General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: All day long I have been fuming about this and I am glad that I waited to post it. I COULD BURN [View all]Silent3
(15,909 posts)...over time, it's mostly speculation, but I think what we do know favors the idea that horrible cruelty has always been with us, and that the levels don't generally change much over time.
The fact that we live on a planet with over 7 billion people, and a media system that can instantly, virally spread the most sensationalistic stories of the worst things some of those people do to one another around the globe, means that you can dine daily on a feast of horrors, but it still won't have a thing to do with indicating a trend driven by some new, particular underlying fault that can be dug up to explain it, and possible remedied if identified.
While I understand the emotional component of this kind of reaction, I can't help but be annoyed when someone's reaction to a terrible news story is, "What is the world coming to!?"... as if every bad story must be an exemplar of some assumed trend that the world is always and forever getting worse, descending from some idealized past into growing depravity.