I’m really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I’ll coast right through it. I’ll also accept “I don’t” and “very poorly” as answers

  • festus@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    I’m going to address your question in two ways it may be read.

    The world is worse than it was

    I completely disagree, I think the world has never been better. Look back even 70 years and you have the threat of cold war, other wars (Korean War, conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Middle East, …), much more poverty, starvation (China’s Great Famine), illiteracy, a lot more nasty pollutants that we’ve since moved away from.

    To go a bit more US-centric, although much of this is mirrored elsewhere to varying degrees, you had much, much higher crime rates (possibly due to lead in gasoline), women could be raped by their husbands and had minimal rights, gay people were persecuted, black people were killed for fun (lynchings) along with other deplorable treatment, etc.

    Right now you live in a world where practically all information is available at your fingertips at minimal cost, where most people will at least tolerate your presence even if you don’t fit neatly into their ideal world, where we’ve made a lot of progress on limiting and reversing environmental damage (ozone layer). We have more medical cures & treatments, longer lifespans, greater nutrition, more education, incredible entertainment options (Netflix, Steam, YouTube, etc.).

    The world is better than it ever was, but the pace of improvement has slowed / gone stagnant

    Yeah I get the anxiety, things do seem more unstable than they were 10 years ago. I’m super thankful to be living in our so-far-the-best age but I don’t take for granted that it can stay wonderful. Much of the benefits we now enjoy were hard-won victories that required hard work, and I suspect that to keep making the world a better place it’ll require us to pay it forward by also working hard. But don’t take it for a given that we’re due for pain and conflict; human events are too complex to follow simple narratives and it’s possible in 5 years we’ll all be relaxed and thankful that these current problems fizzled out.

          • nublug@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            10 months ago

            where’s your data showing this trend of rising crime that has not stopped, bud? because everything i’ve seen shows less crime than before lockdown with only comparing to during lockdowns looking like any increase. they offered data, you offer none except the assumption that there def is a trend in rising crime.

              • nublug@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                10 months ago

                you’re the one asserting there’s def an established trend of rising crime and dismissing data that shows you wrong while still offering no data yourself.

                  • nublug@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    10 months ago

                    the difference between the lockdowns where there was understandably a drastic drop in crime to after lockdowns were lifted does not a trend make; it’s an externality, and the only rise i referenced. comparing pre lockdown to post lockdown there is a clear continued drop in crime overall. i referenced this lockdown ‘rise’ particularly because it’s what media and fascists have used to pursue greater police budgets and stricter laws and campaigning, and it is misleading at best to parrot their fear mongering over ‘rising crime’ especially without any data to back it up.

      • JillyB@beehaw.org
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        10 months ago

        in the USA atleast, crime is increasing

        Source? I’m pretty sure there was an uptick during the pandemic but then it went down again.

      • soviettaters@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        Everything ebbs and flows, but on the wider scale of things crime is down and life expectancy is up.