I left the US over 10 years ago. Not for any political reasons, but because I just wanted to live abroad all my life. This has given me an interesting perspective.

I think the World is in a major transitional period. The next 5 years will be very rough for most regular Americans. Kind of like in 1939-40. It's going to be bad for a little while and then get better once a new world order is established.

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BobbyTables2 a day ago | parent | next [-]

What areas have you lived in? What did you find?

I’ve come to appreciate how few English speaking countries there actually are in the world.

Western Europe seems cute and glamorous but it feels like a lot of people not much above poverty are just trying to survive. (Hence small buildings and their characteristic way of life). Prices are high, taxes high, incomes low. (Sure, they might say they’re less capitalistic and are happier.)

Maybe I’ve also just gotten older but I feel a kind of enthusiasm prevalent in the 80s/90s has been lost.

We went from dreaming about space, computers, and technology to a world focused on social media, analytics, and artificial intelligence. It’s hard to get excited about the latter…

	▲	kilroy123 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
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dlivingston a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Can you say more about the transitional period (the why and how)?

I agree completely we are going through one.

	▲	kilroy123 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Humanity lives in endless cycles. I believe we're experiencing a collision between a few shorter cycles and longer cycles. All at the same time. 1. a sort of 80 year forth turning kind of cycle (WWII was the end of one of these): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Turning 2. a larger super cycle of anacyclosis in the West: https://anacyclosis.info/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacyclosis 3. a ~250 year cycle of empires rising and falling (US): https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6177860-the-fate-of-e... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52962238-principles-for-... Now I don't think any of these theories perfectly map to the world. It's not black and white; there are shades of gray. The real world just isn't like that. But it's clear to me there are these shorter and longer cycles and we're about to wrap up several of these and a perfect storm is forming.