Have things been legitimately crazy the last ten years or so.

When I was a kid I don't remember anything of note happening. We used to get really excited about hurricanes because they were something big.

But I was thinking about how the last 10 years have been a rollercoaster ride.

- 2009: A massive transformer blew at my workplace. I returned to my desk and suddenly it was black. I thought for a moment I was dead and then the generators came on. Then we smelled smoke and got out of there.

- 2011: we had an earthquake. I will never forget the sound of the cracking traveling in a wave from one part of the building to another. Turned out to be an earthquake in DC.

-2012: hurricane Sandy. Though it wasn't that bad where I am, it disrupted a lot as i was heading to NYC just weeks later.

- 2013: the most insane days of my life... Boston Marathon bombing. Honestly I am still suffering some PTSD from that.

- 2015: this was the 3 -- 3 foot snow storms in a row winter. My home could not handle the weight of the snow. It caused mass damage in my development. This was also the year many days were negative temps. It got down to -20 many nights in my area.

- 2016: Trump gets elected... I actually support Trump but the hysteria that occurred at that time was just crazy and kind of still feels that way.

- 2017/8: North Korea looks like it is going to nuke us. That was really difficult.

- 2018... the home next to mine gets struck by lightening. I mean, that has NEVER happened... in my life time. Never mind the home next door. In general thunderstorms seem worse lately.

2020... well you know.

I was thinking lately about how tired of it all I am. How do we stop it. Is it the press? Well I got rid of tv but I feel like the world still intrudes. Stop the world I want to get off.

[Yaowen]

Hi Emily,

Wow. I can definitely relate to what you wrote from unfortunate personal experiences. Bad things often seem to come in waves with no relief. But I try to keep perspective if I can.

I am probably wrong about this since I am often wrong about many things, but I think the good things are always overwhelming the bad things.

So as to at least try to reduce the chances of being misunderstood, I hope I can explain what I mean.

Journalism is a business, an important one and there is no reason why it shouldn't be a profitable business.

But one aspect of being a business is the need to sell newspapers, magazines, tv and radio programs and so on.

So part of this involves reporting on things that are "relatively" rare. People would not pay to hear common things.

For example, imagine the following newscast:

Today most regions of the earth did not suffer massive earthquakes, hurricanes, floods or tornadoes.
Today most of the students on the earth [ a billion ? ] did not go to school and commit unbelievable mayhem.
Today tens of thousands of vehicles carrying millions of people did not crash.
Today billions of people did not go out and commit a violent felony crime [ a trillion people ? ]
Today the vast majority of people did not succumb to rabies or die in a burning building.

The point I am trying to make is that bad things make the news because they are "relatively" rare in comparison to good things.

It is as though goodness is not rare or even running head to head with badness. Goodness overwhelms badness daily. But that kind of things does not sell newspapers.

It could also be the case that we are hard-wired to see things from the perspective of "could be better, but isn't better."

Of course it is true that anyone and anything could be better but isn't better. It is true. But it is also true that there are other truths. For example, the very same people and things could be looked at from the point of view of "could be worse, but isn't worse."

My neighbor may have walked on some flowers in my yard but he didn't send tens of millions of people to be destroyed in the Holocaust.

I might be struggling with many, many problems and difficulties but I am not stuck in the middle of the Sahara Desert without transportation or water. I may be suffering a terrible illness [I am] but I am not on fire in a burning building.

I think it was a philosopher who once said: "Often it is not things which distress us as much it is how we view these things." Do we always view them from the point of view of could be better but are not better? Or do we also view them as could be worse but are not worse..

Two years ago I was struck by a long series of misfortunes and I was very upset. Looking at these things with perspective I now see that there were thousands and thousands of bad things that might have happened but did not.

A doctor once told me that his happiest patients who had been diagnosed with end stage cancer were those who were able to see that even in this misery, things could be worse. Pain medications might not be effective but were effective. Palliative care could be worse, but was not worse.

I do not mean that we should not be horrified by bad things and try to relieve suffering. What am I to say to that little girl who was marched into a Nazi death chamber while clutching her Teddy Bear in fear and terror?

Bad things should be opposed and struggled against and it would be inhuman to tell someone in agony that good overwhelms evil.

Of course, the fact that I believe in an afterlife probably gives me hope when there seems to be no earthly hope.

Maybe I am wrong. I have certainly omitted important facts and interpretations!

I myself have tried to dedicate my life to the relieving of suffering. When someone is hurting they have a right to scream and their scream ought to drown out philosophical thinking.

