I’ve noticed a trend among my friends, family, acquaintances, baristas, pharmacists, dentists, and basically anyone I come into contact with. When I ask them how it’s going—an innocent question that we’ve all learned to answer lightheartedly since the beginning of time—they now say some version of “The world is on fire and the country is falling apart but, ya know, fine.”
At first, I thought it was funny. A spin on the ol’ classic “Good, thanks.” I even took a few turns at the wheel myself with chestnuts like, “Well, there’s war, inflation, and too many tech bros, but I’m OK.”
But at some point it occurred to me that, no, this is annoying. I am actually “fine.”
I am actually “doing good, thanks.” Why do I—we—have to be so insistent that the world is falling apart? Why do we characterize everything as terrible? Why do we do the performance of misery?
I get it: The abortion ruling sucks, the war in Ukraine sucks, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California being absent from her job sucks, Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Green sucks. In fact, the GOP in general sucks. There’s a lot to feel crappy about. But, since the beginning of time, there has always been a lot to feel crappy about.
The bubonic plague was a total downer. The Khmer Rouge was a pile of poop, at best. Since the mid-twentieth century, we've all had to deal with the specter of nuclear war. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was a bogeyman, there was something called “junk bonds,” and everyone wore shoulder pads. That must have been rough! In the 1920s, Americans had to have fun despite alcohol being illegal! Beer was illegal. And yet, the 1920s roared!
Unlike our current moment, in previous generations, the geopolitical didn’t always invade the personal. And the perception of personal life could be maintained on an even keel. But now? Now, millennials are convinced that they’re broke. They’re convinced that they came into the workforce during the worst of economic times, and they constantly joke about having to live with their parents.
But guess what? They’re wrong. The statistics show an entirely different story. Millennials make good money—great money—the most money, in fact, of all the generations before them, even adjusted for inflation. But what do they do when they’re eating their avocado toast? They complain about things being awful.
Let’s look at crime. New York City is constantly held up as our most crime-ridden city. New Yorkers complain about riding the subway. They’re scared, they say. But again, the data tells a different story. New York City, as it turns out, isn’t even the most dangerous city in New York State. It doesn’t even rank in the top ten! In its own state.
Now I know, that when somebody asks how I’m doing, my answer is an earworm. It gets into their system. I don’t need to dole out the many ways the world is screwed up.
Here’s another one: It looks like young liberals are more miserable than young conservatives. But why? Matthew Yglesias suspects it has something to do with the fact that adult liberals are teaching the young’uns to catastrophize, to take everything to the nth degree, and then behave as if we’re already living in the nth degree. But we’re not. Because we’re fine.
But don’t worry, conservatives are doing their own part to catastrophize, and they’re doing it with the guns they’re overzealous about. Just in April, we saw the shooting of a Black teenager because he rang the wrong doorbell to pick up his siblings. A twenty-year-old was shot and killed for pulling into the wrong driveway. Two cheerleaders wearing their uniforms were shot—one of whom was critically injured—when one of them tried to get into the wrong car by mistake.
Why would these kids get shot? Because gun-loving folks are paranoid, catastrophizing the motives behind what are clearly innocent mistakes. And they’re reacting in the absolute worst way possible by deploying their guns. They let the false perception that people are dangerous guide their actions. Most people are not dangerous.
But if they had let perception meet reality—that a cheerleader getting into the wrong car isn’t an act of terror, obviously—we wouldn’t be here.
We know that the news is more negative today. We know that social media makes us feel worse. They’re exacerbating (or creating) this problem.
Perception and reality need to link up. Hell, they need to date and get married and have a bunch of reasonable children together. Because the gulf between them is making the surrounding rhetoric so depressing, paranoid, and catastrophic.
And now I know, from being a human myself, that when somebody asks how I’m doing, my answer is an earworm. It gets into their system. I don’t need to dole out the many ways the world is screwed up. I can offer up my actual lived experience. Because right now, I’m kinda fine. And isn’t that grand?