Well, if you take a wider historical view it becomes more like an investment on a time scale. It dips and rises and sometimes drops really sharply and sometimes rises the same. But overall it’s still growing. However I fear no one will survive the next crash. If only we could have been Star Trek
I had The Cold War on my mind in my teens (probably listening to too much Ultravox didn't help...) then when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and The Montreal Protocol came into effect, I did think the world was getting there.
Funny how things turned out (not "ha ha" funny...).
Technically, you were correct. After all, the Earth is spinning the right way. Oh. Wait. You meant the people of the Earth. Yeah, no. They are crazy. But, you have a sizable amount that agree with you that they are crazy. So that is still something. Right?
It is still moving in the right direction but when this involves some groups losing the privilege they thought they had, they'll fight hard to regain/keep it. This is what Trump relies on, he reminds his voters of The Good Old Days, which really weren't all that good!
It's actually called Declinism.
It was. But isn't any more. White male fragility, hubris, debasement, monstrosity, and horror is now pulling us all back into the septic tank, just so they can feel a bit better about themselves, even if only as devils. Ah well. It was. Now it burns.
Back in the 70s, we all felt that: times were hard, but hope was high. We had space shuttles, started w/Russ. a space station, music told you not to stop believin', disco (sorry)
television and movies had mostly positive endings.Darker stuff was rare, which made it thrilling.
I remember foolishly thinking adults wanted what was best for everyone. Because that's what they tell you adults are suppose to do- sucks when you realize too young most of them actively work against each other for stupid reasons.
I was pre-teen in the Cold War days. Nuclear annihilation was a real threat. And yet, I was upbeat about the future. Maybe because I was just a kid? Dunno. Roll forward more decades than I want to count and I'm still upbeat.
Sure, bad shit is happening. But bad shit always happened.
Politics has always been inhabited by the "what's in it for me" crowd controlled by the rich media barons but nowadays with social media everything is in real time and if you have any sort of IQ being fooled easily is a thing of the past but then again maybe not.
The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the 2 foci.
A line segment joining a planet & the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of an orbit.
As a kid I remember learning about the Roman Empire (mid elementary school, when I was 8 or 9) and the teacher was outlining the 'bread & circuses' stuff that heralded the decline.
I remember raising my hand, and asking something to the effect of "Does that mean America is headed for the same 1/
Yeah, about a year later I had to do a report on a famous person. I chose Walt Disney... and definitely used a few resources that were 'unauthorized' and covered the Red Scare in Hollywood.
So yeah, add that to the pile of disillusioning a small child in rapid succession.
For a while it was. Whenever there’s progress made, there’s always a backlash. There’s still been great progress made despite Trump dragging every racist, misogynistic and homophobic lunatic out from under the rocks they were collectively living under. There are still more of us than them…
Right?! I distinctly remember walking down the hall in high school one day thinking how cool everything was going to be when my generation started running things. It took me a while to figure out my generation was as full of aholes as any other.
I feel like it was for a time, around the late 80s and 90s.
Then the corporations and their leaders became too mercenary, too smart, and too good at making excuses for evading their social obligations.
That morphed into the hyper-capitalist period we're now in.
A foundation myth of the USA is that the country was founded by freedom seeking people. In reality, it was founded by religious zealots who were escaping rising secularism in Europe. The depths of ignorance we're now experiencing and the global impact are rooted in that zealotry.
We can’t help that we were taught as impressionable children that the “pilgrims” were the good guys. This is why they fight “woke” education so hard—if kids knew the truth they might not do stuff like sign up to murder brown folks.
The ill-equipped pilgrims were saved by natives who fed them through their first winter on native land. Imagine turning that completely on its head and inventing Thanksgiving.
How about Florida now teaching kids that slavery wasn't all bad since slaves benefitted from learning useful skills..
Also ingraining in them that being paid shit wages is ok since you’re “learning skills.” I hear about late-stage capitalism a lot, I’m not sure what it is, but maybe it’s something like this.
I'm afraid what passes for Christianity will return to its bloody ways as well. They won't come at you like sleazy salesman but also at the point of a bayonet.
Hoping that all this stupidity is, in fact, a blip.
Normal service will be resumed. Eventually.
We were, in fact, correct to believe the world is moving in approximately the right direction. I really hope so...
I was in elementary and middle school only a decade after Civil Rights Act in US. The world, at least my little piece, was moving towards progress and equality. Then the religious right pushed back, and they kept pushing.
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Funny how things turned out (not "ha ha" funny...).
I grew up in the 60s, nuclear scare(s) so it hit hard.
It's actually called Declinism.
television and movies had mostly positive endings.Darker stuff was rare, which made it thrilling.
No longer. No longer.
Few years later I realized how wrong I was. But at least it wasn't like the dystopian apocaplyse we are heading towards now.
Sure, bad shit is happening. But bad shit always happened.
(stolen-ish from Hunter Thompson)
The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the 2 foci.
A line segment joining a planet & the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of an orbit.
I remember raising my hand, and asking something to the effect of "Does that mean America is headed for the same 1/
and lemme tell you, in the mid 90s, that got me sent to the principal's office...
was all-state in college 🤣
So yeah, add that to the pile of disillusioning a small child in rapid succession.
Then the corporations and their leaders became too mercenary, too smart, and too good at making excuses for evading their social obligations.
That morphed into the hyper-capitalist period we're now in.
How about Florida now teaching kids that slavery wasn't all bad since slaves benefitted from learning useful skills..
Take note of who is attending 👇
Normal service will be resumed. Eventually.
We were, in fact, correct to believe the world is moving in approximately the right direction. I really hope so...