I realize that it is materially better than it has ever been and it continues to improve, despite very obvious issues and inequalities.

I just don't expose myself to the 24h news cycle very much. My life is good, the life of the people around me is good, and nobody is helped by worrying about things I can't change.

get into areas like solarpunk that hold out hope against the dystopia

It's getting harder every year.

I remember well the constant fear of nuclear war in the 1980's.

I remember the wonder we felt when the Berlin Wall fell and Soviet Union collapsed. A hope of a tomorrow free of fear.

I remember the dreadful recession of the early 1990's and the steep economical rise that followed it.

I remember the amazing advancements in technology and the standard of living in the late 1990's. And at the same time, it felt like the world was coming to it's senses.

I was 21 in the year 2000. The world was full of promise, technological advancements were just pouring in, old mortal enemies were finding common ground and it seemed that we were slowly heading towards a Star Trek - like post scarcity utopia.

This age of hope eneded by the finance crisis of 2007-2008. Russia tried the waters with the war in Georgia. The general atmosphere of the world turned towards gloom again. And the downward spiral just seems to keeps going and going....

Yet I continue the work I started when I chose teaching as my profession in those golden years of hope. The kids are very different today, any class from 20 years ago would be a piece of cake compared with the problems they have now. But if a change for the better is to come, it will come from the kids. My generation is hopelessly lost in consumer greed and watching mindless "reality" shows that they somehow feel more important than real life.

I alone cannot be the change we need, but I CAN educate a few hundred kids and with good luck, maybe a dozen or few of them will have a some effect for a better future.

By realizing that it IS getting better. We live in a world now where information has exploded out of control. What this means is that we now know exactly what's going on everywhere, and it turns out that's a lot of shit.

That shit was still happening, but until fairly recently it was just out of the picture. The average person didn't know about any of it , couldn't do anything about it anyway, and thus it didn't really impact them.

Fast forward to today you hear of tragedies ALL THE TIME. Bad shit happening to good people for seemingly no reason. The difference here is that you just happen to know about it. The objective truth is that bad shit happens less today than it did at any other time in history. We just see every instance of it, not just our local community instances.

Many people in here arguing things "have never been better". It's true to an extent; things are pretty good in terms of poverty, liberties or world peace (for now). It's not great, it's never been great, but it's a decent bit better than it's been in the past. Overall.

We are, however, in an era of unstability and unrest, where it feels like things are constantly on the cusp of changing for the worse (and in some cases, are indeed already changing for the worse, like abortion or LGBT rights in the US, for example). Violence and discrimination are on the rise, global peace is being threatened, democracy is in jeopardy (not just in the US mind you), the 1% are getting WAY richer way faster than ever... To top it all off, climate change is objectively, unarguably as bad as it's ever been, and it's getting much much worse, much faster than even experts can keep up with. Like, we're headed straight for extinction and we keep accelerating toward it.

You have every right to be worried. Yes, it's easy to forget and take for granted the things we have now that we didn't even a mere 60 years ago, but many of them are very much under attack at the moment. Just because shit maybe hasn't quite yet hit the fan doesn't mean everything is fine.

And to answer your question, I've found some refuge in art, both experiencing and creating it. Reading books, watching movies, playing games, etc, especially those that echo that sentiment of fear and uncertainty for the future (or present). Trying to use all that as inspiration for my own work, I think it'd help to express my feelings this way. I am indeed doing very poorly still though, it's a lot to deal with, on top of my own personal problems.

A lot of weed

I'm going to address your question in two ways it may be read.

The world is worse than it was

I completely disagree, I think the world has never been better. Look back even 70 years and you have the threat of cold war, other wars (Korean War, conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Middle East, ...), much more poverty, starvation (China's Great Famine), illiteracy, a lot more nasty pollutants that we've since moved away from.

To go a bit more US-centric, although much of this is mirrored elsewhere to varying degrees, you had much, much higher crime rates (possibly due to lead in gasoline), women could be raped by their husbands and had minimal rights, gay people were persecuted, black people were killed for fun (lynchings) along with other deplorable treatment, etc.

