Not to be a downer, but it’s not great so far.

the parallels to the 1920s are making me a little nervous, ngl. pandemic, rising fascism, aftermath of a newly imposed world order breaking down into open conflict, looming catastrophic economic crisis, etc etc. all in all, very but i’m sure things will straighten out by the 30s and all will be fine

The response (or lack thereof) to COVID in the west has served as a great example of what will happen with climate change on a shorter timeline. If there are some immediate one-off events that can’t be ignored (raging forest fires, flooding, hurricanes, etc) they will be responded to, but viewed as unavoidable. General reduced QoL will be accepted due to propaganda. No meaningful action will be taken by the powers that be, which will drive people to the political extremes. Due to the multi-billion dollar fascist propaganda complex and general background radiation of a century+ of the Red Scare, the majority of these people will become fascists.

Also the economy being increasingly built on obvious scams seems bad.

I don’t know what’s next, but lazy historians will view the last few years as the obvious precursors to it.

It’s been shit.

Hot take: The arc of history is bending in the right direction when you look at the world on the whole, but we are nearing the peak of the stress curve and it’s going to be very ugly when it snaps, particularly in the imperial core. There is a big conflict on the horizon between democracy and the forces of reaction which could erupt before the decade is out.

The biggest wildcard of course is what can and will be done about climate change. Climate change notwithstanding I think the future is bright for the global south as us influence collapses

My kid was born early in the 2020s which has kept the scales pretty tipped but overall not great if you discount that

The world gets worse every year and the only people who are happy are the ones who are happy to ignore it, or take joy in knowing they’re causing misery with their actions.

Climate change looms and despite China’s significant efforts to mitigate it, america and the west have decided to drive the entire planet off a cliff because it’s just so damn exceptional being crackers that we’d rather destroy the planet than let the brown people fix our mistakes.

Gloves are off, the illusion of reaching a more civilized time at the end of history is thrown in the trash, anything is possible.

This is the decade where cracks in American hegemony spring all the way through: societal failures in 2020, military/diplomatic failures in 2022, economic/technological failures in 2025.

But nobody seems to want to pop the balloon by bringing on the major conflict and upheaval. Everyone knows the guard rails aren’t there, and they’re stopping short.

Everything that seemed upbeat about information tech is ruined. Energy scarcity and the Great Simplification are rushing at us ever faster, and this is largely a good thing because it will save us from the technocrats and place a clear restrictive barrier to what capitalism thought it could achieve. A check on human ambitions and hubris will be one of the most defining moments in human history.

The time is ripe for a distributed entity that values equality, ecology, good design, and appropriate technology to position itself for a boom. The more you plant in spring, the less you starve in winter.

The Rotting 20s indeed

“twenty thousand years of this, seven more to go”

I hate it here.

But I hated every decade so what’s new.

Still not sure if my retirement plan of “die in my 40s in the 2030s during the water wars” is going to happen or not

The proof is in the pudding and we’ve only ate half of it, so I can’t exactly judge.

It’s interregnum times.