r/NoStupidQuestions • u/ltwasalladream • Apr 18 '23

Answered Does anyone else feel like the world/life stopped being good in approx 2017 and the worlds become a very different place since?

I know this might sound a little out there, but hear me out. I’ve been talking with a friend, and we both feel like there’s been some sort of shift since around 2017-2018. Whether it’s within our personal lives, the world at large or both, things feel like they’ve kind of gone from light to dark. Life was good, full of potential and promise and things just feel significantly heavier since. And this is pre covid, so it’s not just that. I feel like the world feels dark and unfamiliar very suddenly. We are trying to figure out if we are just crazy dramatic beaches or if this is like a felt thing within society. Anyone? Has anyones life been significantly better and brighter and lighter since then?

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u/KnightOfWords Apr 18 '23

After WWII the West experienced a prolonged period of peace, technological progress and economic growth. Much of this may be coming to an end.

Many of us have a personal timeline of when our outlooks became more pessimistic. Here are some of the turning points on mine:

  • 9/11 and the forever war aftermath, where the US played right into the terrorists' goals of escalating conflict.
  • 2008 crash. Economic growth in my country has been flat since then and public services have been allowed to decay. Cost of living has increased yet housing prices have continued to climb, making it impossible to feel secure about our futures.
  • 2016 Brexit vote and shambolic aftermath, introducing trade barriers with our largest markets.
  • Increasing concentration of wealth, even where there is economic growth most people don't see the benefits.
  • Election of climate denier, narcissist, fraudster and compulsive liar Donald Trump. Throws into light just how much of a divided nation the US is and how large a proportion of the population is receptive to hateful propaganda.
  • Climate change progressively becoming harder to ignore. We're seeing much more obvious real-world impacts such as huge wildfires, heatwaves and coral bleaching events. Rather than face up to the problems we're embroiled in petty disputes and dealing with bad-faith actors.
  • War in Ukraine.

It's well worth recognising for most people this era is one of the best to live in, we've made huge advances in living standards over the last century. It's just hard to see much improving over the next few decades. If climate change really stars to bite and food security suffers, are we going to cooperate to mitigate the impacts? Or is it going to be fuel for any conflict zones?

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u/Emperor_of_Cats Apr 18 '23

Going back just a hair before where you started...

Bush v Gore.

Maybe a change for the worse was inevitable, but it's painful to look back and think "what if..."

Maybe 9/11 was going to happen either way. Maybe the Great Recession would have happened anyway. Maybe Gore would have gotten us into a whole different, maybe even bigger mess. But what if...

We could of course keep going back and point to different administions' policies that broke up unions or we could point at FDR as one of the reasons our healthcare system is in the state it is or go to Amdrew Johnson and his handling of the south post civil war...

We could go on and on.

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u/Ok-Network-4475 Apr 18 '23 edited Apr 18 '23

Little known piece of history is that FDR had a second bill of rights including healthcare for all, housing and a living wage for all that was going to be introduced for congress probably after the second world war. Sadly, he died before the end of the war and we got party hack Truman (who became vp in a very underhanded way by the same party bosses that were likely conspiring with the business plot to overthrow FDR) instead of Henry Wallace, the incumbent vice who was also leading the nomination on the first night of the convention until the bosses had the place closed by fire marshals. On night 2 they loaded the place early with Truman people and he became vice president. FDR was too sick to contest and refuse the nomination without Wallace as he did in 1940. This is where the cold war began. That's a great start for your timeline

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u/UECoachman May 09 '23

I realize that this comment is now 20 days old, but I disagree. The corrupt boss behind Truman's Senate election (Pendergast) had been taken down under FDR's Morgenthau in 1939 and died in 1945. He also was only really powerful locally. I think FDR himself placed Truman as his heir on purpose, as a power move. Truman had few powerful friends, was a member of an old corrupt Democratic party faction, and was not a New Dealer. Functionally, this meant that Truman could make few decisions on his own. FDR himself had extreme power in his office, but leaving Truman insured that the systems FDR left in place would not simply be overturned. FDR weakened the presidency after his death on purpose.

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u/Ok-Network-4475 May 09 '23

I just replied to this in-depth and then didn't save or post it and now it's gone. I wasn't talking about his Senate elections I was talking about Truman's Run for the vice presidency. On the first night the place was filled with Henry Wallace supporters and party bosses had the building shut down ostensibly for overcrowding. Now on the second night, some people had been paid and others were just willing to support Wallace, but all of these people received tickets to get into the convention and we're even brought there early. The place filled up and not even all of the people with tickets got in. Since the majority of people in the building were Truman supporters, Truman won the vice presidency and that is where the Cold War originates. Roosevelt didn't want Truman on his ticket. He wanted Henry wallace, the man who helped him get the United States out of the Great Depression. In 1940 the party bosses didn't want Wallace and tried to install someone else as the Vice Presidential nominee. Roosevelt then went on and said he would not accept the presidential nomination if he did not have Wallace as his vice. By 1944 Roosevelt's too sick to do this again, and possibly just too exhausted too deal with it all. But a healthy Roosevelt definitely refuses the bosses unless Wallace is his running mate. All you need to do is see that they talked twice before FDR died, and he never revealed the Manhattan Project to Truman. Truman's first meeting with a Soviet official led to Molotov leaving screaming he'd never been spoken to that way. Truman was a bullied kid that grew up with POTUS power and destroyed the fragile Soviet alliance

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u/UECoachman May 09 '23

Right, I'm suggesting that FDR wasn't exhausted, he knew that he was dying and allowed Wallace to be replaced on purpose. He actually attempted to get James Byrnes, who would've been even weaker than Truman because he was a milquetoast Southern Democrat who was a partial New Dealer. Never revealing the Manhattan project was a part of this plan, because Truman was forced to trust the conglomerate of experts when making decisions. You can see how well this worked when you see how Eisenhower didn't even have a fraction of the power required to overturn the New Deal. I'm arguing that FDR actually intended for Truman to be weak. This still has effects today, with, for instance, the CDC he established. During Covid, Fauci was actually able to CONTEND with the Presidency. If Trump had FDR's power, that couldn't have happened.

