6 ms·

I don't know your age but I'm going to guess 30+. This is just happens when you get old. When you were younger you probably noticed that all the older people yo

I don't know your age but I'm going to guess 30+. This is just happens when you get old. When you were younger you probably noticed that all the older people you knew pined for some earlier time (say the 1970s or 1950s). And you probably thought they were being silly. Well, now you've become one of those people. The fact is the world always seems better when you are younger, not because the world necessarily better, but because it's just more pleasant to be young. The future is full of promise, you haven't made any huge mistakes yet, and your body hasn't started the inexorable march towards decay and death. Most of your points are subjective, reflecting people's mentality or thoughts. I can't really argue against this because it's your own perception. But I would say you should be a bit skeptical that people's behavior can really change that much over such a short period. It's much more likely that you interpret it differently than you use to. Scams have been prevalent throughout human history. Perhaps you are just paying more attention to the news lately? Some of the things you bring up are valid objective things. For example it's true that many more things are subscription based now. But on the other hands, those are things that weren't even available before. You can still buy and play all the same non-subscription games that used to exist (I still play HOMM3 for example). If you prefer cable TV that still exists as well. So I find it misleading to argue that because we have more choice that it's somehow worse when the previous options haven't been taken away.

cedws 4y ago
I'm 21 and I think everything's going to shit as well... is it doomerism or reality? Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?
- drewcon 4y ago
  You’re wrong on pretty much every measure here.
  - c7DJTLrn 4y ago
    Please keep the low quality comments to Reddit. Thanks.
    - laidoffamazon 4y ago
      I think you should consider backing those assertions up a little bit more. > Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse? 1 is definitely not true given patronage doesn't exist like the early 1900s. 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs. Innovation doesn't seem to be coming to a standstill, we are seeing rapid advancements in ML just this year, not to mention in energy (fusion research, battery research, wind+solar deployments) and biotech (MRNA). Housing is more expensive, yes, but the easy solution remains just having a longer commute like people in the 2000's dealt with. More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984, so there's no real decline in family formation either. I don't think kids are checking out of life either. I really can't see any statement here that's particularly justified.
      - mxkopy 4y ago
        > 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs. Alright, fair, conflicts like the one in Ukraine aren't anything new, with what's going on in Palestine, Iran, Egypt, Rwanda, probably countless others I can't name. But EVEN IF you were referring to how 'mundane' and indicative of stability such conflicts are, I'd refer you the Doomsday Clock which was recently set to 90 seconds to midnight. I don't really know much about the geopolitical state of the world, but I'd trust a group of scientists who have direct interest in the matter to make those sorts of calls for me. > I don't think kids are checking out of life either Kids were checking out of life when I was in high school ~5 years ago. Hell even I was. So if you've got any updates on that situation please feel free to educate us. > More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984 Can you supply the percentages please? Because otherwise this is pretty meaningless
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories), and getting more in person interaction. You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics or stories of violence hundreds of miles a way. Disconnect and recharge. Reconnect with people around you and enjoy the world as it exists, not for some representation of all the terrible things on news media.
  - cedws 4y ago
    I have a problem with reading too much news, you're right. However, switching it off doesn't lessen the impact on daily life. Fuel doesn't become cheaper because I stopped reading the BBC News reports about the Russo-Ukrainian war. I don't pay less tax because I chose not to read about the government increasing VAT.
