Edit: I know, through the eyes of an 8 year old. My city was a target of the U.S. nuclear missiles, so the I had the same fear. Saw nuclear exposions all the time in my dreams.
Do you think, that having been through Cold-war era conditioning and propaganda, that you're sort of sensitized to the "modern Russia tropes"? I ask because, well Russia seems like a shithole. A sort of noncompete on the global scale outside their natural resource stockpiles, but the US demagogues seem to like to point fingers there and I see it as more or less a propaganda tool. I suspect it's aimed at the generations that experienced the cold war, but I'm inducing hard.
The situation changed ever so slightly after 1985, culminating in dissolution of USSR. Good riddance!
And now the same forces - or new incarnation of the same forces - are working again to create that image of an absolute enemy - on both sides. It's just so easy.
The parent commenter relates that they were 8 years old and not a missile identification expert at that age; but stressed about by something that actually was a realistic fear.
I think it's basically laughable to suggest that millennials have experienced more stress than earlier generations. (Not that it matters, but I'm an older millennial myself.)
Now, it genuinely might be the case that millennials are subjectively more "stressed out" than their predecessors, but that's a different claim. It's a claim I don't have any trouble believing, but the cause is likely widespread access and attention to negative stressors (via social media, for example), not the existence of a greater number of them.
Do you really believe that? That Earth will be uninhabitable within the lifetime of a person alive today? Or their grandchildren? No climate scientists argue anything remotely close to that outcome.
For people in Africa threatened by heat and drought (which is already making places uninhabitable and causing migration!) and smaller islands, yes.
I think about them from a Policy stand point, I may recycle or by a sustainable product because I know about climate change, but I am not stressed over climate change
I am not stressed over wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, I oppose them from a policy stand point, I am sad and empathetic for the lives lost needlessly.
Even COVID, did not cause me any stress. I looked at the data, I isolated myself when appropriate, wore a mask when appropriate, and got vaccinated when appropriate I did not have an existential crisis of the mind where I was in fear that I was going to die, not at any point in the pandemic. Certainly not to the point where I have seen others be; out on the street screaming @ people that did not conform to societal or government demands or claiming those people are a "threat" to my life.
So I honestly have no frame of reference for people that have this "permanent mental load" where all of these things cause them soo much stress that is impacts their life.
Yes some conservatives have a greater reaction to 9/11, and seem to be more suspectable to external threats / rhetoric like Islamic terrorism, china, russia, etc.
However when it comes to things like the pandemic, or internal threats like domestic terrorism, or "Trump" like presidents, etc liberals seems to become just as unhinged and stressed as the most extreme conservative does over an Islamic Terror event...
If you are not seeing that likely because you are more closely aligned with one group over the other.
I am close to neither, as I am more an individualist and reject any type of collectivism from religion, to government structures, to golf clubs, if it is a group I want no part of it
>Yes some conservatives have a greater reaction to 9/11, and seem to be more suspectable to external threats / rhetoric like Islamic terrorism, china, russia, etc.
So which is it? :)
>If you are not seeing that likely because you are more closely aligned with one group over the other.
Well I'm in the UK which is a completely different world when it comes to politics. Even then I don't really identify with either of the main parties, I could pick issues that I align with from both sides.
>If you are not seeing that likely because you are more closely aligned with one group over the other.
Yet you reacted when I mentioned conservatives.
>I am close to neither, as I am more an individualist and reject any type of collectivism from religion, to government structures
That sounds fairly conservative to me.
Again it is applicable to both, you asserted it was only conservatives that have this trait, I contend it is both.
>>Well I'm in the UK
I am sorry ;)
>>Yet you reacted when I mentioned conservatives.
No I continued the dialog we are having by responding to your assertion and disagreeing where I felt your argumentation was flawed
>>That sounds fairly conservative to me.
Depends on how you define your politics, if you do so on a single axis Left/Right. Liberal / Conservative. Maybe.
I tend to look at politics more like the Political Compass[1] for which I am dead center between left and right, but I am extremely far down on the libertarian scale
Later in his early twenties my father was drafted. They also spent time doing bomb drills in elementary school because of the cold war, nuclear fallout was an actual worry.
>did I already mention that my and the later generations will face significantly less earnings than the generation of Boomers, and that income and wealth inequality also has risen constantly over the last decades?
I do worry about rising wealth inequality, but that is largely a factor of deficit spending and needing the fed to print money causing wealth transfer to the upper class. Unfortunately, most young people are all for the government spending even more money for various things which will only exacerbate the issue.
>(we sacrificed our youth for the at-risk population),
I dunno, the largest cohort of covid positive cases has always been the 20-30 age group by far.
