1) Maybe not "the" world as currently defined, but certainly _your_ world, ie your entire city or country, in a time in which it was hard to escape from or imag

1) Maybe not "the" world as currently defined, but certainly _your_ world, ie your entire city or country, in a time in which it was hard to escape from or imagine much outside of that. So subjectively I don't see how I (or even my family or community) am/are much worse off than a Pompeiian. 1b) I can tell you are not very well aware of previous environmental catastrophes. There's historical evidence they've happened before, including in the Roman empire. 2) Nuclear weapons were first used in 1945. The big drop in mental health happened around 2012. Uncorrelated. 3) I'm not in denial because I haven't denied any _objective_ reality. The problems are real and they deserve equally real action, just as previous historical problems did. But our subjective _feelings_ about them are out of proportion. You just spend too much time reading about these problems -- and not enough time actually doing anything about them. That's why you're so depressed, yet nothing gets better. I'm not in denial, I'm not saying things don't need to get better. But wallowing and ruminating does not help anything get better, it's just pointless self-harm that's temporarily been normalized because we're in a weird cultural moment where big tech has rapidly able to colonize our culture for the sake of clicks and eyeballs. 4) I mean, considering how debilitating the "the world is ending so nothing matters" philosophy is, even if it's correct, absent total extinction, it will be selected out pretty quickly as most of the subscribers to the philosophy avoid reproducing. Or to put it another way, raising kids is inherently an act of radical hope, making that hope an inherently transmissible characteristic. 5) I really don't see how any of us are supposed to be able to successfully take action to contribute in any way large or small to fix the world or prevent the problems you worry about, if we're too busy being depressed about being hopeless about it.