Like I get that there will be ups and downs, but it seems like the world is just getting worse in almost every way.
Is this true, or this the same thinking every generation has, then things turn out okay?
Does every generation think the world is going to shit, or is it just us right now?
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Nobody likes change, only thing that is consistent is change. When things change people react and it’s usually over hyped
Every generation tends to think doom and gloom, yes. But nothing has been as bad as the state the world is in right now. Not only wars, but also the environment going to shit.
Every generation has its problems
I think the world is going to shit and I think the orange rapist is driving that bus
No. It’s just recently. AND it’s YOUR fault.
Edit: – this is US centric. Some will fit other western powers though.
Yes – every generation. The boomers were completely caught up in Vietnam and had several riots/upheavals of their own. Gen X and Boomers lived under the Cold War and the threat of Nuclear winter. Listen to the lyrics of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” or something like “Children of the Grave” or something like “Cult of Personality” and see if it doesn’t have that very same, “we’ll do a better job than our parents” flavor.
You might think that perhaps late GenX/Early Millenial felt better, but that was because they were born right at the fall of the Soviet Union. It wasn`t long before the twin towers and the erosion of rights under the Patriot Act happened though.
Millenials were hit by 2008 and an inability to get jobs as well as front row seat for perhaps some of the most ineffective US Foreign Policy in decades. They were the first to get sucked into zero privacy culture. They died due to burn pits and saw anything militarily they thought their friends gave their lives for go up in smoke.
GenZ was able to get jobs (compared to Millenials) but global warmingworld order was getting out of hand. I’d also argue Gen Z has never really had a stable media situation; many don’t know where to go for reliable info or the difference between a source that is legally liable for lying vs. one that isn’t.
Every generation thinks the world is going to end- but only one will be right!
The world is not going to shit any more than it has before.
Reading and believing what the media spews is the biggest shit show.
The world has been going to shit for a while but I had a lot more hope when I was younger than the young people of today have.
Being old enough to have experienced the 60s up until now, this is by far the absolute worst period by far. I have never seen so much hatred or been so close to a complete collapse of the world order. Authoritarianism has always been around, but not from countries that really matter on the world stage, but Trump is the worst thing to happen in my 60+ years.
I know my parents did when all the hippies were hitchhiking by the side of the freeway in CA. My uncle always used to say, “is that a man or a woman?” 😂 The problems of today are bigger though. Climate change is huge, too many people. Species going extinct thanks to us. We need to live more in harmony with nature and each other.
Every generation has problems that they need to overcome, but the world is much smaller and more fragile then it has ever been. We no longer succeed and fail as a city, nation, or religion. We succeed and we fail on a global scale.
Yes.
Except Gen X….we don’t have any fucks to give…
Yes. Lol. Your children and grand children will too
Well this is WW3 and its now a wartime economy. Places that have some semblance of order should have some problems but are managing, places that have no order are likely going to be in chaos right now like the US.
Depends where and who you are. If you’re in China working for BYD you might be living comfortably. If you’re a Palestinian child living in Gaza the world has already gone to shit.
Every generation – We are statistically in the best time to be alive by most standards (life expectancy, poverty, suffering metrics) and it should continue to improve. But often times the negative things steal the headlines and attention
I wont tell you my age, but I have grandchildren. Yes, much Of the world appears to be slipping. My biggest concerns ATM is the Fed deficit and the fact that (in many countries) we are eating ourselves to death. Obesity levels are off the charts. It was not like this 50 years ago …
Our fathers had the perfect time to build something from nothing. We can afford barely an apartment without support and job market is Colosseum.
Manners. People have no brain filters.
Every generation has this. Having said that…. if you go back to the generations before they gave them names…. life had been shit for average Joe for centuries.
Francis Bacon had to write persuasive tracts to try to convince people that science was worth pursuing and that tomorrow could actually be better than today. People used to have to be convinced of that and now we take it as our birthright that the next day should be better than the last.
It is truly going to shit right now.
The world, or your world?
Every generation. Except I do believe the younger generations are royally screwed more than ever.
Every generation since the Stone Age believed the world was ending. Guess what? We’re still here.
The world is ok it’s America that’s going to shit at the moment
Every generation has its own issues and each seems to think the world is getting worse. Most likely it is worse in some areas and better in others. I majored in history and it’s kinda comforting to see humans from 100s of years ago have similar thoughts.
Also, for example, I remember my modern US history teacher showing us a comic, from 1920 I think, and old people were complaining about the younger generation not knowing anything and everything was falling apart and the younger generation complained about the older generation being out of touch. It sounded very similar to what you hear today other than specific examples and items were different.