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      How much of that resentment towards fuel prices stems from being told to be resentful about fuel prices? When we're able to make our own judgments about the goings on in our life instead of being programmed how to feel by the media, life stops feeling like it's all hell.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        This is a big one. In a less dramatic way, it's easier to enjoy video games when you don't read the reddit threads whinging about them. It's easy to feel like a game is unplayable garbage when you read a list of every single complaint people have, while playing and experiencing it yourself, you just don't notice this stuff and get to simply enjoy the content.
    - kansface 4y ago
      It does, actually. It’s the difference between struggling and being preoccupied with struggle. Anxiety doesn’t make fuel cheaper, end war, or racism; anxiety is not a virtue.
  - 4y ago
- zug_zug 4y ago
  Those are a bunch of statements that angry people with agree with, but you haven't presented any evidence for your claims, and I think they're mostly backward. We're in the longest period of peace in thousands of years. Check out this cool graphic that puts in perspective: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ People are mad about politics, but I don't think it's any worse than the cold-war, kennedy assassination, mcarthyism, being drafted to Nam. Reagan was a movie-star who became president. Innovation is the fastest its ever been. It's hard to say how corruption is changing, and whether accountability is greater or lesser now. People are upset about the environment now, but consider stuff from the last 100 years (leaded gasoline, the banned-pesticides, radioactive toothpaste, etc etc).
  - jmcgough 4y ago
    There's way less trust in our society than they have been in many years. This is something that's been studied with evidence to back it up. You can see this in the week it took to elect a speaker of the house, something that hasn't happened (at that scale) since the 19th century. Globally, nations that become more economically developed shift towards individualism and selfishness.
    - mach1ne 4y ago
      This is actually what you’d expect from practically any system where wealth and power centralize as a function of time. The pressure will grow until it eventually might pop.
    - HEmanZ 4y ago
      This trust thing is true, but it doesn’t mean that institutions are lest trustworthy. It seems more that we have the tools (institutional, cultural, technological) to actually understand many systems better and see how untrustworthy they are. Basically, our vision is better, the situation isn’t worse. Individualism is something I do half agree with. I’m not sure it’s a time-based thing tho, and I’m agnostic to whether it is good or bad. Collectivism in the past could be incredibly stifling and coercive. Hyper individualism can be alienating. There is some middle ground and I actually believe we are in the process of moving towards it. Because if you talk to anyone, they KNOW there is a problem with how individualistic consumerism causes us problems, and they KNOW alienation is a problem. We are learning to balance our new-ish freedoms, prosperity, and individual flourishing with our deep need for community and solidarity. It will take time, but we will figure it out.
- HEmanZ 4y ago
  I want to call out that at least in the US, politicians actually appear way less corrupt than they used to be. Any reading of specific political histories, e.g Robert Caro, you can quickly get a feel for just how insanely corrupt politicians have been throughout history. If you compare them to today, it’s actually some relief. They are still corrupt today but really it’s child’s play compared to most of US history and pretty much all of world history. I think a big problem is that people don’t read or watch real history, they are only familiar with abstract, high-level, or hyper-biased history. In basically every aspect imaginable, excepting maybe some things resembling spirituality (which do matter but are much trickier to pin down and understand) the world is so so much better than it has ever been, petty much everywhere
  - djur 4y ago
    If anything, the problem with modern-day politics is that politicians are too committed to their ideological beliefs and are not corrupt enough to be bribed into cooperation.
- ako 4y ago
  This is worth reading: https://wordsrated.com/summary-factfulness-ten-reasons-were-wrong-about-the-world-and-why-things-are-better-than-you-think-by-hans-rosling-ola-rosling-anna-rosling-ronnlund/ https://wordsrated.com/summary-factfulness-ten-reasons-were-...
- nabakin 4y ago
