Ok this is me having an anxiety riddled moment. Is the world getting smaller? Are our lives getting smaller and more constrained? Are possible futures being killed in the crib as we slowly lose little bits and pieces of peace of mind and personal freedom? I don't think I know a single person my age who associates any good feeling with airports. They are stress-inducers, bloated, over-dramatic security theater demonstrations of government ineptitude. Look at this thread! There's a guy trying to make a 'it's just common sense' argument that you shouldn't be allowed a thermos on a plane! /anxiety
All I can think of over the next 50 years are the bad things...the impacts of climate change, which we are just now going to feel, food and water becoming the next crisis, a potential for a rise in infectious diseases, what feels like an impending financial crisis, the burden of student debt over an entire generation of Americans, a continued loss of privacy and housing opportunities. I have this massive fear that this generation will be "the stagnant generation"... It feels like you can extend this sentiment so far beyond that of the baggage claim. The interpersonal, the intimate, none of it really feels tangible anymore. When you're constantly connected and constantly stimulated how can you feel.The meeting at the baggage claim is one of business, not emotion: get the bags, jostle for room, get out.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The baby boomers are finally dying off, a sizable number did not save for retirement, many of them are fat and unhealthy and are starting to realize, 50 years too damn late, that their generation's history is going to be written by their grandkids, and that history is not going to be... pleasant. Allowing nature to take its course, in ten years the boomers won't be the biggest voting block any more and their median age will be 65. The hate on the millennials, strictly IMO of course, is based on a massive fear of what they are going to do once they get into power. Say what you want about them, but there is a huge contingent of them that are pissed off that Grandma and Grandpa paved the earth, looted the treasury, sold the manufacturing base to foreigners to play stock market and are now whining and demanding Medicare and SSI. The biggest issues facing us when I was born were environmental damage, nuclear war, the Ozone Hole and the national debt hitting a HALF TRILLION dollars! The Japs are going to own everything! /snark. Measles and Smallpox have killed a combined 20 billion or so humans in our history, and both are GONE in my lifetime. The fish stocks off New England are rebounding, slowly but rebounding they are, the ozone hole is closing, The Clean Air and Clean Water acts were passed by Nixon of all people, and I doubt that we are ever going to see a full nuclear exchange in my lifetime. Problems and Challenges exist for every generation, and the stuff you plan for is rarely the battles you end up fighting. This is why I started playing D&D again. eight knuckleheads in a room playing make believe and trying to piss off the DM. Oh, and some nights we actually end up playing a bit too. This sort of connecting with people turns out to be the best part of my astronomy outreach as well. I never thought that I would enjoy that, but it is what drags me out to a park on a clear night to stand around like a dork and be excited about space.The interpersonal, the intimate, none of it really feels tangible anymore. When you're constantly connected and constantly stimulated how can you feel.