Oh. My. God. Fearmongering is everywhere. We also might conclude that "meh, teens getting drunk occasionally" or "meh, people actually having a sex life" is pr

Oh. My. God. Fearmongering is everywhere. We also might conclude that "meh, teens getting drunk occasionally" or "meh, people actually having a sex life" is pretty goddamn normal and get over a bunch of nonsense. No matter what goes on around us, we still have a choice in how we interpret things and what kind of world we choose to build. There is zero inevitability here. When Demi Moore posed naked on the cover of a magazine while pregnant, this was some sort of shocking dramatic thing. Now, it seems like every pregnant celebrity does the exact same pose and posts it somewhere. It has become prosaic. Seriously, we can choose to be more humane to people. Things going to hell is not some inevitability. Edit: Maybe a better example is that when 24 hour news channels became a thing, it changed the news. Before that, people were very straight laced and serious for the 30 minutes that they reported the news. This was not sustainable when reporters had to talk live all day, every day. They became less stiff and formal, more able to crack a joke and be human. They still had to treat some subjects with appropriate respect, but 24/7 news channels caused news to lighten up some. Geez.