  > Innovation is coming to a standstill Machine learning is getting significantly more powerful by the month, nuclear fusion technology has been advancing at a much faster pace recently (not even counting the NIF's breakthrough), though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive, the cost and efficiency of green technology just keeps improving, the cost and efficiency of going into space has improved dramatically, pills which can cure obesity, cancer wins, longer lifespans than ever before, I could go on. I imagine one of the reasons you think innovation is stagnating is because the industry which has innovated at an incredible rate for the past 50 years, where you spend most of your life and time, is finally maturing. This was always going to happen. It was just a matter of time.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Even the stuff that has had ages to mature still seems to be rocketing forward. The M1 Macbook upended the whole market, one day we suddenly had a thin laptop with no fan that outperformed chunky brick laptops and did it with outstanding battery life. The rest of the market is catching up now but I don't think we should ignore how remarkably fast this all changed.
  - dorkwood 4y ago
    > though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive Can someone explain in layman’s terms what the impressive parts are? The mania surrounding NFTs left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d like to keep an open mind about the technology.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Likewise. Here's the most convincing video I've seen trying to explain that, but even this explanation doesn't feel great: https://youtu.be/qBAOsB6ETrY https://youtu.be/qBAOsB6ETrY It's from the Computerphile channel, so I trust it more than random YouTube.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Others already said this is wrong on basically every point, but I haven't seen this one commented yet: > Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse? It's the smallest, easiest, most concrete thing. Dictionary, en masse, "as a whole". Sure, hyperbole, so let's say... how about a bit more than half, 51%? But you're talking about suicide (presumably), we all know that isn't 50% of the population, but I don't know the figure. "En masse" really, even as a hyperbole, sounds to me like it ought to be at least a few percent. Wikipedia -> search 'suicide rate' -> redirects to article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... The worst country in the world has a suicide rate below 0.1%. Kids I couldn't quickly find a global rate for but in the USA (https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html) it's at 0.002%. "En masse" is not even close to reality. Every individual instance is horrendous for those involved, that's probably why you hear about it and why it seems so bad, but keep things in perspective when considering what the world as a whole is like.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    That phrase doesn't necessarily mean suicide. It generally means "giving up" - for example, burying themselves in things like video games or social media instead of school or friends.
- mancerayder 4y ago
  I felt like that when I was 21 as well! I had very strong political beliefs as a reaction to these, with an angry desire for change. That's entirely common at that age. The nihilism seems more pronounced in the 20somethings of today, but when I was that age music also reflected that same nihilism, so who knows if it's worse now experientially.
The_Colonel 4y ago
> The fact is the world always seems better when you are younger, not because the world necessarily better, but because it's just more pleasant to be young. I would also mention that when you're young, you're readily learning and accepting new ideas, and that capability/willingness shrinks with age (at least on average). As a result, the world seems increasingly a foreign place for you as you age - you understand less - partially on the cognitive level, partially on the value judgment level. It's the world of your youth which seems like your home, where your values align with the trend, where you understand what's happening.
mxkopy 4y ago
I'm 22 and I'm worried about high interest rates and how the cost of food has doubled. Getting a house is out of the question right now because I want a stable job rather than starting a business. Mind you I have more prospects than most; I'm at a top XX school's CS program. In high school I worked at a car wash and I met people who'd worked there for twenty odd years. Well not 'there' as they usually bounced from place to place, but at other car washes, fast food, what have you. These people have no clue about starting businesses, arbitrage trading, SaaS whatever. So if I'm thinking to myself that the future is kind of shaky, I might have to wait for a new house, then hundreds of people are thinking the future is kind of shaky, I might have to skip dinner for a couple days.
- jfalcon 4y ago
