• Ironfist79@lemmy.world
    26·
    5 hours ago

    Hell, I’m 46 and it’s really hard to not be cynical these days. I want to believe there’s still good people out there but I run into so many assholes.

      • Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        7·
        4 hours ago

        I will forever seethe that I missed out on the 1990s, especially considering how IT was a money printer back then & the rave scene was top notch. I just about caught the tail end of the old internet as well, even that has gone to complete corporate dogshit.

        And owning a house wasnt a Pipedream : (

        • Lady Butterfly @lazysoci.alEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          Ah the rave scene really was amazing. Have you seen the tiktok videos? The music and feeling will stay with me forever

          • Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            3·
            3 hours ago

            Don’t use tiktok lol, I’ve seen a few old clips passed around on forums and stuff uploaded to youtube though, shit looked great. Meanwhile the smallest rave gets shut down pretty quickly by the police these days : ( also pretty envious of pints being far more affordable back then, I barely even go to spoons as a student as it just costs way too fuckin much. I guess one upside of the modern day though is party drugs being cheap, pure and plentiful but that can obviously also have significant drawbacks.

            • Lady Butterfly @lazysoci.alEnglish
              2·
              3 hours ago

              I joined and deleted tiktok just to download the videos! I’m properly old now I swear everything was just better back then

    • Smoogs@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 hours ago

      Uhh, ok hmm…so I learned in life if everyone you see is an asshole, you’re the asshole.

      Think about it this way: there are countless good people in your life but as a society we get taught to get fixated on the worst to complain about. Maybe it’s more entertaining. Maybe we sync to it cuz maybe we have similar features in ourselves we don’t like … which ever the reason it’s personal why we do this. But in doing so It’s easy to discount the good people by ignoring them and what they do. We notice every mistake and bad person out there.

      And how do you think that makes good people around you feel?

      Well they stop coming around. They get drained from being ignored. They put up boundaries where they don’t want to be around assholes fixated on the negative and don’t spend their time on assholes.

      And that’s how we become assholes telling on ourselves by admitting everyone is assholes.

      It’s the shoe smells like shit every where you go analogy.

    • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      I’m quickly catching up to your age and I don’t really understand either why it would be a young people thing either. (not that I’m not still young of course, my white hair are just an affectation)
      It’s just a matter of looking around.

      • fishy@lemmy.todayEnglish
        3·
        2 hours ago

        Welcome to the age of the smartphone, where we’re more informed while being more misinformed and where we’re all connected but can’t actually connect. We’ve hit the point where people can watch something, stare the truth in the eye and say “that’s a lie” or be told an obvious lie that could be disproved in less than a minute and say “that’s so true.”

        There’s no easy way out of the hole now either. If the government stepped in, the people spreading lies would simply lie and say the government was misleading people and people would gobble it up, and there’s no way I’d trust anything privately owned to tell me the truth.

  • Floosh@lemm.ee
    16·
    9 hours ago

    I’m glad to see folks talking on here. Makes me feel better knowing we’re here all going through it. Gives me that Band of Brothers vibe “We stand alone, together.”

  • Kalysta@lemm.ee
    9·
    10 hours ago

    I wouldn’t be gentle. But then again both my parents are dead so I don’t actually have anyone to be bitter at.

  • kittenzrulz123
    34·
    14 hours ago

    At this point we have to contend with small wins like Die Linke getting almost 10% of the vote in Germany, Elon Musk getting bullied out of politics, and Carney winning in Canada.

      • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        4 hours ago

        Idk what you mean by that, the SPD was always centre left, at least since Bismarck times. Sure, they moved to be basically no-opinion-at-all centrism recently, but it is not like they were the shining sunshine of socialism before.

  • ammonium@lemmy.world
    10·
    11 hours ago

    It’s really sad that many young people are so pessimistic about the future. Despite some setbacks the last years, in many ways the world is still in a better place than it has ever been in human history.

    Child mortality is still lower than ever, (extreme) poverty is still on a declining trend, we’re actually on track to stop the worst climate change (thanks to massive Chinese investments), AI could vastly improve our lives in the future…

    That said we do live in uncertain times, fascism is on the rise again, a nuclear war could still kill us all, fighting climate change is not done,l and AI could ruine all our lives; but pessimism is not the right mindset.

    • Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      We have climbed so high as a species in such a short time that we genuinely can’t remember where the ground was when we started.

      Climate change will be devastating. But for most of human life, the fear of the future was much closer. It wasn’t about the next five or ten years, it wasn’t about the world we were leaving for our children - it was about the food we were feeding our children today. It was about making it through the next winter. It was about survival.

      We didn’t have refrigeration, penicillin, HVAC, germ theory… people weren’t worried about undervaccination because there was no such thing as vaccination.

