No Stupid Questions

There's a big Economic Supercycle which lasts about 100 years, or around 3 generations.

We're now at the most painfull point of that supercycle, when wealth has accumulated in too few hands as has real power, inequality has exploded, social mobility has crashed and growth has ground to a halt, so the elites have switched from capturing most of Economic Growth to pillaging existing wealth from the rest of the population - a handful of people are fine, most people are getting poorer and young people most definitelly don't have the opportunity to "be anything you want".

All this, of course, translates into social discontent, increased autoritarianism from those in power in order to keep said power (just notice the fast growing desire from widespread surveillance amongst mainstream politicians as well as the increase in anti-demostration legislation in supposedly Democratic nations) and political movements subsidized by the elites (i.e. the populist Far Right) that scapegoat foreigners (immigrants, "interference" from other nations) for the pain that most people are feeling so that they're not punishing the local elites for their pillaging and the way they mismanage the country.

All this in turn translates into more wars: if you're scapegoating foreigners for the pains in your country and/or there is not enough economic growth for the elites to grow more wealthy, then it's only natural to go to war with other nations, either to "punish" them for their "fault" in the pain of the population or to take their shit to make the local elites richer.

Naturally, when people are discontent and have no real hope to change the way the place they live in is managed or they live somewhere that keeps getting attacked by foreign military because their elites want to steal your shit, a lot of them turn into "extremists". Also a lot of things which are pretty natural and democratic things to do start getting painted as "extremism" by the mass media owned by the above mentioned elites and/or made illegal by said elites (when directly in power) or the politicians they bought.

And then most of this shit feeds around into reduced Economic growth, so less of it for the elites to capture, hence the elites pillaging even more, propagandize the "foreign enemy" even more, push even more for Far-Right parties and reduced democratic rights even more.

Social flows from Economic and Economic flows from Social.

• The first school shooting in the US was in the late 1800s.

• During an 18 month period between 1973 and 1975 there were an average of five terrorist bombings a day in the US.

• There were more serial killers in the 1970s than any decade since.

• Before 1974 a women could not open a bank account unless she had her father’s or husband’s permission.

• Do yourself a favor and do not research what Belgium was doing in Africa in the 1940s and 1950s..

• At the peak of the Irish Potato famine British companies were exporting 150 tons of beef a week out of Ireland. In fact the Irish Potato famine meets all the criteria of state sponsored genocide.

• 1816 is called the year without summer. A volcano erupted in Singapore and put so much ash into the air summer never happened. In North American there were heavy snowfalls into July. So many crops died in Europe that food riots erupted and massive disease out breaks occurred.

These factoids are not meant to depressed you. They just illustrate that there have always been major problems and fucked up things to solve. We should not destroy ourselves because of them, we have to address them.

Both
Authoritarianism is increasing globally and with it come atrocities.

It's not that it's more volatile, but that the volatility is coming closer to home (and 24 hour news amplifies it).

South America is at its most peaceful in about 100 years, South East Asia currently only has 1 war ongoing, while slightly up from 0 in 2010, is still lower than most of the last 100 years.

Africa is more stable overall and developing better for most people, with some exceptions.

Although if you mean volatile as "the US is no longer sure it can curbstomp any likely military opposition", then yes. That is now true due to other nations' improvement, and changes to asymmetrical warfare capabilities.

I think that it was just the last 30 years being an anomaly. In Europe you had lots of very interesting stuff happening pre WW2. Also pre WW1 was calm just briefly. After WW2 you had communist revolutions in the east which took a while, then in the west you had Basques, Northern Ireland, extremists in Italy and Germany doing interesting happenings. And decolonization struggle in the rest of the world. All very eventful. Real calm for Europe came after end of cold war up until 2014 Ukraine. And that is if you disregard the wars in ex Yugoslavia that was ongoing for 10 years! And included eventful things like a genocide and several ethnic expulsions. So maybe real calm was for all in all 14 years in the 21st century...not to say that Middle East was anything but calm in that period. And that Russia ended its civil war circa 2008 and invaded Georgia that same year. That leaves us with 6 whole consecutive years of calm on European continent.