  I think you are stunting your growth and forgetting to live life. The world works on a Benjamin Button sort of deal where the best you will ever be physically is when you are the most financially destitute and vice versa. Thus your risk adverseness is also reversed where the time to be risky with wealth and job and life in general is your youth and the least when your in retirement age. The best thing you should worry about right now is figuring out a budget that allows for constant savings into bellwether stocks or savings bonds THAT YOU DON'T DESTROY ON A WHIM to tap the power of COMPOUND INTEREST. Heed Warren Buffett's advice and get into the habit of saving money early along with the discipline of not touching it for any reason until you have sufficient resources to readjust the performance of whatever it was invested into. If you don't have money working for you by collecting interest or grown by investment whether by wall street or a main street business, it will not keep up with inflation - that was learned by many in the 1980's when deregulation began eroding the financial industry. But the real point is that you should be young and take risks now as when you are older, you won't have the time or possibly the freedom to do it without other factors being in play (job,family,responsibilities for young and old, etc..)
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    > But the real point is that you should be young and take risks now as when you are older, you won't have the time or possibly the freedom to do it without other factors being in play (job,family,responsibilities for young and old, etc..) I hear this all the time but I question how universal this strategy is. There's this statistic about the average age of the entrepreneur (42) and how successful businesses are started by the older side of that curve. Personally, I know I can't start a business anytime in my 'youth' because I'm still learning to manage my ADHD and lifestyle, let alone actual real world shit. My plan is to start stacking as many practical skills as early as I can so when the time comes, I can compete with industry and put my weight behind something that's not just lucky. Until I have the self confidence required to do that sort of thing, the idea of business responsibilities just makes me nervous.
Izkata 4y ago
> This is just happens when you get old. When you were younger you probably noticed that all the older people you knew pined for some earlier time (say the 1970s or 1950s). Not really. What I picked up from them is the 90s were some sort of high period.
- jfalcon 4y ago
  I would say that was due to mostly shock and the brainwashing our parents gotten which delayed the wokeness as the hippies were quietly finding out about Cocaine and becoming Capitalists. Disco never died, it was just the precursor to EDM. Attitudes about people didn't change, they were just relabeled from Geek to Nerd and back to Geek once they became millionaires and "cool". Politics are still the same however - if not worse due to the herd mechanisms and failed idealism. I'm one year shy of my big 50 now and have been online most all of my life in one form or another so I feel I'm pretty hip to both sides of the culture/counterculture that connectedness brought forward. I've learned and confirmed that usually when it comes to personal/family wealth that it's better to have a republican in office (as long as you have financial understanding on what you can control in your life) but that comes at the expense of perhaps personal safety or religious separation as usually what happens is that democrats will not only add more social programs but will also put more people in prisons due to the concept of being "tough" on crime. It's too soon to say whether or not social/mental health programs will change the trend but one could say that the biggest changes come from social adoption towards better change. I hold up the 1950's where laws were passed to both codify and tear down major social issues and whet peoples attitudes for changing the world, after many of them went farther than any generation previous to them ever traveled - remember that most people rarely traveled more than 100 miles from the place they were born for any great length of time over the 175 years prior to this period. You hopefully just saw some with BLM, Safe Places, Gender/Sexual Equality and also some retractions like Abortion Legalization (remember, the SCOTUS is just an equalizer - not a law maker which there was never formal legalization - just the prevention of non-legalization being enacted). Billy Joel has a song called "We Didn't Start The Fire" for which is his least favorite song that lists off the highs and lows of the period. The only problem is that it stops at roughly 1990. It would take a whole other song to quantify what has happened since for which one could say that we still may have highs and lows but overall it's still getting better than before our great grandparents had to exist within.

