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This is dismissive in the form of "Other people suffered, why are you complaining?"

Nuclear war is still possible. Acid rain is still bleaching forests and marshes near me. Our economy is kinda hosed at the moment. Endless conflict in the Middle East/SW Asia. Uiyghurs are enslaved. And of course resource depletion and climate change.

It's not sunshine and lolipops.




Nuclear war is possible but much less likely, compared to when the Soviet Union and the US were watching each other "knowing" the other was itching to launch, and so if they do you better attack back first lest you lose. Acid rain is still a problem, but not nearly the problem it was 40 years ago. The economy has always been kinda hosed about something - but overall your standard of living is better than it would have been. There have always been endless wars - where they are have changed over time. There has always been slavery, again much less today than years ago. I have seen newpapers from 1880 (not a typo, in the 1800s) where the editors were wondering what they would do when the oil wells went dry.


A big difference is that now you learn (faster or at all) about issues that 30-50-100 years ago would have been completely obscure to most of the world, and you're getting the news hammered into your head on so many channels until you can only see them as important. So most issues today hit people far harder than they used to because the world used to be a bit more (unwittingly) ignorant and what you didn't know couldn't hurt you. Knowing about every bad thing everywhere, and knowing the impact of that can hit harder than the actual issue. It takes a huge emotional toll.

If issues command more attention time each day they feel more important. Generalplan Ost might have killed twice as many people at the same time as the Holocaust but most people never heard of it because it didn't get that much prime time. And the Bangladesh or Indonesian genocides flew under the radar for most people around the world.

Lots of things are possible but the likelihood, and the fact that this is hammered into your head via every channel make all the difference. Nuclear war is possible but if FB would throw this possibility at you every day I can guarantee you'd see it with very different eyes and feelings.

Just going back a few decades you had things like AIDS or the hole in the ozone layer. So each generation had their own burden to bear. And things like global warming aren't something that hit one particular generation (unless it triggers a catastrophic and quickly unfolding event), it just erodes away the niceties of life with each generation.


You could write a similar paragraph about any time in history. China, for one, is far less genocidal than they were a few decades ago, as hard as it is to believe. Overall it's far less likely for people to die in wars than at any time in human history.




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