      Even in recent history. In the 1920s, we had a war so huge and devastating and terrifying that they called it the war to end all wars.

      Then they almost immediately did it again, but bigger.

      Every adult in the early 20th century lived through the greatest horror in mankind’s history so far. The first heavy machine guns, the first aerial bombers, the first atom bomb. Then the massive, unstable world powers spent decades building up an arsenal of global annihilation, and very nearly triggered that annihilation at least twice.

      All of human existence - from the daily survival of pre-industry, to The Jungle of industrialization, the still-ongoing plague of tuberculosis (“consumption”), the brutal violence of the 20th century - all of it - has been a struggle to survive.

      Human existence has always been, on some level, terrifying. Disease, famine, war - these apocalyptic horsemen weren’t on the horizon, they were constant companions to historical humans. And that’s not even getting into all of the historical oppression and bigotry that always has been.

      But people weren’t constantly scared by default. They made art, wrote books, told stories. Started families, had children, almost half of their children died as children, had more children anyway.

      Humans just lived. This isn’t the first time we’ve faced self destruction. This isn’t the first time we’ve faced oppression, tyranny, poverty, and yes, even climate disasters. A drought could devastate nations. A harsh winter could leave no survivors. Entire settlements just… failed.

      Humans are still thriving compared to one or two lifetimes ago. It feels like we plateau’d and then began to decline - because in a sense we did. We were taking massive leaps toward the future with every passing decade, and now we just feel like we’re making incremental improvements in meaningless gadgets, while social progress stalls - or worse- actively regresses.

      But we live in the future. That’s why we plateau’d. We made it. Humans have effectively gained the power to make life on Earth as it is in Heaven, and we just choose not to. We choose other things, mainly because a small handful of humans have the power to make those choices for the rest of us.

      That doesn’t mean we should lose faith. Humans can still make a golden age of the future, climate change or not.

      We just need to fight for it. We live in unprecedented times, and we are capable of unprecedented things. We absolutely have the capability to make the future better than the past.

    • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
      12·
      10 hours ago

      Extreme poverty may be declining but that doesn’t mean more people in the west are not being pushed into food scarcity due to stagnated wages and corporate greed.

      • Sparrow_Joint@lemm.eeEnglish
        7·
        10 hours ago

        It remains sad that in the world with enough artificial nitrate fertiliser to produce enough food for everyone in abundance and enough food in abundance to feed everyone in the west companies are still putting perfectly edible food into dumpsters and then covering them in motor oil to prevent freegans and dumpster divers while elsewere, famine still happens.

    • truxnell@aussie.zone
      4·
      10 hours ago

      I do joke a lol, but things in many areas are so much better than 30-50 years ago and considering Brits in WW II had to turn out all their lights to hinder German bombings - most of us are being peddled fear by the media and it’s not THAT bad.

      Where did you get the climate hope bit? last articles I glazed over were ‘we missed 1.5 deg target and instead put the foot on the pedal to make it faster’ and ‘climate migrations coming and mass famine’.

      Sounder doomerism to me but I don’t really have a good source to be optimistic at all.

      • Mossheart@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 hours ago

        Not to mention each message to chatGPT burns the equivalent of a water bottle worth of water.

      • ammonium@lemmy.world
        2·
        8 hours ago

        In short, solar prices are declining exponentially and deployment is growing exponentially. There are even companies claiming to be able to make efuels from air using solar cheaper than fossil fuels by the end of the decade.

        Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie is a good book if you want to read something optimistic.

        • truxnell@aussie.zone
          1·
          5 hours ago

          Thanks for this. I haven’t been letting it get me down in the past, but having two kids can certainty start making me question what the heck their future will look like

  • BenLeMan@lemmy.world
    36·
    17 hours ago

    I think they’ve got it the wrong way around. The under 40s have a chance of rebuilding after the war. Yes, there are hard times ahead but they are young enough to come out on the other side.

    At 49, I’m quite sure I either won’t make it through the coming storm at all or at least won’t be able to enjoy the aftermath for long once things get better again.

    • superniceperson@sh.itjust.works
      30·
      15 hours ago

      The under 40s are going to be the ones fighting the wars, as always. Even if there is an other side for humanity after what’s coming, no one alive today will ever have a peaceful life ever again.

      • Gronk@aussie.zoneEnglish
        23·
        15 hours ago

        I’ll take prison or a bullet to the head before I decide to fight for a nation that has pulled the rug out from underneath me.