It seems to me that many responses in this thread lean towards oversimplification which in turn garners the most votes.

While these simpler responses contain a grain of truth and that the big picture viewed trough the lens of day to day news might seem elusive; if we look at the evidence it seems we are on the cusp of a demographic collapse in global economy dominated by geriatric capitalist superpowers that lean heavily towards techno feudalism.

Most signs point towards a quite unpleasant next 40 or so years.

If you’d like a data driven analysis with realistic estimates of the likelihood of some things happening in the near future I would recommend intelligence reports, or at least the danish one seems quite well thought out: https://www.fe-ddis.dk/globalassets/fe/dokumenter/2025/-fe-intelligenceoutlook-25-.pdf

It is a wave of volatility not seen since the end of the Cold War.

Abundance of news and remember the golden rule. Modern day journalism sacrifices the core principles for more clicks. Doomscrolling makes more money at the end of the day.

Things are getting worse.

Yes we can access information more easily but things are also getting much worse.

Despite what they may say out loud, wealthy oligarchs are well aware that climate change is going to cause widespread famine, and natural disasters like drought, fire, floods, and storms.

People are conditioned to pay attention to bad news.

It's a survival mechanism. If you find out there's lions in the savannah to the left, then you want to know that so you can go to the right, you know?

News organizations profit off of that survival mechanism by constantly telling you that the world is ending so that you keep paying attention to them so that they get ad revenue.

There are bad things going on, but it's not as bad as it seems.

It's just the bad gets so much more attention because it is actively being shoved into your face, whether you're looking for it or not.

It's multiplied and accelerated, so yeah.

History always had power struggles, empire exploitation, death disasters, etc. but the modern era has significantly expanded on that with the boom in technology and the global population.

Add to the fact that we are digging our own grave in several forthcoming critical problems that the world is already starting to see the effects of.

It's the information.

Before, what you didn't know couldn't hurt you, so, when someone on the other side of the country did something, it would have to be REALLY important for people to talk about it here.

Tv gave us national news, but still, they were limited by broadcast time. Not every little bit of news can fit in a 24 hour day, and they'd have to repeat the important stuff just in case someone wasn't watching at the exact time it was reported.

Now, there are no limits. Every local drama, every crime committed, every break up and make up, and every plate of food is recorded and immortalized on the Internet.

Statistically, crime is lower than ever, less crimes go unsolved, and more people have more rights than ever before. This world is literally the best it's ever been, but we've also never been exposed to so much injustice before. It's quite the Faustian Contradiction.

Climate change makes it worse. Not yet, but soon.

I think a large part of it is the internet. Like everything else, popularity ruins everything. I grew up with the internet, my family was one of the first I knew with a computer. For a long time, it was fun as fuck, play videos games, post on forums, chat with friends, MySpace, etc..

But over the years it's become a shell of what it once was. Everything is about engagement, predatory algorithms, ads, fear mongering, censorship, control, bots, etc.. Capitalism and greed sunk its teeth into it and ruined it for profit like it does to everything else.

Instead of it being a way to escape and have fun, it's a place to get depressed, demoralized and preyed upon.

Yes, there was a long period of post WWII stability, though there were still lots of problems including the Cold War that ended by 1990. Then there's also been a series of slowly escalating Middle East conflicts. I think a lot of people are pointing to that period 1990-2001 or so with no "major" global conflicts happening. But even then, there was genocide in Rwanda. But the information/reporting was less global at the time.

It was always volatile. It's more volatile lately than 30 years ago, but if you go farther back I don't think this is unusual.

I’m gonna go with more volatile. Climate change is getting to the point where it’s harder and harder to ignore. The consequences are very scary and not at all pleasant to think about. As a result, people are angrier and more frightened. Personally, I expect bigger, crazier bullshit.

When major costal cities start getting flooded, people will lose their fucking minds.

This has been prevalent throughout history.

