There are plenty of people in the US post industrialization still believing in ghosts and sky man and unfortunately eugenics for that matter. But at least they weren't filled with microplastics and their food wasn't poison. They didn't die from the sun or peanuts. We can only sit here and say it's better now because we've robbed the global south thanks to industrialization. These exploited countries aren't gaining from all the innovation that they paid for.

I don't think that's a fact. It depends on your definition of better. Have their been technical advances and innovations that make life better? Sure, but at a cost to society, the health of the planet, and betrayal of the human condition.

Cottagers in the late 1700s had a great thing going until economics forced them into pauperism due to not being able to compete with big manufacturing plants. Maybe they didn't have many physical items, but they lived a simple life near family and local communities. Their needs were met. They didn't have cell phones or access to the worlds knowledge at their fingertips, but they didn't get those things in cramped cities either living to make some rich guy more money.

They said the same thing about the industrial revolution. How's that going?

If I'm trying to surround myself with successful people, and they are trying to surround themselves with successful people also, then we'll never hang out until I'm already successful.

Better advice: set boundaries with the people in your life, both toxic and non-toxic.

It's the pigeon lady before her family abandoned her in Central Park

I believe there was a guy in the mid to late 1800s who started some apocalyptic cult in upstate NY, that obviously didn't happen. I'm not sure the cult made it after the prediction didn't pan out.

I'd say the thought of groups living in end times is a common theme for all of human history. I mean, just in modern times alone there was the Jonestown cult, Heaven's Gate cult, the Branch Davidians.

I think this thought stems from arrogance; both exuded by the leader and embodied in the follower seeking greater meaning to their lives than just being the product of sex by their parents. Not that their is anything wrong with being merely the product of sex, but expecting or demanding more for yourself seems futile.