Right now you live in a world where practically all information is available at your fingertips at minimal cost, where most people will at least tolerate your presence even if you don't fit neatly into their ideal world, where we've made a lot of progress on limiting and reversing environmental damage (ozone layer). We have more medical cures & treatments, longer lifespans, greater nutrition, more education, incredible entertainment options (Netflix, Steam, YouTube, etc.).

The world is better than it ever was, but the pace of improvement has slowed / gone stagnant

Yeah I get the anxiety, things do seem more unstable than they were 10 years ago. I'm super thankful to be living in our so-far-the-best age but I don't take for granted that it can stay wonderful. Much of the benefits we now enjoy were hard-won victories that required hard work, and I suspect that to keep making the world a better place it'll require us to pay it forward by also working hard. But don't take it for a given that we're due for pain and conflict; human events are too complex to follow simple narratives and it's possible in 5 years we'll all be relaxed and thankful that these current problems fizzled out.

I play videogames

I just accept our fate.

Humanity will probably realize we seriously fucked up around 2050 and near the end of the century mass migration will lead to a death count much bigger than WW2 or the chinese civil wars.

The only grace is that most of us reading this thread will die from various reason before the second stage.

I will still do my part by reducing my CO2 footprint but unless we find some miracle technology producing nuclear power plant levels of energy for the cost of a charcoal power plant, shitty world leaders and corporations will ruin everything for fake wealth.

Like so:

We can’t capitalism our way out of what we capitalismed ourselves into. It’s socialism or barbarism.

Try this: Don't Believe The Hype

(DarkMatter2525 - Is Society Collapsing)

TLDW: No, things are getting better, some things aren't, but it's not an easy answer because there are 8 billion perspectives to consider. We are living longer and enjoy more technology, so there's that.

Be the change you want to see. I switched things up and took a job where I work to feed hungry people. It's pretty great and I feel good about myself and what I do. I'm not gonna fix the whole world, but I am making a difference for those who I reach.

I feel like a spectator at this point. Fully aware of how the system operates and powerless to affect change without grave consequences. Materially, I'm secure. Not reproducing, so I don't have offspring to care about their future. Fuck this timeline, maybe I'll get to return at a cooler time.

Fascists took over my country, and now they use a devestating attack as an excuse to start a total war that might evolve to world war, while the rest of the world sees our country as a "faschist genocide machine" our own citizens oppose it, and suffer from it, but still being fooled by propaganda.

I'm teriified. That's the truth.

I avoid the news, if it's important one of my friends or family will tell me. Also, if something is going on but isn't actionable (I can't do anything about it) I try not to let it occupy much of my headspace.

I don't cope, I go out of my way to *make it better: I volunteer my free time to hand out food at any of those food shelter events locally, I walk trails with a trash bag and collect trash, I care for my elderly neighbors by visiting them a few times a month without warning and insist they find me a job to help them around their house and refuse payments (but suggest I accept a piece of candy as compensation), I use my turn signals 100 meters before I make my turns when driving, I call my old friends who live abroad just to remind them I care about them if they aren't feeling good and they can always talk to me. Etc, etc.

Everyone should just ignore the eternal dumpster fires around them and try to make better as much as they can within their local vicinity.

Don't have kids, save for your retirement.

I do communist things.

The world is getting better in a lot of ways but this is despite the US, the primary state agent of death and destruction. What we can do is organize together against that while also building local class consciousness and support structures so that as that violent apparatus turns more and more inwards, our neighbors will be (1) less horrible to one another and (2) safer overall.

With some ways of looking at things, the world as a whole is getting better, rather than worse.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190111-seven-reasons-why-the-world-is-improving

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/bill-melinda-gates-foundation-goalkeepers-report-poverty/671415/

I'm pretty sure long covid and climate chaos will put a stop to that soon enough but we'll see. For now, some stuff is getting worse and some stuff is getting better.

Is it getting worse? How do we measure the goodness or badness?

One measure of economic indicators suggests we are relatively stable.

I'm sure there are a variety of measures that are up and down.

