What a mess we've made of things

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.

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. 

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. 

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.