The narrative of their lifetime is 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, Trump and deep polarization, COVID, another war, cost of living crisis, and a middle class existence increasingly out of reach.
The future: climate crisis, multi-polar world (China, Russia), more job instability, AI wrecking everything.
Western civilization peaked in the 90s, it's all downhill since then. The millennial generation has only known downhill.
But the 70's and 80's were marred with inflation, booms and bust cycles, Soviet-US rivalry dominating the headlines, and proxy wars in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Inner cities were grim and it isn't obvious if Americans could be described as optimistic then.
The 50's and 60's may have been a uniquely optimistic time for Americans (less so for Europeans after WWII). The country came out ahead, growing, rich and dominant. The 1960's was a unique decade seemingly of optimism and change. However there were certainly massive challenges, you can find enough evidence of terrible injustices being committed against minority groups standing up for themselves.
We work backwards and find tragedies in all of them.
Fast-forward again, we have incredible technology - we have maps, video conferencing and infinity encyclopedias in our pockets; people are getting bodypart transplants and plasma injections; we have consumer devices that monitor our health. None of us have fear of draft. There's no rational fear of rockets raining on us. We're incredibly lucky.
I can see the downhill feeling though. There's a deep pessimism.
There's reason to be pessimistic, mind you - but the pessimism is very monetizable, making it difficult to tell how much of it is being fed to us for profit.
The narrative of their lifetime is 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, Trump and deep polarization, COVID, another war, cost of living crisis, and a middle class existence increasingly out of reach.
The future: climate crisis, multi-polar world (China, Russia), more job instability, AI wrecking everything.
Western civilization peaked in the 90s, it's all downhill since then. The millennial generation has only known downhill.