[jongjong]

What? We're more comfortable? What planet do you people live on? People have never been more stressed and uncomfortable. People are literally fighting psychological warfare and vanishing opportunities. Psychologically, we have never been so uncomfortable.

[pixl97]

Just no. There is a particular problem of 'reporting' vs 'reality'.

Less fighting, more opportunity, more food, more clean water, less disease than ever.

What we do have now is 24 hour news and social media screaming how bad it is so we watch ads.

[jongjong]

My grandmother, who lived to 90, used to tell me "The only thing which really improved in my life is medicine." She would tell me that people were so happy and society was so safe when she was a child that her family used to sleep with the windows open.

I also observed things only getting worse in my life. So I really don't buy this narrative that things keep getting better. IMO, the only people who think things got better are billionaires and multi-millionaires; of course it got better for them but it didn't get better for the average-luck person. For the average ambitious person who worked hard to improve their situation, things got MUCH worse; there are all these artificial barriers preventing them from succeeding, depriving them of opportunities and then constant gaslighting to blame them for systemic issues (including their own failure to thrive). Low birth rates, high rates of depression, high rates of homelessness, high suicide rates speak for themselves.

The fact that it all gets covered up by social media echo chambers to the extent that some people think life got better, makes it MUCH, MUCH worse, not better. People just don't seem to notice the tent cities, the increased immigration (due to worsening conditions in poor countries), the political division (again, driven by poverty).

[pixl97]

I mean the places I've lived in my life I've left the windows open and the doors unlocked and not had issues. Maybe I'm lucky as your grandma.

Of course maybe your grandma like my grandma ignored all the cases of people that had abjectly terrible lives back then because that wouldnt fit her world view of 'make the present the past again'. Birthrates dropped in the US long before we were born. Homelessness was very high in the US before the postwar 'irregularity'.

All those poor countries are still richer than ever historically, it's just that first world nations are that much better.

Just stop the billionaires from sucking up everything and it's not really too bad at all.