Yes, things are objectively, statistically better than ever before, but what I perceive more and more is that societies are getting more allergic. By that I mean that, just as a person raised in an aseptic environment will have a greater chance of developing allergies, which is an over reaction to usually harmless stimuli, as societies become more secure some people become hypersensitive to any minor thing, real or perceived.
Then real damage results from this over reactions, this is the part that worries me. I often comment to people that most of the big problems in the world stem out from people’s knee jerk reactions to little, happenstance problems.
On top of that the corporate news media complex has become very good at yanking people’s chains, this days all it takes is a (monkey?) whistle by the media to have the monkey start dancing and grinding the organ while the person running the show just sits back and cashes in with no effort.
The constant, fast paced and more often than not slanted stream of outrage fodder is the perfect breeding ground for harmful, kneejerk reactions by the public. Which is great for the news industrial complex.
Another thing that is becoming worse is that most people have no bleeping clue how the world around them works, and I don’t mean political machinations, I mean the nut and bolts of it. It doesn’t even enter people’s minds what it takes to make our civilization function, people shuffle around with machines that are wonder of applied science and technology in their hands and it may just as well be all powered by magic. We are literally living in A. C. Clark’s world, where a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic for most people. I believe that lack of understanding drags people down, it’s like attending a game and not knowing what the rules are, how it’s supposed to be played, who the players are, what are the skills involved etc, etc… that person will probably be bored to death by it all, while a sports fan will be having a blast.
There is so much around us that should fill us with gratitude and kinship to our fellow humans for what we have achieved to last a lifetime.
I will add one thing, I find it rather grating to hear people living in the richest country in the world, enjoying freedoms which many, many people in the world are actually dying to achieve, moan about how bad they have it. Try feeling grateful at what you have for once, maybe you won’t be so miserable.
A couple of generalizations here I would quibble with. In nearly all countries in the world, people have pretty much the same day-to-day freedoms Americans have, including voting for one of two power-abusing jackasses in a flawed electoral process. And for richest, my Filipina wife and I would be happy to live in the US, but her health insurance alone would cost nearly my entire pension, and although she speaks seven languages, is not qualified for any more than a minimum wage job, which is not my idea of rich…
I don’t think they do. I have two teenagers and they’ve been doing active shooter drills their entire school careers. That, combined with the increase in the cost of college, leading to huge student debt (which they’re well aware of because they have to be, now that they’re deciding on college plans) makes them quite bitter about the state of the world they live in. And then they’ll start talking to you about climate change…
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You’re getting older, so you notice this stuff more.
Ignoring the richest 1%, who you don’t interact with and never will interact with, the USA is poorer than it’s been in a long time. In the past decade, the average wealth of a citizen in the bottom 50% has gone negative.
(We’re still richer than a lot of nations, of course, but that’s not what we compare against. We compare against our own past.)
I think that’s all unrelated to why downtown shops are all dead, which makes some towns look really bleak. That’s more about how big box stores are a lot more convenient to people who use personal cars for transport.
Even towns that are doing ok economically, really have to make a coordinated deliberate effort to combat that, and even then they can’t return to their pre-walmart glory days.
I think I know where the OP is coming from; just in going between Houston/Dallas or Dallas/Austin, you get well out into the country, and it’s a different world than the big cities. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of industry, and farming/logging/oil doesn’t really seem to be generating a lot of prosperity out there either. Everything just seems run down, shabby and old, including the storefronts and commercial parts- I often wonder if these places were nice and well-kept in say… 1930, or if they were grungy and ratty then, just with a new building or two. So the small towns aren’t exactly impoverished, but they’re not optimistic or hopeful places either.
It’s definitely a contrast with the bigger cities- while they do have similarly run down parts, they’re generally in the extreme low-income parts, with pretty much everywhere else not being that run down, especially not the commercial areas.
I think my short answer is that most people with the means and wherewithal to do so would rather work lucrative jobs in finance, high tech, pharma, media, law or nearly anything else on the planet in busy, vibrant cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Philly or Pittsburgh rather than a farm, mill or factory in the Midwest (or anywhere).
And I’m not sure why you think agriculture and manufacturing are any more “real” than any other sector of the economy. They aren’t even the largest:
There are professional careers in the less populated areas of the country, too. The financial upside is generally a little more limited. And lots of talented professionals are content in small town America, where one can trade off financial success and big city entertainment for less stress and a greater sense of community.
