Sup yall. I had this thought just now, figured I'd share it with you guys and have us discuss this. Is the world as it is getting worse and worse and time is going on? Now, based on what I observe happening in the world around me and the trends I have seen progressing throughout my lifetime on an economic, political, environmental, and societal level, my first inclination is to say hell yes! Things definitely seem to be getting worse and worse right now, and only sliding further on down the downhill slope. More people are poor and suffering than any other time in recent history. It is harder to get by in our society. People seem to becoming dumber and dumber as a result of having less parenting, less foundations. Meanwhile there is only more and more propaganda - mind control - constant non-stop advertising influence the mind and the hearts of the youth. The level of corruption and greed at the top level of our global socioeconomic structure seems to be getting greedier and greedier and more corrupt and corrupt as the days tick on. More and more rights are being taken away from the average citizen by self-appointed, independently-acting governments, which are now turning more into regimes than anything, as the people have absolutely no representation and no say in the many absurd laws and restrictions on humanity these forces keep passing on a daily basis. Environmentally... well, we all know that 100 years ago you could basically drink from any given mountain stream in the country and be guaranteed fresh pure delicious water. Yet we all know now that if you try drinkning from most natural waters today you might as well be chugging nitroglycerin. We know that air quality in major cities is utterly horrendous and barely shows signs of getting better. We know that the biodiversity in the world is being utterly reduced by human forestation and fishing practices across the world. We are running out of oil and fossil fuels to power our Earth, and will most likely be out completely by the end of this century. Whew... doesn't that make you feel just peachy In many ways it seems like things on the broader level of society ARE getting worse. But here's the thought I had just now. Think about hte Middle Ages... the Medieval times. If you think about it, life could not have been too fun for those poor people back in the day. The general standard of life for your average citizen was that of a surf - a poor farmer that was under the rule of the church and the "law", MUCH worse than we are now today. Their people would get sick with a disease and die by the millions. They had relatively little fun and entertainment. Their life at the worst part of the dark ages was probably generally quite grim and gloomy I imagine, in many ways. The Middle Ages, I think we can agree, for the general population was not a great time to be alive at all. Things were bad at the start and got worse and worse throughout. However... EVENTUALLY.... the RENAISSANCE appeared after that. After this long terrible period of much struggling and human ignorance, suppresion of human potential, the Renaissance sparked a new golden age. The human life and its virtues were CELEBRATED. Some of the greatest art and innovations in human history were developed in this time. Generally, living as a lay person in Italy around this time, I think we can all agree that life was MUCH better off in this period than the previous. And of course the Renaissance started off slow... it started off with.. one invention, one group coming together, one idea... then another.. and another... and the liberating, positive momenting just started snowballing until at some point everything for them just continued getting BETTER AND BETTER AND BETTER. To be alive at that time must have been truly blissful, especially with the recent memories of the Dark ages still near to everyone's memories. Sure it wasn't perfect, but it was better than THAT time. We'll.. I was thinking. Perhaps what we are living through now is EXACTLY what the people were living through back then. And what civilizations have lived through since the dawn of humanity. There is a great rise, then some corruption and violence and chaos, and destruction, and suffering. Joy, then pain. Laughter, then tears. It's happened with every single great civilization before us: Egyptions, Mesopatamians, Greeks, Romans, British, French. There is always the glorious rise and the gradual decay. You can even see it in America this century, although to me it seems to be a slightly accelerated course. There was times when most families in the US were prosperous. The US was on the rise. Sure there were glitches, but things general got better and better for some period of time for a lot of the people living in America. But in recent history we can start to see the beginnings (or acceleration) of this decline. And where we are now... it seems like we are now way on the rollercoaster drop, and still dropping. Is this just the inevitable cycle of humanity right now? Are we destined to head for another period of struggle hardship before a light age of harmony peace and prosperity rises again? The ancient Indians have 4 cycles, or ages, that they said humanity pages through. The sanskrit word for age is yuga. According to them, we are currently living in the the kali yuga, the darkest of the 4 ages. The densest of the ages, the bronze age. The age of widespread ignorance and corruption amongst humanity. That is where we are according to their map of history right now. But you know what comes right after the darkest age of ignorance - the brightest age of illumination and peace. The people of the world are spiritually content - they do not chase false pipedreams in a vein attempt to reach happiness like in the bronze age, where the people usually achieve mostly just pleasure. In the golden age - the Satya Yuga, the age of Truth - humanity has risen above its immaturities of greed. Of separation amongst one another and nature. It has overcome most hatrid toward the fellow man - thus, the world lives in peace and harmony. The natural eternal balance of nature, earth and human is not broken. There is harmony. The people, through the lack of false delusions, illusions and defilements, are able to live in peace, and attain true spiritual realization, lasting contentment, brotherly harmony and inner peace. I think the ultimate question is... is there ever truly any way to stop this cycle in history? Can we ever truly LEARN from history, or is mankind destined to keep repeating its same mistakes? Are we destined to plunge into darker days ahead, before an age of incredibly rasied human consciousness is brought about? Well, as much as I looked around at the world today, as much as I see the bullshit, I see the EXACT same power from the opposite force working its way as well. People uniting worldwide, given the power of the internet to connect the entire globe together... and actively CURRENTLY discussion solutions to bring about this very age of peace we all dream of right now. Many of us fed up with the crap of our society have begun thinking about these solutions, the visions on our own, and the internet has allowed us to connect, find similar minds and grow our iddeas, solidifiying our collective visions even more. I believe that the Mayans and the ancient prophets of old that foretold these events, who understood the eternally cyclical ways of nature and the universe, from which humanity is not separate at all, knew what they were talking about 100%. I think that perhaps we WILL continue sliding a little further down the slide a bit, and may hut our ass while hitting the ground a bit. Then after that we'll experience a time of renewal and prosperity, that will hopefully last for a long time.
