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Why would young people with dismal economic perspectives and a poisoned political system possibly be miserable? That doesn't take too much to understand.

• ggrantrowberry 9mo ago
  They’re miserable because they think this way. They think this way because they spend time with others spreading cynicism. Dismal economic perspectives and a poisoned political system is a point of view and a talking point and in reality not true for most people. If you know even a little bit about history you likely won’t have this perspective. Get off social media and look around at real life and you’ll see all sorts of great things!
  • pepperball 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • ggrantrowberry 9mo ago
      [flagged]
  • andrepd 9mo ago
    I don't use algorithmic social media and I'm looking at dozens of history books in my shelf as I type this. I can do without the patronising tone, thanks very much.
    • kjkjadksj 9mo ago
      Then you’d at least be aware of the standard of living even the poorest among us enjoy compared to someone in say manchuria or eastern europe in 1941. The irony of the grandchildren and great grand children of actual holocaust survivors claiming the world today is simply too screwed up to bring kids into is astounding.
      • foldr 9mo ago
        Realistically, we know that no-one’s level of happiness here in the present is determined by standards of living in Manchuria in 1941. You can argue the point intellectually that we are all very well off compared to most humans who have ever lived. Nonetheless, psychologically speaking, people’s satisfaction in life is determined by more local comparisons. (If new historical research showed that Manchurians in the 1940s were actually having a whale of a time, would that make you correspondingly miserable? Of course not!)
      • andrepd 9mo ago
        > claiming the world today is simply too screwed up to bring kids into is astounding. But that's not what I'm saying, so there's that. Anyway, everybody (barring the global ultra-poor) is obviously aware that their standard of living is much higher than that of most of history. This is not novel, not hard to realise, and certainly not a discussion-terminating point. In the Western world every single generation since WWII has roughly speaking lived better than their parents. For people currently in their 20s, this is on track not to be the case. The "democratic normalcy" is under attack. Wealth inequality was reaching literal Gilded Age levels... and has now barreled past that with no sign of stopping. And yes, algorithmic social media running anger-maximisation machines on a planetary scale. Shall I go on? The point being that "medieval peasants didn't have microwaves" is immaterial to the discussion.
• goatlover 9mo ago
  Also climate change, which the world seems unwilling to take necessary action to mitigate. Are climatologists feeling good about the future? Young people protested Gaza, climate change, racism, massive wealth disparity and they just don't see the results. Governments, economic systems and societies just keep the status quo.
  • brabel 9mo ago
    Young people are always the ones protesting against whatever they consider the currently big injustices. They rarely achieve something, but I think it’s great that they do anyway. It shapes their priorities and experiences. In just 20 years, they will be the ones governing and by that time they will have the chance to see whether they were right about whatever they wanted. Most likely they will learn that what looked like the end of the world back then turned out to be just another overblown issue which eventually sorted itself out. And they will go on to mostly perpetuate the status quo with just a few changes that happen gradually, like the acceptance of LGBT and elimination of most institutional racism in my lifetime. When I was young we all thought that in the future , there would be too many people on the planet and not enough food for everyone. Job prospects were low due to tremendous competition as baby boomers made sure there had never been so many young people before. Some people believed pollution would get so bad that water would become as valuable as gold. This sounds ridiculous now but was dead serious back then.
    • goatlover 9mo ago
      This assumes the world is still trending in a positive direction. I'm not convinced of that anymore. The scientific consensus is climate change will get worse and make things hard on human civilization. Doesn't need to be the worst case scenario. Looking at geopolitics, we see a rise in authoritarianism and a breakdown in the western liberal order since WW2. Also a rise in the popularity of the far right, and some of the gains for LGBT and against institutional racism are being reversed. Wealth disparity is also increasing, so is polarization. We can't know whether there is a global conflict around the corner. It happened twice before. There were many positive people in the roaring 20s. As for environment degradation in general, just because prior predictions were wrong doesn't mean the biosphere isn't still headed in the wrong direction for sustainability. Maybe we have the right governance and economics to adapt in time, but that's not a guarantee. Being positive about everything seems like a really privileged position. It also maintains the status quo. If you're Ukrainian, how positive would you feel about your country's future? How positive is Europe about NATO and it's future with the US right about now. How are Canadians feeling about their neighbor to the South? Are they confident future US elections will self-correct? Maybe over the long term it all works itself out and human progress continues to the stars or whatever. Or maybe we're going to be part of a Great Filter intelligent species face because of short sightedness and powerful technologies they unleash. Or maybe we'll just muddle along with some gains and then losses. Civilizations rise and fall, we really don't know how positive the future will be.