In terms of crime and violence, the world has never been safer than now. For anyone not a white dude, overall economic and legal situation has never been better than now, though we are in the “one step back” part of two steps forward, one step back.
Environmentally a mixed bag, to some extent pollution is less but it’s spread out more, and the accrual of all the old pollution, it’s cumulative and having more of an impact on our weather and climate, overall I think that’s worse, but people want to compare it to some past that didn’t exist - it was bad before too.
And yes we are WAY more aware of the shittiness now.
People who say the past was better or cleaner often “forget” to remember the negative aspects of the past. It’s also easy to remember the things that didn’t affect us, like a white person remembering going to the malt shop with friends but not remembering that there were no black kids in there either.
In terms of crime and violence, the world has never been safer than now. For anyone not a white dude, overall economic and legal situation has never been better than now, though we are in the “one step back” part of two steps forward, one step back.
Environmentally a mixed bag, to some extent pollution is less but it’s spread out more, and the accrual of all the old pollution, it’s cumulative and having more of an impact on our weather and climate, overall I think that’s worse, but people want to compare it to some past that didn’t exist - it was bad before too.
And yes we are WAY more aware of the shittiness now.
People who say the past was better or cleaner often “forget” to remember the negative aspects of the past. It’s also easy to remember the things that didn’t affect us, like a white person remembering going to the malt shop with friends but not remembering that there were no black kids in there either.