No. Because if you look at numbers, compared with various benchmarks in the past, many things have gotten better or worse.
Maybe they would have been scared of the society in the past.
Depending on where you stand in a socio economic racial stance, yes they would have a right to be afraid of the society at almost any time before now and even now. Amazingly a lot of people in this situation would not go compare things generally like this but explicitly tell you where things are problematic. Everything from micro aggression to abuse of power in great detail.
And then you have the people who may have always been privileged but occasionally something bad happens to them. So they will incur a lasting trauma to something happening to them and decide nothing good ever happens to them and would discount anything good.
And then you have the do good doomer gloomer. They will surf the internet for material to strengthen their resolution and decide every video where there’s questionable material hasn’t been staged and is the absolute truth. They’ve decided the world is ending. They claim what they are doing is for the better. ‘Open your eyes sheeple’ . But they do absolutely nothing but post general bait like the OP did just to get a reaction.
But then you have the 15yr old gamers who have all the technology and privilege at their hands and have no gauge to measure suffering. So they decide the moment someone merely doesn’t clap for something they just posted and compare it to being oppressed/holocaust/dystopian nightmare. And of course you can’t possibly know the exact detail they are talking about they would never give it up. You can’t possibly understand their ‘suffering’.
I’m too broke to worry about much more then working enough to feed myself and afford my shitty apartment for another month.
So what your saying is the system is working as intended.
Oh well, at least frogurt is still relatively cheap.
The frogurt is capitalist
That’s bad.
It also comes in plant-based varieties!
That’s worse.
The plants contain potassium benzoate!
its because there are no communities anymore. capitalism posioned the nuclear family and communities.
Literally gives me anxiety to the point I need meds
With you.
Nice that meds exist though.
I’ve read history. I know what actual dystopian nightmares look like. We’re not in one.
“Things can always get worse” is a pretty shit justification to say things aren’t bad now.
No-one is saying that all is fine. Yes, there are loads of big issues right now, but we’re still living better and safer than 99% of all the humans that have ever lived. We are not living Ina dystopian world.
- “We are not living in a dystopian nightmare”
- ”The fact that things can always get worse justifies a lack of effort to make things better”
- ”All is fine”
These are three different statements. Not the same thinfs.
Can we fucking stop with the sloppy quoting? Nobody in this thread is responding to what anybody else is actually saying.
Things are NOT bad now.
The homeless veterans in my city park disagree.
Yeah, it was much better before when vets died from gangrene swallowing their bodies. No vets - no problems!
Even a poor person in any EU country lives much better than any king a mere 200 years ago. Healthcare, painkillers, food safety, clean water, indoor plumbing, freedom of religion and expression, and in the palm of your hand all the knowledge, pr0n and memes you heart desires. Probably a few items less on that list in freedom land, but still not that bad.
They eat cleaner food and have more amenities than a King, but they certainly don’t live better. The point of the article is that the rising tide is floating a few boats wayyyy higher than the rest, and the overall growth does not justify the fact that people still die of hunger, get evicted while working multiple jobs, fall ill and are saddled by medical dept for life (US only), and shit like that.
I don’t think anyone dies of hunger in the developed world, even the US. No evictions in many EU countries either, even if you don’t have a job at all you get unemployment that is high enough for a reasonable apartment.
I can only speak about the US, but sadly, the unhoused die of hunger, preventable disease, and exposure all the time here. And unemployment does not cover a 1 bedroom apartment in major cities, nor does it qualify you for the outrageous requirements of most leases. You may be right about the status of the poor in the EU though.
Someone in Gaza would disagree right now.
Yeah, and Jews in WWII would disagree with you.
It’s always easy to find a very specific group of people that are having a horrible time, that doesn’t mean that on average, humans live better and safer than in the entire history of humanity. Sure, the last 10 years saw a bit of a down turn, but thing are still way better than, say, 40 years ago.
I guess it’s hard to remember how really hard life could be
Idk man it’s really not a competition. AI powered automated genocide and industrialized genocide are both horrible in their own way and to me absolutely dystopian nightmares. Same way how China uses AI to track every aspect of their citizens lives + also genocide.
