Society is dying

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I "obsessed" over the future of the world for a long time now. The issue I have is a sometimes desperate longing feeling for what the world may have been like when my parents/grandparents were growing up, it looks like modern society is almost inevitably going to fall and it's closer in my lifetime each year that passes by.


I sometimes lose happiness and feel like giving up on the future in general. The line for being considered successful in society keeps getting higher and the cost of things over the last decades have risen in general. While you can also argue that technology has made us more depressed and isolated than we were ever before.


I wanted to get hugs and positive vibes.

If only

Lets go back in time...

1990s: The economy is strong and propserity is wide spread. Ridney King riots in Los Angeles.

1980s: There is a recession. Cold war tensions still simmer. New York has the violent crime rate of a 3rd world country. Iran contra. WTC bombings.

1970s: Vietnam war, tens of thousands of young men are sent to their death. Gasoline shortages. Civil unrest is common. Black out in New York leads to wide spread looting.

1960s: Cuban missle crisis. Stock market crash. Drugs.

1950s: Korean war. Population boom.

1940s: World War II. Tens of millions die. Europe left in ruins. Japan has two nuclear bombs dropped on it. Humans obtain power to wipe out most life on Earth.

1930s: Dust bowl and great depression following 1929 stock market crash. Millions of Americans thrown in to poverty, some in to abject poverty.

1920s: Prohibition, organized crime syndicates grab power.

1910s: World War I: Tens of millions die. Europe left in ruins.

We can keep going back but it's much of the same crisis, unrest, and moments of stability and propserity through out human history. The only difference is, as of the 2nd industrial we have seen rapid climate change and mass extinction as of the creation of the atomic bomb we can destroy most life on the planet.

Learning How To Die In The Anthropocene

We Live In A s**tshow But Denying Our Despair Could Make Everything Worse

*HUG*

101 ways to take care of yourself when the world feels overwhelming.

All things are impermanent. Even American democracy. Even the Earth's biosphere. Even you and I.

“Do you see this glass? I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”
Ajahn Chah

Don't fret about the future; live in this present moment. Make every moment precious.

Be at peace.

Hi there.

I think the title of your thread and your thoughts on the subject are largely correct.

"Society": the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.

In previous generations, our parent's, grandparent's and great grandparent's generations for comparison, there was a far stricter expectation of what was considered acceptable behavior. Many such behaviors were ordered based off of Judeo-Christian "objective" morality/"truth". There was an objective moral code. This code was the foundation of society for centuries. Were there "winners" and "losers" based on how society was ordered in these past generations? Definitely.

We're now living in an age of "moral relativism", "subjective morality" and "subjective reality" and objective truth has been rejected.

"Society" as a construct is fluid. However I believe a total rejection of objective truth for a total embrace of "subjective morality" (ie "I decide what is right or wrong for myself no matter what) will increasingly lead to more chaos and less order and therefore lead to a degradation of "society" as defined.

^

I largely agree even though that's more than values like morality per se, it has shown that in even the secular lens, what we exchanged for relative moral objectivity has turned up it's own crap downsides.

I don't think many others in my generation are able to realize this as much or have the courage to even question it.

Maybe God is punishing the society directly or indirectly like some evangelical Christians have believed.

I understand this feeling. I think society is on the verge of collapsing too but I don't think that necessarily means the entire world is going to end. Things always have a way of working out eventually.

We've all pulled ourselves out of horrible things in the past no matter what country you live in. Think about The Great Depression for example which effected everybody in the world.

If things do collapse you just do what you have to do to stay alive and hope for things to get better soon, because they always do eventually.

Take Japan for example. Imagine how devastated the country was after World War 2 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and so many people died either from the explosion or the radiation poisoning. I bet things couldn't have been worse for them after that but they eventually pulled through and rebuilt and now as a country they are better and stronger than they ever were.

The same could be said about Germany after everything they went through after World War 2. They managed to pull through too.

You just gotta have a little faith that things will eventually get better. Sometimes things change for the better.

Russia post ww1 became a dictatorship who’s leader murdered millions. It doesn’t always get better. Soviet Union existed for long time
Communist dictatorship in China still exists. And north Korea’s future does t look any brighter then last 50 years have been.

I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes the truth is unpleasant: society IS going down the gutter, and fast.

China is actually getting better though. And North Korea may start getting better too.

Things do change over time for every country. Sometimes it takes a very long time like it did for Japan. They were isolationists for centuries before they decided to open their borders up and establish trade with the outside world.

Mentally insert great big group hug smilie that is completely inappropriately intimate for the circumstances.

I am so sorry. I saw this coming and I tried everything in my power to get the people in power to listen to me and STOP but ultimately it didn't do any good. I'm not Edward Snowden, Reality Winner, Rodney Coronado, or anyone who really has the right to call themself "an activist" but it still happened in spite of everything they did too.

Society is sick and it's dying. You aren't. Don't you believe society one minute if it ever tells you that you are "less than" or "not good enough" in light of the source.

I'll add Dmitry Orlov to your reading list. He used to publish a lot more "free as in beer" content during the GWB era, but if you can find him at your library, he has first hand experience surviving the collapse of the Soviet Union and then living in the US long enough to have some interesting insights on how the similarities and differences of the two cultures might affect the resiliency of individuals.

When I had kids young enough to listen to soothing words, I used to say "Rome didn't fall in a day." because it didn't. I worried too much when GWB got re-elected in 2004 because I expected 2018 in 2005 and it didn't happen. Some really nice things did during those 13 years even though they're over now.

Last edited by AQ38 on 18 Oct 2018, 1:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

Things seem to ebb and flow, get better for awhile then maybe worse again, then better again.

They opened up cause we sailed a warship into their country and made them. They never really changed hench ww2

China is getting WORSE - compared to how it was in the 1980s, say. It still runs concentration camps, murders ethnic minorities, steals the organs of Falun Gong practitioners, occupies Tibet, interferes in overseas affairs, murders foreign dissidents... The list goes on.

The only reason you've heard that China is "reforming" is that big business, which owns the western media, has a vested interest in keeping Sino American relations in good order, because it needs their slave labour. It's the same reason you've heard that Saudi Arabia is reforming when it too is getting worse - American arms manufacturers need Saudi contracts.