In my own life I try to avoid hurting anything. I walk so as not to accidentally step on and destroy the little six-legged creatures walking beneath my feet. And if I see a little spider stuck in a drain I try to bring it to safety. I try to have reverence for all life.

Perhaps I am wrong about this too.

Death and suffering seem to be the kinds of things that shouldn't exist. So it is always sad and often utterly heartbreaking when a man or creature is suffering.

These are my fallible and probably mistaken opinions. I hope you get many responses to your post from people wiser than me.

-- Yao Wen [sorry if my English is not good].

[TishaBuv]

Yes, it’s all really crazy things happening. But it feels for me like they have always been.

I can even reflect back to prior generations of my family and well, there’s the Holocaust, for example.

I think with social media we have a way to communicate it all more, so maybe that’s something.

[zapatoes]

Maybe it is partly the press worsening it, but it has been crazy the past 10 years. It would be fun to go off the grid and live in an isolated place in some remote country, no tv even, just occasionally movies on dvd.

[mote.of.soul]

Wow, that's some crazy things that have happened to you @Emily Fox Seaton. Some very traumatic things...

This will step on many toes including the OP's, but I'm certain that this great feeling, this great sense of world insecurity we have today, was very much set in motion by the reckless, autocratic, loose canon, you have in the most powerful office in the political world, the president of the US, Donald Trump. It was all foreseen and predicted. Bumbling and blustering around, scandal after scandal, hurling insults and dehumanizing people everywhere he went, the most powerful man in the world. The world watched and became very disillusioned, very uncertain - and the gun violence suddenly soared in the US, as migrant kids were being torn from their families and put in cages, one thing after the other - very disheartening - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. It effected [infected] the world. Negativity!

Trump's antics and influence the past four or five years, is a big cause of this sense that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, I have no doubt in my mind.

Before Trump, everything seemed the same as it always was. But now it's different. It's worse.

[Nammu]

We didn't start the fire. Billy Joel

1177BC the Bronze Age collapsed

12th century inquisition

1347AD the Black Plague wiped out 1/3 of the population

WW I

WWII and the holocaust

Lynching throughout the American south

Persecution off gays thought history

Originally Posted by zapatoes

Maybe it is partly the press worsening it, but it has been crazy the past 10 years. It would be fun to go off the grid and live in an isolated place in some remote country, no tv even, just occasionally movies on dvd.

I think it is the press too, in part. But it seems they are untouchable. I actually had the press create a terror for me once. They reported something factually untrue about my workplace. - we were all scrambling inside to find out if it was true. It wasn't. Then there was press everyplace in be building and we could see a group of like 500 people outside with more walking over from downtown. Then they pulled a fire alarm and we had to run out of the building. I suspect now, this was because too many people were converging on the building and they felt they had to do it for safety reasons. But we didn't know that. After it was all over and I was getting a ride home they stuck their microphones in my face wanting me to be on camera. We rudely pushed them away.

Even though I support trump I have to admit things have really ramped up since he came in. I do feel it is the "resisters" but I don't know if I can continue it much longer. I even go so far as to think this virus is somehow China's reaction to the "trade war" which they were losing.

I also forgot about the closing of the government which I work for. Another stressful thing that was unnecessary.

[mote.of.soul]

Originally Posted by Nammu

We didn't start the fire. Billy Joel

1177BC the Bronze Age collapsed

12th century inquisition

1347AD the Black Plague wiped out 1/3 of the population

WW I

WWII and the holocaust

Lynching throughout the American south

Persecution off gays thought history

Yes, and let's not forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki, atomic bombs and the nuclear arms race post WWII. Very uncool.

[winter4me]

I am now 67, as a kid and teenager I remember:
Assassinations: JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK, members of the Black Panthers
War: Vietnam (welcome to napalm, agent orange, massive demonstrations....death of friends & friends returned as heroin addicts & getting zilch from the govt.
Civil Rights: riots, murder of Freedom Riders, lynchings, ... Emmett Till...
Ok to drive drunk. So sad when someone got killed because of it. Litter everywhere. Blowing black nasal discharge after a day in the city.
remember two big hurricanes and a tornado (in Northeast)
Bay of Pigs, ..........................................
Just USA-----and that just the tip of the iceberg---Climate change is bringing more severe and changeable weather. Humans are acting as they always have for better and for worse. Historically we are actually in safer times re: violence in general.
Oh yeah, no credit cards for women, OK to redline and discriminate against races, and women. No rights (perhaps prison) for LGBTQ community...