The Uyghurs are absolutely living in a dystopian nightmare. China uses technology to track their citizens. You can’t blame it on AI, although AI has improved their technology. Their tracking predates AI. Also our current “AI” is just self-improving algorithms, not true AI.
That’s just authoritarian abuse. That’s the same kind of horror humans have been facing throughout history.
To me, a “nightmare” is artificial life extension for the purpose of torturing people, and non-invasive mind control and neural reprogramming from a distance.
Don’t get me wrong we’re going there. We’re not going to be able to turn back from that course. The nightmare stage is when the ability to off oneself is gone, because the machines or other people own your body at a cellular level, and it can detect and paralyze you when you’re acting against their interests.
On average, I think humanity’s experience will rise. For the majority things will get better.
But for some unlucky ones (and unfortunately, because it will soon be as easy for a kid to do as pulling the wings off a fly, eventually there will be countless trillions of those people), all the usual stops and limits to suffering will ne raised only to usher in a continual flow of pain beyond anything they can imagine, for orders of magnitude beyond their normal lifespan.
But even if that only happens to one person, that is an indescribable nightmare.
My sincere hope is that in the long run, during the war for control of the galaxy, the resources necessary to maintain these eternal torture cloud instances will be reallocated to the war effort.
That’s the only eventual escape I see for those people, now that I know the depth of sadism that exists in the world.
I think we’re headed for a nightmare, but we’re not there yet.
Their situation could easily be the setting of a dystopian novel written 30 years ago. Your nightmare future is essentially the Matrix.
By the way, people have been kept alive and prevented from killing themselves to allow further torture for a long time. It’s why there’s doctors at Guantanamo Bay. And suicide watch in prison.
Can you explain why 40 years ago was worse, as a whole?
I look at the 80’s and I see affordable housing, the fall of the Berlin wall, the birth of the internet, and a ton of economic upturn for the US (including way higher wages if you adjust for inflation.)
This decade is popularly referred to as the “decade of decadence.”
The fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of the 1980s. It was such an amazing and joyous event specifically because of the level of mastery generated by the previous arrangement of Berlin being split in half and people in East Berlin needing a wall and razor and armed guards to block them from moving out of the area.
40 years ago people were literally living in 1984
Sure, the last 10 years saw a bit of a down turn, but thing are still way better than, say, 40 years ago.
What’s funny is if you don’t include the improvements in China which skew the average then the rest of the world has gotten noticeably worse than it was forty years ago.
History does not only repeat, and simply looking at the past can make you blind to the novel ways society has transformed. For example, oppression has been a constant throughout history, but it never has been as faceless as it is today. Lords and kings have been replaced by corporations and agencies operating across borders, in ways and with purposes that I don’t think anyone who’s not actually involved with can claim they fully understand.
You really think oppression is more faceless now than before the existence of cameras? What was the odds that a medieval peasant knew what the King looked like? Or that a slave in Egypt knew the face of the Pharaoh?
Maybe they could never see the actual pharaoh, but what I’m saying is that “The Pharaoh” was itself the “face” of power, and also where power and influence actually resided. Now we have surveillance and propaganda perpetuated by either known but opaque actors (e.g. governmental agencies, corporations) or simply unknown ones. You can believe or not in an international “elite” conspiracy, but by that I also mean random teen hacker groups, data brokers, gov agencies of nations other than the one you live in, etc.
And soon no human will be able to understand the main strategy of the company.
Sure the AI can break it down for the humans, but it’s not always going to be easily comprehensible in human terms.
This is the most Lemmy ass shit I’ve seen all day.
UhOh did mum forget to buy Doritos when she went to the shop and you’re comparing your life to the holocaust …again?
