Is it a good world?
Nature, people, society. It’s not easy to evaluate the overall. There are so many factors.
Nature is generally beautiful, but, of course, it can be ferocious and terrible.
Most people try to be good and fine, and most of the time are kind of generally good and fine, but there is a distressing amount of psychopathology and sociopathology.
Society leaves much to be desired.
I’m afraid the macro-level evaluation has to be negative.
The System (the economy, governments, institutions) works well for some (upper classes), but not for many. It’s tolerable for the middle classes in the relatively affluent countries. It sucks for those below middle class and it sucks for the majority of people in Third World countries.
It’s too uncooperative even for those who cope OK. Advertising tries to get us to consume more than we need to, more than is good for our wallets or our spirits. Imagine if, when you went in to a dealership to buy a car, instead of a “salesperson” there was a helper person, someone who was there to try to help you make the optimum car purchase. That would be indicative of a good world.
The financial system tries to get us to take on debt so that it can make a profit from the interest on the debt. That’s nasty. And the trendline is not encouraging. The issue used to be saving, not debt. You can budget $300 a month for car payments having financed 80% of the purchase. Or you could, in your twenties, at first drive a hand-me-down from parents or a cheap used vehicle and start saving $300 a month until you could afford to buy a car. Pay cash and get a good deal. Buy the car and then keep saving $300 a month. Don’t pay interest, earn interest.
The financial industry has influenced the culture toward considering debt to be part of our way of life.
It’s bad.
“Frequently one partner has far more debt than the other.”
This is not indicative of a good world.
