Everything Is F*cked

The Paradox of Progress
We  live  in  an  interesting  time  in  that,  materially,  things  are  arguably  better
than  they  have  ever  been  before,  yet  we  all  seem  to  be  losing  our  minds
thinking the world is one giant toilet bowl about to be flushed. An irrational
sense  of  hopelessness  is  spreading  across  the  rich,  developed  world.  It’s  a
paradox of progress: the better things get, the more anxious and desperate we
all seem to feel.
9
In recent years, writers such as Steven Pinker and Hans Rosling have been
making  the  case  that  we’re  wrong  to  feel  so  pessimistic,  that  things  are,  in
fact,  the  best  they’ve  ever  been  and  likely  going  to  get  even  better.
10
 Both
men have filled long, heavy books with many charts and graphs that start at
one  corner  and  always  seem  somehow  to  end  up  in  the  opposite  corner.
11
Both men have explained, at length, the biases and incorrect assumptions we
all  carry  that  cause  us  to  feel  that  things  are  much  worse  than  they  are.
Progress,  they  argue,  has  continued,  uninterrupted,  throughout  modern
history.  People  are  more  educated  and  literate  than  ever  before.
12
 Violence
has  trended  down  for  decades,  possibly  centuries.
13
 Racism,  sexism,
discrimination,  and  violence  against  women  are  at  their  lowest  points  in
recorded  history.
14
 We  have  more  rights  than  ever  before.
15
 Half  the  planet
has  access  to  the  internet.
16
 Extreme  poverty  is  at  an  all-time  low
worldwide.
17
 Wars  are  smaller  and  less  frequent  than  at  any  other  time  in
recorded  history.
18
 Children  are  dying  less,  and  people  are  living  longer.
19
There’s  more  wealth  than  ever  before.
20
 We’ve,  like,  cured  a  bunch  of
diseases and stuff.
21
And  they’re  right.  It’s  important  to  know  these  facts.  But  reading  these
books is also kind of like listening to your Uncle Larry prattle on about how
much  worse  things  were  when  he  was  your  age.  Even  though  he’s  right,  it
doesn’t necessarily make you feel any better about your problems.
Because, for all the good news being published today, here are some other
surprising statistics: in the United States, symptoms of depression and anxiety
are  on  an  eighty-year  upswing  among  young  people  and  a  twenty-year

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upswing  among  the  adult  population.
22
 Not  only  are  people  experiencing
depression in greater numbers, but they’re experiencing it at earlier ages, with
each generation.
23
Since 1985, men and women have reported lower levels of
life  satisfaction.
24
 Part  of  that  is  probably  because  stress  levels  have  risen
over the past thirty years.
25
Drug overdoses have recently hit an all-time high
as  the  opioid  crisis  has  wrecked  much  of  the  United  States  and  Canada.
26
Across the U.S. population, feelings of loneliness and social isolation are up.
Nearly half of all Americans now report feeling isolated, left out, or alone in
their lives.
27
Social trust is also not only down across the developed world but
plummeting,  meaning  fewer  people  than  ever  trust  their  government,  the
media,  or  one  another.
28
 In  the  1980s,  when  researchers  asked  survey