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Bro you need to touch grass like a lot haha
Ppl in the comments proving OP right
Most of yall are to cought up in your own delusional world of bliss to acknowledge what’s actually going on
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What’s the alternatives? Depression & Suicide? Rise up in revolution out of general malaise? Or just post memes and hope something happens to change the status quo? Covid showed us that another world was at least possible, but it also brought on a lot of the ridiculous greed we’re seeing now too.
Yes, this is system absolute madness only equaled by the madness of the mass tolerance of it.
And NOT the fun weekend bender kind of madness I haven’t had time for in years due to capitalist exploitation.
Yeah. Your free time is very limited by the fact you live under capitalism and not magic fairy dust.
I mean, compared to all the other economic systems, capitalism provides more leisure time. But compared to magical fantasy circumstances, capitalism’s a drag.
Communism limits free time, too. You still have to work under that system. And pay bills. You have to pay for childcare, dental work, travel, food, housing, and just about everything else. Except medicine. But you have to wait for that, and have no choice in who you see.
Depending entirely on the form of communism. Right now the worlds richest 400 have a combined wealth amounting near 7 trillion. In a communist society world wide we could distribute that wealth globally to install water infrastructure, food infrastructure, vaccinate everyone and still have change in the bank to support other large projects.
And this is speaking purely finance. Here in the UK we have more than enough empty home to house all of our homeless.
The amount we work to the resources produced are wildly high, we could work a lot less if not for the bosses ever demanding more.
Well, I am referring to actual communism, not the fantasy kind.
Wealth distribution is not equal under communism. Most is owned by the state, the privileged class still exists. The underprivileged class also exists.
Communism tends to be inefficient and less productive than capitalism, so a lot less is produced. This is demonstrated time and again. People just don’t have a personal motivation to increases production for the state. Distribution is also inefficient. Historically it leads to hunger because central planning is less effective than a decentralized system where individuals are able to make decisions.
So while I agree that the current level of wealth inequality is not good, communism is certainly not the solution. All it does is change where the lines of inequality are drawn. It usually kills a few million people for no good reason, too.
Given that we now have a track record of communism, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would choose it.
well i say if we can go from feudalism to mercantilism to capitalism then why not capitalism to socialism to communism? its again distributing power from the top to the lower status classes, we saw similar in feudalism to mercantilism.
Wealth distribution is not equal under communism. Most is owned by the state, the privileged class still exists. The underprivileged class also exists.
- wealth distribution should be equal under communism, wealth not being equal means we must do better. we don’t look at corrupt corporations and think “to bad its fucked best not make any more”
- under socialism most would be owned and redistributed by the state. communism is worker lead and not state lead at least in my school of socialism.
- under socialism the unprivileged class gets lifted through the transitional period. class distinctions are to be removed through the transitional period leading to a classless communist society.
Communism tends to be inefficient and less productive than capitalism, so a lot less is produced. This is demonstrated time and again. People just don’t have a personal motivation to increases production for the state. Distribution is also inefficient. Historically it leads to hunger because central planning is less effective than a decentralized system where individuals are able to make decisions.
- i cant argue communism and its efficiency as i have yet to see it but i am sure socialism can be made to be more efficient. being from the UK and having the carcass of what was once our publicly owned NHS i know that after WW2 under a Labour government we saw the NHS rise from nothing within 3 years, Labour at the time were socialist. the NHS was revolutionary at the time. we also mass built affordable housing. these are all things we struggle to achieve now.
So while I agree that the current level of wealth inequality is not good, communism is certainly not the solution. All it does is change where the lines of inequality are drawn. It usually kills a few million people for no good reason, too.
so your a reformist?
Are you familiar with twentieth century Chinese or Soviet history? If you are impressed by communism, you really should read up on what happened in nations that implemented it, or attempted to implement it, in the last hundred years.
Communism doesn’t redistribute power to the lower classes. It redistributes power to the Communist Party members - usually an inner circle. The people who are running the massive government that is required to operate a nation with all the central planning that communism requires. The new privileged class becomes the top technocrats and their families.