In the Cold War era, both the U.S. and the Soviets (and to an extent, other powers like the Chinese, British, and French), funded conflicts across the globe in the name of ideology and economic interests. Dictatorships and autocratic governments were prevalent around the world, propped up by these major powers. New nations were fighting against colonial powers for their independence.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, conflicts are still everywhere due in part of tribalism, support by world powers (e.g. US and Russia), economic interests of those at the top, and colonialism. You had the breakup of Yugoslavia and all the conflict that erode from that, Africa and Asia are still a hot mess due in part to borders drawn by the Europeans, the Middle East is likewise, etc.

However! It is true that, currently, we are at a tipping point in the world. Many populist far-right parties and leaders are gaining influence, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is devastating for both sides, Israel is starving Gaza, Iran is bombing their neighbours, the United States is doing what they have always done, the Chinese are militarising at a rapid rate, blunt racism and religious prejudice (Islamophobia, antisemitism, etc.) is returning (by prominent world leaders too, yikes!), etc. And these are conflicts involving nuclear-armed states!

Things are bad, and it is important to be aware of that, but nothing is new. The Russians have had conflicts with Ukraine (and other states, like Georgia) in the past, Israel had always been committing atrocities in the occupied territories, Iran had been hostile to its neighbours in the past, the U.S. had intervened in many (sooo many) nations already, etc.

But simply because it's not new doesn't negate its consequences. Lives have been lost in war, people across the world require humanitarian aid, and bigotry (of any kind) affects everybody. No, the world is not more volatile, but that doesn't mean it isn't.

Have you considered the possibility it's both? Yes the world is becoming less stable and less safe, but also, the immediacy of information has also made it all seem much more urgent and close? We don't live in a closed test environment. Two variables can be moving simultaneously.

I'm unsure but I do know that things seem less bad when I spend less time listening to the news

So in the 90s we had news over sensationalize crime and we thought our cities were all unsafe. Moms kept their kids inside. Now in the 10s and 20s we have the news sensationalizing politics and we think we are under fascists or communists when the real problem is the corpos nobody is talking about.

In recent memory, there was a brief gap of calm in most of the world between the fall of the USSR and 9/11 where it looked like we could go a different, more positive direction. For the rest, every generation thought they lived in the most volatile times. I'm not trying to say it's delusional necessarily but we have a strong recency bias.

Abundance. Everything looks smaller in the rear view mirror. As someone who's been in both decades, it actually feels a lot like the 80s all over again.

I'd imagine the dark ages and the crusades might have been rough. Living thru the black plague too.

I think it seems worse today because everything is so interconnected. And the "base" our world is built on doesn't seem very stable. So when it rocks back and forth on an unstable base it's very nerve racking because you honestly don't know if something will fall over, and take other things down with it.

But honestly, shit like this has always been happening. If humans can find a way to survive in the future, they will. If not, time will keep marching on.

it's just the downfall of the west

most of the world is doing better than ever and rising

The shift from paper to digital has caused all news to pass through RAM and CPU registers, thus causing it to become volatile

Both but for your example extreme weather events are factually becoming much more common and will continue to worsen.

Europe's experiencing the longest hot war since Wordl War II

I believe you that this is true by length of time, but there was a lot of war going on in central and eastern Europe in the 90s.

What We Call the News

Dirty Laundry

Climate crisis and capitalism refugees, water shortages, forest fires all are getting worse. I consider we are entering a new dark age. The US empire is collapsing, world order is re-shuffled, nobody really knows what's coming next.

And also, it's very easy to get stuck watching it happen live while one's own actual situation might be okay. Good to switch it off sometimes and go walk under some trees and enjoy what is there to enjoy if you have the chance. All the more if it's to end soon!

I doubt there is a single year in human history (including before writing) where somebody in your village has not in some form made the claim or asked the question. There is always some old person reminiscing about how much better the past was, and young people who hear of bad news and wonder if maybe the past was better since they only hear about really really bad things in stories not the day to day bad but not enough to tell around the fire.

The extremism thing is definitely real.

Abundance of news yes, but also human population is way higher and all the ramifications of that fact come into play. There's more than twice as many humans alive today than when my boomer dad was born in the 1950's. 2.5 billion back then, 8.3 billion now.

Hol up, I think I’d have heard about a nuclear exchange in Europe

What are you even on about?