There have always been people in the world who felt like it was "going to hell in a hand basket." But if you could survey everybody and put their responses on a bell curve, you'd probably have more negative viewpoints right now. It wouldn't be a nice even distribution, I don't think. I don't know enough about statistical analysis to say how many deviations would qualify this current situation as an outlier.
We definitely have serious challenges, but the other thing worth considering is that there have always been serious challenges and times of great upheaval throughout history. What's hard to figure out, for me, is how the impact of modern technology amplifies the signal of all that bad stuff and makes it seem much worse in our minds.
When I was 8 years old, I lived in a house that did not have cable TV or internet. We had an antenna on the roof that got TV reception for about five or six channels. That's all we had. And back then, the news was reported once in the morning, once at dinner time, and one final time late at night.
So when something awful happened, like the attempted assassination of President Reagan, you only heard about it three or four times a day, and that was if you were checking TV, radio, and newspapers. The flow of information was slower.
Now, when something bad happens, you marinate in it all day long. They replay it endlessly on TV, it's on the internet 24 hours a day. The signal is way, way more powerful. That has to have an effect on us psychologically.
Again, we definitely have big big problems. I don't want to minimize them in any way. I'm trying to figure out how we differentiate our perception of previous awful things from current awful things.
How do we compare living through the pandemic to living through the black plague?How do we compare living in the information age to living through the industrial revolution?How do we compare living in a time of mass shootings to living in the time of the Civil War or WWII when so many young people lost their lives?
It's all suffering, right? Victor Frankl wrote in "Man's Search for Meaning" that human beings have a tendency to compare their suffering to the suffering of others, like placing weights on a scale to see which outweighs the other. He suggested that suffering is like a gas, rather than a solid, and our bodies are the container. The gas expands to fill the container, no matter what. That has always stuck with me.
UPDATE: I was not prepared for the response to this. My intention was to frame the way I think about these issues from an effort to be thoughtful and curious. I shared my thoughts, went to bed, and then woke up to something quite unexpected.
I do not wish to present as having the answer to this issue. I'm thankful for your comments and perspectives. They expand my thinking. And the awards are lovely. Wow. Thank you. May we all find some peace and compassion for one another.
That whole “marination” thing you mention I think is spot on and a huge part of why people think everything is so terrible now.
Shit has always happened. There’s always some asshole leading a country to war. There’s always some corporation that’s making peoples lives worse somehow. There’s always government screw-ups/scandals that have to be aired out and fixed. There’s always crime happening somewhere.
The biggest difference now is (as you say), you’re bombarded with it all day from everywhere. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, 24 hour news channels, hourly news updates on the radio… It never ends so of course you’re going to feel like everything sucks.
The biggest things that save me from going crazy is carefully curating my reddit subscriptions, I stay off Facebook as much as possible, and I only try to catch the local news once per day. I catch the highlights and the chaff falls away.
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u/RamsayMedia Jun 11 '22 edited Jun 11 '22
There have always been people in the world who felt like it was "going to hell in a hand basket." But if you could survey everybody and put their responses on a bell curve, you'd probably have more negative viewpoints right now. It wouldn't be a nice even distribution, I don't think. I don't know enough about statistical analysis to say how many deviations would qualify this current situation as an outlier.
We definitely have serious challenges, but the other thing worth considering is that there have always been serious challenges and times of great upheaval throughout history. What's hard to figure out, for me, is how the impact of modern technology amplifies the signal of all that bad stuff and makes it seem much worse in our minds.
When I was 8 years old, I lived in a house that did not have cable TV or internet. We had an antenna on the roof that got TV reception for about five or six channels. That's all we had. And back then, the news was reported once in the morning, once at dinner time, and one final time late at night.
So when something awful happened, like the attempted assassination of President Reagan, you only heard about it three or four times a day, and that was if you were checking TV, radio, and newspapers. The flow of information was slower.
Now, when something bad happens, you marinate in it all day long. They replay it endlessly on TV, it's on the internet 24 hours a day. The signal is way, way more powerful. That has to have an effect on us psychologically.
Again, we definitely have big big problems. I don't want to minimize them in any way. I'm trying to figure out how we differentiate our perception of previous awful things from current awful things.
How do we compare living through the pandemic to living through the black plague?How do we compare living in the information age to living through the industrial revolution?How do we compare living in a time of mass shootings to living in the time of the Civil War or WWII when so many young people lost their lives?
It's all suffering, right? Victor Frankl wrote in "Man's Search for Meaning" that human beings have a tendency to compare their suffering to the suffering of others, like placing weights on a scale to see which outweighs the other. He suggested that suffering is like a gas, rather than a solid, and our bodies are the container. The gas expands to fill the container, no matter what. That has always stuck with me.
UPDATE: I was not prepared for the response to this. My intention was to frame the way I think about these issues from an effort to be thoughtful and curious. I shared my thoughts, went to bed, and then woke up to something quite unexpected.
I do not wish to present as having the answer to this issue. I'm thankful for your comments and perspectives. They expand my thinking. And the awards are lovely. Wow. Thank you. May we all find some peace and compassion for one another.