Ask Lemmy

YES. But a big chunk of people have been sheltered from that fact.

That’s why we have people: wanting civil war, because they’ve never had to personally suffer the loss, privations, and terror of a real war. Are anti-vax, because they haven’t had plagues of smallpox, the flu, or polio kill their kids, friends, and relatives. Pro-authoritarian, because they’ve never lived under a series of shitty power grifters and a corruption-based economy where absolutely nobody does well except the richest. Anti-social programs, because they’ve never faced homelessness or a disability.

There are so many things that people have had the luxury of avoiding that they’ve forgotten how shitty the world is. Spoiled children, they are.

My dad regaled me with tales of the 60s/70s once. The JFK assassination, Vietnam war, the gas crisis, hyper inflation, 20% mortgage rates.

The older you get, you realize everything isn’t a world ending crisis. I think our 24/7 outrage-based media is responsible for a lot of FUD.

You've never had smallpox.

You probably have never been hungry. Famine used to be a thing that just happened every ten years or so.

You've probably always had ready access to drinking water.

There's always been wars, people doing terrible things. Slavery and genocide are pretty much par for the course whatever the ethnicity/region.

By most metrics this is the safest time to be alive.

But ya, shits pretty fucked still. So I say we all wake up tomorrow and try and do a little better.

The world was always fucked up, but we had a sense it was improving. That's what has changed, majorly. We started having the feeling that as bad as it is, it is only going to get worse.

Im 59, it was just easier to plead ignorance back then. Hell, beating gays was seen as ok, raping your wife was quite legal, fucking kids was mostly ok, racism was seen as humour, my mother took up teaching as she said the other career she considered forced you to leave if you got married (bank teller).

We slaughtered people all over the place with impunity, overthrew governments. Same as today really.

My mistake? I assumed it would get much better when my cohort of Gen X came through, same as young millennials think today. It's not worse, it's just we're more aware.

The world has always been a shithole. The manner of shittiness has changed and also depends largely on location.

Always has been, the big difference is it wasn't streamed straight into your eyes in real time

I've just finished reading a very detailed book on 13-16 century renaissance history and yes, always fucked. Though less dark ages than you'd think and more fucked politics, same as now.

Plus we only really know the history of rich people up until very recently, so no telling how fucked the poors were.

I'm 57 in the US and up until the last ten years I always thought that things would get better in my lifetime and that ultimately my country would eventually choose the right financial and moral paths. Now I not only don't believe that will happen in my lifetime but I doubt if this nation will bounce back in my kid's lifetime, if ever.

No, no it was not.

Example: when they found out what caused the hole in the ozone layer, they fixed it.

If we found out now, people would say that you can't trust Big Academia or Big Science and nothing would be done. And don't get me started on vaccinations.

We're sliding rapidly backwards.

People who say it isn't are just too lazy to do anything.

We didn't start the fire was written for this exact reason. Billy Joel was talking to someone 20 years younger than him who said that when he was 20 more stuff had happened than when Billy Joel was 20, so he just started listing all the stuff that had happened before he was 20 and then expanded it into the song.

People who only go as far back as the 60s/70s, truly ignore everything that has happened prior. Things for human society and the world didn't start getting bad on those decades, that's only recent memory to those born from or grew up through.

The world didn't start getting fucked up until humans developed here the day they evolved.

In ancient history;

You could be tried and killed by just simply being allegedly accused of being a witch. The Salem Witch Trials demonstrated that happened in the early 1690s. Accusations entirely arbitrary and subjective, I may add.

5 Million people got killed because of one single messenger, the wrong one, got killed. This was through the Khwarazmian Empire dated back in 1077 - 1231.

Then we know about everything the Egyptians did and how they got the pyramids built and all. Slavery was rampant in the ancient past, nothing just built itself, you know.

So yes, the world was always fucked up long before the 1960s and 1970s. You would not last a day in the past, where all developed concepts and ideas were nothing but just thoughts of the mind and just about anyone could decide to kill you just because they can.

It's always been this way, just the internet has made global awareness easier

Well, there are two songs which I think answer your question:

We didn't start the Fire

And

Besuchen sie Europa, solange es noch steht

Which is a song about visiting Europe before it will be destroyed by the then assumed imminent nuclear war.

It used to be a lot worse for the vast majority

OP keep this in mind.

During and 18 month period in the early 1970s there was an average of five domestic terrorist bombings in the US every day. Think about that.. five a day was the average.