        I hope more young people see it this way, maybe we’ll actually get to a point where we can watch all these leaders duke it out in person because no one will fight for them

        • TheLastOfHisName@lemmy.world
          4·
          4 hours ago

          Gen Xer here (born in '67). I would encourage young people to NOT join the military at this point in the timeline. It’s not about serving your country any more, it’s about a bunch of greedy fucks using you to further their fucked up, anti-working class, anti-humanity agenda.

        • ChillPenguin@lemmy.world
          13·
          10 hours ago

          In my 30s, feel the same way. Why would I offer myself to the meat grinder for a nation that bitches about me all the time?

    • VitoRobles@lemmy.todayEnglish
      36·
      17 hours ago

      I know a surprisingly large amount of MAGA/Trump adjacent fans because of my type of work.

      • They’re all single dudes. Maybe divorced. Maybe never went on a date.
      • There’s Joe Rogan involved.
      • After a few beers, they all will unprompted share their views on Jews, blacks, trans, lesbians, or some other racist shit then back off and pretend it’s just a joke.
      • Tell them anything involving empathy “Sorry your dog died” is met with silence or coldness.
      • They all don’t give a shit about anybody else besides themselves. And often see themselves as the victim. “Oh Trans person was brutally beaten? Yeah it’s a violent world like one time some guy threatened me gotta stay strapped.”
      • They may not like Trump’s antics. But to them, the Democrats aren’t helping THEM. Remember that lack of empathy?
      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        4 hours ago

        I worked in local government for nearly a decade and through covid. A lot of cops and former cops in elected positions. This mostly check out.

        I would add they overwhelmingly believed homeless people deserved it and/or were subhuman.

      • Saleh@feddit.org
        7·
        11 hours ago

        They may not like Trump’s antics. But to them, the Democrats aren’t helping THEM. Remember that lack of empathy?

        Unless they make 6 figures that point is true though. Not that Trump is going to help them either. But at least he pretends to care about them, whereas the Democrats outright said that their life reality of rising prices and stagnating wages is fake because the stock market is making new record bubble numbers.

    • TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website
      73·
      19 hours ago

      This is the saddiest shit ever. Young men being angry at the « Men » will vote for the men that will sold them to the bone mill in a heart beat.

      There’s a Turkish proverb : and the forest vote for the axe because they where made of the same wood

    • Quadhammer@lemmy.world
      15·
      16 hours ago

      Who are the positive role models? Weve got all these young guys watching sniveling cucks like andrew taint

    • toastmeister@lemmy.ca
      4·
      15 hours ago

      They misattribute monetary policy that bids up home and asset values using cheap debt and facilitates massive bailouts with federal government policy. The CPI doesnt include asset prices so cheap debt can flood into asset prices without slowing down the devaluation of their salary, it also does subjective inflation deductions to goods based on perceived quality changes, and excludes much of the shrinkflation thats happens to goods and service quality.

      Something as basic like getting support for a flight is now talking to a chatbot with perpetually larger than expected call volume, you pay extra for seating, you pay extra for baggage; and your seat is so small now you also may as well be standing. Free range chickens used to just be called chicken, and eggs could be eaten uncooked since they werent swimming in ecoli, but according to the CPI you’re significantly better off now; so the nominal value of a boomers house is now worth significantly more due to all this perceived wealth.

  • Jhex@lemmy.world
    129·
    23 hours ago

    I’m over 40 and struggling not to conclude life on this planet peaked 30 years ago

    • rayyy@lemmy.world
      9·
      6 hours ago

      Yep. It peaked right around Ronnie Reagan’s sell-out to the wealthy. If folks want a better quality of life they will have to take it back from the rich.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        12·
        11 hours ago

        If you were a kid in the 90s, sure. Your parents shielded you from all the chaos.

        The 90s also had terrorism (IRA, WTC bombing, German and French hijackings, Israeli settler massacre, sarin gas attack in Japan, Oklahoma City bombing, bombings of US service members in Saudi Arabia, PKK suicide bombers in Turkey, Dagestan bombing in Russia (possibly a Putin-orchestrated false flag)). It had the ongoing AIDS epidemic, which was terrifying. It had the first Gulf war. It had the LA riots of 1992. It had the columbine shooting.

        • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
          13·
          16 hours ago

          At this point we can only hope the Matrix is real and they reset this simulation soon because what we’re seeing are the side effects from the uprising outside.

  • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
    84·
    22 hours ago

    A while ago, I was talking to my mum and offhandedly said that I’d have to move north at some point in my life, due to climate change. For me, that’s just a given, with record hottest summers coming in regularly and current summers already incapacitating me for weeks at a time.

    But my mum’s reaction was basically “What’s this about now?”. She’s lived in her childhood town or close-by for basically her whole life. And she’s old enough that she doesn’t have to worry about the aftermath. But yeah, that was still brutal, how different our realities were in that regard.