cedws 4y ago

I'm 21 and I think everything's going to shit as well... is it doomerism or reality? Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse?

drewcon 4y ago
You’re wrong on pretty much every measure here.
- c7DJTLrn 4y ago
  Please keep the low quality comments to Reddit. Thanks.
  - laidoffamazon 4y ago
    I think you should consider backing those assertions up a little bit more. > Politicians appear increasingly corrupt and selfish. Geopolitics are becoming less stable. Innovation is coming to a standstill. The average person just wants a decent job, a nice place to live, and maybe a family. All of these are becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse? 1 is definitely not true given patronage doesn't exist like the early 1900s. 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs. Innovation doesn't seem to be coming to a standstill, we are seeing rapid advancements in ML just this year, not to mention in energy (fusion research, battery research, wind+solar deployments) and biotech (MRNA). Housing is more expensive, yes, but the easy solution remains just having a longer commute like people in the 2000's dealt with. More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984, so there's no real decline in family formation either. I don't think kids are checking out of life either. I really can't see any statement here that's particularly justified.
    - mxkopy 4y ago
      > 2 doesn't seem terribly true given the state of the world for most of the 20th's century, including two world wars followed by the threat of nuclear annihilation - meanwhile, today the "bear" is being beat with donated hand-me-downs. Alright, fair, conflicts like the one in Ukraine aren't anything new, with what's going on in Palestine, Iran, Egypt, Rwanda, probably countless others I can't name. But EVEN IF you were referring to how 'mundane' and indicative of stability such conflicts are, I'd refer you the Doomsday Clock which was recently set to 90 seconds to midnight. I don't really know much about the geopolitical state of the world, but I'd trust a group of scientists who have direct interest in the matter to make those sorts of calls for me. > I don't think kids are checking out of life either Kids were checking out of life when I was in high school ~5 years ago. Hell even I was. So if you've got any updates on that situation please feel free to educate us. > More people got married in 2022 than in "Morning in America" 1984 Can you supply the percentages please? Because otherwise this is pretty meaningless
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Try turning off the news, avoiding social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, HN, anywhere people share bad stories), and getting more in person interaction. You don’t need to be invested in the finer details of global politics or stories of violence hundreds of miles a way. Disconnect and recharge. Reconnect with people around you and enjoy the world as it exists, not for some representation of all the terrible things on news media.
- cedws 4y ago
  I have a problem with reading too much news, you're right. However, switching it off doesn't lessen the impact on daily life. Fuel doesn't become cheaper because I stopped reading the BBC News reports about the Russo-Ukrainian war. I don't pay less tax because I chose not to read about the government increasing VAT.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    How much of that resentment towards fuel prices stems from being told to be resentful about fuel prices? When we're able to make our own judgments about the goings on in our life instead of being programmed how to feel by the media, life stops feeling like it's all hell.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      This is a big one. In a less dramatic way, it's easier to enjoy video games when you don't read the reddit threads whinging about them. It's easy to feel like a game is unplayable garbage when you read a list of every single complaint people have, while playing and experiencing it yourself, you just don't notice this stuff and get to simply enjoy the content.
  - kansface 4y ago
    It does, actually. It’s the difference between struggling and being preoccupied with struggle. Anxiety doesn’t make fuel cheaper, end war, or racism; anxiety is not a virtue.
- 4y ago
zug_zug 4y ago
Those are a bunch of statements that angry people with agree with, but you haven't presented any evidence for your claims, and I think they're mostly backward. We're in the longest period of peace in thousands of years. Check out this cool graphic that puts in perspective: http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ http://www.fallen.io/ww2/ People are mad about politics, but I don't think it's any worse than the cold-war, kennedy assassination, mcarthyism, being drafted to Nam. Reagan was a movie-star who became president. Innovation is the fastest its ever been. It's hard to say how corruption is changing, and whether accountability is greater or lesser now. People are upset about the environment now, but consider stuff from the last 100 years (leaded gasoline, the banned-pesticides, radioactive toothpaste, etc etc).
- jmcgough 4y ago
  There's way less trust in our society than they have been in many years. This is something that's been studied with evidence to back it up. You can see this in the week it took to elect a speaker of the house, something that hasn't happened (at that scale) since the 19th century. Globally, nations that become more economically developed shift towards individualism and selfishness.
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    This is actually what you’d expect from practically any system where wealth and power centralize as a function of time. The pressure will grow until it eventually might pop.
  - HEmanZ 4y ago