Another example is Christian church music. Growing up I always sang old songs from the the early 1900s and earlier. (Say 1700,1800s and some are older than that.) Well, there’s multiple writers in the late 1700s, I believe, complaining about all this new music that’s going to cause these people to go to hell and how corrupting it is. And yet now, most churches don’t play these songs, or have arraigned them differently, as they’re considered old.
Something I’ve noticed in my work, and in myself, is no one likes change. Whether good or bad we don’t like things changing and will often react hostile because it’s new. Whatever it is. And yes, things aren’t great but also they’re currently better for many people than say most of Asia, Europe and the US in the 1930s-mid 40s.
I was born in the 1950s. When I was growing up, we were afraid the world would end in a nuclear explosion. In the 1970s, we started learning that we were polluting our food and water and air, In the 1980s, AIDS was pretty scary. In 2001, we started to lose privacy and the right to move freely onto planes and into government buildings.
Trump and the MAGA cult are the scariest thing I have ever seen in the US.
For Native Americans, life as they knew it ended with the European invasion. For Africa, life as they knew it ended when the Europeans took over. Probably it was the same for the indigenous people of Australia and the Pacific Islands.
For Chileans, life as they knew it ended when the US assassinated their elected president. Many countries have been taken over by tyrants throughout history. The US does not have a permanent exemption from that condition.
Empires undergoing collapse can produce some pretty weird social conditions.
And then there is climate change. The last time we faced such a big change was the end of the Ice Age.
I think that’s probably the case, but it feels like things have accelerated over the last 20 years. Maybe it’s just social media and 24 hour news, but it feels like we are headed into something truly “historical”. At least in the USA.
Growing up in the 90s – after the Cold War and before 9/11 – I remember that my peers and I thought the world was mostly on the upswing and the horrors of the 20th century (particularly genocide and authoritarianism) were behind us. Joke’s on us
There was widespread belief that the world would end in 1000CE. The plague (black death) killed 1/3 of Europe’s population in the 1300s and many thought that was the end of the world. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been preaching that the end of the world is going to happen any day now for about 100 years. The atom bomb had many convinced in the 1950s and 1960s that the end of the world was about to happen. Y2K had its share of “this is the end of the world” believers. Anyone remember the Mayan Calendar? Dec 21, 2012 was going to be the end. The list goes on and on and on and on.
The world WILL end (if the laws of physics hold true) in about 5 billion years when the sun expands into a red dwarf.
Every one. Guaranteed.
Yes it’s a researched topic but bias aside I think we are in the most perilous time our species has ever experienced in terms of chance to wipe ourselves from existence
It’s every generation, in the 70’s it was Vietnam, the Cold War, global cooling, yes global cooling, the ozone layer, the oil crisis.
I entered the workforce in the 80’s and heard the older people say the same things about me that the boomers and GenX are saying now about the GenZ and millennials.
There’s always something lurking around the corner that’s coming to eat us, and each generation blames the previous for the mess we’re in now, but as things change and thoughts change there will always emerge a new group of leaders that will help smooth things over.
Yes every generation, every presidential election and people scream that like they were the first one to have the idea.
Worlds only going to shit for the people that were promised to be the beneficary. People in Libya have had it bad for ages after Gaddafi was killed . People in Afghanistan have had constant invasions by multiple superpowers. People in the favelas’s have had top make do the entire time we were living cushy lives.
With that in mind to even ask this question is a privilege.
I’m early Gen X, and my high school gathered us all in the auditorium to scare the shit out of us watching what happens when the nuclear bombs wreak their havoc. It was 1983 at the height of the Cold War. We weren’t exposed to very many things of that nature at the time, so yeah. I think the movie was called “If You Love This Planet”. I’m in Canada btw.
You bring up an interesting point. Two things can be true at the same time. Yes everyone thinks the world might be going to shit, and yes things are getting worse today.
People aren’t crazy, every generation had its struggles, and they are getting worse. Worse to such an extent that boomers and Gen X have to witness personal first hand accounts to understand that younger people have it far worse. FAR worse.
Just get a job and work hard? I would take anything to avoid eating my savings. These people aren’t turning down jobs, they aren’t getting hired.
This started in the 1980s under Reagan and it has just snowballed. The people who were doing well before that benefitted, the people pursuing the “American dream” didn’t.
We are in end game capitalism. We either enact policies to steer it in the right direction, or I truly fear for the worst.
The threat isn’t from some foreign nation, the threat is from disenfranchised citizens who are starting to understand society considers them disposable.
Depends, but yeah “my generation was better and things are only getting worse” is a historical norm. Personally I think it is worse. Climate change is going to trump all the trumpiness blowing up the planet in the immediate. Thermodynamics is forever, ideology is ever changing.
There is a truth to the idea that catastophe is accelerating. It’s not so much that the magnitude of any particular problem is necessarilly bigger, but the time between them is getting smaller. “Generation Defining” issues are now less than decade defining. The instability of the system not having time to settle before the next big problem hits is part of why it feels like we’re always on the back foot these days.
I’m a boomer. Things have never felt as frightening as they do now. Whenever things felt out of control before we could reassure ourselves about the stability of the structure of our government. Now? Our President is a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist. The Supreme Court is utterly corrupt.
Not a Fox viewer.
95-99 things seemed to be going in a better direction. There were problems and inequality etc but it all seemed solveable.
Jeff Tweedy/Wilco “Come on children, you’re acting like children. Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world.”
I’m a boomer. 72. My parents thought we had a great country and life was good. Dad fought in WW2 and felt like he accomplished something. Raised four boys and retired happy. Me? It’s been going down hill all my life starting with Vietnam. It caused a huge rift between him (82nd Airborne) and me (anti war).
Every generation has its doomers
Gen X here – no, it didn’t feel like the world was falling apart until like after 9/11, and even then, it felt normal after that. HOWEVER, and this is a weird thing to ponder, this can actually be an issue for those of us who had / have mental health issues. In some ways, in those days the world felt so normal, or at least that others felt so normal in it, that it felt very shameful and isolating to have mental health issues. Nowadays pretty much everyone has them and it’s like “that tracks” and I think people feel a lot less alone in that. Does that make sense?
Yes. Tune in, Turn on, Drop Out.
I give this notion a good amount of thought myself, so I’ll give my two sense.
IMO every generation has it’s demons. In the mid-late twentieth century, Americans and people around the world were worried about the threat of nuclear war. In the late 1910s was the Spanish Flu. Early 2000s, September 11th and a post-9/11 world that has changed a great deal of everyday life.
How I see it, people are typically living longer in this day and age. Back in Medieval Times, one bad infection and most people would be six feet under. In the 1200s, Genghis Khan and the Mongols ruled over the majority of the Eastern world- imagine being one of the some 40 million that met them and faced a cruel ending. My point is that compared to the rest of history, the world seems to be a better place.
Present day- yes the world has large, widespread problems. Many countries are far more fortunate than others. I feel that it is all about perspective and how each person lives their life. I’d love to hear if anyone else also thinks this way.
As someone who lived through the blitz, I feel that things could be worse.
They all do and they’ve pretty much been correct
The US is going to shit.
Not speaking for others but in Aus I feel like it’s alright for the moment. Depending on the situation though.
Every generation in history thought the world is going to sh*t.
Basically each generation faces their own challenges, changing circumstances. What is happening with AI now was happening many times before as well in history. And people always adapted.
As well every generation thought, that the next generation is spoiled. Even Socrates (greek philosopher) said it 2500 years ago.
Basically everyone who has ever lived is convinced that 1) shit is about to end right now and 2) it wasn’t like this before
But the “before” people also felt #1, so…
Yes, every generation feels that the world is getting worse and that the younger generations coming up are all losers.
I feel like this happens every 10 years or so.
I think they did a study and actually looked back at old newspapers and they were saying how the next generation is lazy and doesn’t know how to work and pretty much the whole world’s going to shit so yes
It would seem yes, though we are in unprecedented times now more than ever in one large way; technology is going faster than it should for the sake of humanity and our minds. It has harmed us immensely.
It’s just the 24hr news cycle. Get away from the tv news. Look locally to see how life is actually.
the previous generation is always worried the new one will fuck things up.
The bubonic plague literally wiped out majority of humanity. Yes every generation thinks the world is going to shit. The doomerism is engineered this way to keep people distracted from the stagnation of humanity. The effect was just multiplied by the internet.
Yes and no. I think in the past we felt in it all together as a people and that had a level of comfort or at least confidence we were working towards similar goals. Now I think we have no faith we are working together at all. Second the fear mongering from media and politicians is to the moon. I remember as a kid getting a flyer from school that climate change would kill us by 2000. I was worried for weeks. That’s a daily occurance now and everyone seems to go along with it much more easily.
The fact that “We didn’t start the fire” was remade 2 generations later probably says the answer is yes it’s getting worse.
If you mean “End Times” due to “rampant sexual immorality of people I don’t know who aren’t asking my (God’s) permission” then the world is always ending and has always BEEN ending. Repent!