The issue is not the amount of money that is spent; the issue is for what the money is spent. So many articles discussing the current bills in Congress simply stating the amounts of money that are allocated in aggregate with little if any discussion of the specific amounts within the bill. My skeptical mind thinks this is purposely done to mislead the public.
Only the dead have seen the end of war. As far as stress on a populace goes, anyone my age (50) or younger has had it pretty easy. My parents' generation had to deal with the possibility of getting drafted to fight in Vietnam. My grandparents' generation had to deal with the much higher possibility that they were going to have to fight in World War II. A 20 year old trying to get some sleep because in the morning he is going to have to storm the beaches of Normandy, that's some stress. What my generation dealt with, stressful sure, but not as much.
>> the financial crisis
There's always going to be another financial crisis. My grandparents grew up during the Great Depression. The 70s had stagflation. I first learned how to freak out about the stock market in the late 90s. There was the 2008 financial crisis, and after that there was the longest economic expansion in US history. Do people just wipe that part out of their memories? Out of all of it, I would pick anything but the Great Depression.
>> anyone not completely ignorant already sees the catastrophic effects of climate change
When I was young, it was overpopulation, then a coming ice age, then ozone and acid rain, then global warming. If you look at what the scientists are actually predicting, it is that we will be much better off at the end of the century but not as much better off as if we had taken more action now.
>> we have a new crisis looming in the form of Russia destabilizing Western governments by propaganda and cyberwars
When I was a young teen, I seriously believed I would die in a nuclear war before I was 18. Now people are freaking out about Russia trolling people on the internet.
>> did I already mention that my and the later generations will face significantly less earnings than the generation of Boomers
Boomers started in what, 1946? In 1950, one third of the households in the US didn't have indoor plumbing. And you're jealous of them.
>> home ownership is ever more inachievable
The home ownership rate is lower than it was in 2000, higher than it was in 1990, around the same as it was in 1980, and higher than it was in 1970. Rental affordability is a little lower than in the past, mortgage affordability much higher (due to low interest rates). People change jobs less than they used to and they move less than they used to. Not really seeing peak stress here.
Sure, Covid was stressful for some people. Not for me, it's been the least stressful year and a half of my life. I don't see the whole fundamentally broken part. If you had told me that there was going to be a global pandemic that pretty much shut down the US economy for a time, I would have thought it would have turned out worse than it did.
- for Americans, the numerous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and in other countries - not to mention 9/11 itself which hit right as many of my generation were in childhood and old enough to understand what is going on in the news
- the financial crisis 2008ff which will leave those who graduated around it with lifetime lower earnings (https://www.pymnts.com/economy/2020/millennials-facing-secon...)
- for the Europeans, the Euro crisis not soon after, same effect if not worse, given the devastation it caused in Southern Europe / PIIGS states
- for Europeans, dealing with the refugees that all the wars in Africa and Asia caused, culminating in the 2015ff migration crisis
- worldwide, anyone not completely ignorant already sees the catastrophic effects of climate change and the utter inaction of our politicians. We see that the world is figuratively speeding with 200 km/h against a rapidly upcoming brick wall, we see that instead of applying the brakes, the 1% of rich and elites instead maxes out the throttle, and we know that we are going to take the beginning of its effects in 30 years and our children face the full impact. Old people complain why the youngest are on strike on Fridays instead of going to school - well, they are aware that no amount of education can help them if the planet is nearing inhabitability!
- and on top of that, we have a new crisis looming in the form of Russia destabilizing Western governments by propaganda and cyberwars, and China taking parts right out of the NSDAP playbook and acting like a schoolyard bully in the Pacific region all the way to Australia.
- did I already mention that my and the later generations will face significantly less earnings than the generation of Boomers, and that income and wealth inequality also has risen constantly over the last decades?
- as a result, home ownership is ever more inachievable, in contrast to our parents we have to regularly be on the move and uproot ourselves (thus, losing our meatspace social network) every couple of years because the only way to achieve wage raises is to move companies
- and on top of all of what I mentioned, we have the aftermath of the Covid crisis that showed just how fundamentally broken our societies and economies are, how incompetent and reckless our politicians are, how utterly ignorant politics and society acted when it came to the needs of the young (we sacrificed our youth for the at-risk population, and got rewarded with anti-vaxxers and police smashing outdoor parties as a thank-you), that wrecked entire economies beyond belief and many of us lost people held dearly under sometimes egregious circumstances!
All of this is a permanent mental load, in some cases (especially when it comes to Covid) we are crossing into trauma territory. I'm seriously interested in the first psychological research dealing with stress influence of the last two decades.