With all of the turmoil in the world do you think it is due to ...

[butterfly77]

Bush policies or are we in the last days and prohecy is being fulfilled?

[Warpy]

1. Self fulfilling prohecy, at most

because there is a small but highly organized and extremely well funded bunch of religious lunatics who think if the final days aren't upon us, they bloody well should be and they're going to do their level best to bring them about.

Stupid is a part of this group.

[SteppingRazor]

2. How about neither?

Comparitively, we don't really live in particularly tumultuous times. How is the early 21st century filled with turmoil when compared to the 1940s? The 1100s? You get the idea. It may seem bad when you're in the middle of it, but if you take a long view, things aren't as bad as they have been at many other points in world history.

[butterfly77]

3. Do you think that it is because these generations of americans..

have never had it bad or haven't read history?

[SteppingRazor]

4. Hmm... good question....

I think it's a fallacy to say that this generation has never had it bad. It plays into the notion -- probably as old as the human race itself -- that the current younger generation doesn't have it nearly as bad, and is much more lazy and complacent, than the generation that preceded it. As a member of both the X and Y generations (I'm right on the edge, and fall in one or the other, depending who you talk to) I find that claim repugnant and absurd on its face, and it irks me everytime I hear some baby boomer try to make that claim.

At the same time, I don't think anyone would be so obtuse as to claim the world is in far worse shape today than it was in, say, 550 or 600 AD, when civilization almost came to an end. Or how about in the Permian extinction, when all life on Earth almost died out?

I think we, being mortal beings with short lifespans, simply have a tendency to inflate the circumstances of our own existences. To endow our own periods with a deeper meaning than they may deserve, in an effort to give deeper meaning to our own lives. Otherwise, to quote a nihilist maxim, the meaning of life is death. And few people want to admit to such a bleak outlook.

[butterfly77]

5. It may seem that way to them because this is all they have known..

and they don't know what has occurred in the past and don't want to know.