For school, I need to get 20 opinions on what the biggest problem in today's world is. So, what do you think it is?

When you answer, please also put your age (you don't have to if you don't want to, it's just that half of the people I ask need to be over 21).

Students.

Edit: Oh, yeah: nineteen.

Well, monotheism caught on big style, but nobody is worshipping the Aten. I mean, what the heck?



C'mon.. would it really be so hard to give a little Aten worship once in a while?
I am over 21.

At current, for me personally: liberals who won't admit they have nothing to whine about any more and just refuse to give up beating the dead horse that is the Bush administration.

If you want in terms of the whole world, I would say the concept of world community we're developing in which we act as though we're all one big family and buying a japanese car when you live in Detroit, “setting straight” another country who is making policy you don't like, trying to influence other copuntries to use a standard currency, etc. is something that's to be considered acceptable and normal despite the fact that all too often we don't understand the ways and lives of people who live in another part of our own country much less a completely different country. In short: people's priorities about who they need to support and what they're doing are a bit wacked out it seems.


I would give a silly answer, but that's just what comes to mind.

And I'm 20 for your record.

The Economy and practicing religion freely. Seriously?!? What's with us now? two hundred years ago nearly everyone went to church and no one complained about it or doubted God's existence. Our country was founded and formed by Christians, and now they want to remove us from society.


I'm 14 by the way.

Religious practices/protests promoting intolerance/ignorance and pedophilia are pretty high on my list of disdain.

18

LIZARD_B1TE
For school, I need to get 20 opinions on what the biggest problem in today's world is. So, what do you think it is?

When you answer, please also put your age (you don't have to if you don't want to, it's just that half of the people I ask need to be over 21).

The globalists/banksters. They're out to suck your blood.

This is what they are:



I'm 25

“I HOPE THE PRESIDENT FAILS”

For the record I am 58.

Walrus
two hundred years ago nearly everyone went to church and no one complained about it or doubted God's existence.

Gosh, you don't suppose that's because people who did got their heads cut off, do you?

*sees tick picture posted by kyopol*

AHHHHHHHHHH!! eeewww, that creeps me out so much….

ewww.

eww…
…
..

…

*shivers*

okay, got that out of my system.

I'm 25 years old.

And I think one of the biggest problems in the world right now is:

1)So-called “Christian” Zealots who thinks that their country was founded by Christians only, while conveniently ignoring the fact that the first founding fathers who was clearly agnostic, not Christan. in fact Jefferson himself even wrote about how much disdain he had for some so-called “Christians” who used their religion to get their way. He believed in an supreme being, but that was not definitely the same as believing in the Christan god.
How is this an problem? well, for one thing they keep on claiming this was founded as an Christan country, and so on forth… so clearly they want State and church to stroll hand in hand. When clearly it's not working, and has been proved time and time over to be the WORST IDEA EVER.
They expect the government to bow down to their every religious whims, just because they're christian. Vote for prop hate, show Gays that they'll be an second-class citizen forever! ban abortion, even for the cases of rape/incest! hate on every single Muslims out there for what the few Muslim nutcases did, but conveniently look the other way when one of their own Christan zealots bombs an abortion clinic, killing 5 doctors, mothers, teenagers, etc.
but that goes against what America was all about– as an safe harbor for all people who want to believe in whatever they want, do whatever they want (providing that it doesn't hurt anybody else), freedom of speech.
And… big surprise, There's more than just Christians living in America. We got Agnostics, Atheists, Jewish people, Muslims (the non-terrorist kind, imagine that!), Buddhists, etc. and is it just me, but isn't the middle east showing us exactly why having one religion rule over the other is such a horrible idea?
religion then becomes more corrupted as the religious zealots fight and bomb their way to the top, so that they can make their religion #1.

2) The lack of responsibility.
Nobody wants to take responsibility for their actions anymore. It seems that whenever somebody fucks up big time, they just point the finger at others and go: “I didn't do it, he did!!”. and that's also the reason why some people are so sue-happy… “omg!! I spilled coffee on myself and ruined my 500 dollar suit! The coffee came from this shop, so I'm going to sue them for damages!”
The worse part? we see more of this stupidity as the younger generation grows up, having learned all those horrible habits of shrugging off responsibility from the older generation.