It’s impossible for wealth distribution to be equal. Wealth is not just money, it is also assets. Say you strip all the assets away from people - let’s say housing - and redistribute it. OK - Now everyone has a house. But all houses are not created equal. Some houses are nicer than others. Some locations are nicer than others. Everyone will want to move into the nicest house in the nicest city, but obviously they can’t all fit. So what do you do? Someone has to work on the farm and grow wheat. How do you force people to work on a collective farm? What about people who don’t want to work? Do they get the same housing as the workers who contribute to society? Even if you house everyone, including providing free housing for those who won’t pay, what about the people who don’t WANT to live in a house? Do you force them to live in a detention center? What about their kids? They keep having more kids… Do you forcibly sterilize them, or do you put their kids into an orphanage, hoping that the state can do a better job raising workers than their lazy parents? And then, what about the homeless? The people who actually prefer living outside? Obviously if they refuse to live in their house, they have fewer assets than others. Now your society isn’t equal anymore, it’s just made some changes in who have wealth.
Yes, socialism can be made more efficient. The trick to it is my introducing a mix of capitalism so you have a mixed market economy. Like in China.
Am I a reformist? It depends on what you want to reform, and what kind of reform you’re talking about. I’d like to see more direct democracy, which I believe can be achieved in my home country through reforms. But in some other countries, it can only be achieved via revolution. For economic systems, a mix of capitalism and socialism seems to be the best thing we’ve found so far. No doubt a better economic system will be discovered someday. But it is not communism. Communism is too extreme. It’s not a good system, and it has failed everywhere it’s been tried.
Never heard of Europe, eh?
No. I’m familiar with history. It is normal.
It’s really not. At least no more than it has been in the past
The same people that quote that these are the least violent and most progressive times we live in will turn right around and say we’re in an ever increasing dystopian hellhole despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary.
They will continue to bemoan mainstream media and social media pushing propaganda on them they continue to link on THEIR better social media.
You’ll then be yelled at for Green washing and unironically saying that progressives are in the democratic party for a reason despite saying all politicians are the same from their useful idiot basements while pretending to be a Bernie Bro despite him endorsing Hilary, and Biden lol.
What would you have Bernie do after loosing his primary?
The point being that Hilary’s and Bernie’s platforms were near identical. They agreed and voted together on the same issues 94% of the time. More than any other candidate they had ever run with.
The progressive Democrats are not sure that different from mainstream Democrats not because they’re so far right like everyone loves to espouse but from a constant track record of Democrats regularly becoming more progressive.
Don’t believe bullshit internet memes and lies about centrist Democrats being far right. They’re not. They’re working in the framework of American culture and despite what everyone thinks is going to happen every time we get a forward thinking leader, the government is slow by design and quick changes are not reality for almost any government except dictatorships.
Having a benevolent dictatorship would be phenomenal. The form of government doesn’t matter as long as lives are being bettered. Representative Democracy tends to keep it from going full on off the rails in the span of a decade though.
Except now there’s nukes, end stage capitalism, and climate change… Sure up until like 100 years ago shit sucked hard for just about everyone, but at least there was no way they could literally end all life on earth
Even if we set out to do so we couldn’t end all life on earth (literally)
Lol, you high?
Yeah, there are tons of things to make better and improve on, but things could be a lot freaking worse. (For more people, anyway, for too many people it’s already terrible currently, e.g. Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Haiti … )
Yeah standard of living overall is factually better than at any other point in the last few hundred years.
Medicine alone has made getting to or living past your mid-30’s far less hard or filled with pain - even for those in poverty.
And hell I’d argue that if the original commenter really believes it’s a dystopian shit-show…it’s crystal clear how to make your own lot better.
People in the ukraine are like: man this is great, imagine living in the 30’s
Yeah standard of living overall is factually better than at any other point in the last few hundred years.
Really depends on who you are and where you live. I’m watching my Houston ISD getting torn apart before my eyes. Police were running around UH campus clubbing students and dragging them into squad cars just a few weeks ago. The derecho that blew through downtown knocked out 5-10% of the windows in various buildings and killed the power for a few days. Electricity costs have doubled in the last ten years, while summer heat is up a sold five degrees Fahrenheit on average.
