What a mess we've made of things

I do get where you are coming from though. I do a lot of soul searching on these things. I've noticed the thoughts get worse when I'm burnt out. 

With regards to the big things,  ultimately it comes down to us wanting to survive. In the very olden days as a species we wouldve adapted to our environment like animals do rather than having it all forced down our throats and panicked all the time. 

Sensationalism, caused by the nature of TV to control the populace.

Bob Geldof has a lot to answer for.

I agree Jamie, so many people seem to measure their worth in what posessions they have or how perfect their body is. There is so much more to life than this 

That is very true. It is certainly better than living in the middle ages when life expectancy was about 35! We have so much to be thankful for, running water, food etc that even people in many parts of the world these days dont have. 

I agree about music I wouldnt know what to do without that. I think there are generations where it was easier to live but there are also a lot of generations when it would have been much harder. Count your blessings indeed 

Yes I wonder if that is part of it. At least in the old days no matter how much the government or TV or school tried to scare you you could go out and switch off from it all whereas now with smartphones in your pocket its 24/7 and you can never switch off

Yes, all that stuff (social media pressure) is much more insidious. It's a thousand tiny but steady pressures at once rather than a sense of imminent universal calamity while simultaneously popping out for a pint of milk because the sky wasn't falling in. Probably in an atrociously assembled wardrobe because any old thing would do to keep warm, being 'on trend' just wasn't a massive priority. 

I'm as old as Star Wars (the original movie, not Reagan's abandoned project for firing lasers from space), so no offence taken. 

I agree Billy, this planet is in a horrible mess at present. Materialist values are rife mainly because people don't know they have a soul. And not only that, the vast majority of people are not aware it is possible to know they have a soul rather than just believe they do

I remember my childhood always being full of impending doom. Public information films told us how to prepare for imminent nuclear war. I think part of the film was used at the start of ‘Two Tribes’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. AIDS information films portrayed a similar message. We never went into London as bombings were quite normal. We were told that oil would run out.

Day to day, we just went on normally and didn’t seem to worry about it all too much. I do feel sorry for the young, the pressure on how they should look is damaging, social media is 24/7. I get customers text me at 5am on a Sunday morning, it has become a strange world. 

Your words bring me comfort! 

I think we do have a choice, no matter how hard it is, whether to engage in it and do what is beneficial for YOU. To be honest, in lockdown, my usual area was frequented by more people "enjoying nature" and this meant more rubbish strewn around everywhere and more people in general which is something I generally like to avoid when I'm out.

The problem I have with the internet and social media is that it has made everyone more conspicuous in their behaviour. And then there is the problem to me of authenticity. 

I go through periods of "what sort of a world are we in" but it's just the time I've been born into and I cannot change that. My current opinion is WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE.  In the history of humanity we have clean running water and food just THERE. We have modern medicine. We have art and music and literature. We can travel wherever we want and speak to people from anywhere in the world instantly. The thing for me is recorded music. I can't imagine not having recorded music.

So yes the world is scary and unpleasant but there are joyous elements too.

Shardovan said:

I remember looking around me in shock that everyone was casually writing this down instead of screaming in panic at the revelation.

This is kind of how I feel about climate change but I am now resigned to the fact and instead of panicking,  am getting on with life. Because in reality, no one will give up their lifestyle and I am a small drop in a very large ocean and I see that any inidivusl efforts are futile. We are probably in an environmental deficit from the moment we are born.

I think with regards to the nuclear threat, this technology has only been with mankind for the past c.75 years so the threat will always be there in some way unless we have total disarmament.

Thats a really interesting perspective. I always felt like people were generally more terrified these days because social media etc makes us believe nuclear war, enviroonmental catastrophe or more global pandemics are imminent but its interesting to hear from someone who, (apologies if im wrong no offence intended), perhaps grew up in the generation before me. To hear that kids were in some ways even more terrified by tales of global catastrophe then is quite interesting and eye opening. I didnt know that 

Wonderful, I know just what you mean. X

I think there’s always been this tendency in humanity to assume that we’re in the worst of times, that total collapse is imminent, that we’ve lost our better selves almost entirely. Something came into my head earlier after reading this thread - it’s a slight tangent but I grew up as a child and teen with this feeling that sudden and total global environmental catastrophe was about five minutes away. It was thanks to things like this: https://youtu.be/1LWql4HRg4s

That title sequence used to depress the hell out of me on a Sunday night, though now I look back on it with disbelief that Channel 4 was ever that highbrow and worthy - a far cry from shows comparing willy sizes or playing joke versions of Countdown. 
 
But yes, that five seconds to midnight feel never let up. I remember being shown this film while I was in secondary school and it said that if one or two things didn’t get sorted fast then most of the world’s electricity would run out by the year 2000. I remember looking around me in shock that everyone was casually writing this down instead of screaming in panic at the revelation. Which somehow never seemed to materialise for real. I couldn’t get that out of my head for ages, and there was a ‘what’s the point in all this if we’re about to go back to the Stone Age?’ sense of dread in me a fair bit of the time. I think we live in a way more optimistic age now. That kind of stylised exaggeration isn’t so omnipresent and while youngsters are undoubtedly more anxious and stressed than ever, at least that kind of doomy fatalistic message isn’t being quite so unrelentingly poured into their ears and eyes. Because they have many ways to find stuff out for themselves. They can see that there are problems, and solutions, and a general pattern of eleventh hour course correction by the human race. Not sure what my point is. I feel I e strayed off topic.

Very true! Lol I like that 

Very much so! All the more ironic when we talk of ‘not having the spoons’. Oh, I’ve turned into Alanys Morisette now. Well isn’t this nice?  

Its brilliant isnt it! I think it sums up the whole autistic experience quite well in some ways tbh

I must confess that I stole ‘wifi soup’ from something Matt Smith said in a Who ep. But that Noel quote blows it out of the water- love that! 

Shardovan said:

However, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle and it would even be unhealthy (if even possible) to do so

Reading this I am reminded of a line from Roger Moore in the Persuaders "you cant go back to the way things were, cos they were never that way in the first place" Perhaps we sometimes idealise the past without knowing what it was actually like. I sometimes wonder if I would have even been happier back then, perhaps there would have been other things I struggled with. I wouldnt have had helpful things like this forum to help me. There is a verse in the Bible about wherever I find myself I will be content. I try to live like that

I cant see any future positives to social media though. I think if anything social media is more likely to be the explanation future historians look to as to why western civilisation collapsed 

I like what you said about CDs and DVDs, there is something quite calming about it because you know when watching a DVD that you dont have the option to flick to a million other things and your head can relax a bit

Shardovan said:

We can’t escape the nervous air molecules of the wifi soup we live in now

I love this phrase, wifi soup! I am reminded of Noel Gallagher's description of his brother Liam as "a man with a fork in a world of soup" If wifi is the soup then I definitley have a fork lol