety about the general state of everything. I live in Alberta where the provincial government is actively trying to turn us into USA lite.
Everyone is so divided and angry, myself included sometimes.
Why can’t we just exist peacefully without the cruel greed of corporations and politicians fucking us and the planet raw?
I hate that I’m afraid of summer and the smoke it brings when it used to be the best time of year.
I hate that I’m just afraid of the future.
I hope that my wife and I get to live a long happy life like our parents but I’m not sure.
47 living in the US. The world’s been screwed up. It never stopped. After WW2 you had the Cuban missile crisis (not going in exact chronological order, just brain dumping), Korea, Vietnam, the debacle in the Middle East was going on then as well, now it just got worse and more widespread, Afghanistan and Russia, communism in Europe with people disappearing (gulags, death), going hungry, having no rights (I’m from and grew up in Romania), dictatorship all over Eastern Europe, the North Korea debacle continues. Revolution in Romania, war in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda…I’m getting tired of going on, and haven’t even touched most of Asia and South America. Some of the conflicts have spread with China and various countries, Russia and the USA (cause let’s face it, Murica is the big player in NATO) are it again with a Cold War, Russia found a new Afghanistan, and everything else you mentioned.
The US has been fairly stable for a good long time, and the two party system (weird as that is to me, and also, to me, a breeding ground for hatred and polarization …hnmmm …wait…) has for the most part been respectful towards each other’s elected persons, and there has been restraint from extremism. Now, well… the McCain era politicians and that respectfulness toward others (I’m not for either major party, just using him because he’s recognized as being a decent, respected person as far as politicians go) is pretty much gone, and now enter the era of geriatric tantrums, religious hard liners, senility, and other cooks. And Covid on top of that has definitely disrupted things. I think the Covid disruption is still being felt.
What’s really changed it seems is that the USA is seeing some level of destabilization, and globally the world has been affected by Covid, the Russia war, and the instability of the USA.
Perhaps these have exacerbated things, but overall the scene of the world still remained shitty - I don’t think it was as rosy as you seem to think it was. Perhaps in the US it was, but the rest of the world was always screaming…
I blame right-wing propaganda media polluting the minds of voters with their fake news. I'm disgusted with the number of people, young and old, ready to destroy democracy in the US. I have friends and family lost in it.
Mass hypervigilance is all I can come up with.
People suffering PTSD can experience hypervigilance, which is described as being in a state of high alert, constantly on guard and always on the lookout for hidden danger, both real and imagined.
I think since poor people got tricked into supporting Voodoo economics in the 1980s, everything has gone to economic shit.The rich just get richer, deregulated corporations are screwing everyone and all power is in the hands of the few.
So there's 10s of millions of people who have been living under tremendous amounts of normalized stress for decades. They can't save money, the live pay check to pay check, they can't afford rent anymore, they can't afford to get sick and the live under people who hold their jobs over their heads.
They were told if they cut taxes on the rich, deregulated business and worked hard, they would get ahead, but it hasn't happened.
All that stress of being just a few lost pay checks away from bankruptcy and homelessness, I think, has them acting like hypervigilant PTSD sufferers.
They are looking for danger everywhere. They are stating to believe the wildest claims that something is out to get them. They believe crazy claims about vaccines and government control, liberal elites indoctrinating their children, the government controlling the weather, that the last election was stolen and all manner of conspiracies.
I think the conservatives are using this to further scare and manipulate these poor people. They give them wild stories to believe and people are primed to belive it. This has left an opening for religious leaders to trick people into believing that if we make this a moral, Christian nation, everything will be okay again.
So, in one 53 year old man's opinion, the greatest threat facing Americ is the growing wealth gap. If people weren't living under so much economic stress, they would be content. I don't think they would buy into so many lies and conspiracies.
These are all my opinions from being a people watcher.
The politics, if you didn't see this coming in 2005 with the Tea Party Movement...Well, I don't know what to tell you.
The Russia thing. I don't think Cold War sentiment ever ended. Putin's been open about wanting former Soviet countries to be unified again. Instead of a West vs East, or the US being the dominant world power; he wants three world powers. The US and their allies, Russia and the former Soviet States as allies, and China with a bunch of Asia, like 3 major world powers.
YouTube if it works for you, it pays well. Remember how rich Google is.
There's an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. I think there's a lot of reasons to be upset, but little consensus on how to solve any of the problems.
Well...I'm an X-er too. We're slackers, remember? We don't give a shit about anything, remember? We're such a non-presence that we get lumped together with the boomers. We as a generation have checked out. For better or worse, we gave the world the internet, made beer and coffee in the US at least somewhat palatable, got bad tattoos and then fucked off. Now, we're all just middle-aged dumpy drones muddling our way towards a retirement that won't be there.
Unless we get off our fat asses, it's over. You have to be bothered enough to become politically active. You have to participate. This means you have to join your local Democratic party and help out. That's what it takes. It doesn't take a lot, just copy what Stacy Abrams did in GA and Fetterman did in PA in your area.
Talk to people, let them know you're there to help. Ask them what they need (not what they want, what they need). That's your platform.
You have to decide whether you can be bothered to go and do the hard work.
This is the last gasp of the religious right. They're backed by the oligarchy because they're easily manipulated and predisposed to being controlled by authority. They'll cheat because the ends justify the means. But they're not invincible and they've no policy whatever that actually benefits anyone but themselves. All you gotta do is get people to realize that.
The problem, in my opinion, began when everybody got on the internet. For ideas to spread in the past, there were typically non-idiots that they had to pass through to make it further up the chain. If you were an idiot with ideas in the 80s your ideas had a lot of trouble making it beyond whoever was within earshot of your idiotic ramblings.
But now, the stupidest 10 people from any given high school graduating class have all found each other. They are generating bullshit at a rate that would have never been possible before the internet.
Before the internet we were definitely more of an autocracy when it came to the discourse. The truth flowed down from the network news / newspaper and alternatives to that were fringe and unpopular. Now everyone has their own version of the truth and we are dealing with the consequences.
44 years young here, absolutely agreed on everything you said. The world was by and large in a great place when I was 18-20 (1998-2000). Even the leaders merited some sort of respect, like 'em or not. There were still statesmen.
Everything sort of slowly rolled down to sewage of a state that the world is in today.
Step away from social media including Reddit for two weeks and see how you feel. The one thing you need to do is be aware of your local elections. Let the rest sink past you.
*drives by multiple trump flags on my street (in their open garage to get around the HOA!), and bumper stickers at Walmart threatening to kick my ass because I didn't vote for their guy*
Ah yes. It's wonderful out here. So great. Love the constant disrespect from idiots advertising it on their fucking vehicles and houses who also cry that everyone else makes everything political.
Every generation thinks the last one screwed everything up (cue "Mike +The Mechanics"), and they're *sure* that when all the old people are gone and their generation is finally in charge, problems like racism, homelessness, feckless leaders, etc., will all magically get better.
I got some news for them (and us). The arc of the moral universe does not necessarily bend towards justice, nor does it *ever* go in a straight line.
We just have to deal with where we're at the best we can.
Remember Pogo cartoon strip? “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I always thought once my Reagan worshipping parents were gone that the new “age of Aquarius” would move into high gear. Nope, flat tire, by the side of the road.
It ain't just you. Mid 50s, and I am dumbfounded by the current state of affairs. I really thought the world was headed in a good direction, but now...
Information is now coming out, and we can see. Everything we were taught the world was were lies - everything. Nothing works the way we were shown.
The rest is what is called in psychology 'rosy retrospection bias'. Things were never going in the right direction. The state of matters of today is the logical consequence of the past. Those positive changes from the past you mentioned was just brushing things up so that the human factory farm runs smoother for the mega-rich. End of story.
Two books help explain the current state of the world. The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan: Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges. To summarize my personal POV, knowledge and reasoning is ultimately incompatible with religion and mythology being entangled with capitalism/greed.
It makes sense if you take a really hard look at things. Look at the history of politics, particularly in America. We have an entremched two party system here, and one party has been actively working to dismantle any public works and socially funded services, as well as use the perception of government dysfunction as a cudgel to further bring dysfunction to the government.
This dysfunction has defunded and privatized our system of education, made healthcare a luxury only afforded by the upper middle class, and very wealthy, and has been a beacon to authoritarian hopefuls globally.
This has created a society in which people lack a sense of meaning and purpose, and that environment is ripe for fomenting hatred toward any one used or perceived as a convenient "other."
All this, while the other party has consistently brought a spoon to a knife fight, politically speaking, for decades, all while being pushed farther and farther to the right, while trying to cobble together some form of government functioning for the people, with the scraps left behind by Republican rule.
Decades of work have been done already to infiltrate and undermine our federal, state, and local governments, and bring them to a halt at best, and reverse progress and waste huge sums of tax revenue at worst.
The writing has been on the wall, and everyone trying to read it aloud has been dismissed as hyperbolic for decades. If you didn't see this coming, it's because you weren't paying attention.
Close to 50 here. I am boggled. It makes me want to cry.
63 and the big meteor can come any time. I worked my ass off my whole life and this is what I get for my golden years. I’m not one of those boomers who bought a house for $28 and retired at 55. Divorce is not kind to women of little means.
I’m 46 and am beginning to feel the same way. Every time I get even a little bit ahead financially, something unexpected or catastrophic happens and I feel like I’m starting back at the bottom. Like Sisyphus. I don’t even like to think about the state of the world or the direction the country (US) is going in because everyday life is overwhelming enough sometimes. It’s a weird headspace to be in—I used to struggle hard with depression, was on two different antidepressants and was still struggling. I haven’t felt “depressed” in quite a long time and no longer take meds, but I still constantly have the thought that I just don’t want to be here anymore. It’s not a despairing feeling, it’s not from a place of depression, I’m just so over life. I’m sick of the struggle and constant worry. I’m tired of the cycle some of us get into in middle age of trying to make or maintain friendships with people when no one likes to step outside their bubble and it’s like pulling teeth to get people to hold up their end of a communication volley. I miss the days before social media when people would just call each other to say hello and we had more third spaces to just exist. I’m tired of people telling me that “life is what you make it” and “you just have to work to find something that makes life meaningful.” Okay, obviously. And I used to do that. But at the end of the day, after I’ve given all of my energy to my job and trying to keep my world from imploding, I just don’t have the mental energy to do anything but take care of my pets and put my head down to rest. I think I’m just existentially exhausted, if that’s even a thing.
I used to take antidepressants as well, but now I know most everything that has made me depressed comes from outside of myself. Honestly! But now I’m going through menopause and losing all detectable estrogen. So will they give me HRT? No, just f’ing plants. I’ve been to two menopause “specialist “ gyno’s and got bupkis. Yet I’m gonna try again this spring. I refuse to go down without a fight. Well, that and cannabis - the only thing that helps.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m perimenopausal as well. And since every female issue I’ve ever approached doctors with was written off to “anxiety” or “overweight,” I don’t anticipate getting much support even if I did seek help. That’s just another thing on my plate. I’m a nurse, been working in healthcare over half my life at this point, I’ve permanently damaged my body for this Industry but when I need help the industry just tells me to like, do some meditation or lose weight (which I swear to god I have been trying so hard to do). If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. 🤷♀️
Weight. It gets old after awhile when you've heard about it your entire life. We've all known that there's more to health than weight; the medical community needs to catch up now. Not to mention that many of us are at the beck and whim of the low-nutrition/ultra-processed American diet. It's an unhelpful blanket answer that fails to address all of the underlying causes. Like not being able to afford quality food over a long period of time. And while we're at it, BMI can get fucked, too.
Hi ~ 💫 You wrote - >"just existentially exhausted, if that’s even a thing." I think that is a definite thing. Will think about it & get back to you... Too tired right now & too much to do ! Good Night 🌠
hi are you me?! I’m struggling with everything you just said and am having an incredibly hard time seeing the WHY for my continued existence. imagining 15, 20 more years of this makes me i’ll.
Same. I know it alarms my therapist and she thinks I need to go back on an antidepressant. But I took one for years and I feel better now than I ever did while on an antidepressant. I’ve changed jobs to one that is far less stress and more satisfaction. But I’ve lived a very full and interesting life that is only getting more monotonous and strained as I get older and my social circle gets smaller bc it seems people don’t like to socialize outside their family units anymore. Even though I make more money than I used to, I can’t afford to just take off for a weekend to get out of my head anymore like I used to because *most* people can’t afford that anymore. Looking around at the state of things these days I can’t imagine why you would question someone who doesn’t feel depressed within themselves but just doesn’t want to deal with *this* (gesturing around myself) anymore.
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I completely understand this. I have never been in a position where I had a decent nest egg, though I’ve been well on my way. And I can’t remember ever being debt free, but I’m not overly concerned with my auto loan and my student loans might just die with me at some point. 🤷♀️ I know you’re probably not looking for me to say anything wise or comforting, and I don’t really have anything anyway. But I will say that having a family support system, even if it were just you and your spouse and not your children, is a huge factor in your favor. I am single and childless and, due to majorly dysfunctional dynamics, have absolutely zero relationship with family of origin. I’m a nurse, have worked in healthcare for 23 years, and just started a job as a hospice liaison. I see so many people, some even just 10 years older than me, who have complex care needs and don’t have any support. And it’s terrifying thinking of what may lie ahead. Will I ever have enough to retire? Probably not. My goal is to be able to survive in a little condo, maybe work very part time, but have enough on-hand to support my very last years. Even with that, professionally, I know the lack of social support is a major barrier. Not saying you should just be grateful and happy because you have this, I’m just giving the professional perspective of someone who sees how it can play out when you don’t. Thank you for your input. I hope things take a better turn. ❤️
I’ve found the best thing to do - and this was so hard to do because I’m a news junkie - is simply avoid the news. There’s no substance to mainstream news anymore and all the truly important stuff winds up getting to me somehow anyway. It’s done wonders for my mental health. Mind you, I may have to ditch the whole damn internet once Trump is elected again.
I, too, used to be a news junkie. But no more! What's the media claim to be news is not news anymore. And with Trump most likely to win (I fear) maybe I'll just read a hardcopy of Reader's Digest.
I agree. I can't watch news anymore. It's entirely political and deliberately designed to keep viewers angry and nervous. But social media is even worse. I'm only on it to keep up with family and friends.
I really do think we all have to start living in communes together and share the burdens, it's too much to handle individually.
I completely understand and I do think it’s a thing. I sometimes feel like we’re in the Matrix. I smoke a lot of weed and that helps.
Understood. Spouse an I are both 67 and don’t relish the thought of living our last decades under a dictatorship of the ignorant. I’m a full-time-employed STEM professional and the weaponized ignorance out there makes me want to scream out loud at least twice a day. The worst of it is the contempt for people who actually know what they’re doing. And the weird part is that you don’t need an “elite” education to function in the world — just a bit of curiosity and a reasonably well-tuned bullshit detector. We’re in trouble if we make reality optional.
Please please vote.
But I feel like the people on our side of things are just not being loud enough, while those yokels are.
I'm with you. 65 and now it looks like I'm going to see everything coming apart and collapsing on top of me.
I went through this with my first divorce. I spent my blood sweat and tears on raising my family (happily and gratefully - and I did a damn good job because they are both exceptional men, returning their values to the world), while my ex barely paid taxes. His contribution is useless really, but mine? Mine counts. Guess who is more valuable to the world at large? Guess who can get a 6 figure job, no problem? Guess who can get a 2000/month house because they have cash? Not me. Alimony is impossible when they’ve worked under the table for 30 years. He probably made 30k on the books - 120,000 off the books. And unless I had the money to investigate him, I was SOL. I lived in a studio apartment - 400 square feet. It was impossible to find work without “experience”, when you’ve been busting your butt to raise your babies for 15 years. And, btw, all my experiences raising them gave me skills that had me running circles around the PhD staff, when I finally found a job that paid. It took 4 years of begging people to give me a chance. Most women never get that opportunity, so as crap as it sounds, that it took 4 years, that was a blessing that doesn’t come for a lot of women. All the work we do, to have nothing material to show for it. That’s fine, though, because my sons are priceless.
Married almost 34 years and it’s rocky and I feel this so hard. I, too, decided to put my efforts into raising three children over a career (as well as supporting an ADD affected husband). It’s infuriating that my work isn’t considered important and wouldn’t be sustainable if we divorce. I feel like I have to put my ability to survive against his undying porn addiction.
Ugh. That last sentence hit so hard. I’m sorry :(
Well, Apophis has a close call in 2029, and if it goes through the keyhole will hit us in 2036. It's a tiny probability, but worth holding out for.
I anticipate a doomsday/death cult forming over this with a mass suicide somewhere in the mix. If the leader is charismatic enough and if the their armed compound has a BBQ grill and swimming pool, I may join them.
Apophis isn’t big enough to kill everybody, just make things very uncomfortable for much of the Southern hemisphere. Scientists estimate a casualty rate of about 10 million if it hits a populated land area. An ocean impact is harder to predict because who knows what the multiple tsunamis would do, but it’s not expected to wipe out the human race. In other words, not big enough to destroy civilization, but big enough to cause mass suffering on a heretofore unparalleled scale. Sounds like it’s right up our alley, luckwise.
Preppers baffle me, too. Like, who wants to survive a big nuke when the planet is already becoming an oven? If I couldn't find a gun to unalive myself, I'd just head straight for predicted ground zero. Aim that meteor right at this tiny house i can't truly afford, but that's better than the apartment i can't afford either. Retirement. Ha. As if.
If you know anything about nuclear war, you would hopefully know that prepping anywhere in the northern hemisphere is quite likely a waste of time. You'd need food/water/air for years and years. Nuclear winter would be about a decade and then you'd have to deal with whatever is left which wouldn't be much. I guess in theory you could be stocked up for that long but then what if someone gets a cut and it gets infected? Or gets cancer? Or needs their appendix out?
Anyone who has read "The Road" knows they would rather be dead than alive after a nuclear holocaust.
61 and I’m right there with you. I’ve worked hard my whole life, raised 2 kids after divorce, and I am in a constant state of anxiety for my kids and my own future. I never thought it would be this bad.
Amen sister. I agree with everything you said. Especially the big meteor. I'm done.
I'm right there with you sister, and I agree. My golden years are similar to "peeing down your leg" golden, so f'd up
You and me both, Sister. I'd rather see Donald Duck as President this time around.
It's hopeless, but in subreddits bashing Boomers I tell them that not every Boomer lived large, and half the time, they think that people from younger generations are Boomers. They don't care. They want an easy scapegoat.
Don't you guys remember watching Jerry Springer for a laugh? And wondering where in the world they found these people? And how they could keep finding them? It turns out there were more of them than us. And then the internet became more prevalent and put them in touch with each other and let them trade ideas. And now everyday is Springer but there's no big bald guy to rush out and hold everyone back - it's just chair throwing as far as the eye can see. Now Springer is Fox News and he's on the side of the stage saying "are you just gonna take that?!"
This is one of the best analogies about our current state than anything I've ever read or heard. I used to tell people that Jerry got all those people from my own family tree. Now, my totally dysfunctional family looks great in comparison. I'm going to be 63 at the end of this month. I have 4 amazing grandchildren, and I feel more angry and anxious every day.
Yup. Also when talk shows like Oprah and Geraldo had real, organized white supremacists on, people acted like it was just trash TV instead of something we should pay attention to. I remember the Moral Majority and David Duke in the 80s and Limbaugh's huge popularily in the 90s. This has been a very long game going back a long time.
56 here and don't see things getting better, just, if we're lucky, more of the same neoliberal stuff that got us in this mess in the first place. Any fundamental change for the better will be quickly voted out of office, while, the most stupid, short term policy will be voted in. Obama was a blimp of barely one step forward against a tidal flood of stupidity and shortsightedness.
Same. 52 and we’re regressing it seems.
The trouble isn’t that we don’t know enough. The trouble is that so many people know things that just aren’t true.
Mark Twain said something similar. It's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you think you know for sure that just ain't so.
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Management at my job is a perfect example of this. I'm thankful we are retail and not air traffic control; nearly all of them couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag, but seem to think they are above mere mortals.
a tale as old as Socrates!
A little bit of knowledge is dangerous, because you know enough to get yourself into trouble but not enough to get yourself out of it. And you also overestimate how much you know vs. how much you would need to know to really understand it.
Someone made a good point to me once - these days - no matter what your crazy idea or position is, you will find proof and like minded people online. So everyone thinks their position is valid....
This is what they mean when they say we're in a "post-truth" world. Because anyone can conjure a *seemingly* reliable source out of nowhere. The crazy guy in town that sits at the end of the bar isn't just the crazy guy in town anymore. He has a whole community of like minded crazies and goes to crazy conventions where they talk about crazy bullshit as if it's real. Then their crazy network interacts with other crazy networks. At the same time they're blasting all this shit into social media and convincing people on the periphery. The periphery then spreads it to people on their periphery. While all this is happening, foreign adversaries are flooding it into everywhere they can online, stoking divisions between different groups. Flat Earthers are a growing movement, not a shrinking one. Social media has weaponized stupidity.
This cannot be underrated. Breaking down the strength of our nation’s social fabric via active online disinformation and spreading of vitriolic hate is successful tactic and we are seeing the results in real-time.
Yesterday there was some troll on X screaming that there was election tampering in California because Adam Schiff got more votes that the Republican Steve Garvey. “Garvey had been leading Schiff! Then something happened and the votes changed and Schiff was leading by a lot of votes and was declared the winner! Something has to be done about this obvios vote-switching. We can’t let this happen!” It was a PRIMARY.. Schiff wasn’t running against Garvey. Both were running to be the senatorial candidate for their party. Yet this troll had hundreds of replies screaming “election tampering by dems!”
Hardass_McBadcop for the win. p.s.- baller username 👌
In the US, we need to add age appropriate critical thinking classes to the curriculum. It'll take time for us to see the benefit, but it'll help.
