Unless you live under an actual rock, it’s hard to not notice people talking about how everything’s just getting worse. Surprise surprise, this is one of those rants about the future. I also apologize for anyone who’s not living in America, as this is going to be another Loud American rambling about the entire world from a thoroughly Western perspective. Though my conclusion’s more optimistic than ‘figure out when you’re going to die and buy a shitload of heroin around two years before that point.’

George Friedman is a renowned geopolitical analyst and occasionally accurate predictor of the future. His recent book The Storm Before the Calm posits that America follows two cycles, each different lengths. These cycles have highs and lows, but have never overlapped at a low point before—until the 2020s. He claims that during the nadir of these twin cycles, unrest and instability will reach their zenith, leading to a new golden age in the 2030s.

I’m grossly simplifying the claim and it’s been a hot minute since I’ve read the book. That unfortunately does lead some credence to his claim, as the book came out in 2020. It was written before COVID-19 became a global concern, before the first attack on the US Capitol by an organized force since the War of 1812, before the Cold War reignited with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A lot has happened. A lot of shit, man. Every goddamn year it seems like some new catastrophe springs up, while the previous one’s become, and do forgive me for using such a sanitized, overused term: the new normal.

So maybe Friedman’s right. Maybe he’s wrong. He’s not God, nor does he have the magic combination of information and insight to predict the future. He’s just better than most at it. But it doesn’t take advanced knowledge and an immersion in long-term geopolitics to see that things don’t look too good if we as a species don’t change our ways. The world’s getting hotter, the wealth’s getting more concentrated in few people, and everyone who still wants to play by the rules are finding it harder and harder to get by.

Twenty years ago isn’t 1980 anymore. It’s 2003. Kids born that year are just about old enough to drink. Time has passed. The so-called doomsayers of climate change, of fossil fuel overuse and of increasing polarization in the sociopolitical climate are being proven right. And us? The common clay of the people? We can’t do shit about it—or it sure feels that way.

We were raised to think we could change the world. I don’t hold that blind optimism against my parents. You want your children to have a better life than you did, and you’ll do what feels right to make that happen. But it’s okay to be mad at them for it. Acceptance doesn’t require forgiveness.

Maybe we can’t change the world. What we can do, in our own little pieces of it, is make it a little nicer. Picking up garbage on the side of the world doesn’t stop massive corporations from destroying entire swathes of the planet by dumping their waste. But that ditch sure looks a lot nicer without takeout containers and bottles of Bud in it, no? You may not be able to solve prejudice, but if your local city council suspiciously ignores the candidacy of a mayoral candidate who isn’t a white man, your efforts will have more impact working to right that wrong instead of trying to fix them all at once.

In the end, do what you can to make your part of the world a little bit nicer. Your town, your neighborhood, your friends and loved ones. If you have an opportunity to do more, take it. But if not, then that’s no failing on your part. Be informed enough to understand the world; not so much that you shoulder the grief and rage of an entire civilization on your shoulders. Misery without purpose isn’t meaning, it’s masochism.

Maybe Friedman’s right, and things will get better in a few years. Maybe they won’t, and we’re all doomed. It doesn’t mean that we can’t make life a little more bearable for ourselves.