But to the larger issue of this thread, yeah, I’ve driven through lots of small towns recently which used to be a lot more self sufficient and now depend much more on bigger metro areas down the road apiece. Those might be less stressful places to live but the opportunities there are increasingly rare and the inconveniences growing. A lot of the decisions we make in 21st century life center around convenience.
Pure rationalization. I’m not on the spot in the USA to do a field study, but why are there so many reports about crumbling infrastructure, abandoned buildings, many homeless, and people desperate to keep their jobs that do not pay more over time. I’m sure some parts of the USA are fine, bur evidently there is a shadow side.
Places like Germany have started having tornadoes but they are not anywhere near as big and destructive as the US ones. Usually, if they go through a house the roof takes a hit and the windows blow out, but the house is still standing. Usually.
Wooden houses and eathquake country: I lived in Tokyo for over a decade in a wooden house. Dunno if it is still there: the Japanese tend to demolish after about 40-50 years, partly because it is often to rebuild than refurbish a small house. One problem in japan is that land has value, but houses do not. So there are an increasing number of abandoned houses outside the towns. Coincidentally, I saw pictures in the Internet very recently about how Russian villages are becoming depopulated and the wooden houses are left to fall down. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Funny you should say that. I am looking at maybe buying a plot of farmland here in Poland, and the plot includes a house and barn. The house looks as if it will be condemned due to mildew and similar good things, and I don’t see much point trying to do up an architecturally dreary brick-built house of no great age that does not have proper foundations and insulation. The barn is maybe a century old or thereabouts, with brick walls that are not lead-bearing and a decrepit roof resting on some very nice old wooden beams. Unfortunately, the beams have been eaten through and the roof could collapse in a bad storm. I hate to think what big pieces of wood such as that would cost, plus the crane to put them in place, plus the cost of tiling the roof … and what would I do with a barn anyway? It would look nice, but does not have all that much utility.
If the deal goes through, I’ll be looking for a demolition contractor.
I posted some version of this theory before, but IMHO society seems to get “worse” for a number of reasons:
Changes in population: If more people move into an area, you get a sense of overcrowding and strain on existing infrastructure. If people move out of an area, you get a sense of abandonment and dilapidation.
Increasing information and connectivity: We didn’t have the internet or 24 hour news when I was a kid. Now it’s non stop.
Everyone always acts as if the next great advance is going to destroy the world.
Gentrification: Hey, it’s great that they developed Hudson Yards over the old LIRR railyards in Manhattan. But now I have these giant glass Blade Runner style buildings blocking my view of Manhattan.
I’m a hospital librarian. This week I was asked to do a search on the importance of nurses communicating with their patients. That’s the state of the world. The only communication is texts/tweets/Instagram. I’m sad that nurses have to be told “you need to talk to your patients.”
“Convenience” is such a perjorative word, as if modern people are incredibly lazy and soft compared to their forebears. But what I see and experience is not laziness, but technological/social changes which sweep everyone along willy nilly.
The cost of health care, the shame of the United States, drives many economic decisions these days. The reason many people are abandoning small towns and rural areas is because they are being driven out by economics, not because they are too lazy to make a go of it. Megacorporations have destroyed small farming, small businesses, and small towns, and there is almost nothing in government policies which mitigates this process (unlike in western Europe).
Another economic reality that shapes much of the social landscape in the modern era is the emancipation of women. There’s a real case to be made that the single most significant modern invention is birth control. When women are not virtual slaves to men, and have no choice but to, unremunerated, bear children, raise children, and also care for the sick and elderly, an enormous, unprecedented shift happens. Not everything in that shift is of benefit to the general society, something that every conservative knows. We are still, I think, in the throes of it.
I did not mean “convenience” as a pejorative. Most of technological advances are designed to make things in life more convenient as well as more efficient and productive and I think that’s a good thing.
That’s an interesting point about disruption. Yes, one of the things that separates liberals from conservatives is that conservatives fear the consequences of change more than they appreciate the potential benefits while I think liberals are the other way around.
You could just as easily argue that most technological advances are designed to make money for the company marketing them. “Convenience” is an advertising device, more often than not.
The fact that I don’t need nor understand nor use 90% of the functions on any given electronic device (I’m a little extreme but not bizarrely so in this respect, according to my anecdotal evidence), tells you something about “covenience” of technology.
And, not to make this political, but I don’t think you have the liberal vs conservative dichotomy quite figured out.
You wouldn’t be the first to make this charge. I probably misunderstood this part of your post, “Not everything in that shift is of benefit to the general society, something that every conservative knows” and would welcome the opportunity to have it fleshed out for me.