Is my standard of living better than it was for someone living in the city a generation ago? Doesn’t look like it. But hey, we’ve got weird new AI and the stock market is very up. Is it better than someone living in Houston in 1824? Yeah… I guess? But so much of that seems to hinge on having electricity and running water. And the more pipes keep bursting and lines keep getting knocked down, the less reliable these services seem.
Medicine alone has made getting to or living past your mid-30’s far less hard
Average life expectancy has been over 60 years of age since at least the 19th century. A lot of that came entirely out of the advent of vaccinations.
Good think we’re not having trouble convincing people to get vaccinated in the modern era, I guess.
Not to forget, how we now “only” work 40h (for most people), but productivity went up and a lot of down times and social interaction in the past, were replaced by workload grind in a now stressful office environments.
we now “only” work 40h
That’s a deceptive estimate, as the number of employment hours worked across the household has jumped considerably higher. Two income families are the norm while children in low income households are routinely press-ganged into service - either as additional hires or as unpaid support for the primary worker (aiding parents as field workers while the field overseer turns a blind eye, for instance).
productivity went up and a lot of down times and social interaction in the past, were replaced by workload grind in a now stressful office environments.
Longer commutes, fewer public spaces and services, more haphazard schedules (more and more people working traditional “weekend” periods, particularly in retail, service, and transportation sectors), and more unreliable gig work. Absolutely.
The world looks like a horrible place, barely hanging on by a thread, until you step outside and see that society and the people in it are generally pretty chill.
Of course, that said, I don’t live in the states. Everything could be literally on fire there for all I know.
It’s a pleasant surprise every time I visit how chill the US is, you see so much news and fear mongering but it’s super friendly and nice everywhere I go.
That’s how it always happens, unfortunately. “Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
You either find a way to cope or live your life worrying about something ultimately out of your control. As long as I’m voting and spending my money thoughtfully then I believe I’m doing enough.
Good for you man. I hope you continue to participate without whining.
Why wouldn’t I be able to whine?
Food insecurity is something outside of most people’s control, last I checked, humans can only cope without food for about a week before death sets in.
Then I guess they will live their life worrying about something outside their control and ultimately die.
God it must be blissful to live without any kind of empathy towards the struggles others go through.
It must be so tiring pretending to care about every single issue of the world. You must be a real white savor. I hope all the struggling people can hang on long enough for you to come save them.
I have empathy for others while understanding that their situation is outside of my control. I do small things like vote and help where I can but beyond that there is no point in harming your mental wellbeing when you are not in a position to help.
is that what you think you’re doing? being empathetic? you are all making yourselves miserable and refusing to look at anything in a positive light. blame the system, blame the man, blame capitalism, fine - - what are you going to DO about it? fuck your empathy, do something or start living well
cuz news flash, posting memes like this does NOTHING for the people starving.
Bold of you to assume I just sit on lemmy all day posting memes. Actually join in a bunch of volunteer service events throughout the year, some through work, other times personally. I also encourage others the vote for candidates who are more likely to bring about positive changes for our society.
So, yes I am being empathetic, and that empathy does actually drive me to take the steps I can take to make other people’s lives better. But at the end of the day, all of this work can very quickly be for naught unless we simultaneously fix the overarching systems in place that led to the unnecessary problems people suffer.
You try to help people locally - that’s great! I didn’t initially get that you were saying “Perspective isn’t enough.” Action is definitely important. When is it enough, though? (There’s always more people to help.) Can it *ever *be enough, without the shift in perspective alongside it?
Yeah I do help locally, I’m lucky enough that I have the means and ability to help others. But that still doesn’t change the fact that people can’t just cope and hope their way out of food insecurity. Plain and simple, every single one of us needs food, our bodies and minds will go through great lengths driving us to find food, we literally cannot turn off the neural pathways that tell us we’re hungry and that we need to eat. You can’t “positive thinking” your way put of an empty stomach while your body breaks itself down for energy.