If you mean environmental despoilers destabilizing the climate with fossil fuels, overconsumption of the fresh water resources and aquifers, hyper pollution with micro plastics and chemical byproducts, willful seppuku of the economy, mass unemployment due to DOGE and A.I. and dismantling of the social safety nets with concomitant outlawing of resultant homelessness then no, this is a unique situation. Thus, 🍊, the Beast foretold by Revelation, being here, NOW, with legions of bloodthirsty thralls bearing its beastly mark baying for blood and an orgy of violence, is the herald of the End and the imminent return of Jesus after forty and two months of demonic reign ( Rev 13:5).
Repent!
Yea, it’s actually a part of our evolutionary psychology. We have evolved to be cautious and are more prone to exaggerating threats. That is because there is less of a consequence of a false positive. There is an existential threat of committing to a false negative threat. So, when there is a rustling in the bushes, we are inclined to think it is more of a danger rather than something more benign. This extends to our perception of the world and the past. Social media then merely gives us what we want which is negative news. This cycle is self induced and self perpetuated. As a result, we’ll always have a tendency that the world is going to shit. It’s in our DNA.
What do you suppose people were thinking while the deadliest wars global in history were raging on just last century?
I think I sort of disagree that it was always like this for all generations. Some segments I think had it pretty nice.
For example from about mid ’80s to early ’00s things were going pretty positive, I thought, for most of the world. We showed global cooperation on things like ozone layer and acid rain. USSR finally crumbled relatively peacefully without triggering WW3 or nuclear holocaust. Ukraine denuclearized as a bright beacon to the world (and look got ducking great it worked out for them). Computers were making huge leaps and bounds and internet was coming in, ushering much more closely connected world and a new age of global commerce. Clinton balanced the budget and got a blowjob. Y2K and new millennium and a bright socialist future.
There were of course negatives too, but relatively localized. So for almost two decades I’d say things were looking very optimistic. Not without struggles, of course, but going from memory it didn’t feel like things were objectively going to shit.
Since then though? 2001, Dubya twice, Patriot Act, financial crises 1-3, ongoing mass extinction, climate change and how corpos knew all about it, when general public only started to become aware around summer of ’88. Then we had Covid and two Trumps, etc. In the ’80s it was still possible to work and live, students could still afford things. Today things like housing and children are just flat out of many peoples’ price range. To be fair, there’s now 8 billion of us, compared to 4 billion in 1970s, so obviously we did a good job, but still. And that 8 billion and growing still needs to eat, which is another problem, given how quality of topsoil is deteriorating and seas are being overfished, and so on.
I’m just not seeing the same faith in the bright shiny future.
Most importantly, just with sheer increase in the number of people, our capacity for damage skyrocketed. Like I said, in the ’70s, world population was half of what it is now. And a lot of that was rural and isolated. Today, we have twice the people, and everything is made disposable, filling up gigantic piles of garbage, plastic is everywhere, morons are able to gather in large numbers thanks to a global communication networks, whilst just a few decades ago village idiots sat quietly in their individual villages and did little harm. This is not to say older generations did no damage. Boomers breathing their leaded gasoline for decades and their current mental decline are pretty disturbing, and I’m guessing GenZ is already doing something similar to themselves, be it vapes or microplastics in their bodies, we just don’t know yet. But again, everything is just much more widespread now, the volume, the frequency, it’s all way higher thanks to the sheer number of people. And, in theory, it’ll still even out, because in absolute terms there should be more smart people too. But it doesn’t feel like that, feels like we’re heading towards Idiocracy being a documentary.
On the whole, I’d say things are worse, but not catastrophically worse, and no worse than say 100-200 years ago. Not yet. There’s potentially some very serious threats, like climate change, but no worse than global nuclear war, which has been omnipresent danger since 1940s, and is not going away any time soon. We’re just a bit more realistic now, I think. We know we won’t get cyborgs and flying skateboards or teleportation, we know we won’t be living on Mars this century, and so on. Whereas in the ’70s we thought we’d be a space-faring species by now, considering how fast we advanced.
People thought the world was going to end when the year turned to 1000 CE.
I think every gen experiences a sense of doom.
Way back before Viet Nam everybody thought America was the center of the world, and they weren’t wrong
No, we are in an exceptionally bad time right now
I think the world is doing fine , no worse than the 70s and certainly better than the 1920s,, Were soft people compared to those who got drafted to ww2 and vietnam so we see everything and existential
The world is going to shit
It’s gonna get better. It took decades to F it up this badly. Stay tuned.
Every generation thinks this, but for us its actually true.
“The world situation is desperate as usual”