    This trust thing is true, but it doesn’t mean that institutions are lest trustworthy. It seems more that we have the tools (institutional, cultural, technological) to actually understand many systems better and see how untrustworthy they are. Basically, our vision is better, the situation isn’t worse. Individualism is something I do half agree with. I’m not sure it’s a time-based thing tho, and I’m agnostic to whether it is good or bad. Collectivism in the past could be incredibly stifling and coercive. Hyper individualism can be alienating. There is some middle ground and I actually believe we are in the process of moving towards it. Because if you talk to anyone, they KNOW there is a problem with how individualistic consumerism causes us problems, and they KNOW alienation is a problem. We are learning to balance our new-ish freedoms, prosperity, and individual flourishing with our deep need for community and solidarity. It will take time, but we will figure it out.
HEmanZ 4y ago
I want to call out that at least in the US, politicians actually appear way less corrupt than they used to be. Any reading of specific political histories, e.g Robert Caro, you can quickly get a feel for just how insanely corrupt politicians have been throughout history. If you compare them to today, it’s actually some relief. They are still corrupt today but really it’s child’s play compared to most of US history and pretty much all of world history. I think a big problem is that people don’t read or watch real history, they are only familiar with abstract, high-level, or hyper-biased history. In basically every aspect imaginable, excepting maybe some things resembling spirituality (which do matter but are much trickier to pin down and understand) the world is so so much better than it has ever been, petty much everywhere
- djur 4y ago
  If anything, the problem with modern-day politics is that politicians are too committed to their ideological beliefs and are not corrupt enough to be bribed into cooperation.
ako 4y ago
This is worth reading: https://wordsrated.com/summary-factfulness-ten-reasons-were-wrong-about-the-world-and-why-things-are-better-than-you-think-by-hans-rosling-ola-rosling-anna-rosling-ronnlund/ https://wordsrated.com/summary-factfulness-ten-reasons-were-...
nabakin 4y ago
> Innovation is coming to a standstill Machine learning is getting significantly more powerful by the month, nuclear fusion technology has been advancing at a much faster pace recently (not even counting the NIF's breakthrough), though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive, the cost and efficiency of green technology just keeps improving, the cost and efficiency of going into space has improved dramatically, pills which can cure obesity, cancer wins, longer lifespans than ever before, I could go on. I imagine one of the reasons you think innovation is stagnating is because the industry which has innovated at an incredible rate for the past 50 years, where you spend most of your life and time, is finally maturing. This was always going to happen. It was just a matter of time.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Even the stuff that has had ages to mature still seems to be rocketing forward. The M1 Macbook upended the whole market, one day we suddenly had a thin laptop with no fan that outperformed chunky brick laptops and did it with outstanding battery life. The rest of the market is catching up now but I don't think we should ignore how remarkably fast this all changed.
- dorkwood 4y ago
  > though shrouded in scams and misrepresentation the technology behind cryptocurrency is extremely impressive Can someone explain in layman’s terms what the impressive parts are? The mania surrounding NFTs left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d like to keep an open mind about the technology.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Likewise. Here's the most convincing video I've seen trying to explain that, but even this explanation doesn't feel great: https://youtu.be/qBAOsB6ETrY https://youtu.be/qBAOsB6ETrY It's from the Computerphile channel, so I trust it more than random YouTube.
lucb1e 4y ago
Others already said this is wrong on basically every point, but I haven't seen this one commented yet: > Is it any wonder kids are checking out of life en masse? It's the smallest, easiest, most concrete thing. Dictionary, en masse, "as a whole". Sure, hyperbole, so let's say... how about a bit more than half, 51%? But you're talking about suicide (presumably), we all know that isn't 50% of the population, but I don't know the figure. "En masse" really, even as a hyperbole, sounds to me like it ought to be at least a few percent. Wikipedia -> search 'suicide rate' -> redirects to article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... The worst country in the world has a suicide rate below 0.1%. Kids I couldn't quickly find a global rate for but in the USA (https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html) it's at 0.002%. "En masse" is not even close to reality. Every individual instance is horrendous for those involved, that's probably why you hear about it and why it seems so bad, but keep things in perspective when considering what the world as a whole is like.
- Izkata 4y ago
  That phrase doesn't necessarily mean suicide. It generally means "giving up" - for example, burying themselves in things like video games or social media instead of school or friends.
mancerayder 4y ago
I felt like that when I was 21 as well! I had very strong political beliefs as a reaction to these, with an angry desire for change. That's entirely common at that age. The nihilism seems more pronounced in the 20somethings of today, but when I was that age music also reflected that same nihilism, so who knows if it's worse now experientially.