So yeah, the USA isn't the world but if the place you live in is falling apart its understandable to shrink your worldview down to the that which affects you most or that you witness the most often.

1. Don't feel like you have to stare into the abyss all the time. This is just self harm. Its like habitually looking at entries on the old rotten.com website. Nothing good will come of it.

2. Do something, anything, that you can do alone. Plant some flowers, pick up trash in the neighborhood, read a manual about combat first aid or small engine repair, pick a country at random as far away from the USA as you can point to on a map and start learning about its history and culture.

3. Find somewhere to do something, anything, with other people. Internet book club, see if any local groups/orgs need help feeding the hungry or helping the unhoused, probably some groups not too far away that exist to support one minority group or another that could use some help in research or outreach.

Also, the world is a complicated place with lots of different actors. China is doing some pretty cool and good things. There's a lot of scary situations that probably will lead to positive change in Africa and South America right now.

Stoicism, move somewhere else, get active, make the small world around you better and stop reading national/world news.

Drugs, BDSM, and the smug satisfaction that I was always right.

Read the last paragraph on page 3. Things are not getting worse. Your perception of the world around you is cynical as a by product of our evolution and saturation of news/media.

I deliberately avoided having kids and I don't have any particular existential dread, so I'm just sort of sitting back and bemusedly watching it all play out. I just read the latest bit about one or another obscenely wealthy and/or powerful blatant psychopath doing or saying something gibberingly insane and I marvel yet again at the fact that the world is run by literal lunatics and nobody seems to even notice.

And when it stops being cynically amusing, I shut it off and go do something else.

The knowledge that it was always bad helps me. The only difference is that in generations past- we didn’t have such easy access to everyone on the internet screaming about all the different ways the world will end.

What do you mean "the world isn't getting better"? It definitely is. I mean, just look at, well, uhh... well uhhh... nevermind.

Your perspective is distorted, things are incredible and getting better by most metrics.

• The average person today lives better than kings of old.
• We have abundant water, food, and sanitation. In America, food is so subsidized that it is ridiculously cheap by historical standards.
• Your odds of dying to violence or disease have never been lower in all of human history.
• You have all human knowledge at your fingertips, and technology is expected to keep improving our lives in novel ways.
• You can visit any place on Earth in a matter of hours and have access to cheap exotic foreign goods.
• Civil rights are protected a lot more today than they were in many/most civilizations of the past.
• Entertainment is abundant and cheap, and takes forms that people of the past could only dream about.

While we certainly have our challenges to overcome, like climate change, wealth inequality, and social problems, let's not forget how good we have it.

I chose to leave after Trump got in office—& it took like two years of planning/saving. It’s had real ups & downs but overall the best major life decision I’ve made.

I look at the long arc of history and see that progress is not monotonic (always increasing or decreasing). We are experiencing setbacks to overcoming our challenges, as have those who came before us. But while we can read about years passing in a paragraph in a history book, we have to live and experience those years. And with all the challenges comes new technology and drive and awareness to solve problems. As unfortunate as it is trouble breeds innovation and commitment to change far better than comfort and easy times.

How do I cope? Poorly

Focus on the things you can control. My emotional state has significantly improved when I decided to do this.

I mostly just pretend that thing's can get better, if I just communism hard enough. Also sex and drugs.

Some very good replies here. I share some of your worries, but with some recent issues I have also gotten a lot of practice seeing the good in things. Consider these 2 angles:

First is the Louis CK routine that includes “Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.” I think it comes down to humans getting used to things that work well and taking them for granted. Compared against most people who have ever lived, we are genius magical wizards who live in luxury. Unfortunately some of our magical technologies let us see the bad shit all around the world (and close to us) that our brains haven’t evolved to deal with.

Second is how absurdly unlikely and unique the existence of our consciousness seems. We are a collection of atoms forged in inconceivably massive exploding stars billions of years ago, aware of its own existence. We are literally the universe experiencing itself.

I'm doing good. I'm doing things that I enjoy, and I strive to improve. I believe we'll sort most of our shit out, it will never be even close to perfect, because we're dumb, materialistic, belligerent apes by nature, but it will be enough.