Times are certainly tough at different points in history, but they are extremely mentally and emotionally taxing right now and we keep hitting new peaks. We continue to accelerate the destruction of the earth and yet nothing is being done about it. When the everyday person is obsessed with EV cars instead of composting and planting native plants in their yard instead of wastelands of homogeneous lawns and committing genocide against insects and other animals in their yard, it becomes extremely demoralizing.
People don't do anything useful about anything now, and I think that is the most depressing of all. There's rabble about stuff on social media, politicians don't do anything but move the U.S. more towards and oligarchy, and corporations keep selling us stuff to consume, which consumers then lap up.
The Internet is the single most divisive technology ever created by humanity, and it does nothing but distance us from one another. There's never been greater threats to humanity than the Internet and its woes and the already arrived environmental and climate crisis.
That's not even considering the deep financial stress people are under these days. Even just 30 years ago, my parents bought a lot and built a house for $100,000. That barely covers tuition at most universities, and a similar sized house now costs around $1,000,000 just to buy. Just as recent as the late 90s and early 2000s, gas was under a dollar. We're sitting at $4.50 now. People can't afford the number of kids people used to have and must delay even having one or two kids well into their 30s, often due to financial constraints. Minimum wage has barely doubled since my teenage years, and yet everything is exponentially more expensive. Then there is the onslaught of several other socioeconomic factors.
People, aside from the wealthy, are getting slammed from literally every direction, and there is no concerted effort to improve any of it. It's not hard to understand why people are depressed more than ever.
