>The lessons from history are often that things can and do get worse, sometimes for generations, before improving again later. The example I like to think abou

>The lessons from history are often that things can and do get worse, sometimes for generations, before improving again later. The example I like to think about for this is imagine being born in the eastern European bloodlands - Eastern Germany, the Baltics, Poland, Byelorussia or Ukraine around 1895-1900. Things are pretty good up until the Great War starts, which back then you would be old enough to be considered an adult for, and then it is wars, famines, repressions and totalitarianism for the rest of your life as you likely die just short of the Iron Curtain falling. That's a pretty bleak life. Yet many people lived it, and found love and purpose and had families under it and those civilizations as a whole eventually recovered.