Not a troll post. Why is everything shit?
capitalism. solipsism. authoritarianism. windows.
The last one is easily fixed.
The first three take some work.
Because we’re monkeys that just came down from the trees. TBH that we’ve gotten this far relatively intact is remarkable.
On the offchance you don’t mean in a current events way, but more cosmically: To all appearances the universe wasn’t built for us, we just kind of showed up in a grimy corner of it. Life has the brutal kind of existence that usually goes along with being stowaways or pests.
😭😭😭😭
Ugh, sorry. In lieu of a hug, I’ll point out that we haven’t failed yet, and there’s good and bad sides to being here by accident. The existentialists were straight up excited about it, actually - you get to define goals for yourself, amazing! I take a more neutral stance. It’s like being rats in Notre Dam or on an early explorer’s boat. It’s tough but boy do we get to see some cool things. And, although there’s no guarantee there’s a happy ending, at the same time anything is possible; no god to look after us also means no god to smite us for our ambition.
Correct. I mean, lifespans are 125 years max. So we had to transfer knowledge down, and amazingly…we’ve conquered a whole planet. But sadly we can’t unite and that will be the undoing of the human race. Until we can put petty deferences aside, and pool resources as a species? We will never be more than a chapter in Eath’s history.
I feel like the transfer of knowledge gets overlooked way too much when people look at big history. Every time a new way of storing or transferring knowledge arrives technological advancement start going up by like an order of magnitude.
The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture takes several millennia to fully complete, but in the ice age at least the northern hemisphere had a rapid climate disruption every 1500 or so. Any progress would have been disrupted and then quickly forgotten. Once the interglacial begins the transition completes for the first time in human history (although I do wonder why nobody started farming in Australia). That leads to sedentarism, higher population density and hierarchy, which leads to the development of cities. In cities, like-minded people can meet and share, and it was only a couple of millennia more before you start seeing pottery, metalworking, writing and wheels. With the development of writing knowledge of abstract systems begins accumulating, although you see variation in literacy and library sizes based on how cheap and convenient writing materials were.
They exploded with the arrival of paper. At some point in that period advances start happening within generations, so the effect is harder to track. With the arrival of specifically wood pulp paper in the Victorian era everyone had access to education, and now, with the internet, we can have nerdy conversations like this one every day.
But sadly we can’t unite and that will be the undoing of the human race.
What makes you say that? I feel like we’re 95% of the way to united, relative to where we were 50,000 years ago. Consider that Kim Jung Un has sometimes worn a suit that would be just normal seen on Mark Rutta - that’s pretty significant cultural overlap, even with the stark ideology gap. We have some big challenges coming up, so it’s not guaranteed, but I don’t have any reason that we’re doomed to failure either.
Private equity buying companies and sucking them dry to make a profit is also big factor
oh society has lots of problems.
trying to fit it into one comment can be difficult but i can list some issues that i perceive:
- there’s no long-term plan. none at all. nobody has an idea what humanity will look like in 100+ years. that leads to considerable uncertainty in the youth, which definitely makes their mental health difficulties more severe.
because you’re old
Whats not old?
when do you remember things being good?
Probably when I was a kid, lol. But really, I would say any time before covid was a lot better. Even just like, 1.5 ago was still better. I feel like everything is just getting exponentially worse.
Depends on how you look at things.
Compare your life to the life of people 1 century ago, 2 centuries ago, etc…
News, social networks focus on shit. Lot of things improve. But news only focus on what is going wrong.
Lot if things are shit, but lot other things aren’t.
This. How many of your childhood friends survived to adulthood? How many famines have you lived through? Have you ever received modern medicine? Do you know anyone who’s shit themselves to death (a surprisingly common cause of death back when)? Are you literate?
I’ll not try and tell anyone things are peachy, because they’re clearly not. But a lot of things are so so so much better than they used to be. Most of us lead lives that would make Pharos of old green with envy.
We’re in the late stage of capitalism.
I think it’s short-termism combined with capitalism.
Capitalism tells people that success equals money. Short-termism tells people to focus on how much they can grab right now.
Look at the actions of C-suite level people. They do what they can to increase profits this year to get a massive bonus this year. If that means laying off half the company that’s ok because they’re incentivised to maximise profits now. So they do. The next year they’re off to a different job at a different company and they will get that job because “When I was CEO of Mongoose & Felcher I increased YOY global profit by 270%”. Their focus is never on the actual well-being of the company or its employees or on the social or environmental impact of the company because their bonus isn’t dependent on those things.
Politicians are much the same. If they’re not in power they want to get into power. If they are in power they have to act as quickly as possible to achieve their aims because they might only be in power for a single term.
One of my favourite ‘business’ ideas came from Gus Levy who was CEO of Goldman Sachs back in the 1970s. He came up with the term ‘long-term greedy.’ The idea was that you dealt fairly and honestly with your clients, never gouged them, kept your word, and did a good job. Sure, you might make slightly less profit from those clients this year but you would keep them as clients next year too.
No-one seems to be long-term greedy anymore.