You should have done a little more research on some of the bold, slightly innacurate claims I spotted above. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve
Yea, I realized as I was writing it that I was probably getting a lot of stuff wrong in there in the history parts. I'm no history buff. So sorry for those inaccuracies, I was just using those examples to make my point. I just realize that this thread comes off more as an essay than anything... let me open it up for discussion a bit. Do you guys agree that things are currently on a downhill slope in our present time? Do you think it is inevitable that history will repeat itself and the American empire will have some sort of big collapse or reformation? Do you see that there will be massive social economic coming out of the ashses of that fall, if there is one?
I feel like our world is going through a lot of changes both good and bad. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether it's for the better or worse. Yes, our standard of living has greatly improved but does that mean that THINGS are getting better? I mean all of our technological advancements are very convenient and nice, but i think a whole new set of problems will rise out our advancements. There's been a sharp increase in mental illness, whether from our new environment or diet, there's no arguing it's happening. I feel like our brains just weren't "built" to handle all the stresses and problems of our modern, technology-centered society. We are the product millions of years of evolution to natural environments on our planet, now we've replaced our natural habitat with concrete jungles and a mess of problems associated with them. I think we're in a very crucial part of our species' existence, we are now growing and learning faster than could ever have been thought. We have the potential to become masters of our planet and it's resources with technology. But often there is no planning and thinking over of the consequences of our advancements. We could easily begin pioneering space at the end of the century if all goes well. Or we could easily wipe out every resource on the planet and drive the human population to extinction. /end high rambling...To answer your question, yes our standard of living has improved greatly. On average people are probably better off today than 500 years ago. But is the nature of our situation any better? IMO the world is tilting on the fence toards chaos, but that's not to say there couldn't be changes and postive advancement. So i guess i'll just hang around and see what happens.
To answer your main question I don't know. It's uncertain whether we are on a massive land slide to our own demise, but it sure seems that way doesn't it. From an aware intelligent unbiased view almost every category is completely fucked lol. The world is revolting right now, all around the world riots and protests are happening by the millions. War is everywhere. 1/5 of man population is starving, truly unbelievable. Our dollar has almost no value. We are trillions in debt. Not only are all these horrible things going on, but it's not getting better, it's getting worse. In all reality World War 3 may be right on our doorsteps, and then life is really going to get fucked up. As for the middle ages and all that, remember that history is written by the rulers, it's all tainted, it's all regurgitated over the years and formed into whatever it needs to be. For all we know they had a great way of life, much less stressful and chaotic as our world today. Whether or not humans go through these stages as the mayans insist is very interesting. Really makes ya wonder doesn't it, about "fair", lol. Some humans get born into slavery and hell and others are born into a golden age.. interesting. On the flip side it's weird though as you say, because even with the amount of negativity coming from our world today, look at the amount of people waking up! Really an awesome thing to observe. Spreading like wild fire. Reminds me of the connection between human brains that I learned in one of the best books ever Evolve Your Brain. Same guy who wrote "What the bleep do we know?!" but anyways it was talking about how they make tests for a certain day. Ya know like when you were in 8th grade, every 8th grader took this certain test all around the country on this day at this time. Why did they do that? Well guess what, for the kids who got lucky and somehow were able to take the test later in the day or the next day, had significantly higher test scores. Why? It was talking about how once the answers are "out there" we can find them within ourselves. Another example was how no one could run a 4 minute mile. For thousands and thousands of years humans tried it to no avail, and it was deemed impossible. Well then that one kid came along how did nothing but practice and practice to beat the 4 minute mile, long story short he does it, breaks the 4 minute mile something no human had ever done and scientists believed was impossible. Well guess what after he did that in 1963 or whatever, THOUSANDS OF MORE HUMANS DID IT WITHIN THE NEXT MONTH. WTF?! lol, sorry for getting all excited things like that just blow my mind. And it was all about that connection between us all, once one human does it, it becomes achievable for us all, and unlocks mental barriers. But I dunno man.. there is a lot of bad and a lot of good in our world, depending on how your perceiving the picture is what is going to be reflected back to you. As a single human being I can do what I am able to do in any other time period on earth, and that is make of my time as I wish. So regardless of the hells going on, really best to keep doing your own thing and making your own life positive, making life positive around you.