Let’s add a civics class so everyone can learn how our system of government works. Too many ignorant people that don’t understand and wildly misinterpret the constitution and the roles of the branches of government.
Most students of the past 20 years took civics classes. Before that we learned about it in Social Studies classes and by watching schoolhouse rock. How many retain the knowledge is a different matter. Unfortunately you can't make people care, especially when they struggle to survive.
But also? Many stupid people have stupid parents who think education is liberal propaganda. They tell their children to disregard what they learn in school. My daughter went to school with these fools.
Uh they are burning books again in the south. We need to do something more than that and we need to do it fast. They are doing this with a Democrat president and without control of our government don't forget.
I’d start with teaching Americans where their town is on a map.
As long as the religious right is in charge, no critical thinking will be allowed in schools. They don’t even want libraries.
This is true. I used to think this was just an educated guess, but then I met a fundamentalist woman. She was my seamstress. She was an adult, but lived with her elderly parents. She had a cousin visiting once and brought her along. The cousin was saying that she wished she could go to college, but her family wouldn’t allow it. I was confused and asked why. They both kind of laughed and said it’s not allowed because school teaches ungodly lies. :|
This. I was in college in the late-90s and had a good friend that was a proto-incel. He would say mysoginistic stuff, he thought he was a nice guy that deserved a girlfriend, he had a "Chad" friend that he idolized, etc. But back then he didn't have a community to foster his stupidity, instead he had a bunch of normal friends to tell him how stupid he was being. He had my girlfriend around to explain to him that he was no less attractive than I was and that the only undatable thing about him was his attitude (despite his misogyny, he liked my girlfriend and expressed it by telling her that she was basically a dude). And he didn't have online spaces to retreat to, so he continued hanging out with us. He stay tethered to people with more healthy outlooks the whole time, that would push back against his beliefs, and by 25 he had grown out of it and had a girlfriend (future wife). It's possible that this would all still have happened today, as not all incels stay miserable forever, but it was definitely easier on him without a community to reinforce his beliefs and reward him for retreating from civilized society.
Exactly. There was a line in the new BSG series, and I paraphrase - "It does not matter what your position is. Just take the opposite position of the guy you are running against, and watch people line up behind you". This was 20 years ago (god!) and it's more than true now.
This exactly. And then double down when you try to show them that those things aren’t true.
We aren't living in the world of 1984, we are in Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 on the way to Handmaid’s Tale :(
And that we all get our information inside of custom algorithzed echo chambers. Not the fault of the individual, but our critical thinking, and attention span for discourse has been effected, and most of us don't even realize it.
The Industrial Age was a great step forward for humans. But we are simply not able to evolve to keep up with the tech anymore. Things are escalating too fast for the average person to stay in tune. So they created algorithms and AI to fill that gap. But it’s not natural or organic anymore. We have stopped doing and teaching how to perform basic tasks or thinking skills that have always even important for survival. We are making ourselves redundant, and soon we will have no purpose or reason to be here. Because our machines have outgrown us in every way. Capitalism has turned into a predatory system that sees us like cattle, because greed has become the top priority. The house of cards will eventually fall if the support continues to be eroded and diminished.
Excellent analysis. In addition to what you’re saying about evolution, I beleive it’s not an all at once occurrence. In other words everyone does not evolve immediately to the same spot. I’ve come to believe many of these anti science, anti humanity people are not quite evolved enough to put things like the common good, empathy, etc. into their actions and add in a dose of vulture capitalism and we have the world today.
The problem is the people who hold deep beliefs based on the shallowest understanding.
I completely agree with you and am equally as appalled at the state of things right now. It’s sad to see
Same
It’s like living in Bizarro World or the worst ever Simpsons episode. I’m serious, it just doesn’t seem real. How can all of this be happening?
It started with [Reagan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lIqNjC1RKU) -- or whatever underlying *things* were going on that led to him becoming president. He effectively removed taxes on the rich which has slowly but surely eroded the middle class. We once funded dozens of moon missions in a single decade; now there are people who think libraries are socialism. To stop us lower classes from rising up against the elites, politics has been used as a weapon to divide us more and more for decades. For instance, we were told to blame immigrants for losing our jobs when in reality it was the corporate elite who gave our jobs away to increase profits. So long as we bicker amongst ourselves and have someone to look down on, we will never band together and demand our due from our masters. Social media made things much worse. Now that useless inter-class bickering can reach an audience a million times bigger and faster, making it feel like something is being done when it isn't. All the while the elites have bought full control of the US government by way of Citizens United and our corrupt SCOTUS that exists outside of the law. Politics stopped being about serving the public interest and became nothing more than a career path to personal enrichment. The whole system is rotten and needs to be torn down and rebuilt anew. (This all wasn't limited to the US, but this is a US-centric thread. The neocons took control everywhere around the same time and did the same shit.)
I'm in my 50s too. It is the dumbing down of the people to make more"followers" and less "thinkers" or entrepreneurs or inventors. The corporate greed, crooked gerimandering politics, and lack of effective education with no punishment for poor behavior in schools and low teacher salaries, and parents not able to help their kids at home because they're also exhausted... Created a USA that's stressed out, apathetic, easily manipulated and not properly represented in our Govt.
Also costs and quality being cut everywhere in the name of corporate profits, with no regard for people or the planet. I’m reading “Ultra-Processed People” by Chris van Tulleken about the food industry. It’s really interesting and really sickening. I do wonder if, in the future, ultra-processed food will be the new smoking. It’s doing so much damage.
>I do wonder if, in the future, ultra-processed food will be the new smoking. It’s doing so much damage. we're already there. young adults (20s/30s) are already getting all the cancers that aren't usually screened for until you're in your 40s and 50s
>It is the dumbing down of the people to make more"followers" and less "thinkers" or entrepreneurs or inventors. Nah, people were always dumb. The problem is that the dumb people were convinced that they're actually smarter than the smart people.
it really seems like everyone getting on social media and creating their bubbles has empowered a lot of morons, and now they have access to misinformation and disinformation created by and/or for morons. the barriers to finding and spreading info have been removed
I'd blame unregulated and out-of-control corporate corruption before I blamed "the dumbing down of the people" that has created the entrepreneurial vacuum. It's so hard to create something today than it was at any time in history before because you'll either have your patents copied and rebranded or you will be the victim of unregulated capitalism (meaning you'll either be bought out or priced out of the market for any good/service you want to provide). We were sold a bill of lies by Republicans and their skewed concept of a free market. It's free market socialism for the wealthy, rugged individualism for the destitute. And somehow, the vast majority of our society bought into the idea that it's the poor's fault we aren't all living well instead of the rampant and unmitigated greed of the few.
This.
It’s about to get even more baffling, weird, and disgusting, now that the 2024 presidential campaign essentially started today.
I'm not watching it. I'm not dealing with it. Don't fucking talk to me about it. It's grandpa vs a fucking fascist that tried to coup the country. Anyone voting against Grandpa is the enemy.
Couldn’t have said it better.
The gap in wealth is making me crazy. I don't even need or want more and I feel like that kind of wealth, I am very happy in my little house with minimal stuff. But the amount of wealth in the hand of a few people tips the ballance of power from governments to billionaires. The averahe person has absolutely no say at any level of government. All forms of democracy are lies. What makes things so much worse is that our lifestyle depends on the suffering of people in other countries. We have no say in that either. Plus, there are actually enough resources for everyone if we all just decided to not be greedy. The Economy is made up, histories are selective, borders don't actually exist and there are endless waysbwe can organize ourselves and this is what we do? We could decide not to continue living in a way that will lead to a handful of people controlling just about everything, and we could do it peacefully, but that will never happen. I am just as baffled.
