While most of the comments are correctly pointing out the late-stage capitalism as the main culprit, I must add something I didn't see mentioned: COVID-19 pandemic.

To me, a Zennial, it was the main once-in-a-generation disgrace event. I still clearly remember the days when I began reading about a "mysterious pneumonia-like disease noticed among the patients from an ophthalmologist in Wuhan", the first cases reported in South Korea, all the way to the outbreak in Italy, then World Health Organization finally declaring it a pandemic in March 11th 2020 (I can't forget this specific date, either).

COVID-19 left so many marks. Emotional, as millions died from it; biological, as many who survived lived or are still living with the "Long COVID-19 syndrome"; and also societal, as it fundamentally shaped society as we know it.

I feel like I was never the same after I first got COVID-19. It's as if my entire existence became split between "before 2020" and "after 2020".

Maybe, just maybe, one of the explanations would be that SARS-CoV-2 is known to affect more than the respiratory system, it can also affect the brain. SARS-CoV-2 or not, the pandemic truly messed up with our brains as a society, I became sort of traumatized by it and so were countless other people, especially from my generation, because we spend a significant part of our adulthood with a world struggling to fight a virus. It was also the first time we experienced the concept of quarantine/lockdown (I was already an introvert person who's accustomed with staying indoors, but the pandemic messed up with my graduation because I couldn't elaborate my thesis, let alone present it, until I ended up giving up of a bachelor degree).

So, if I were to guess, the disgraces that followed up to nowadays, including the late-stage capitalism, seem to be heavily tied to that pandemic six years ago (which I remember as if it were yesterday).

!asklemmy@lemmy.ml