Mundus Nunc Non Modo Discissus Est, Semper Discissus Est

    Another day, another conversation with someone who thinks we live in the worst possible time to be alive. 

   Which, as all who really know me know, is something I just cannot tolerate.

  This conversation was a tad different however, in that the person I was having the conversation with was quite a bit older than one of the usual suspects. This person was more my age, not some fresh-faced, inexperienced and undereducated mid-twenties snipe.

   It was a little disheartening to me because of that fact. I keep holding out for people of my age group to grasp the fact that every era, no matter how you want to define it (a millennium is probably too broad a range, but maybe fifty years? Twenty years? Ten years?) has had it's injustices, it's failures, it's righteousness, it's successes, it's own particular twist on what is moral or immoral, it's wealth or resources gap, it's detractors and it's supporters...I could go on, but I trust you get the gist.

   This person just flat out refused to accept anything I had to say when I began to counter his statements with what I thought were extremely polite and well-thought out rebuttals.  

   I mean, in light of the fact that I was interpreting what he was saying as the half-mad ravings of a disaffected lunatic.

   It's getting tiresome listening to people tell me (usually in a very aggressive manner) that we are living in the end times, that the world is going to hell in a hand basket (especially the good ol' U.S. of A), and it's really aggravating when I'm treated as a lessor person for not accepting that spiel without dissent.

   But dissent I must, for we live in a time when the history of the world, the entire history of the world, is literally available at almost everyone's fingertips, and for anyone with access to that knowledge to consider that being alive today is worse than it was ten years or twenty years or fifty years or even a millennium ago..well, that just belies a person's claim to be knowledgeable about facts and reveals their lack of perspective or experience.  

   For, as the title of this post clearly states, the world isn't just now falling apart, it's always been falling apart.