I thought this was a great perspective from a younger person:
Wow, that’s a…really real take on like, life man. Nobody ever thought of felt that way before, at least not from my pre-911 generation, where’d this dude like come up with this amazing insight man!!!@!!
Sorry, I know thats the wrong way to post that, but, that quoted post is not powerful, or new or original in anyway that matters what so ever. Sure sure, the details differ from generation to generation and each has had its civilization ending existential crisis or so. Hell in my lifetime I can recall famine brought on by overpopulation, man made ice age, population crash by way of thirst as we were going to run out of potable water any day now and nuclear war. All of these were popular emergencies for humanity in the last 50ish years, several pushed by Carl Sagan Himself.
Yeah the world is a shitty place, get over it.
I think Darren nailed it down fairly well. Having the perspective of time tends to do that to an extent. A quick read through Jared Diamond’s World Until Yesterday can give one a real understanding of just how good we actually have it overall. At least, until the next Dark Age anyway…
After the routine savagery, brutality, and endless wars of the 20th century, we’re practically living in Shangri-La now. Sure, a lot of things are fucked, but when are they not?
That poor, tormented Holden Caulfield on reddit should contemplate the rule of King Leopold in the Congo Free State. Hardship and adversity? Modern day America is a picnic.
Great, so as the world burns and our metropolises flood, we can all chant “at least we have it better than King Leopold’s Congonese subjects, amiright?”
I think it’s all relative. Daily life for me at least isn’t so bad compared to many people in the past or in less stable parts of the world. I don’t have to work in a mine, do back-breaking or dangerous labor, worry about getting shot at, or anything like that. I think corporations have enabled large numbers of middle class that aren’t rich but don’t have too many large complaints either. A steady stream of semi trucks brings gas, goods, and food into the Walmarts and McDonalds etc and we get by just fine. But is this sustainable? One hiccup in my income and I’m toast. One hiccup in the flow of food into my area and suddenly I have to drive 80 miles round trip for basic needs.
The world is not burning. Most metropolises are not flooding. And while we have it better than King Leopold’s Congolese subjects, we also have it better than almost any subject of any ruler, ever.
We are faced with real issues. But even if the Netherlands, Bangladesh, a bunch of islands and chunks of Ireland and England get flooded, in aggregate the world population will still be better off than it was 60 years ago. It doesn’t mean the problems aren’t real, or serious, it just puts them in perspective. Growing up in the Netherlands in the 70’s and 80’s the prevailing attitude of many younger people was that it was kinda silly to be too involved in school etc, since we were all going to die in WW3 anyway. This, in hindsight, was stupid. We didn’t die in WW3, and our lives were better than those of previous generations by almost any measure.
Mid-20th century, global life expectancy was around 45 years. Now it’s over 70. That is a massive improvement.
Sounds like an overly-entitled crybaby whining about world that is better than any time before now because he can’t buy a house when he is 22 years old.
Fortunately, a significant number of people of his age are holding down jobs, collectively addressing many of the problems he’s moaning about.
In ten years, one of them will be his landlord, while he bemoans his fate as a renter.
Buy a house in a prime spot in San Francisco when he is 22 years old. And you know what? Neither can I, at 47 with a pretty damned good salary.
hmmm…methinks the 25-year old needs to get laid. 
Too late. The Chads already took all the Stacys. 
My first memories predate 9/11/01, despite being a couple years younger than the redditor in question. I mean yes, all of those things actually happened and have importance in how I view the world. But compared to my parent’s generation… whose first fully formed memories were watching the assassination of the leader of the free world, or ducking under gradeschool desks in anticipation of a nuclear strike, or seeing your family members being shipped off across the world to murder despirate farmers in the jungle, getting your license and then not being allowed to drive because of gasoline rationing, being unable to marry your soulmate because of anti-miscegenation laws, first learning about politics when the President of the United States covers up for a political crime, etc.
And don’t then there’s the generation before that… born into a world engulfed in the bloodiest war in history, growing up during the single greatest economic disaster in modern times, coming of age just in time to be shipped out for a second world war, winning that war only to see the rise of communism…
~Max
Are you…are you from the future? I hadn’t even read the thread yet when you posted this!
(For the record, my reaction to the Reddit post is “What a Drama Llama!”)
Me, I see his post as the first step into…joining the 3%ers and setting off a bomb somewhere. Or shooting up something. Because if there’s nothing to live for, then why care? You can shoot yourself, or shoot someone else. Which is easier?
And yes, I swear I read that post decades ago.
I was a bit confused, too. swampspruce probably meant to write DorkVader.
~Max
You can keep ignoring what the science says if you want, but as we have been told over and over again over the last two years, we have a very short window of time to prevent irreparable damage.
It was my dorkside sith bunny powers clouding everyone’s vision, yeah, that’s the answer.
Thats right, the Easter Bunny is a Sith Lord, think about it.
Does that make the world better or worse?
I’m not sure why people are ridiculing the author, these are valid complaints.
Maybe they’re not as bad as what people went through in ww2 but they exist.
And what makes them so miserable is they are avoidable. We could have higher wages, universal health care, do something about climate change, do something about foreign investors driving up real estate prices. But we don’t do anything about it because we live in a plutocracy and the rich like our broken system.
The reason for the ridicule is that there is nothing substantially new. The realizations in the complaints are the exact same ones every generation has had going back…forever maybe? And many of them really are not that different from the Boomers and GenXers