Where are we headed

07/02/23 @blitzerr77. It's easy for anyone who tries to stay informed to become discouraged, if all their input comes from our "if it bleeds, it leads" media culture, or even worse, from ideological echo chambers.

The people who help me to stay sane are the public intellectuals who are equally honest about what's going wrong and what's going right, and keep them balanced. Notable names I'd mention include Matt Yglesias at "Slow Boring", Yascha Mounk at "Persuasion Community" -- and anything else he writes -- Ben Wittes at "Lawfare", and the whole gang at the Bulwark. Two distinguished media outlets that have been getting it right for over a century are the Atlantic and the Christian Science Monitor, both available online.

I think that the future will contain more challenges at once than humans have ever addressed before, but as a species we're also more numerous and, on average, healthier, wealthier, and, if not wiser than ever before, at least better educated, better informed, and with better technology and communications. I'm looking forward to it, and I think that you can, too. All the best to you!

It certainly does seem like the developments of the last few years will have lasting effects on life going forward and the pace of change seems to have accelerated along with them. The proliferation of AI is really an interesting one because at some point, it's going to eliminate some jobs in a lot of different industries. My fear is that will intensify the already existed wage gap in a lot of places since the more menial and less highly skilled jobs tend to be the ones that get automated first.

There's a troubling emerging pattern in the US that's hard to really get a grasp of, because it's not exactly the same as the "sky is falling" disaster related media coverage scope, but something is going wrong at an underlying level.  The distribution of wealth is becoming more polarized, which is fine for people in the top half, but the bottom 1/4th or so aren't really ok now.  I think this, along with other factors, is driving a new type of instability and dissatisfaction.  The ongoing political divide (which I see as somewhat artificially maintained) is one part of that, along with crime issues, drug epidemics, and random shootings.  It seems to emerge as a mental health crisis, which could be interpreted as part of a broader health crisis, but that's really a broad output of these different inputs, I think.

Of course AI and wars are still a concern, and climate change; UFO's not so much.  For living outside the US now (I'm American and divide time between Honolulu and Bangkok at this point) the same general troubling feel isn't present.  Things seem a little uncertain, but basic economic and societal stability doesn't feel threatened in Thailand.  I don't think all this is "coming to a head," even though it feels like it is.  It could be part of a broader pattern of decline that could play out over a few more decades.   Different triggers could prompt rioting and more unique forms of protest over that time but there doesn't seem to be any possibility of fundamental change or resolution.  All these negative inputs will probably keep worsening, and half of everyone in the US will remain unaffected, beyond navigating around more and more homeless people and "no go" areas in cities, and feeling more tension over public shootings.

Let's speculate a little:  if something was to partly resolve these conditions, what would it be?  Or is it instead that developing countries are going to experience a mid-range development level stability that the US enjoyed at the end of the last decade, and now it's the US's turn to follow a bumpy path to a new form of stability?  Or will it all crash?  I think that the US can and will shift focus more on the common good eventually, turning leaders' attention from making the rich richer to supporting common interests, eg. limiting military spending, or partially fixing health care.  I doubt that will happen soon though, since it will be easy to ignore those problems for another 20 years or so, seeing them as concerns of the minority.  It seems optimistic enough to guess that the second half of the 21st century will relate to resolving problems that stacked up during the first half.

I generally feel optimistic about the US. However, one irony I see strongly. There were friends and family who thought I was nuts to leave my career in healthcare and move to São Paulo, Brazil. They pointed to the random violence and poverty.

I first came to São Paulo for three months last year to see how I would like it. I lived with my wife's parents and helped them out with day to day tasks. In that time from May through July there were over 13 mass shootings in the US.

Here in São Paulo two men pretended to help my mother in law and withdrew money and walked off. I went after one and grabbed him and he handed the money back to me. The police responded and handled the situation calmly.

Since moving back here in November, two teenagers were stabbed, one died, in the highschool in my neighborhood in California (city population of 150,000). The middle school in the same neighborhood had a group fight break out (what was reported in the news paper) of over 100 students. At the Unitarian church my sister goes to they run active shooter drills.

My point is, although I have experienced crime in this big beautiful city of São Paulo, I witness more empathy and more kindness from others. I see people who communicate more with one another. I see people from different socio economic classes communicating with one another. In Praça de Se, and downtown plaza known not to be the safest place in town, I witnessed a homeless man help a blind man to the entrance to the Metro.

