One challenge I’d have for you / others who feel similar to you, is to try to get more concrete on measures like this, and then to show that they have been declining.
I’ve given some thought to this over the last few decades, and have yet to find ANY satisfying measures, let alone a good set. I reject the trap of “if it’s not objective and quantitative, it’s not important”—that’s one of the underlying attitudes causing the decline.
I definitely acknowledge that my memory of the last quarter of the previous century is fuzzy and selective, and beyond that is secondhand and not-well-supported. But I also don’t deny my own experience that the (tiny subset of humanity) people I am aware of as individuals have gotten much less hopeful and agentic over time. This may well be for reasons of media attention, but that doesn’t make it not real.
I’ve given some thought to this over the last few decades, and have yet to find ANY satisfying measures, let alone a good set. I reject the trap of “if it’s not objective and quantitative, it’s not important”—that’s one of the underlying attitudes causing the decline.
I definitely acknowledge that my memory of the last quarter of the previous century is fuzzy and selective, and beyond that is secondhand and not-well-supported. But I also don’t deny my own experience that the (tiny subset of humanity) people I am aware of as individuals have gotten much less hopeful and agentic over time. This may well be for reasons of media attention, but that doesn’t make it not real.