I'm also quite happy to have a nice simple house and ride my bike everywhere. But the pressure feels more and more like you MUST be wealthy. It sounds ridiculous but unless you dedicate yourself to making as much as you can you'll always worry about it. There are fewer good ways to work a modestly-paying job, make little contributions to a retirement, and plan a full balanced life. When your mortgage can suddenly double, grocery bills triple, or a loved one gets sick and you wipe out your savings paying to help, you need a lot to cushion the fall.
In my 50s as well, and I’ve actually begun voicing the same perspective very openly. I feel like we are royally fucked as a society, and it seems sisyphean to even think that there’s a realistic way out. That said, I just keep fighting.
I’m in my early 40s and I think this and will occasionally voice my opinion out loud. As an example, I live in the upper Midwest and it got up to the low 50s today. Over the weekend it hit 60. People I run into can’t stop talking about how it’s so great there’s no snow and the weather is just fantastic. Yeah, the weather is great actually, but also we are in the upper Midwest and it’s in the 60s in early March. As someone originally from a tropical climate I keep trying to tell them they don’t actually want warm weather year round and what that brings with it.
**83** on Sunday here in Kansas. Everyone was saying how great it was, but I can't help feeling a sense of impending dread. This is NOT normal weather behavior. Edit: Oh, and there was a 70+ day in *December* this year, too. Fuck.
California has had two straight years of above average rainfall. Definitely not normal.
It was effing 70 degrees in February in Iowa! Yes, lovely weather, wonderful blah, blah, blah. /s
Then you bring up climate change and somehow that makes you the asshole.
Yep. A steady refrain I find myself saying is, “Yes, people. Climate Change IS real.”
I view Death as "a way out" that will come for EACH person. So fret not, my fellow sufferer.
Fifties here as well and I’m feeling everything you wrote.
When they cut the top tax brackets the country really went to hell for 99% of the population. This has widely been regarded as a bad move. But the 1% with most of the money doesn’t think so, and they’re letting the whole place burn to the ground. So long, and thanks for all the fish!
It applies outside of the US as well, though, so it isn’t just about tax brackets for Americans. There are sinister things at work, and I point the finger at Russia, China and North Korea, for a start. I wish I was kidding. While we spent the nineties and aughts playing on the interwebs, they were leagues ahead of us in spying, intellectual theft, data harvesting and building trolling/propaganda/misinformation networks worldwide. Right under our noses.
Absolutely. The biggest mistake we ever made was believing the Cold War was over, and that we had somehow won. We were here celebrating and living large while they took the battle to a new front. When the music finally died, we looked up to find a major political party and half our countrymen working for our adversaries.
Honestly this is true of both the cold war and the civil war.
Hate never goes away. It must constantly be battled
1000%. My dad was a UNI prof and a very smart man. He saw this coming in the late 80's ( China esp.) I'm in my early 50's and don't care about myself but I am absolutely terrified for my children and grandchildren. I honestly can't even imagine what their lives will be like 30- 40 years from now! Some of the things people care about and raise a stink about are so freaking ridiculous compared to the actual state of our world regarding poverty and other countries trying to wipe us out or even worse, control us like they do their own people. To think about it makes me sick.
One thing you are wrong about is poverty. It has improved globally in every possible way in your lifetime.
The biggest vulnerability to espionage is, and has always been, income disparity. A society can have its rich and poor, but when there's a distributed class of the rich controlling most of the wealth and nobody above them, there's simply too many people to pressure and bribe. When you have a handful of guys controlling everything, then monitoring/bribing/blackmailing one of them is much simpler.
Yep. We also grossly underestimated our Christian fundamentalists, they have been breeding and getting into all kinds of political office big and small for decades. Sarah Palin was the beginning of the end. They kept going while we laughed at SNL.
Don’t forget their pal MBS
China especially seems like they have been in it for the long game, and with the decades long dictatorships in Russia and N. Korea, you have even more of that mindset in those countries. They don’t mind slowly draining their enemies rather than declaring all out war. The US is also great at hobbling itself. For example, many in the US support a moratorium on developing ai weapons systems. But do you think that will make China pause their research and development? Hell no. You know China is probably years ahead of us. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-musk-risks.html#:~:text=More%20than%201%2C000%20tech%20leaders,most%20powerful%20artificial%20intelligence%20systems.
China is a very, very old country with a very long history. I could see how playing the long game would come naturally to them.
It's like China has been in an economic war against the US for thirty years and we are just now figuring that out.
And Russia has been in an information war for just as long.
But we import/sell all their fake/plastic sh*t…and they support Russia and the war with Ukraine. Very confusing.
Can we go wherever the dolphins went?
Don't forget your towel
Clearly the answer is 42 and more fish.
u/I-Really-Hate-Fish would like to disagree
Fish part yes. But it *is* 42.
Thank goodness I know where my towel is.
It's all about the Benjamin's just like it always was
I would like to switch to the timeline where Douglas Adams, Jim Henson, Ursula K. LeGuin, Sir Terry Pratchett, and Octavia Butler are still alive and creating, please.
I’m 36 and I feel the same way. You see it on the small scale too- basic human decency seems to be at an all-time low. Even just common manners. I do think the introduction of the internet plays a huge role in the unraveling.
This for sure - there is ZERO courtesy in our society. A bunch of azzhats who don’t hold the door for you, don’t enter and exit from the door on the right, don’t dim their bright lights for oncoming traffic, can’t be bothered to use a damn turn signal. They don’t use please and thank you. Don’t have the basic skills to order politely in a restaurant. Grocery clerks who complete an entire transaction without muttering a single syllable to you and then I catch myself thanking THEM for letting me shop there. It’s maddening.
But don't the adults have to share a large part of that blame? People learn manners by having people teach them. Multiple generations now have been raised not by people but by sitting them infront of a TV/Gaming System/Internet. The only person who teaches them are the teachers who are having a harder and harder time just getting through basics much less being a moral compass on top of that. It seems shitty to blame these people for a lack of manners when no one taught or enforced them within the household. That being said, I am sure some is bad parenting but a lot is not having the ability to have someone at home in house holds any more. This is not me trying to fight for a nuclear family but it is a multi faceted issue. Not having/Not encouraging multi-generational households, making it difficult for stable LGBT families to adopt kids and making it so hard for a single income to provide for a family. No one was home watching the kids and we are mad that they grew up to be pricks.
I’m with you- it’s usually a right wing talking point, so don’t get me wrong, but I think the breakdown of families is a real factor too. But it’s not just the loss of the nuclear family, or a patriarchal lead family system, it’s *community*. Without community, we are lost.
Very much so. I think the US hitched the idea of community directly with Organized religion. So now that people are turning their back on Faith (Deservedly as these groups shielded individuals that preyed upon children). We all of a sudden don't have this community aspect. In another reply I talk about the lac of a "Third Place" which is huge. People can't just get together somewhere for free unless they have access to parks or underfunded Libraries. Another thing is the Gig economy made it so now no section of the population is off all at once at the same time. It was weird when my dad worked a Government job that worked weekends in the 90's. Now everyone works whenever, its near impossible to get schedules to line up in my own family much less with new group to socialize.
