Comment by wvenable

> Gen Z is looking like the most garbage generation of the last two centuries with more mental illness than any generation in history.

I'm not at all Gen Z (late Gen X), but you can't put all of that on them. They've had many formative years during a lot of the points you've listed.

> Can someone tell me everything is going to get better?

That's never guaranteed. You can only control what you take in, how you cognitively frame it, and how you react to it.

>Can someone tell me everything is going to get better?

Yes but only after it will get much worse.

I see this all around me here in the US, and feel the same way that you do. Ironically, some Americans see this as a US-centric problem, and look at places like Denmark as an example of a country that still has its shit together, but your own comment seems to confirm that we're in the midst of a global cultural malaise that could probably give the 1970s a run for their money.

We have a total lack of competent leadership across all institutions -- political, commercial and social -- increasing extremism and authoritarianism from every political faction, and cynical short-term thinking from every economic institution. Everything is drowning in mediocrity and pessimism, and society is increasingly dysfunctional in every aspect. Extremists keep proposing authoritarian political solutions, but I see their proposals only as even worse iterations of the problem. What can we do about it, apart from admitting defeat and going off-grid in the mountains?

> Gen Z is looking like the most garbage generation of the last two centuries

Have you ever met a millennial?

t. 1992 cusper

You are in Denmark? WOW!! From here in the US, my impression of Denmark is a small country of really smart people with gorgeous women having really good lives!!! Your post questions that impression ....

Here in the US, there are what seem to be related issues. Opinions about what is wrong and why differ. It can seem that we don't address the issues or what is wrong, for example, it can appear that the media believes that making clear the issues and faults are too deep for the audience of the media. For example, so far I've yet to see good engineering style graphs of even the basic measures from the economy, health, education, happiness, etc. In simple terms, the birth rate is so low we are going extinct -- some graphs over time might provide some insight. To avoid going extinct should be worth some graphs of related data?

Here is one guess: Some people want more government involvement, activity, services, ..., at the national level. Involved are money and power, money collected from taxes and/or borrowed and then spent and the people spending the money getting power. Then for the money the guess is that the spending is too inefficient, that is, too often wasted. For the power, it can stop what might be solutions. So, with the waste, we are throwing away our efforts, and with the power we are blocked from better approaches.

For this view, the US has some old images, from history, the movies, some parts of education, and even from some of recent history: So, the old images are from, say, the movie The Big Sky from the 1830s of 20 or so men and one Native Indian woman leaving Saint Louis on the Mississippi River (major US river from the north east going south and dumping into the Gulf of Mexico) and the Missouri River (from the northwest of the US close to the Pacific Ocean and flowing ~2000 miles to the Mississippi) to trade with the Blackfoot tribe to give them woven blankets, guns, tools and get beaver pelts.

The whole effort was lawless, that is, no government, laws, police, political power, regulations. So there was fighting, killing. No medical care, so there was suffering. There were lots of injuries from struggles with the river. It was all highly risky with lots of struggles and losses but in the end successful.

There were more such movies about the US, people on their own, risking everything, fighting, struggling, having failures, in the end being successful. There was Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers (had a bicycle shop), etc.

To the present, there were two guys at Stanford University in a project for indexing the contents of libraries. They thought of indexing the Web sites on the Internet and were offered ~$1 million for their work and Web site. They turned down the $1 million, started a company, and had success. It was all risky. It's now worth ~$1 trillion, called Google. Other successes, risky, one or a few founders, include Microsoft, Walmart, FedEx, Facebook, Amazon, Burger King, McDonald's. One guy, sole, solo founder, used some old Dell computers, an early version of Microsoft's Windows and Web software ASP.NET, built a romantic matchmaking service, grew it, ..., and sold out for ~$550 million.

Mostly these successes are examples of significant increases in economic productivity, that is, how much utility get from each hour of work. Personal computers? Killed off the typewriters with just astounding increases in productivity; same for email; Zoom, .... In cars, using digital electronics to get fuel mixture and spark timing a lot better resulted in the engines lasting much longer -- if looked carefully into what was going on with the old carburetors and breaker point ignitions and the huge ways they were wrong (unburned gasoline diluted the engine oil and, thus, wore out the main engine parts) can understand. Tires -- progress in the synthetic rubber chemistry made the tires last much longer, maybe 5 times as long.

The theme is, as in the movie, leave individuals with a minimum of taxes and government power and let them try and take the risks. The victories can generate massive increases in productivity, wealth, and a better life.

Heck, I like music, A. Vivaldi, J. Bach, ..., S. Barber. Used to be, had to go to live performances. Then we got audio tapes, vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, and the Internet. So, now just from a few keystrokes I can get terrific performances of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, Bach's Chaconne, ... Barber's Adagio for Strings.

Those are some of the ideas that have floated around. Money and power: The idea that just these two are the main causes of all of society's problems is tough to accept. But, for the problems in Denmark, maybe these two should get some attention.

It is usually from the wreckage that the next big things emerge.

Just how these things work.

Sorry, I don't think that helps at all. If anything, it comes across with a "You should skip the avocado toast" energy.

The vast majority of these things are not all that important to most people, not like prices of groceries, household goods, clothing, energy, childcare costs, transport costs..etc.

I don't care that cars have nicer features now, if buying a new car is most of my annual wages pre-tax. I don't care that I can fly to more interesting destinations from SF when I can't afford to go to urgent care without having to switch to rice and beans for a week. I do on the other hand care when my grocery bills double unless I spent multiple hours a week collecting coupons and driving around to find sales. I care when I have to wake up in the morning shivering because I can't afford to keep the heat at even close to a comfortable temperature.

>America was prosperous as the Bible said it would be.

The book of Job was written specifically to denounce the idea that morality means that you'll prosper.

I'm a little bit concerned about Jesus crashing the fishing industry by dumping product onto the market at prices that are too low for anybody else to compete with. It would be especially bad if it triggers some kind of broader trade war. It would be better if there was some way to quantify the risk involved.

As an American Millennial, all my life I've seen Christians who talk about love and charity on Sunday, and then work the rest of the week to lower taxes on the rich, shame women, and get as many guns into as many American hands as possible. Ultimately, they found their political apotheosis in Donald Trump, who seems to be the physical manifestation of the deadly sins. If he was created in a lab by Atheists to prove that Christians are hypocrites above all else, they could not have done a better job.

I'd suggest that if they want more Americans to live the values preached by Jesus, they should try starting with themselves. I don't know how many people they have turned into Atheists with this behavior, but I can say for sure they did for me, and I suspect they have alienated many others as well.

The number of wars and genocides that have resulted from arguing over whose god is the right one dwarfs all other ills.

Get that fixed and then maybe I’ll listen.

When and where did that really ever work? Evidence please. The bible says nothing about America. I assume that abolishing slavery was where we turned away from biblical principles.

Thank you GodGPT

> Over the decades, people turned away from God and those values to chase new ones:

Most people leaving the church today do so because of how hateful and toxic the modern US church has become over the recent decades. If you don't like Christians leaving the church for Marxism, you shouldn't have let Marxism be the only ideology loving thy neighbors while the church was too busy chasing the delusions of white supremacy and Christian Nationalism.