General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm struggling. [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)that those moving into the rift won't restore and build on? Anything?
Humanity's history has never been a straight ascent; it's constant battles with many steps back for all the advances. No to "grief" over imaginary forever losses and yes to understanding that it's always been this way, and that history's more dramatic moments call for commitment to our beliefs, not grief and abandonment.
I'm grimly positive that the current disruptions have, as they always do, loosened the binds of institutional stasis and created new opportunities to finally do things that needed to be done long ago.
In the 14th century, the literally unimaginable deaths of a third of the people of the western world were both devastating beyond anything we can comprehend and helped enable the incredible advances in humanity's knowledge and wellbeing that came after. Our world arose from that, and our little current disruptions are absolutely nothing that we can't rebuild better in amazingly little time because of the unprecedented materials we have to work with. In spite of our problems, humanity's never had so much potential for planetary wellbeing. Average lifespans are in the 70s and severe poverty far, far lower than it's ever been in human history, and that's while screwing up dealing with those changes really badly.
As for our supposedly lost "norms," they exist in the minds and principles of real people and our very real culture, not magic, mystical manuscripts that once destroyed are lost forever. More people might have voted instead of whining if they understood the way it always is, and I'd get to be more excited and less grimly determined right now. Now much more we can do now with just a bit more power! And in practical terms, bureaucrats of principle hid the mission statements and procedure manuals they inherited before turning their offices over to the incoming barbarian hoards
Betterment is humanity's trajectory, "that arc of justice," as just a little reading in big-picture history would prove. Even wars so far merely create longer down periods, giving way to bigger highs.
And since you're okay yourself, I'm guessing you'd do even better as one of the knowledgeably committed billions who help make that happen, instead of the billions who have always had to be dragged along kicking and whining by the rest.