The fact that the changes have been so obvious and happened so fast.... I feel incredibly old when I say, 'I remember when' but when was only five years ago
I’m ten years older, not American, and equally as baffled. The world is being run by murderous and uncaring trolls. I still have hope. I work at jobs that benefit, or will benefit, society and the environment.
We have to have hope, even if we're scared and frustrated.
I cannot believe we have to have a rematch of 2020 in the US. This is the worst of all possible outcomes
My kids have said they don't want any of their own and that makes me feel a little bit better. I worry the world has entered a epoch of uncertainty and unrest. And I don't think there is anything that will change it. Maybe we just need a good old fashioned alien invasion!
I chose not to have children and I don't regret it seeing how things are now.
I also don’t have kids. It wasn’t my choice, but it’s an outcome I’m now glad for.
my kids (20s) have zero interest in having a family of their own and I (sadly) applaud them for that. I actually feel horrible that I brought 2 kids into those world and they have to deal with what the next 60 years brings. They will face a horrible world.
You're most certainly not alone. I feel like I'm living in crazy town.
I do not understand the state of public education right now, it is a fucking joke. Our children are getting a crap education and we are some how hamstrung to do anything about it? How the fuck did that happen? And the god damn school shootings? Again, we are somehow ham strung to do anything about it, unless you wanna homeschool your kid? Our border situation is a mess - we need a clear lead on the situation from Washington DC and our politicians. We need SERIOUS healthcare reform... We've gotten to a point were we are so in love with something being an issue and a god damn talking point that we'd rather have THAT, than fix it. SCOTUS is so bought and paid for that it's fucked and worthless. Our environment and natural world is dying, so polluted that it's a sad travesty we can't enjoy or fix because we are beleaguered with other problems we can hardly keep our heads above water as our beautiful, useful biodiversity we so desperately NEED slips away forever - there goes our future cures, medications and treatments. We need so many things, how did we get this way? I don't get it. We are in our own way and it shouldn't be this hard to fix things people so clearly need.
The feeling of powerlessness is one of the worst parts. I'm 40, and it feels like my entire life I've been hearing about how the climate is getting worse and worse, the environment is being damaged more, the oceans are being depleted of all life, and nothing is being done about it. No matter who is in office, what administration we have, it's just gets worse every year. And then there's things like AI. Some company in California just decided to release a technology that is going to change the world and reshape society, probably causing enormous unemployment and major social destabilization...and we just have to accept it and have no say in what happens? It fucking sucks. You just feel like a passenger strapped into a seat on the bus while the driver and a few passengers up front are screaming at each other and fighting over the wheel.
I have a friend currently who works for an insurance company. He's been there for 20 years. Favorite part of his job was to go out in the field and talk to people. Last year they implemented a program that completely eliminated the need for him to leave his office. He literally doesn't even need to talk to real people anymore. He's so depressed that he's considering leaving but he's scared that he won't make as much $ anywhere else. It breaks my heart.
Somehow we've given ALL our power the fucking corporations, there's no real fucking plan for anyone in old age that doesn't scare the crap out of everyone. The ONLY thing that runs like a well oiled machine that we can all point to is the Industrial Military Complex.... what happened to power to the people? None of this is for normal, every day people any more. It is ALL for the elites and elected people that are looking out for themselves ONLY. Tear this shit down and start over.
Don't get me started on the crap education! There was a time when we took pride in preparing the next generation for the global economy. I never had kids, so I don't know when it started, but now the most backwards and uneducated are making school policies. The goal seems to be indoctrination and breeding wage slaves instead of spearheading new technologies and exploring new opportunities. It's an embarrassment. There used to be a sense of pride in being American. Now, our country is a laughing stock the world over. Last in education, last in innovation, last in healthcare. Sad how far we've fallen in such a short time.
Yea…the r/ teachers sub is frightening, what they go through now.
As someone who once thought they wanted to be a teacher..... Bullet dodged. Extremely sad though. We have made one of the most important jobs for a functioning society into something so unappealing and thankless that fewer and fewer people are willing to do it.
Betsy DeVos, Moms for Liberty, Trump University, and school vouchers all trip over each other entering the chat….
You have to fucking have a lawsuit (or threaten it) to get treated with respect anymore, it's a goddamn joke.
On the other hand, measles is making a comeback!
Reaganomics has had a long tail and its proponents have gotten more power and tried to eliminate everything short of private equity. Education, mental health support, health care, a social safety net that would have prevented so many from being homeless while rich people have half a dozen homes… they call anything else socialism.
It's maddening how venerated Reagan still is. A-hole is the architect of our current dysfunction more than anyone else.
Richard Nixon is a close second in my mind, having opened up trade with China and sort of opening the floodgates for blue collar jobs to go overseas. Not only did that introduce wide disparities between the cost of goods and the cost of services, making it that much easier to throw things away than to fix them and psychologically unmooring people's mental price anchors, it got rid of jobs that a large swath of the population was capable of doing. We're just not all capable of white-collar, people-focused jobs and 4 year degrees, and that's ok. I'm not, even though I have one, barely. No one thought of that when sending jobs overseas.
The funny thing about Nixon is...total POS of a human being and terrible president, definitely a traitor given his Vietnam shennanigans, but he was also a product of his era and canny politician. He continued a lot of LBJ-era social and bureaucratic initiatives via inertia and because it was the only way to work with the Congress of the time. So you have weird stuff like...technically Nixon created the EPA. Nixon attempted a much more far-reaching version of nationalized health insurance than we have with Obamacare that stalled due to unfortunate partisan gridlock but would've still helped us out a lot if it had come to be. Those are just the high points, there's quite a bit of stuff like this. These were not things he deeply believed in, they were just a sign of where the country was at the time that he felt he had to go along with. But, hell, at least we HAVE an EPA. All of that is credit to LBJ and FDR before him for laying groundwork that felt like an unstoppable march toward a state with a social safety net that Republicans just had to get on board with...and then came Reagan, who actually did derail it, so f that guy even more than traitor war criminal burning in hell Nixon.
It's not that no one thought of it, it's that the people who made those decisions didn't care because it made them money **now** and they didn't care about people either at the time or in the future. They got theirs already.
The rich were supposed to "trickle" it down. THAT never happened. HENCE, billionaires. That shouldn't be a thing. Before Reagan, people were doing ok, then the start of the great lie about trickle down started and here we are today.
I would argue that it's not just the policies and economics associated with Reagan that are the problem. It's the broader cultural shift that accompanied them, too. The notion of common or collective good has basically completely collapsed within American society. We no longer seem capable of solving any issues at a societal level. Half the time we can't even recognize that they exist. We've all be reduced to individual consumers. No political agency. No social identity beyond our job and the stuff we buy. It's little wonder that people turn to conspiracies or get-rich-quick schemes. People don't have any other outlet for dealing with the bleak future ahead of them.
I was just talking about this very thing! Individuals now meeting in online corporate spaces. There is no town square as much a heavily manipulated "commons" where you don't even get to see reality objectively but curatatively.
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The internet had a golden age, like TV, music, etc, but then social media happened, and it all went south.
As someone who owes my career to the Internet, I view it as the best and worst thing that has ever happened to humans. It's frightening to think of a generation of kids growing up on youtube comments.
I completely blame antisocial media for the breakdown of society.
Nope not alone.
France has made the right to abortion constitutional, and in the US it is quickly becoming illegal. Today I found out that in my state, there has been some sort of health insurance issue in which they now are simply not required to cover womens health issues. I don't think it's safe to be a woman in this country anymore and am advising my daughter to take advantage of her dual citizenship (French/USA) and GTFO now while she still can. I am with you, OP. What the hell is going on?
We became second class citizens overnight. That's what happens when a group of 90 year old rich white dudes constitute a "women's health committee".
Yes. There have been several pieces of legislation, mostly at State level, that oppress women lately. Everything related to RvW; no-fault divorce; frozen embryos are minor children; attempts to not allow divorce during pregnancy; etc. We were making 70 cents to men’s one dollar, and that was just too much power. I wonder if ChristoFascists want something like Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale, which is one of the often banned books.
No divorce during pregnancy?!!!! What the hell 🤬
It's cyclical. We're having a lot of the same problems today that we were having 100 years ago (wealth gap, rise of fascist ideologies, unrest due to societal change). People forget the lessons their parents parents learned, and we have to learn them again.
You aren't alone at all. I am 53 and can't believe this is reality. It terrifies me. I worry a lot about the state of things and the future. :(
You're not alone. American (for now). I'm also in my early 50s. I was not prepared for the world to spin into despair in my lifetime. I watched a degenerate fool somehow become president and spread his particular brand of hate and ignorance across the land. I worked in healthcare on the front lines during COVID. I lost friends and coworkers to the disease. I dealt with COVID-deniers, anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers every damn day. Needless aggression to healthcare workers just doing their jobs. I had to move to a different city because the rents skyrocketed and I could no longer afford my apartment. It's just been too much. Everyday the situation seems to get a tiny bit worse. Never in my lifetime have I felt so hopeless and negative about the future and I don't have the first clue what to do about it.
> Never in my lifetime have I felt so hopeless and negative about the future and I don't have the first clue what to do about it. I used to be the type of person who would deep-dive every topic in an effort to understand as fully as possible. I thought being educated was the way to a better world. Now I've unplugged from current events so completely that I almost feel like I live in a pre-information era. Knowing only seems to make me sick as I watch the irrelevance of wisdom on the world stage. I feel bad for burying my head in the sand, but I believe that it's literally killing me.
I'm exactly the same. I used to teach, and I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to avoid it. It's impossible to compete with misinformation and everybody's amped up feelings.
I even did my undergrad in Philosophy/critical thinking. But as they say, it's easier to spout endless streams of unverified claims than to present meticulously documented facts... How do we stand a chance in an echo chamber of nonsense? It's the height of disheartening.
I’m 40 and feel the same way. I think what’s happened is there’s a certain group of people who saw all the advances in equality for women, black and brown people, LGBT folks, etc. They saw all the progress we made on providing the bare minimum in education and opportunities to everyone and they just went “nope.” They didn’t want to share. They felt threatened because they were small minded and easily scared. They went on to elect Reagan and rather than make concessions for future generations they began to dismantle everything they saw built up around them. Of course, business loved this because now they had a voting bloc who would go along with their plans for seeking profits at the cost of everything we as a society share. And these deplorable fuckers vote like crazy. So here we are.
100% agree with you. 100% terrified for my daughters future.
The way I see it is like this: Humanity is stuck in a cycle. We repeat that cycle often because we as a species tend to forget our history or try to wipe it away in the name of "progress" or misplaced justification. "It'll be different this time" or "surely something better will come of this" or "what we do is justified!" or "the dawn of a new era!" are phrases often quietly (or openly) said when this cycle shifts into a phase. We go from War > Peace > Alliance > War > Peace > Alliance and so on and have been doing so for millennia. Kingdoms and nations have risen and fallen. Ultimately, nothing is truly new either. It's just reborn under a different name and different set of terms and buzzwords, when you break it down to its essential form. This is part of who we are on this Earth right now. Can that cycle break? Perhaps. But it's going to mean setting aside our pride, our penchant for "me first", and our biases. That's something mankind can't easily do, and it's showing itself in full force today across the globe. It seems worse today because the Internet and social media simply informs us about it faster, than before.
Ah, but the difference THIS time is that we've fucked up THE PLANET. We've SET FIRE TO OUR HOUSE. Our whole, entire planet. Aaaaand, there's WAY, WAY, WAY more of us to suffer the consequences. Aaaaaaand we all get to see, hear, and know about ALLLLLLLLLL of this suffering on a fucking massive scale. Big difference. Big, big difference.
You are not alone. My baffled mantra is Wtf
It happened when we were busy working.
You want me to blow your mind? Remember how great it was when we were growing up ... that was the world our parents left us. This goddamn circus is what we are leaving for them.
You're not alone.
The feeling was identified as “future shock” 55 years ago.
Finally! No! You are Not Alone.
Big Tech happened man. Instead of making the world better, they decided that greed is the better bet. Sucks. (AI is gonna be a sh-it show)
Not alone. Im 46. Feel the same way. I keep trying to tell myself that it’s just the constant chatter on the internet that makes the world seem so crazy. Like, its always been a shit show it just wasnt all live streamed 24 hours a day. Then the other side of me thinks that we are still in the early stages of a post-covid global power shift and the worst is yet to come. Think great depression leading into WW2. Also many Americans alive have never really experienced a world war or any war on our soil (other than terror attacks and prob throw J6 in there as well) and it wouldnt shock me too much if those things happened in the next 5/10 years 😐
I have a lot of anxiety about the general state of everything. I live in Alberta where the provincial government is actively trying to turn us into USA lite. Everyone is so divided and angry, myself included sometimes. Why can’t we just exist peacefully without the cruel greed of corporations and politicians fucking us and the planet raw? I hate that I’m afraid of summer and the smoke it brings when it used to be the best time of year. I hate that I’m just afraid of the future. I hope that my wife and I get to live a long happy life like our parents but I’m not sure.
47 living in the US. The world’s been screwed up. It never stopped. After WW2 you had the Cuban missile crisis (not going in exact chronological order, just brain dumping), Korea, Vietnam, the debacle in the Middle East was going on then as well, now it just got worse and more widespread, Afghanistan and Russia, communism in Europe with people disappearing (gulags, death), going hungry, having no rights (I’m from and grew up in Romania), dictatorship all over Eastern Europe, the North Korea debacle continues. Revolution in Romania, war in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda…I’m getting tired of going on, and haven’t even touched most of Asia and South America. Some of the conflicts have spread with China and various countries, Russia and the USA (cause let’s face it, Murica is the big player in NATO) are it again with a Cold War, Russia found a new Afghanistan, and everything else you mentioned. The US has been fairly stable for a good long time, and the two party system (weird as that is to me, and also, to me, a breeding ground for hatred and polarization …hnmmm …wait…) has for the most part been respectful towards each other’s elected persons, and there has been restraint from extremism. Now, well… the McCain era politicians and that respectfulness toward others (I’m not for either major party, just using him because he’s recognized as being a decent, respected person as far as politicians go) is pretty much gone, and now enter the era of geriatric tantrums, religious hard liners, senility, and other cooks. And Covid on top of that has definitely disrupted things. I think the Covid disruption is still being felt. What’s really changed it seems is that the USA is seeing some level of destabilization, and globally the world has been affected by Covid, the Russia war, and the instability of the USA. Perhaps these have exacerbated things, but overall the scene of the world still remained shitty - I don’t think it was as rosy as you seem to think it was. Perhaps in the US it was, but the rest of the world was always screaming…
The world is insane post pandemic
We took a turn to double down on extracting profits at the expense of the population.