The_Colonel 4y ago

> The fact is the world always seems better when you are younger, not because the world necessarily better, but because it's just more pleasant to be young. I would also mention that when you're young, you're readily learning and accepting new ideas, and that capability/willingness shrinks with age (at least on average). As a result, the world seems increasingly a foreign place for you as you age - you understand less - partially on the cognitive level, partially on the value judgment level. It's the world of your youth which seems like your home, where your values align with the trend, where you understand what's happening.

mxkopy 4y ago

I'm 22 and I'm worried about high interest rates and how the cost of food has doubled. Getting a house is out of the question right now because I want a stable job rather than starting a business. Mind you I have more prospects than most; I'm at a top XX school's CS program. In high school I worked at a car wash and I met people who'd worked there for twenty odd years. Well not 'there' as they usually bounced from place to place, but at other car washes, fast food, what have you. These people have no clue about starting businesses, arbitrage trading, SaaS whatever. So if I'm thinking to myself that the future is kind of shaky, I might have to wait for a new house, then hundreds of people are thinking the future is kind of shaky, I might have to skip dinner for a couple days.

jfalcon 4y ago
I think you are stunting your growth and forgetting to live life. The world works on a Benjamin Button sort of deal where the best you will ever be physically is when you are the most financially destitute and vice versa. Thus your risk adverseness is also reversed where the time to be risky with wealth and job and life in general is your youth and the least when your in retirement age. The best thing you should worry about right now is figuring out a budget that allows for constant savings into bellwether stocks or savings bonds THAT YOU DON'T DESTROY ON A WHIM to tap the power of COMPOUND INTEREST. Heed Warren Buffett's advice and get into the habit of saving money early along with the discipline of not touching it for any reason until you have sufficient resources to readjust the performance of whatever it was invested into. If you don't have money working for you by collecting interest or grown by investment whether by wall street or a main street business, it will not keep up with inflation - that was learned by many in the 1980's when deregulation began eroding the financial industry. But the real point is that you should be young and take risks now as when you are older, you won't have the time or possibly the freedom to do it without other factors being in play (job,family,responsibilities for young and old, etc..)
- mxkopy 4y ago
  > But the real point is that you should be young and take risks now as when you are older, you won't have the time or possibly the freedom to do it without other factors being in play (job,family,responsibilities for young and old, etc..) I hear this all the time but I question how universal this strategy is. There's this statistic about the average age of the entrepreneur (42) and how successful businesses are started by the older side of that curve. Personally, I know I can't start a business anytime in my 'youth' because I'm still learning to manage my ADHD and lifestyle, let alone actual real world shit. My plan is to start stacking as many practical skills as early as I can so when the time comes, I can compete with industry and put my weight behind something that's not just lucky. Until I have the self confidence required to do that sort of thing, the idea of business responsibilities just makes me nervous.

Izkata 4y ago

> This is just happens when you get old. When you were younger you probably noticed that all the older people you knew pined for some earlier time (say the 1970s or 1950s). Not really. What I picked up from them is the 90s were some sort of high period.

jfalcon 4y ago
I would say that was due to mostly shock and the brainwashing our parents gotten which delayed the wokeness as the hippies were quietly finding out about Cocaine and becoming Capitalists. Disco never died, it was just the precursor to EDM. Attitudes about people didn't change, they were just relabeled from Geek to Nerd and back to Geek once they became millionaires and "cool". Politics are still the same however - if not worse due to the herd mechanisms and failed idealism. I'm one year shy of my big 50 now and have been online most all of my life in one form or another so I feel I'm pretty hip to both sides of the culture/counterculture that connectedness brought forward. I've learned and confirmed that usually when it comes to personal/family wealth that it's better to have a republican in office (as long as you have financial understanding on what you can control in your life) but that comes at the expense of perhaps personal safety or religious separation as usually what happens is that democrats will not only add more social programs but will also put more people in prisons due to the concept of being "tough" on crime. It's too soon to say whether or not social/mental health programs will change the trend but one could say that the biggest changes come from social adoption towards better change. I hold up the 1950's where laws were passed to both codify and tear down major social issues and whet peoples attitudes for changing the world, after many of them went farther than any generation previous to them ever traveled - remember that most people rarely traveled more than 100 miles from the place they were born for any great length of time over the 175 years prior to this period. You hopefully just saw some with BLM, Safe Places, Gender/Sexual Equality and also some retractions like Abortion Legalization (remember, the SCOTUS is just an equalizer - not a law maker which there was never formal legalization - just the prevention of non-legalization being enacted). Billy Joel has a song called "We Didn't Start The Fire" for which is his least favorite song that lists off the highs and lows of the period. The only problem is that it stops at roughly 1990. It would take a whole other song to quantify what has happened since for which one could say that we still may have highs and lows but overall it's still getting better than before our great grandparents had to exist within.