It's the best time to be alive—so why are we miserable?
The institutions that we've entrusted no longer work and will not solve our problems. The inevitable collapse will suck, but if we learn our mistakes the survivors might be able to rebuild smarter.
I originally wrote this for a friend’s substack on January 4th, a few days before the Eaton Fire destroyed my home and that of thousands of my neighbors. It rings more true now after having witnessed the local, national, and global failures since then.
By most metrics, we are living in the best era of human history.
And yet, everything feels terrible.
My social circle and I are among the most privileged middle class to have ever lived, yet we’re overwhelmingly pessimistic about the future. Interwoven with rising living standards, soaring salaries, and more social and technological conveniences than we could have imagined, we have also witnessed wars, pandemics, government ineptitude, and crisis after crisis. We have more than any generation before us, yet so much still feels out of reach. For many, the autopilot of work and consumption has become a welcome distraction from the looming uncertainty of the future.
Maybe we’re just overreacting. Surely, the dread is fueled by an overabundance of inflammatory news coverage. Maybe we’re just caught in a temporary populist moment, a global political fluke. The environment is crashing? Well, that’s just an excuse to travel more before it gets worse. Maybe we’re not exercising enough, or we’re consuming too much Instagram. It’s our fault that we’re anxious, not the world’s. And besides, we should stop complaining because our problems aren’t that bad, right?
But we can’t stop. And we don’t.
The dread is unavoidable for every generation younger than Gen Z. Those who feel secure in one area of life are terrified in others. Some have stable jobs but have never been in a serious relationship. Some have loving families but struggle with health issues that evade the very healthcare system we’re constantly told is the “best in the world.” Some have jobs, health, and love but know it’s all for naught because they believe the planet will collapse before they do. Most work jobs they despise and escape into digital avatars living better lives than they ever will.
Things are broken and they have been for longer than we realize. All available system indicators are lagging, and we’re coasting on the financial, intellectual, and social capital of the few short generations that preceded us. It feels like things are fine, but that’s only because the gas gauge hasn’t hit empty yet. The problem? We’re still speeding away from the gas station. Every civilization before us probably thought the same, right before their decline. They became so accustomed to prosperity that they forgot the struggles that made it possible.
Civilizations always fall, we’re no exception
The optimists are correct about one thing: we are not special.
Every civilization has followed a predictable cycle of growth, prosperity, complacency, and decline. Things start well. Social organization, cooperation, and culture bring about an era of expansion. Trade and knowledge flourish. Premature death, disease, famine, and war retreat into history as society advances. But as progress compounds, we begin to forget the dangers we once overcame. We grow confident that we can solve any challenge. The future seems permanently bright.
Then, the growth stops.
A challenge, or a cascade of them, proves insurmountable. Societies collapse for many reasons: war, cultural stagnation, environmental destruction, disease, and economic instability. Sometimes, it’s one catastrophe. More often, it’s all of them, feeding into each other in an unstoppable downward spiral.
After collapse, new societies rise. They may even occupy the same land, composed of the same people. But one thing remains clear: the old civilization has ended.
What’s the tipping point? It’s hard to say. But one thing seems certain: the loss of institutional legitimacy accelerates the collapse.
Institutions promise solutions, but their greatest flaw is the false belief that every problem can be managed. As societies grow, so do their institutions; they expand, consume, and govern more. Each victory builds faith in these systems until they are seen as infallible. Then, the cracks form. The complexity of problems outpaces the institutions’ ability to solve them. The weight of managing an increasingly fragile system becomes too much. The facade crumbles.
And by the time we notice, it’s already too late.
The systems we built are now destroying us
No political or economic system is immune to collapse.
Capitalism, socialism, feudalism, and despotism have all suffered from the same blind faith in progress. Institutions, whether governmental, corporate, or religious, follow the same trajectory. The thread connecting them all? A misplaced, misjudged, or ill-timed trust in systems that are far less stable than we assume.
As the topmost institution in most civilizations, the government takes the ultimate blame for societal decline. Governments create the rules that shape society, driving incentives that influence everything from economic policy to social order. But while their reach is global, their motivations are narrow: maintain the status quo for a select few. They don’t need to guide civilization effectively to hold power, so many don’t.
The main feedback loop (elections) is slow, flawed, and manipulated by in-group biases. Any form of direct political engagement requires more time than most people are willing (or able) to give. And so, we leave decision-making to a ruling class whose primary goal is staying in power, even if it hastens our collapse.
Meanwhile, capitalism promises self-correction. As a libertarian, I once believed that free markets would regulate themselves, preventing companies from running amok. But history has proven otherwise. Any honest observer, even a libertarian, can see that markets are as extractive as governments. The very mechanisms meant to regulate the economy - stock prices, competition, public opinion - are easily manipulated to benefit the powerful.
Corporations don’t care about long-term sustainability. They will undercut, overbuild, extract, and pollute without hesitation. The consequences? Someone else’s problem.
At least they give us jobs.
Or so we were told. My generation was promised the American Dream, wherein a house, vacations, financial security were all achievable through hard work. That dream is dead. Housing is unaffordable. Food is either overpriced or toxic. Healthcare is a deferred medical bill. And ambition has been replaced with distraction.
Our collapse is close
The future does not look bright.
Optimism is vanishing at record speed. The world is broken, and fixing it feels impossible not because the problems are unsolvable, but because history has shown that societies rarely reverse their decline. The powerful will not relinquish control for the greater good.
Will politicians implement a real rules-based order?
Will corporations stop extracting and polluting?
Will people suddenly regain faith in institutions?
Will we find values that work for both now and the future?
No. Because our systems are failing.
And we are failing with them.
The crushing weight of the world isn’t the result of some shadowy deep state. It’s the organic, inevitable evolution of complex societies. Systems, once stable, have gone awry. Change is impossible not because we lack solutions, but because thousands of years of institutional momentum have locked us into this trajectory.
We are quick to recognize systems in their tangible forms like a circuit board, a factory line, a household plumbing system. But we struggle to recognize the intricate, interconnected systems that govern our daily lives. Politics, economics, social structures all have their own feedback loops, actors, and metrics.
And all of them are failing.
It’s too late to change course. But at the very least, we should understand how we got here.