3)Political correctness overboard.
people–haven't anybody heard of Moderation at all?! Everything is always good with a very healthy dose of moderation, even political correction.
For instance… it's very good to remind people on occasion that it's not a good idea to say things like “injun!” to an Native American's face too often.
But one goes overboard if they bend over just to get some token Asians/blacks/minorities into your company just to fill a quota, regardless of whenever they're qualified or not. It doesn't matter if they don't how to work a fax machine, and is doing very poorly at the job… because hey, they're the token minority! even if it's not very productive.
And it goes beyond this… lately I see stupidity considering where people are soooo scared to offend anybody so they ban words, holidays, etc and such.
like the school who banned the Christmas pageants because half of the school population was Muslim. Even the Muslim parents were shocked by this… because they honestly had nothing against Christmas pageants, and they were afraid this would just make Christians hate them for it, as if they had anything to do with it.
or the California school who tried to ban the words “mom” and “dad” because they thought it would offend gays? despite the fact that a large chunk of the gay populations are parents, and therefore gets called “Mom” or “Dad” by their own children!

4) The few making the majority look bad.
taking the lack of responsibility and PC overboard thing a step further… we have the people who's all too ready to cry wolf at the slightest provocation. in this case, they cry out that they've been discriminated against, etc when nothing of the sort ever happened.
this of course makes it harder for people to recognize the truly genuine cases of discrimination, etc.
For example.. say you got some immature women in some company, right? They use their own looks to their own advantage, and if they don't get their way they sob over how they've been sexually harassed, etc. or if they feel that an man even looked at them wrong, they sue the men for sexual harassment. The whole company is aware of how those women operates, and learns to be careful around them.
A more respectable, innocent girl comes along and gets fondled by her own boss. She sues for sexual harassment… but thanks to those earlier women, she's not taken seriously at all.
It's the same thing with blacks, you know? You all know the public sepcatles a few of them are prone to–such as that one dude (forget his name)– where they cry racism and hate crime at every turn. So when you have some genuine, honest black person talking about how he got discriminated against, you can't help but tune it out.
That… shouldn't happen.

Are you sure you can ask an Internet forum about this for school? :S

It's hard for me to narrow down what I think is the biggest problem in the world today. My opinions are also based on my own personal experiences and the things I've been through so I don't know if it really is THE biggest problem in the world.

If I had to name something though it would be complacency. When one is complacent they no longer reflect upon themselves or about the world around them. They have become satisfied with the way things are and are often unaware of potential dangers or repercussions.

This does not necessarily have to be about something big. My students are, for example, complacent about their own work. It doesn't bother them that they don't capitalize proper nouns, can't understand simple words, or write a proper paragraph. Instead they are satisfied that they have handed something in (sometimes late even). Surely that alone should guarantee them a passing grade right?

Complacency erodes standards. It kills progress and destroys growth. How do you put high expectations on yourself when you are already satisfied with low expectations? How can you expect the best out of others if you yourself are content with giving only the bare minimum? How do you seek to improve yourself if you are already in a state of self-satisfaction?

People who are complacent do not see the need to change their life or the world. Sure they will complain but really, why change? Everything is just fine the way it is.

In another school I used to work in, a colleague once told me about a girl who did not show up for her co-op placement at Canadian Tires for three days. She was so used to skipping classes and seeing that as acceptable behaviour that she could not understand why she was fired from her placement. She showed up on the fourth day! Surely that was enough wasn't it?

Edit: Oh and I'm 25.

Intolerance and lack of understanding/compassion. Basically, people dwelling on superficial differences and being completely ignorant and unable to recognize other points of views, lifestyles, and beliefs are not only valid but to be respected and considered. (In short, people can't or refuse to put themselves in others' shoes.)

If we fixed that, a lot of the other problems in the world would be corrected.

I'm 26

I would think it would be the population not replacing itself.
Unless of course you are talking about the planet itself. Then I guess the biggest problem would be the population trying to replace itself.

But to generalize it, I agree, lack of compassion.

The gross disparity between “rich” and “poor”; in reference both to individuals, and to nations. I would elaborate, and can if you want. But I'm trying to stay off the soapbox.

Runners-up: global warming; the collapsing world economy; the fact that Pakistan's got nukes, and a very, very unstable government; reality television programs.

I'm 27.

can i say western civilization as a whole?

our lives of excess, complacency, apathy, self centeredness, exclusion, lethargy, materialism, consumerism, lack of responsibility, and idolization have eroded our very fabric of our own humanity and left us to be so self absorbed in our own worthless lives that even the poor man down the street is viewed as a burden on our own pockets and what more we can aquire to satiate our thirst for more. more material possessions. more wealth. more status. more fame. more power.

i look at trash like paris hilton and can wholly understand why a large portion of the world wants american society dead.

over 21

The fact that we've got a whole bunch of rich countries that continue to be rich and make fancy machines to make life SO much more convenient (thus making any other way of doing things very inconvenient and breeding generations of whiners who can't get things done the way they used to be, self included) – while a good half of the world is starving. STARVING! Half the world.

