Do we live in a better world now than in days gone by ?

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The thing is because I hear about the wars going on in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as other things going on in the world but some generations tell younger generations that what have they got to be so anxious about ? And that they live in a better world than when other generations were young, like during world war 2 or during the cold war when they were always reminders on TV of an imminent nuclear attack in the 1950s to the 1980s. But it really is hard to think we live in a better, happy, prosperous and peaceful world when we still have wars going on or still for years have strained relationships with other countries we always viewed as our "enemies" like Russia, North Korea and Iran.

I don't know why I still choose to go on UK channels like talktv or GB news when it makes it seem like the UK and the rest of the world is in deep s**t. Always stories of illegal/legal migrants, cost of living, inflation, war, riots, mass unemployment, etc. No good news alongside the bad. I thought that after the pandemic, that things would be better again. I don't know why I choose to watch this stuff when it just fuels people's anxiety but the thing is I don't watch everything that's on these channels as I know it might worry me but I only watch those just for some reason I like to see people argue about certain subjects even things that don't seem news worthy.

My worst days are behind me. People are more tolerant of people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, people of colour and Germans. A lot of that tolerance wasn't around 30 years ago.

Yea, I watch Talk tv a lot although it's a bit right wing for my liking. I like Petrie Hosken though who is a bit more moderate.

If we could cut immigration and build more affordable housing I don't think the country would be in too bad a position.

Of the 5 decades I've existed on this planet, the most recent one has been the absolute worst. Back in the 80s when I was a kid there was the Cold War and AIDS, but we didn't have lockdowns or mass hysteria. We only had fire drills at school, and not terrorist or bomb or school shooting drills. And if you got a sniffle it wasn't that big of a deal. You stayed home and rested, you ate soup and took Tylenol, you got better. I didn't have any relatives who got sick or died of avian flu or swine flu or Covid 19, or was killed in a war. Parents got their kids vaccinated, and listened to and trusted their doctors. We also had some of the best movies and music and TV shows, in my opinion.

Now we're lucky to be living in a country that hasn't been ravaged by war (yet), the climate crisis has destroyed everything and made everyone insane, hate crimes and xenophobia are through the roof, the food is no longer edible, the water isn't drinkable, the threat of terrorism is everywhere, kids are now killing themselves because of bullying, politicians are evil filthy corrupt douchebags, there's a new disease to be afraid of every day, swine flu, avian flu, covid, mpox, the plague, you get a sniffle you better have written your will, parents would rather believe some garbage they read on Facebook about vaccinating their kids instead of a real doctor, the movies are all stupid and watchable, TV is dead and music can't be called music anymore. And people are reportedly less intelligent now than they were in the late 20th century.

I don't care what the Suzy Sunshines say about how things were much worse a few hundred years ago, or even a hundred years ago. I didn't start living yet, so it doesn't concern me. It's what's happening NOW that does.

Back in the mid 1990s and early 2000s I had horrible doomsday anxiety. And it looks like my anxiety is justified. The world officially started turning to crap because of 9/11.

No, it's only getting worse.

No, I don't think so. Recently I've started to notice, and maybe this is just my area in the U.S so take this with a grain of salt, that though the expiration dates are still well into the future, many things seem to be spoiling much faster. Eerily so. There is also a hush-hush issue with the water, in which it is technically safe for consumption but... Not really. And it's not all that hush-hush, it's just not in the news. Of course there are plenty of places in America where the water is foul, but there are likely many more we don't know about...

I'm concerned about the state of things. But I guess, at least there aren't soldiers roaming the streets gunning people down, and there aren't any breadlines, so it could be worse.

No.

All days / generations are equally difficult with their own sets of struggles and harsh conditions.
We idealize the past because we weren't there to experience the hardship for ourselves.

I think all societies have it bad when the demands exceed their capacity.

In general there is more people, fewer wars, fewer deaths by war, fewer famine, etc, so things are objectively better. The news focus on problems and upsetting content because they get more views. Even then there are big gaps, like reporting extensively on gaza but not wars in Africa.

If you watch the news, you feel like the world is far worse than it actually is. They will find enough problems that you could spend all day watching upsetting content. This gets easier every day as the global population continues to rise. If population goes up 10% and the percentage suffering goes down 2%, there will still be more total people suffering than before despite the clear social progress. Now you can spend even more time being upset than before.

The solution is to not watch the news. It's run like entertainment nowadays, except it specializes in upsetting you instead of making you happy. You can still seek out specific information when you need it like pandemics or deciding which candidate to vote for in an election. Political activists should be more informed than this, but can benefit from focusing on their domain instead of all daily news. If you aren't going to be an activist, "being informed" using daily news is mainly distracting yourself from the good you could actually have done in the world. Try to volunteer or learn a useful skill instead. When you spend your time seeing people helping each other, you might have a better opinion of the world around you.

What a interesting question.. I would say.. yes and no.

Yes: Technology and modern inventions and medicines have improved our everyday lives and increased our life's span. We also improved treating other people that's different from you with more respect. It's not perfect, but better than it was.

No: It's complicated. I think our social norms that were deemed either acceptable and not acceptable have been twisted in this day and age. In the "days gone by," people had their roles in society. Almost everyone understood them and the world just simply worked. (Despite the negative events of that time.) Now there's more confusion than ever before. All the data that's out there shows the drastic percentage changes in our dating culture, how we interact, and our daily life's in general.

I wonder how much longer it will be before mpox becomes a global pandemic and there will be lockdowns again. I've been stocking up on toilet paper for the past few months and have some emergency food and water, but seriously what's the point?

I wonder if it's inevitable that I'll get covid no matter what I do to prevent it? I read about people who said their anxiety got really bad for some reason after they had covid. Just what I'd need, along with all the other post-viral horrors. I guess I could just never go outside again, but even canned food and bottled water have expiry dates.

Also just the thought of eating nothing but canned and instant food is gross.

As for the original question, we live in a much better world than any other era in human history. We have modern medicine, which has been constantly improving. Life expectancy is through the roof, child mortality is at its lowest. We have indoor plumbing and heating, we have well-built comfortable homes, we can travel anywhere... and so on.

But even if you're only looking at recent decades and only at the US, in the late 60s there were riots and assassinations. The National Guard murdered college students for protesting. There was a draft and a war. Politically the country was much more conservative. The Vietnam protesters that we now hear about so much were the minority. In the 70s there was a recession and an oil crisis. The President was Nixon. Then we had Reagan, who created most of the problems we are dealing with now, and George W. Bush who started two wars that killed hundreds of thousands and the Patriot Act came into being under him.

What we have now that is really terrible are Trump and his supporters, and climate change, which will wreak havoc, but overall things are still better than in the past.