chris1989 wrote:
I sometimes seem to think is everything really this bad as the news and media makes it out to be ?
to answer this q first: somehow we're taking the info via news/media as more significant info about how life is going than the mundane info we get on the streets:
How Jan's toddler is doing. The shared memories of the Song Festival on tv. Your country's tradition of pantomime. How everybody knows the colour of cola. How you're supposed to frequent a dentist. What items are breakfast items. That there are people who own horses and in what kind of house they probably live. Your country's tradition of hiking through farmer's fields. The existence of velcro.
This is the shared life you live, in your country, in your town, in your era of history. This is the state of things. Things are OK.
Had you lived 500 years ago you'd get your info from travellers and you'd learn about crazy kings and tirant churches and plague ridden foreign countries and the world would seem as absurd and doomed as our world seems to us now.
The only thing is back then you'd be forced to return your focus to your daily job otherwise no food, no roof, no life. With that focus you'd return your gaze to the people around you, the washing ladies, the pork person, the goat chaser, the know-it-all two doors down, etc. and there'd be more frequent occasions where you were reminded about the drama here and now and the local social cohesion.
To answer your overal q: No, things are not supposed to get better after a world crisis. Why did you assume this? Because we have the potential for so much success? We do. But in reality it's never forfilled and we should be thankful if we get 60% results of what was possible.
Perhaps your expectation was coloured by the good things we now identify (through crooked glasses!) after WWII such as NATO and the results of Marshall plan but they were a fluke. Usually things do not get better. Turmoil at geopolitical scale is the norm. We're not going to win this one. But that's OK, that too is the way it's always been.
There's a great documentary about the year 536, when multiple world empires collapsed after one global event. So much was lost. After that things didn't get better. Things got different. "536 AD: The Worst Year In History? | Catastrophe | Full Series | Chronicle" on youtube