What If -- Hear Me Out -- Society Is IMPROVING?

Lots of examples on that idea too.

Back in 2019, which is now five years ago but feels like about 12 years ago, Bill Gates was arguing that the world was broadly getting better. Now, you wouldn’t know it from going online in 2019, when Trump was in Year III, nationalism was on the rise in Europe, we had a USA Presidential election coming that everyone knew would be nasty, etc. Then 2020 came, COVID slapped us in the mouth, and ironically Gates himself took a tumble, getting divorced in large part, apparently, because of his Epstein ties. Now we’re in Year III of COVID, political polarization in the USA seems endemic, everyone is bitching about everything under the sun on Twitter, and it seems like the planet might burn up in five generations anyway. What’s the point? Society is crumbling, right?

This all got some grist for the proverbial mill over the weekend when some banned-online doctor went on Rogan and talked about mass formation psychosis:

Now, if you listen to the argument, it’s sound in the sense of yes, we were isolated as people, we stare at our phones too much, some of the main ways we connected over the last 100+ years have been eroding, and then COVID came along as a singular event we could focus on and retreat to our various poles (“DO NOT COMPLY,” etc.) So maybe we could be 1937 Germany in the USA here in a second. It’s definitely possible. The whole “I go to dinner and see families just putting their kids on devices, and then the parents are on devices too” thing is very real, so you do worry about connection, absolutely.

But in general, things are getting better around the world!

Look at this chart, for example: