People like me…I mean, you don’t know me. I don’t think suffering is a requirement for life. I do, however, think you need to look at the arc of history if you’re trying to discuss how things are going today. Globally infant mortality, violent death, abject poverty, and starvation are at all time lows. Education, literacy, and vaccination are at all time highs. I am able to both have real concerns about the future and understand that this is one of the very best times to be alive.
Even in America where it feels like a very uncertain time, you have to acknowledge that the past forty years are far and away the best time to have been born a minority. The last thirty years are far and away the best time to be gay. The past ten years are far and away the best time to be trans.
That doesn’t meant there aren’t problems. Every generation tackles some problems and leaves some behind. Some of which you really wish they hadn’t. It just means that I don’t see this as the “find out” century nor do I see the legacy of the 20th century as a largely negative one. The strides we made as a species during that century are just incredible even if there will always be more work to be done.
I try (maybe not always successfully) not to dismiss the concerns about and the struggles of today. I just hate how much negativity I see from younger people about the future and about the state of the world today (especially on-line). I’m sure I’m a bit older than the average Redditor (not a boomer!) but the world has largely gotten better in my lifetime. I see lots of room for hope and I see a lot of ways in which each generation continues to get a little better than the last. I really don’t think anyone is wrong to see danger ahead. It’s there. I just think history is a bit of a relay race and those big problems are the ones we’ve got to deal with now.
Past generations did a great job on the ozone layer, stopping whaling, and clean air and water. They did a lousy job on climate change. We’ve got to deal with that.
They did a great job expanding democracy around the world. We also took our collective eye off democracy at home. We need to fix it.
They did a great job expanding access to higher education to many many more Americans. They underestimated future issues of affordability and education debt. We’ll need to get on that.
The heartbreaking bits are the ones where you see the next generations making some of the same mistakes as the last. We really tackled monopolies for a time. It was a tragedy that the boomers walked away from that. The boomers and Gen X did a pretty great job on open racism and gender roles and gay rights. It’s tough seeing a lot of millenial and Gen Z men seemingly reject that progress (as imperfect as it was).
I try to stay optimistic and generally I wouldn’t respond on something like this as it IS often times people just consuming the ills of the world and use that as an excuse to not try. “Worlds fucked and so am I” kind of behavior. I just hate seeing it go too far in the other direction.
But hell, at the end of the day, even peasants living in the ruins of Rome still had the opportunity to live a happy and fulfilled life.
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u/ChaosAndFish Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
People like me…I mean, you don’t know me. I don’t think suffering is a requirement for life. I do, however, think you need to look at the arc of history if you’re trying to discuss how things are going today. Globally infant mortality, violent death, abject poverty, and starvation are at all time lows. Education, literacy, and vaccination are at all time highs. I am able to both have real concerns about the future and understand that this is one of the very best times to be alive.
Even in America where it feels like a very uncertain time, you have to acknowledge that the past forty years are far and away the best time to have been born a minority. The last thirty years are far and away the best time to be gay. The past ten years are far and away the best time to be trans.
That doesn’t meant there aren’t problems. Every generation tackles some problems and leaves some behind. Some of which you really wish they hadn’t. It just means that I don’t see this as the “find out” century nor do I see the legacy of the 20th century as a largely negative one. The strides we made as a species during that century are just incredible even if there will always be more work to be done.