The root source of things being shit nowadays is capitalism. Capitalism only nows one direction: upwards. Each quarter profits have to exceed the preceding quarter. The result is that products and services get worse over time, because in order to make more profit than the last time, corners have to be cut.
The new iteration of a product gets more flimsy, because they use cheaper materials, or they alter the design to save on material. Or products have a built-in life span (e.g. batteries that cannot be replaced or limited software updates or intentional software incompatibility).
When it comes to digital services, features will be stripped over time or the customer has to pay additionally for a feature that was once included. Or they arbitrarily limit the number of devices one can use the service on. They can do it, because most customers are not prone to change a specific online service, beacuse it either is a hassle or existing alternatives do not offer the same content diversity.
The same goes for operating systems, albeit they are rather not stripped of functions, but new bullshit features that no one asked for get implemented (best example is the implementation of AI features into the operating system (Windows - Copilot or Apple - Apple intelligence) that - in case of both - forces users to even replace their hardware). Tech companies know they can pull shit like this off, because (and this mostly applies to professional users) some users need to run specific niche software on their computers that is programmed for a specific OS exclusively.
The whole AI craze is just to make money (selling data) off of the user and also forcing them to buy the new thing, because tech companies took care of deliberately designing everything in a way that it is incompatible with older hardware.One major problem with this is that, although capitalism is the cause of it all, we all grew up with capitalism and are stuck inside the system up to a point where we profit off of it in certain parts. Having the new shiny thing availiable at any time is the nice part of it. Having to work more for less compensation (because company already builds everything cheaper and now comes for your wages/ salary in order to make profit) is the disadvantage of it. There theoretically is a solution for it: Socialism. Theoretically, because it doesn’t account for the desire of people to gain power over stuff and/ or other people.
But what can I do? I’m so tired
First of all - don’t overthink it! There are so many factors that play into this whole ordeal that a single person can’t change. As other posters have said: Not all is bad. Always keep in mind that on the internet, these things seem to be much more dire than they are.
When it comes to the things I described in my post: Try to buy consciously. Assess if you really need the thing (example: If you alredy own a laptop and a smartphone - is there really a need for a tablet?). Try to buy things that last longer. Most products come in basically three price ranges: cheap, mid-price, overly priced. On most occasions it is sufficient to go with the mid-price range. This mostly offers the best price-performance-ratio. If you buy cheap you buy twice in the end (first for the cheap thing, then for the more expensive version that you should have bought to begin with). If you buy overly priced you probably are wasting money for a thing that could have been cheaper in the first place.
If you are not satisfied with digital services, then leave them for an alternative. For instance, I was unsatisfied with my bank. They tried to pull something off, thinking I will put up with it. I did some research and now I have changed my bank, even with better conditions than before. It was easier than I thought. The same goes with email providers or phone providers. If they enshittify their service for you, go to their competitor. Nowadays you can port your phone number with you. Companies are accounting for their users’ laziness. That is why they can pull shit off in the first place.
When it comes to computers and operating systems, there is something you can do already: Go through all your settings and switch off all things you don’t need (e.g. telemetry data, uninstall programs you do not use). If you don’t know what a specific setting does or if it is needed, just look it up on the internet. Chances are great that at least one other person on this planet has the same question (that has been answered hopefully).
If your computer reaches its end-of-life, because the upcoming operating system is not compatible any longer, try to look out for an alternative. With a Linux-bases operating system, your old hardware might get some extra years to come. I think these have come a long way. 25 years ago I experienced myself with Linux, and it was awful! That might have changed now, and especially here on Lemmy there are many resources and users happy to help.Try to use alternative programs, perferrably free- and open source. Or, alternatively, look out for programs that you can buy once and that do not operate as a subscription service. If you own a program legally (by having it bought once), it can’t be taken away from you. When you subscribe to a program, companies always can take features away or make you pay more for them. This also applies for media as well.
With these things taken into consideration, you will feel less powerless and a bit more in control of things. And it probably will save you money in the long run.
Because greed allows us to ignore the fact we aren’t accounting for the limits of this planet. We get to use greed to justify complete moral abandon, which in today’s world can be really damaging. A few people are getting rich atm by tearing the world apart, it won’t lead to good things.
But our system isn’t designed to communicate the good around you to you, it’s the opposite pretty much. The good is there it just doesn’t brag, or shout or mock. It’s quiet but it spreads.
We are losing the class war.
It apparently is human nature to select leaders who are susceptible to corruption and incentivized to propagate the corrupt systems. I believe we need a solution where we have full traceability and hold leaders accountable, I have never seen anything close to this in my lifetime. Perhaps it is because we have collectively left the wolves to guard the henhouse? Replace the wolves with dogs who are aligned with human best interests.
Either greed or hate, depends on the thing that is shit.
Same reason why Hip Hop sucked in 96: https://youtu.be/yKf40CLF9MU
I am of the personal opinion that life is a meat grinder, and we’re the meat. A small percentage of people are born or become lucky enough to turn the crank or load the grinder, but most of us will suffer, and that’s just the way it is because it has always been this way, for all of human history, and will presumably continue to be so. There is no why. There just is.
Greed and self interest.