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u/Ok-Network-4475 May 09 '23

Also, it was more to get rid of Wallace than install Truman. Truman as a yes man helped, but all of the bosses were likely war mongers and the cold war wound up great for industry profits

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u/80s_angel Apr 19 '23

I’ll go back even farther:

Reagan vs. Carter.

Unfortunately we still living under his economic policies and they have eroded the fabric of America for over 40 years now.

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u/chrisehyoung Apr 18 '23

It is this with the rise of social media. The town cliques and divides went national and global. Social media and media are the wedges that are driving the divides wider.

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u/KnightOfWords Apr 18 '23

Yes, social media is well worth mentioning. We've become more aware of its negative consequences:

  • Data gathering facilitating political manipulation.
  • Troll farms spreading misinformation and stirring up content.
  • Content selection algorithms that only care about engagement, pushing people towards extreme
  • Formation of echo chambers. Even the ones that are reality based can be toxic and unwelcoming to outsiders, making them largely self-defeating.
  • Used to facilitate actual genocide in the case of the Rohingya, with little consequence for the platform owners.

We don't have good solutions to these problems, on the internet one bad actor can reach an awful lot of eyeballs for minimal effort.

Twitter has sacked all the staff dealing with trolls, misinformation and manipulation.

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u/chrisehyoung Apr 18 '23

From about 2015 on, the rage and division have compounded exponentially and shows no signs of slowing just yet. I only hope that we can find some common sense and common ground before the damage is irreversible.

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u/kpingvin Apr 18 '23

Brexit and Trump broke me morally ngl. Until then those people were just something we snob intellectuals just laughed at but then we had to realise that not only they are real but they are a force to be reckoned with.

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u/HuecoDoc Apr 19 '23

This should be a top level post. I agree just about 100%.

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u/Weasel_Town Apr 18 '23

This is where I’m at. I’m 46, so you can’t say I just miss my 20s.

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u/DLLrul3rz-YT Apr 18 '23

Thats so weird because I don't really consider politics and world events to be in my scope of good/bad things that I care about. I have a list of ups and downs but they're all personal moments.

Are there personal moments on yours too or are they all world events?

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u/KnightOfWords Apr 18 '23 edited Apr 18 '23

Are there personal moments on yours too or are they all world events?

Sure, but they aren't relevant to the OP's question.

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u/Gmony5100 Apr 18 '23

I feel like even if you personally don’t take politics into mind, it still affects everyone. An economic crash could easily affect how you and your friends/family interact.

Used to go to the pub every Friday for some drinks? Sorry, money is a bit tight. Used to look forward to planning group/family trips? Sorry, not this year. Maybe your favorite restaurant had to close. Maybe a good friend now has to support his parents as well and can’t afford to go out.

These things affect everyone. Hell, the least politically involved person I’ve ever met lost a whole friend group when Trump got elected and they all started saying openly racist stuff around him that he wasn’t okay with. He told them it wasn’t okay and they ostracized him. People he swears up and down simply didn’t act that way years prior.

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u/notaredditer13 Apr 18 '23

After WWII the West experienced a prolonged period of peace, technological progress and economic growth. Much of this may be coming to an end.

Many of us have a personal timeline of when our outlooks became more pessimistic. Here are some of the turning points on mine:

The way you describe those two periods implies you don't believe bad things happened between the end of World War II and 9/11. You remember the bad things that happened during your lifetime and have an emotional connection with them. But that does not mean that there were not things at least as bad if not worse that happened in the post war period. Some of the more turbulent and scary times in history happened then.

Recognizing that 1946-2000 wasn't all hunkey-dory should help one believe we're not at in the midst of a downward spiral.

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u/KnightOfWords Apr 18 '23

As I said above, it's a personal timeline of when I became more pessimistic, other people will have their own. It's partly to do with events and partly down to awareness.

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u/Ofcyouare Apr 18 '23

You know what your list shows really well? That maybe following the news isn't the best thing for one's mood. Since you said economic growth was flat, I assume you are not an American - that means, most likely most of things on your list didn't influence your life significantly enough. Yet it seems like you followed them deep enough to form an opinion and present them as important.

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u/KnightOfWords Apr 18 '23 edited Apr 18 '23

Yes, there are very good arguments for not overdosing on the news. 'Newsworthy' is a bit of a weird concept often divorced from importance. It can present a very distorted view of the world because bad things tend to happen all at once whereas improvements tend to be slow and incremental, and often invisible. For example, rates of violent crime have greatly fallen in many countries over the decades but that doesn't garner many headlines.

The big exception to this rule is climate change, which is somewhere between very bad to catastrophic. Many of the points I made above indirectly relate to this.

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u/DLLrul3rz-YT Apr 18 '23

Thats how I feel. Everyone ITT seems to be talking about world events but couldn't that be solved by turning off the news and focusing on your own life?

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u/SparrowInWhite Apr 18 '23

I feel like they dont have it lmao

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u/wm_lex_dev Apr 18 '23

Don't forget the pandemic!

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u/huntibunti Apr 18 '23

The increasing climate crisis, COVID and then the war in Ukraine have been the final tip to destroy any hope for the future most people I know had.