I believe there is something going on in the US that is unique to the US, but I am not an expert. I wonder what the thoughts of others are on this forum.

One big problem with reducing the daily exchanges and perspectives of an entire large country down to a few clear trends is that people can tend to find what they expect or want to identify.  All the shootings are definitely pulling expectations and personal tension towards seeing the US as unsafe, and in the sense of people actually dying or being injured in those events of course it really is.  Statistically the risk may still not approach travel risks and such, but once you are living with fear as a significant part of your daily experience it would change everything.

I just moved back to the US after more than a decade abroad, but only spending 5 of the last 10 months there so far, in Honolulu, instead of Bangkok, where I actually am again now (it's complicated).  Public shootings aren't as far along there yet.  That was pretty obvious in my kids' schools still being quite open; anyone can walk off the street and hang out at one.  A security staff member has asked me about my reason to be there at my son's high school a couple of times, but telling her I was a parent was enough.  Once there's a school shooting anywhere in that state it's all going to change.  I think a student might have shot another student who was bullying him last year; I mean the other kind, a mass killing oriented event.

The feeling of living in Honolulu now is a little different than it was 15 years ago, when I went to grad school there.  Having a lot more homeless people around changes everything, just a little; it's hard to be as sure that you are safe, and incidents come up, and once in a long while serious negative outcomes.  People have died in random street crimes, it's just not the kind of common theme it would've long since been in many US cities.  I lived in Baltimore way back when and one person getting killed in a weekend wasn't unusual news.

It all seems like a societal trend that combines a lot of inputs, about economic disruption, mental health issues, gang crime, drug epidemics, a disturbing trend for public shootings to become more normal, even inputs as simple as small local area economic decline.

I am in the southeast USA, have been back for about a year and it’s just insane. Not only is the crime/violence bad in the southeast,the entire country seems to have eroded. Prices are higher across the board, violence has become a part of normal life to the point people are desensitized to it. The major cities, NYC, Philly Atlanta, Miami, LA, Chicago etc are cesspools of violence, open drug use and crime. America is a very different place than it was 15+ years ago.

I'm in western NC. Yes, the US is a mess! You're back just in time for the 2024 Pres race circus.

@Aroundwego The decline on the most obvious levels is most troubling, crime, drug use, shootings, homelessness, and such, but there are also other subtle aspects that are harder to place.  There's an odd attitude about people not expending effort on a broad range of things, becoming a lot more disconnected and sedentary.  Then it's odd that exercise becomes all the more important, when walking around outside or sweeping the floor are things to be completely avoided.  People seem more emotionally fragile, which really does make sense, when you go through the same kinds of online experiences with them, the constant aggressive behavior and polarized opinions on every topic, and waves of bad news about different subjects.

I'm an optimist, so I can't leave it as thinking that this is the eventual decline of the US.  Of course it is decline, of a sort, but the culture and typical life experience can become healthier again.  It seems we need to unpack who benefits by this range of neglect, and negativity, and to sort out which parts are not directly and intentionally caused, and which are organic outcomes of more neutral inputs.  It's problematic to stop any of these themes from worsening but I'm hopeful that improvement is possible.  I don't see the political divide as an uncaused, organic outcome; I think the owners of media companies indirectly benefit, while media outlets gain attention and revenue for being extremist and biased.  As a lower level of causes comes to light more of those can potentially change.

These contributions are very interesting to read for me. I am living in Portugal for 8 years now, but have lived in a number of countries for the past over 20 years before and I have never felt unsafe. Maybe it is because I lived a "normal" working life being at home most nights. Or maybe there are places that are and feel safe.

Going by the Internet all of Africa and South America are unsafe and to be avoided. But, nobody seems to delay or cancel a flight to the US because the country is considered unsafe. When I was in NYC in 1982 and staying in a YMCA on/near 42nd Street that seemed unsafe at night. Everywhere else in the US seemed (!) fine, also during the 1990s when visiting.

I never went back to the US after 2001 and I am not planning to do so. But listening to people that left the US to settle in Portugal, things might be quite messed up over there. Still, I believe that most will return back home after a while.

@Tsaheylu22   I'm near Western NC myself.  Nice to see another Carolinian on here.