Is it my impression or are things devolving?

We live in a time when the media makes more if it causes more dread. My advice is to ignore the news.

Listen to optimists.

https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_is_the_world_getting...

Things are transitioning, and disruptively so. Transitions aren't necessarily collapses, but they can certain look and quack like it before any benefit arises.

Just take the whole arc of the Industrial Revolution for an example: more goods start flowing and more resources start being available, but simultaneously, people are pushed to work harder for lower wages; sunrise to sunset at the factory, tenement housing, etc. It takes generations before most really start seeing the visible benefit to their lifestyle. And the benefit is achieved through a series of fights - violent ones - to secure a new social contract.

So where does it end? Where do we get the source of optimism for this transition? Well, look at the people analyzing the stats. Hans Rosling has long been popular for his positive framing of demographic changes. More recently Tony Seba has taken on a similar role in framing technology changes. They point to the graphs and say: "our trends are going here, not there." And "here" looks pretty good, but also surprising, because it doesn't behave linearly.

The thing is, we don't address most societal challenges in a "Fix-it Felix" heroic fashion: either we find a technology that changes the game (which is produced mostly from people given the necessary access to resources to commit to lengthy trial and error - hence a lot of advancements are perceived as elite phenomena), or we let it fall into the political sphere, where a fight takes place and someone is declared a winner and their opinions become the law, for a while.

Given the option to do so, don't be too concerned about picking a "right" job. Jobs emerge from what the market can support, and when some jobs are called more right than others, that's a factor of politics. The only way to truly remove the politics is to create more spheres of autonomy, which could happen not just "within" jobs but "without", by e.g. trying to redefine your household lifestyle.

well there is likely plenty of cause for concern, there are a large percentage of the population (in the US at least) who are gearing up to launch us into civil war, and they are absolutely serious... between the Q-anon's fighting the cabal, to the throngs of MAGA trumpets, the far right is galvanizing and whipping their propaganda into a lather as they prepare to punish the libs, save the children, form their own handmaidens tail style fascist state with Trump at the wheel they will bring the country back to god just in time for the return of Jesus... and that's just American fringe politics, add to the very real food shortages that will only get worse in the short term and the inflation, and the rising rents, the crashing markets... the aforementioned religious war aside, we are staring down the barrel of a class war that most people are too distracted by nonsense like Depp/Heard or Roe/Wade to perceive the inevitable breakdown of trust that is lurking just around the corner. Not everyone is blind, just the masses, an ear to the wall in Davos is all you need to recognize the hand of intelligent design in all of this mess.

There are two primary schools of thought in play here, one is a devolutionary ideology focused on a return to god, traditional values, homeschooling, and a massive rollback of mankind's progress landing us back in the 50's at best, and somewhere in the middle of the Victorian era at worst. On the other hand there is the progressive movement toward a more enlightened future, a gradual dismantling of localized nationalism, religious dogma as law, and our greed based economy in favor of a more balanced and rational approach to wealth, production, and equality. And IMO if humanity is ever going to project ourselves out into the universe successfully, or even perhaps simply to survive for more than 50 more years, we absolutely must work together as a species. Cooperation and unity is the only way, but with roughly 40% believing that would land them in the fiery pits of hell... well we seem to have reached an evolutionary impasse where progressive minds that desire a road forward need to either convince and convert the others, or find some way to nullify their objections, the trump years taught us that reasoning with them is nearly impossible. fanatical religious conviction anchored in delusion is difficult to reverse. So then it is on to plan B I suppose... hope fully whatever form that takes is over quickly. Then we can start to worry about the north pole, I hear its relocating to somewhere in the Indian Ocean...

