Is the World Getting Worse or is it the Illusion of growing up and knowing more?

Just like to hear some views on what people think of the current world we live in.
is the world getting more violent, are we more in fear than ever before? Its not like its World War 2 or anything, was that not worse than it is now? Or are now people afraid to leave their homes and go at night?

Are we just a young generation just starting to know the world as we understand it better. At a young age we don't really care that much or have much time since we were enjoying youthful times and getting ready to further our education. Now that people have passed that phase people have kids and have jobs and worry a lot more about their future in how the government and the world effects them individually.

Some words on the news I still don't understand, but the more I have aged the more I understand the world the worse it seems altogether.

So if there was a graph of violence and nuclear threats and wars in the world verses the time period of being alive do the two match or has the world always been bad and only when you grow up you see it for what it really is. Each generation will experience these things its part of knowing the world and through experience of not being niave we learn its not as good as we all lead to believe. So is it down to undertanding through ageing that the world seems to be getting worse or is it through real evidence that the world is starting to decline in every aspect in more ways than it's ever been? Is it an illusion we all have as we grow up, 100years ago it could have looked the same then so could 2000 years ago if someone was growing up.




[edit on 21-4-2009 by The time lord]

[edit on 21-4-2009 by The time lord]

A couple insights on that; there have always been wars, and rumors of wars. There have always been earthquakes, and typhoons, and tornados. But, now there are more people alive, than have ever been alive, put together, on planet Earth. And the disasters are increasing in frequency, and in magnitude. I recall having drills in elementary school, where we crawled under our desks to 'protect' us against the nuclear attacks from Russia. We don't do that anymore, but the threat is much greater. Not that crawling under a desk would help, anyways. Possibly allayed fear? You want answers? I'm not going to suggest going to any churches, because virtually all of them have it wrong, but just read a Bible. Revelation, and the Gospels. It is getting worse, and there is a solution. You don't have anything to fear.

I am just trying to see it in relation of the current climate, anyone could be saying during WW2 that its era is as bad as the world is going to get and think that is the end of humanity, many must have thought about it that way. Guess now it has become a world of greater fear, more globalised threats, the world is open to anyone where ever they come from. Technology and nuclear weapons, weather and climate change and earthquakes and more people can die in one place than ever before. Diseases could outbreak to any part of the world since we have air travel, the problems keep mounting up and speeding up. Guess if you are born in such times it can seem seem like a normal trend but in fact its not just understanding about the world's increasing problems but seeing maybe for the first time in history it actally is becoming apocalypitic in nature.

[edit on 21-4-2009 by The time lord]

Mass-media, the internet, and TV have all contributed to it.

Not that long ago in terms of civilized humans and we would have had no idea what was going on in a third-world country, we wouldn't know about poverty in Africa or about wars in Germany (presuming you the reader isn't from Africa or Germany).

Ignorance is bliss, and without that knowledge we would be happy and stress-free. If we didn't have telescopes, or mobile phones, or cameras, it wouldn't matter what was going on 'out there' or on earth because we wouldn't know. Only a select few would know.

I think we are forever screwed in terms of the world fear for as long as we have technology like we have now or better.

But one day the sun will have enough of us being silly humans and will teach us a lesson to show we know nothing about our selves, and we will be without power and without heat, and then in the day we will be without cold.
Those who are right-minded will be O.K but those who must die will die. Nature and the Universe know more than any human ever will.

We can only move on once this has happened. Until then we will be living in fear, always. I hope the change is in my life-time.

[edit on 21/4/09 by Nventual]

I guess the increased knowledge via computers and TV has made us more aware, every nation has some type of problem, if its not the people its the weather and sometimes earthquakes and natural disasters happen but they have always been part of the world. Technology can increase these fears in every aspect, every new invention can be currupted or it can go wrong. But sometimes the more we have the more problems we have what ever it is, its the law of probability.

the grass is still green and the sky is still blue.

[edit on 22-4-2009 by Wisen Heimer]

The second and first world wars were horrendous - living under stalin, pol pot, pinoche, idealism, has finished.

however the great tyranny of british rule in India, Australia, etc,etc has not ended rather we have simply grown more capable of capturing resources without the need to resort of state violence - we cover it up better.

Violence for ideas is the most dangerous. However we have never faced resource scarcity on this planet before, and the as mentioned with the burgeoning population, the coming resource wars which will happen anywhere from the next 5 to 15 years is going to see some of the most disturbing elements of violence our planet has ever seen.