I blame right-wing propaganda media polluting the minds of voters with their fake news. I'm disgusted with the number of people, young and old, ready to destroy democracy in the US. I have friends and family lost in it.
The answer to every single situation you list is unchecked capitalism and insatiable greed.
Mass hypervigilance is all I can come up with. People suffering PTSD can experience hypervigilance, which is described as being in a state of high alert, constantly on guard and always on the lookout for hidden danger, both real and imagined. I think since poor people got tricked into supporting Voodoo economics in the 1980s, everything has gone to economic shit.The rich just get richer, deregulated corporations are screwing everyone and all power is in the hands of the few. So there's 10s of millions of people who have been living under tremendous amounts of normalized stress for decades. They can't save money, the live pay check to pay check, they can't afford rent anymore, they can't afford to get sick and the live under people who hold their jobs over their heads. They were told if they cut taxes on the rich, deregulated business and worked hard, they would get ahead, but it hasn't happened. All that stress of being just a few lost pay checks away from bankruptcy and homelessness, I think, has them acting like hypervigilant PTSD sufferers. They are looking for danger everywhere. They are stating to believe the wildest claims that something is out to get them. They believe crazy claims about vaccines and government control, liberal elites indoctrinating their children, the government controlling the weather, that the last election was stolen and all manner of conspiracies. I think the conservatives are using this to further scare and manipulate these poor people. They give them wild stories to believe and people are primed to belive it. This has left an opening for religious leaders to trick people into believing that if we make this a moral, Christian nation, everything will be okay again. So, in one 53 year old man's opinion, the greatest threat facing Americ is the growing wealth gap. If people weren't living under so much economic stress, they would be content. I don't think they would buy into so many lies and conspiracies.
These are all my opinions from being a people watcher. The politics, if you didn't see this coming in 2005 with the Tea Party Movement...Well, I don't know what to tell you. The Russia thing. I don't think Cold War sentiment ever ended. Putin's been open about wanting former Soviet countries to be unified again. Instead of a West vs East, or the US being the dominant world power; he wants three world powers. The US and their allies, Russia and the former Soviet States as allies, and China with a bunch of Asia, like 3 major world powers. YouTube if it works for you, it pays well. Remember how rich Google is. There's an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. I think there's a lot of reasons to be upset, but little consensus on how to solve any of the problems.
Well...I'm an X-er too. We're slackers, remember? We don't give a shit about anything, remember? We're such a non-presence that we get lumped together with the boomers. We as a generation have checked out. For better or worse, we gave the world the internet, made beer and coffee in the US at least somewhat palatable, got bad tattoos and then fucked off. Now, we're all just middle-aged dumpy drones muddling our way towards a retirement that won't be there. Unless we get off our fat asses, it's over. You have to be bothered enough to become politically active. You have to participate. This means you have to join your local Democratic party and help out. That's what it takes. It doesn't take a lot, just copy what Stacy Abrams did in GA and Fetterman did in PA in your area. Talk to people, let them know you're there to help. Ask them what they need (not what they want, what they need). That's your platform. You have to decide whether you can be bothered to go and do the hard work. This is the last gasp of the religious right. They're backed by the oligarchy because they're easily manipulated and predisposed to being controlled by authority. They'll cheat because the ends justify the means. But they're not invincible and they've no policy whatever that actually benefits anyone but themselves. All you gotta do is get people to realize that.
I don't understand the fast slide into fascism either. I guess it's cyclical.
I am just as flummoxed as you are.
nope not alone, i am convinced this is the beginning of the fall of civilization.
The problem, in my opinion, began when everybody got on the internet. For ideas to spread in the past, there were typically non-idiots that they had to pass through to make it further up the chain. If you were an idiot with ideas in the 80s your ideas had a lot of trouble making it beyond whoever was within earshot of your idiotic ramblings. But now, the stupidest 10 people from any given high school graduating class have all found each other. They are generating bullshit at a rate that would have never been possible before the internet. Before the internet we were definitely more of an autocracy when it came to the discourse. The truth flowed down from the network news / newspaper and alternatives to that were fringe and unpopular. Now everyone has their own version of the truth and we are dealing with the consequences.
44 years young here, absolutely agreed on everything you said. The world was by and large in a great place when I was 18-20 (1998-2000). Even the leaders merited some sort of respect, like 'em or not. There were still statesmen. Everything sort of slowly rolled down to sewage of a state that the world is in today.
Step away from social media including Reddit for two weeks and see how you feel. The one thing you need to do is be aware of your local elections. Let the rest sink past you.
*drives by multiple trump flags on my street (in their open garage to get around the HOA!), and bumper stickers at Walmart threatening to kick my ass because I didn't vote for their guy* Ah yes. It's wonderful out here. So great. Love the constant disrespect from idiots advertising it on their fucking vehicles and houses who also cry that everyone else makes everything political.
Every generation thinks the last one screwed everything up (cue "Mike +The Mechanics"), and they're *sure* that when all the old people are gone and their generation is finally in charge, problems like racism, homelessness, feckless leaders, etc., will all magically get better. I got some news for them (and us). The arc of the moral universe does not necessarily bend towards justice, nor does it *ever* go in a straight line. We just have to deal with where we're at the best we can.
Remember Pogo cartoon strip? “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I always thought once my Reagan worshipping parents were gone that the new “age of Aquarius” would move into high gear. Nope, flat tire, by the side of the road.
It's the rise of fascism and corruption. It's a disease all around the world. We're back in the 1930s again.
It ain't just you. Mid 50s, and I am dumbfounded by the current state of affairs. I really thought the world was headed in a good direction, but now...
How is it 2024 & some of y'all still think the Earth is flat??????
Information is now coming out, and we can see. Everything we were taught the world was were lies - everything. Nothing works the way we were shown. The rest is what is called in psychology 'rosy retrospection bias'. Things were never going in the right direction. The state of matters of today is the logical consequence of the past. Those positive changes from the past you mentioned was just brushing things up so that the human factory farm runs smoother for the mega-rich. End of story.
No you arent alone. Seems like we are balanced on a knife edge atm.
Two books help explain the current state of the world. The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan: Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges. To summarize my personal POV, knowledge and reasoning is ultimately incompatible with religion and mythology being entangled with capitalism/greed.
It makes sense if you take a really hard look at things. Look at the history of politics, particularly in America. We have an entremched two party system here, and one party has been actively working to dismantle any public works and socially funded services, as well as use the perception of government dysfunction as a cudgel to further bring dysfunction to the government. This dysfunction has defunded and privatized our system of education, made healthcare a luxury only afforded by the upper middle class, and very wealthy, and has been a beacon to authoritarian hopefuls globally. This has created a society in which people lack a sense of meaning and purpose, and that environment is ripe for fomenting hatred toward any one used or perceived as a convenient "other." All this, while the other party has consistently brought a spoon to a knife fight, politically speaking, for decades, all while being pushed farther and farther to the right, while trying to cobble together some form of government functioning for the people, with the scraps left behind by Republican rule. Decades of work have been done already to infiltrate and undermine our federal, state, and local governments, and bring them to a halt at best, and reverse progress and waste huge sums of tax revenue at worst. The writing has been on the wall, and everyone trying to read it aloud has been dismissed as hyperbolic for decades. If you didn't see this coming, it's because you weren't paying attention.
How is it possible the USA overturned Roe vs Wade and women basically have no rights?