I apologize for the long comment...

The article is interesting as a way to understand how people are feeling. I think there are deeper questions to examine.

We don't necessarily "feel" it or "see" it, but the world has been changing dramatically for the last 50 years, or so. We all know this.

The introduction of key technology has resulted in accelerated changes. If we could step back from the everyday, we would see ourselves on a slope of change that is almost vertical.

This slope of change affects everything in our lives--society, culture, psychology, environment, government, etc.--there is nothing that can escape these changes.

The question of "the world falling apart" is really a question of how dynamic the change in the world has been over the last 50 years and our collective reticence to adaptation.

Some sense that we need to "return to better times" as a coping mechanism. Except the concept of "better times" is a fallacy. Intellectually we know this.

It is true that many of us enjoy the benefits of the changes in our ability to communicate, to entertain ourselves, to do our jobs, to travel, and so on. But some are unfortunately not able to enjoy the benefits, while certainly receiving the negative impacts.

I believe that we are all better off if we first recognize and accept the changes, and then find ways to navigate these changes collectively--even if this requires letting go of concepts that have worked in the past and/or adapting those ways to the new realities. It requires a new state of mind to begin to accomplish this. Reach out to those that need help in adapting.

I made a decision to reframe "news" as the "fear network" so my brain had that context as I found out the news of the day. The article had an interesting perspective on information diets contributing to overall pessimism.

In the intro to the "Crack Up", there's a quote which I used a a mantra

The ability to hold two conflicting thoughts and yet continue to function is a test of intelligence - be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

You don't need to lie yourself that the world is not falling apart, but being truly optimistic instead of nihilistic at the face of that is a difficult test for any intelligent human being.

In the scale of the universe and history, most of what you do is not important, but it is very important that you do it (rambles on about Gita, Ecclesiastes and Plato ...).

I think there's a pretty simple explanation for this: It's hard to admit when we're not doing well. It's easy to say that the world is getting worse, that you're worried for the future, but to admit that you personally are having trouble is depressing and a little humiliating. I'm guilty of this -- even when times are really bad for me personally, I try to be optimistic and consider my current misery as a temporary misfortune. It helps to keep moving forwards.

It's called disaster capitalism, and it's intended. The tech overlords realized they could make money on things if they helped the world collapse. Why? Because they know they would be immune to the nightmare they would create. Plus they need another yacht for their yacht.

When the answer is not general but particular - "better" or "worse" can be about many things including entirely non-quantifiable and subjective ones like "moral virtue" - but when it's about economy, it's easy to see how the average of "personal" metrics matches stats: things were going on average very well in the last 10 years for majority of people, excluding a slight spike fuelled by free printed money in the era of covid payments, and a slight depression after when inflation compensated for those - otherwise they were almost uniformly well without much visible change.

But the amount of doom-and-gloom messaging skyrocketed in the period and most people tend to believe the news and think that things suck for everyone else, just they are doing ok personally. And something in the middle for people they can personally observe like their town or district.

Idk what's wrong about it. Fixing the messaging is unlikely because positive messages are not newsworthy and not clickable.

this is the first time I've seen someone actually use the practical version of Turkiye spelling - without weird non-English letters

why is it so hard for people to understand that naive should be spelled with 'i' because that one is part of English alphabet and keyboard, while the 2-dotted one isn't?