The huge population reductions of previous wars and famines have been averted with technology and institutionalised practices (peace negs, UN, WTO etc) the famines predicted in the 70's were averted through food tech break throughs, water shortage was averted through small agri pumps etc,
The problem we will now face is that we will see many problems coming to ahead at once, the global credit crunch is a warning of things to come. Imagine global war fare , the systems now in place to feed the planet would break down, we simply can not afford for it to happen - however it will - and we will face a not millions but perhaps billions of fatalities -

I agree that the internet, TV, and technology in general has made us more aware. But why the fear?? Why fear something you have no control over?? I, personally, believe everything is happening just as it has been meant to be and all one can do is prepare for the worse, while hoping for the best.

I, also, think the internet has awaken alot of people to what is really happening within the US - by our own Government. And people do not like what they are seeing.

I believe we are currently living in much more dangerous times. Especially, with the erosion of our Constitutional rights & the doings of the enemy within. I am not nearly as concerned about enemies outside of the US as I am about those within our government. This is more than any other threat I can think of and I wonder what they are going to try and do with us.....

Throughout almost all of recorded history, "things" (so to speak) have been far worse for the average citizen than they are now (at least in the developed world). Even most members of the nobility led far harder lives than the average American, Japanese, Canada/ASus/NZ, or European citizen today.

However, we are curently heading "off peak" in a number of ways and things are GETTING worse than they were, say, 20 or 30 years ago for most people, in terms of meaningful crtiteria for happiness and well-being. So while we are still better off than those in most centuries past, we have recently ceaced the upward progress and are now regressing back towards a state of heightened misery, which is the historical norm. In statistics, this is known as "regression to the mean" and is very near an ironclad law for most measurable phenomena over long enough time periods.

Even in our period of relevant decline from the recent post-WW-II levels of comfort, security, health, and well-being, we can still marvel at the little ways in which improvements continue to offset at least parts of the misery. I hold high hopes for the incresising potential of virtuali-reality tech (I mean strap-the 'trodes to your frontal lobes and hallucinate away in 3D-style stuff, still several decades off) and pharmaceutical/neurological knowledge to alleviate some of the pain of the coming decline. The leaps and bounds underway in these fields can certainly be warped and put to dark as well as benevolent ends, and such developments certainly bear careful scritiny in the coming years. Yet they show two ways in which people can use advances in "inner space" to offset reduced opporunities in the "real world."

The world is getting better when it comes to medicine, we now have larger human populations as we all know because of it. But at the same time it has caused a strain on the environment and the wildlife is payig the price since we are moving into their habitats to build homes. Also the growing human population is causing more povety pockets across the world and people kill elephants for tusks and tigers for fur trading while at the same time endangering the species. Whale hunting is another example for whale fat and other uses but all these great animals are being killed off faster than their populations grow back. They killed off cats during the plague because of superstitions and the irony was that rats were the culprit but there was no cats left to hunt and kill them which would have stopped a lot of the plague spreading and the same situation with bees, who knows how it will all mess up the ecosystem in the long run.

Originally posted by Wisen Heimer
the grass is still green and the sky is still blue.

[edit on 22-4-2009 by Wisen Heimer]

Although I agree the sky is not always blue because of man, they are full of Contrails or some call them Chemtrails filling our skies, the sky is a hazy white and it the sun is covered with lines at sun set. Is the grass green or is it burning in the wild fires turning black in the aftermarth?

It's not just about man's behaviour its also that the world could be falling apart, the north pole breaks large chunks of ice shelves, the weather is more extreame, population growth means more people suffering more hunger in the world. Look at North korea and Iran and Israel situation all looking like a possible world war might break out.

Are we reaching a peak of mistrust in the world we live in, its becomming a roller coaster ride for everyone, but then again it could be that knowledge is spreading and we are aware. In the 1930s lets say we would not have known half the stories we know today not even know what the weather would be like the next few days, there was little warning. Now we are living frantically because we are being warned, warned to worry about what to eat, how much sun to take in and endless stuff that in the end makes the worry take over and that normal sense of living becomes less fun. But then again what about the health warnings that do hep like telling us to stop smoking and endless other habbits that harm us?

Up until about the last twenty or so years, the weather people were able to successfully give a 30 day weather outlook and hit it on the nail almost every time. Those days are gone.

That, alone, is proof that things are changing. I have observed it just in the 4 decades that I've been alive.

