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I was around in 1978. Today has nothing on that era.
Gas shortages, gas lines, gas rationing, people believing it was the end of the fossil fuel era. 3 Mile Island scares people off nuclear. The USSR was still expanding its evil empire and pointing missles at us and threatening to use them. Carter, talking about the "misery index". Recession, jobs gone, textiles gone, manufacturing going bye bye. Hostages in Iran. Plane hijackings every week. Israel and the middle east constantly on the verge of another war.
Many believed the end was near. The end of America, or the end of the world. Few felt any hope.
Those were dark days.
This? This is nothing.
Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo.
We are just a sims game being played by some 13 year old nerd, so the world will end when he uninstalls.
Return of the King never seemed to end... Good god did that think drag on.
Perspective....he has it folks.
People in Western civilization have never had so much access to information and so many programs to increase their upward mobility in society. I am far ahead of where my parents were when they were my age. And I am no "1 percenter". I grew up dirt poor, and yet somehow through all the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years I have managed to make my life better and life for my kids better than it was for me. So maybe the problem with the world isn't everybody else, but maybe it is your own attitude that paints the skies dark.
When the world gets tough or confusing I just think back to my childhood when we learned about duck-and-cover:One in seven thinks end of world is coming: poll | Reuters
I'm not advocating an impending TEOTWAWKI event as much as questioning a rising anxiety among people that the world is becoming scarily confusing. With natural disasters increasing, environmental changes from nature and humans, urban sprawl, economic upheaval, lack of medical coverage, gov debt, ME unrest, continuous protests, terrorism, rising energy needs and costs of living is there an unease in today's world unmatched by previous generations? What seemed more clear about the right and wrong of things is very befuddling in media coverage and there's more division and disagreement than I remember in the recent past.
No doubt, society and the world has always been changing. With the advent of computers, digital media and electronic communication, technology is rapidly modernizing and altering the worlds cultures from traditional to new age. But is this sudden transformation from the historic values of our ancestors altering the psychic landscape faster than our civilization can handle? Is the angst of it being slowly torn apart semi-real or another headline for sensationalism and overreaction?
Speaking of perspective...
My parents were born in the 20's. They were children during the Great Depression.... the one where some people had to let one child starve so they could feed the other.
They grew up during World War Two, when Hitler and the Japanese looked for a while likely to conquer the world between them, and the United States had not yet realized its own war-making power... think about that, a madman actually conquering almost all of Europe while an imperialistic militant society conquered almost all of Asia.
They became mature adults during the first decade of the Cold War, featuring the Korean War and the earliest threats of global-scale nuclear war, a scale of destruction never conceived of before. People were terrified of "The Bomb" and most didn't know much about nuclear weapons, and the Soviet Union was greatly feared. A renewed World War against the USSR was a constant worry.
Then they saw the advent of the 1960's, and everything they'd grown up accepting as "normal society" was turned upside down and inside-out. Massive social upheaval, a rejection by the youth of all their parents held dear, massive upsurge in drug use, war protests, the MLK riots, etc. Surely it seemed like the world was turned upside down.
Then the 70's, that I've mentioned.... still the Cold War, the constant threat that the entire Arab world was going to go to war on Israel again, threats from the USSR of nuclear war, gas crisis, energy crisis, misery index, textiles disappear from the South, etc.
Then they saw the economic resurgence of the 1980s and the fall of the USSR.... the prosperty of the late 80s and the beginning of the Internet in the 90s....
... then Y2K and the 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent wars....
When they were born, many people still rode a mule-drawn wagon into town and many didn't have electricity or a telephone at home, and most people didn't live to be 61.
Before they passed around age 80, they saw Apollo 11 and the Space Shuttle, the Internet and cell phones, jetliners and industrial robots, lifespans increase 28%, cloning of animals, the decoding of human DNA, satellite TV, and the International Space Station. What a life!
THEY had perspective. :mrgreen:
Peace is just the brief intermission between wars and other crises. Turmoil is normal.
I think there is major change coming. Whether we survive or not will depend on the decisions we make. The United States of America is an empire gone out of control around the world. We spread this notion of "democracy," but when a country decides to go against our wishes...we bomb them. The only countries that can stand against us are powers like Russia and China, or countries protected by either country. I think the American people are beginning to awaken from their apathy on foreign affairs.
A lot of people are asking "What have we become?" Here we are supposedly the "protectors of peace," yet we have been at war for over a decade. We have been at a state of covert war for longer than that.
Other then our foreign debacle is our economic woes. I can tell you that they American dollar is losing value. Why are gas prices higher? Is it because we don't drill enough? No, it is because our dollar today is considerably worth less then it was years ago. As the world tries to slowly convert to a world currency; it will be hell here when the dollar loses the world reserve status. People don't realize that our dollar at the world reserve status is the only thing preventing hyperinflation and that won't last forever. So, we're going to be dealing with an economic problem the likes of which nobody has seen.
With those economic strains and our ever growing cost of foreign intervention...the American empire will implode on itself. That is the direction we're heading into. We can't sustain being in 130 countries around the world, and losing our currency. On top of everything are these false unemployment numbers. They say we're "improving," but those numbers only indicate those under protected unemployment benefits and not those dropped or ineligible. Our true unemployment rate is near 20% when factoring all of that.
Will all of that "End the World?" If America collapses then it will cause worldwide catastrophe. Do we have to continue down this path of self destruction? No. Our decisions now will dictate what happens in the coming years.