It's the end of the world as we know it.
Dec 27, 2022 17:24:51 GMT
Post by kerouac2 on Dec 27, 2022 17:24:51 GMT
There were all sorts of crises when I was growing up. There was the Cold War for one thing and we had bomb drills in school for nuclear attacks (Ha ha, just think of the protection of crouching under your desk with an atomic bomb going off down the street.). But after a few years, it just seemed as though it all basically came down to the Iron Curtain and that Europe would be cut in half forever. This of course was based on my age, and I have no idea if people with a broader perspective (10 or 15 years older, or maybe even as ancient as parents) saw the world the same way. Maybe it was just a temporary anomaly for them, which is what it turned out to be.
Bad things happened all around the world, most of which didn't seem important to my little self. Biafra, South American dictatorships, military takeovers in Turkey or Greece, whatever happened in Indonesia... so many things so far away.
Reaching adulthood, I am one of the people who paid more attention than most to what was happening in the world. Having a culture straddling two continents played a major role since I saw so many discrepancies in perception between the two locations. And of course I noticed that the vast majority of people on either continent pay no attention to any of this shit.
We have seen huge climate catastrophes, famines, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, etc. and yet they are nothing compared to what people can do to each other. The USSR in Afghanistan, the United States in Iraq, upheavals in South Africa, Rwanda, Nicaragua, Sudan, Mali, Myanmar.... (short list)
But it appears that as the year 2022 ends, we seem to have never had so many problems. A major war in Ukraine, massive protests in Iran and Afghanistan, countries that have never recovered from previous conflicts (Somalia, Libya...), a pandemic that stopped everything for 2 years and crippled many economies, pollution, global warming (and freezing), limited resources, social unrest combined with massive apathy, crazy world leaders.
Can you think of any year worse than this one in the last 50 years?
And yet most of us in our rich countries are getting by without too many problems. The worst places to be are still far away. The rich are getting richer (because of this rather than in spite of this).
But for how much longer?
Bad things happened all around the world, most of which didn't seem important to my little self. Biafra, South American dictatorships, military takeovers in Turkey or Greece, whatever happened in Indonesia... so many things so far away.
Reaching adulthood, I am one of the people who paid more attention than most to what was happening in the world. Having a culture straddling two continents played a major role since I saw so many discrepancies in perception between the two locations. And of course I noticed that the vast majority of people on either continent pay no attention to any of this shit.
We have seen huge climate catastrophes, famines, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, etc. and yet they are nothing compared to what people can do to each other. The USSR in Afghanistan, the United States in Iraq, upheavals in South Africa, Rwanda, Nicaragua, Sudan, Mali, Myanmar.... (short list)
But it appears that as the year 2022 ends, we seem to have never had so many problems. A major war in Ukraine, massive protests in Iran and Afghanistan, countries that have never recovered from previous conflicts (Somalia, Libya...), a pandemic that stopped everything for 2 years and crippled many economies, pollution, global warming (and freezing), limited resources, social unrest combined with massive apathy, crazy world leaders.
Can you think of any year worse than this one in the last 50 years?
And yet most of us in our rich countries are getting by without too many problems. The worst places to be are still far away. The rich are getting richer (because of this rather than in spite of this).
But for how much longer?