My point in all this is simple, Things are NOT good, and in fact are going to get worse before they get better, a LOT worse. But this is not hopeless, nor is it devolutionary. This is in fact the dawning of the next age of mankind, and as with any major change or growth spurt, it is not going to be easy… growing pains are unavoidable and this one is gonna be a doozy. But the reality is that in spite of the difficulty, we are going to be much better off once it is said and done, and the world that our children will inherit will be a much better one than the one we grew up in. I can look back to my high school years in the early 90s and recall how hard it was for me as I was struggling to accept my homosexuality and how much harder it was because everyone around me had been mocking and bullying me for it for many years prior to my own realization. Yet now I see kids coming out in middle school to love and acceptance and support… churches fly rainbow flags for pride month, it’s a very different world, and while homophobia is still alive and well, its not universally accepted as the norm and is condemned more often than not. We continue to grow as a species and we do I one person at a time, by choice, every day… we write the narrative that defines out universe, we look at the world with hope rather than fear, love instead of hate and we manifest those qualities on the world around us. By keeping your mind open to beauty and hope, challenging your fear and doubt and hate, and speaking positively to the people you come in contact with you create hope and positive energy that absolutely has an effect on everything and person you come in contact with.

If we stare fear and hopelessness in the face and deny it, it looses its power over us and it cannot also then spread its negative influence THRU us… you don’t have to be a carrier of this insipid poison, you can choose to seek out the good and positive things in the world and seek to enhance them and bring them to the attention of others… if we all make the conscious choice to be better… then the whole world will change and mankind will be able to come together in unity and evolve instead of destroy ourselves and each other with fear, violence and hate. This is our choice and we must make it anew every single day.

In the words of my favorite student of catastrophism…

Eyes open, No fear, Be safe everyone

That you feel this at all makes you a compassionate and conscientious human being: thank you for being the person and the human being that you are.

To a certain extent, I agree that there are today floods of news and information that have never existed in preceding decades. But overall, over the centuries, trends have been tracing increasingly worse trajectories, contemporary news and information overload notwithstanding.

Coincidentally, I was re-reading the Powell memorandum today[1], and trying to unpack the layers upon layers of deception and evil and all the other failings of humanity in its every line. It is a reminder of the propensity of the human psyche to prey upon itself and other life, just because. (Also, this pre-dates the internet as we know it today, and was (and still is) being "implemented" by the powers that were and are.)

My unshakeable (though highly personal and highly subjective) worldview is that the systems that humans have been collectively building (or are being forced to build against their will) across many generations are force-multipliers to the detriment of this planet and all its lifeforms.

This leads to shrapnel like:

* System efficiencies are designed for, and forced towards accelerating exploitation at all costs rather than optimizing for general well-being.

* Human effort has largely been, and is still being massively misdirected for generations into building things that shouldn't have even been ideas to begin with. All modern "innovations" (ads? zero-privacy faang walled-gardens?) operate under the implicit assumptions that your consciousness is game; that your consciousness exists as the ultimate cannon-fodder to satisfy these "innovations", and then some? F*ck that noise.)

* We have more hydrocarbons and their residues inside and around living things today, than in earlier decades.

* There is more water draining away from the poles and into the oceans than ever before.

* There is more orchestrated exploitation of the planet and its organisms than before.

As for me, I address it by a bit of selflessness and selfishness combined, being both single and childfree by choice. I've seriously considered offing myself. I refuse to bring a child into a world accelerating downhill, and forced human reproduction (just like your tasty chicken came to be) is actually beginning to take root in some places around this world (see what's up with Roe v Wade these days, as an example.) That sentiment will probably keep spreading rapidly across the world in the years to come.

I know I am to blame to some extent for the world I end up creating through my actions and my profession (as maybe you do as well.) But I have really, sincerely and honestly tried to do my bit as well: never owned or cared for a car, barely ride a motorbike a couple score kilometers a month, veggie, adore my cats. I know it doesn't amount to anything in the grand scheme of things, but hey, my cats purr at me, my poops are just better with all that fiber and I like learning to cook new things that aren't heart-attack food if I'd have to buy them instead.

It is sad that the only way to "win" (atleast in my mind?) is not to play the game: every day I have lived is the most powerful reinforcement of having made the choices I made. I have some regrets, but those pale in comparison to knowing that my children and descendants will never have to suffer through the minefields and exclusion-zones that many generations before me have laid out for them in full coherence and with full force of will. That pain and regret is a small price to pay for such an assurance.

[1] https://law2.wlu.edu/deptimages/Powell%20Archives/PowellMemo...

/soapbox

edit: formatting