Ok the contrary, I feel we are not aware enough. Recently the atomic bulletin of scientists put the doomsday clock to 100 seconds, even closer than the Cuban missile crisis. The reason they gave were tensions with Russia. That’s a huge threat, and it’s not getting much attention.
Really you would think today we shouldn’t have to be worried about wars with Russia or China, and having endless, escalating conflicts in the Middle East. Not to mention the environmental crisis.
Runaway oligarchism in another concern, ever since the 70’s income inequality has gotten significantly worse.
This is perhaps interesting as a meta-example, because I’m confident that I would trust in the institution behind the Doomsday Clock during the Cold War.
In today’s climate, I don’t. It becomes just another menacing signal where I don’t have the time, energy, or even ability, to untangle whatever web of alliances is motivating them to scare me.
The "Doomsday Clock" is a biased and meaningless political statement. There are no objective criteria for measuring our proximity to Armageddon. Relations with Russia are poor but we're nowhere near nuking each other.
(How to design a contract to evaluate the possibility that the world and thus the economy will be blown up is a bit of a puzzle. But it's totally doable.)
I’ve read that while inequality within countries increased, inequality between countries has decreased dramatically (and is arguably much more important as it records the huge reduction in poverty in Asia in the past 50 years).
And I’m not worried at all about war with China or Russia, or at least not more worried than I would have been in the 90’s. I don’t think the events of the past 20 years are evidence that war is more likely now than it was then.
The environmental crisis I think rises to the level of something that has gotten worse, but I think we also should at least consider that environmentalism in the 90’s was mostly about pollution, which basically doesn’t exist in the West anymore the way it did for most of the 20th century. So like, mission accomplished! (/s)
Now we’re dealing with climate change, which a lot of people in the 90’s thought was going to be a giant problem, but which wasn’t the subject of huge media panic the way it is now. That’s not to say the panic isn’t appropriate, just that if it is, the sense of peace that everyone is saying pervaded the 90’s was definitely unwarranted.
Really you would think today we shouldn’t have to be worried about wars with Russia or China, and having endless, escalating conflicts in the Middle East. Not to mention the environmental crisis.
Runaway oligarchism in another concern, ever since the 70’s income inequality has gotten significantly worse.