Schools have changed, laws have changed, society has changed - in my opinion, it all pretty much started back when they took prayer out of schools, and God out of the government.

Think what you will but do your own research into the timeline of when things started going bad for this world. I'd say my grandparents, and half of my parent's generation were the last of the "good" generations of this world.

My generation has left no room for doubt that this world is in the process of final decay. Twenty or so years ago we never had a school shooter - or the ACLU trying to change our Constitution. Or now, a president trying to change it.

The proof is history itself - starting with yesterday and working backwards.

It is strange that we have been getting more and more "comfortable" in a physical sense for some time now...house sizes, wastelines, and sofa lengths are all expanding...there is more food available for less, the range of entertrainment available is stupefying, and everything is "padded" and "puffy" and cozy and comfy...getting into the typical SUV is like entering some kind of plush fantasy-carrage all padded and thick and rich with the aroma of leather...its a good representative example for all the luxuries and juicy comforts that a handful of generations ago would only be available to royalty.

And yet there is a pervasive sense of "spiritual rot," (or "psychological malaise," perhaps, if the word "spiritual" is too offputting to the non-religious among us)...there is less security, seemingly, more worries, more fear, more stress, more people that need to be medicated simply to go through the motions of getting by day-to-day.

Have people literally and figuratively "sold their souls" for a superficial luxury? Leaving aside the psychospiritual aspects and implications of the question, the answer in raw material terms is that yes, they have, in two forms: 1) the assumption of ever more debt; and 2) the embracing of "casino capitalism" that offers the allure of "making it big" but at the same time removes the basic social securities enjoyed by earlier generations. Both 1 and 2 above have contributed to massive stress, insecurity, and anguish.

The difference is that today we have weapons of mass destruction; many people could die all at once. Flu out breaks can now cover all areas of the world where it once took longer to do so. An earthquake in a populated area can kill many at once but that has been like that since the last 100years since medicine helped keep us alive and the populations have grown.

10% of a countries population dying in an earthquake 100 years ago is not the same as 10% of today’s population if it was to happen at the same spot.

Everything is quicker, we have rockets that can be fired many miles away we have communication that can follow people anywhere or take along, the world is a lot smaller as the saying goes and with it the dangers are closer.

Even if we in this generation understand with age that the world is not perfect as we age, the statistics must say something that the world we live in is even more susceptible to trouble and wars. Eventually man will want to find one form of unity and peace, but there are many systems of power who say they are right over another and that causes war and has always been the case. World War 2 was an example and we want to avoid another but at the same time we are in an era of fanatics who are growing in population who want the world their way at all costs. Death to them means martyrdom so there is no middle ground and the clash of civilisations is a repeat of history but with bigger weapons if in the wrong hands.

reply to post by The time lord

You asked :
Is the World Getting Worse or is it the Illusion of growing up and knowing more?

It's not just you. Lot's of people think the world's getting worse, and has been for a quite a long while -

Kali Yuga

Most interpretations of Hindu scriptures believe that earth is currently in Kali Yuga ... Hindus believe that human civilization degenerates spiritually throughout the Kali Yuga: it is mostly referred to as the Dark Age, mainly because people are the furthest possible from God. The description of Kali Yuga given below is an indication of its interpretive relevance in our current worldly existence.

Hinduism generally considers morality to be comparable to a bull known as Dharma. In Satya Yuga, the first stage of development, the bull had four legs, and in each age morality is reduced by a quarter. By the age of Kali, morality will be reduced to only a quarter of that of the golden age. Thus, the bull will only have one leg: morality will wait on men.

Kali Yuga is associated with the apocalypse demon Kali ... The "Kali" of Kali Yuga means "strife, discord, quarrel, or contention."

Source : Wikipedia

Maybe the world goes through phases, it all seems worse for a period of time till it chills out again, there will always be political revolutions there will always be crime and reduction of crime it will never be perfect.
But do we have more to fear now or have our science discoveries laid out the path of a doomsday view of the world with possible Comet, Metorite impacts, super volcanoes, tsunamis, Ice sheets melting and erradic weather patterns still a possibility in our lifetimes. We know religion talks of the endtimes but science is just as bad, guess they both trying to warn us.

Apart from people being more crazy today on the streets as we all see day to day what about natural disasters and weather, everytime on the news its always 'a new record' or 'worst hit earthquake' or 'more than in a 100 years' 'worst floods in 50 years' is the world just getting more crazy frequently?