Also the religious zealots thing. Christianity here really is off its rocker – I don't even know what “most” Christians believe anymore. :(
I don't even get how religious people in general can be so closed-minded. I think that's what happens if you grow up a certain way. (I wasn't brought up in church, yet I still became a Christian, and I don't know why so many people, peers as well as elders, are so invested in superstitions. There's more to life, you know.) I realized recently that you find yourself in your 20s and still thinking back to a good amount of the things you were told as a child - and when you think about them at all, it's totally mind-boggling. But no, there's more to religion (and in some cases less) than that. We were probably told a lot of things just to shut us up.

Too bad because of our western life of convenience we're just too lazy to overcome our own personal mind-traps, even if this society does allow for lots of development of the mind. |D

I'm 22.

Politics. 16.

Walrus
Two hundred years ago nearly everyone went to church and no one complained about it or doubted God's existence. Our country was founded…

This is popular mythology. North America was settled by many European groups, among them the crazy Puritans people like to think were the first, but there were many others who contributed to the founding of the modern day U.S.A.
Foremost among them was the English crown, using it as a penal colony, among other things. A fact routinely forgotten.

And Two hundred years ago people weren't “Christian” in the same way they are today. Today it's more of a thing you positively identify as. Back then you just were one unless you said you weren't. You didn't even have to believe, it just went with your ethnic and national identity. And that's why deviant, strange Christian groups were so unwelcome- because they were the aberrations. You know, Mormons and things.
———————————–

The biggest problem in the world today is unchecked consumerism, short term thinking, and ignorance of history and culture beyond pop-culture and popular history (which are the same thing to most people).

-unchecked consumerism is bad because we're compelled to buy new versions of products constantly: new models of car, phones, computers, big screen TVs etc.
It's largely a fake economy because people can't really afford to keep doing that; not the ones buying it or the companies developing, producing, selling it, and discontinuing the old models. But because the capitalist western system is set up this way we have no choice.

That aspirational system is what had a major role in our current world wide recession. The other impact of it is environmental: production, transportation, use, and eventual disposal of consumer goods on the product cycle incurs a MASSIVE cost to the environment.

That's a result of short term thinking.

Ignorance of history means that people don't realise that it hasn't always been this way. Products used to be made to last (not used for a year and then replaced by the new version). Things were mostly produced locally so they didn't have to be transported around dthe world all the time. Things were made of longer lasting, better quality materials. That made them more expensive, but they cost less for the environment (crap like MDF and plastics in furniture), and they lasted longer so the expense isn't really such a bad thing.

And I'm just as much a mindless consumer as everyone else! :)
——–
I'm over 21

i would say it is national Sovereignty . from that flows all else : war, racism, hunger … as long as we as a species continue to insist on maintaining these artificial seperations we will never solve the problems that plague us .

it may sound insane now , but 500 years from now people will look back and ask why we had borders , or maybe 500 years from now, there will be no people to do the looking back



im 22

Everyone cares too much.
As if their opinion matters.
Nihilists for the win

EDIT: nah, I'm just kidding. I honestly think it's capitalism. It's an evil, evil beast. But I'm not complaining just to complain. I always have my ears open for communes. So far they're only in Ohio though.




20

Lack of foresight by most people, they dont' really think through the consequences enough. Or maybe, lack of willingness to act on their foresight.

If we're talking about what's wrong with people- especially in the “Western World”: I say “willful ignorance”. It's epidemic in the US, especially among the youth generation. Not only is it categorized by refusing to learn about the past, and how past events (even within their lifetimes) shape the current world; but a refusal to even acknowledge that a world exists at all outside their microcosm. “If it doesn't affect me, then it doesn't matter”.

When I started teaching (ages 18-21) I was shocked at how little my students knew (or cared) about domestic and global current events, or politics, or history. I took one class to a political illustration show (Stuff by Ralph Steadman, Sue Coe, etc.) , and the general consensus was “Eh, all that crap was about Clinton and Reagan. Why should I care about shit that happened when i was a kid?” Even the stuff that was made in the past couple years, they didn't know enough about to “get”.

Lack of anything resembling common sense and life experience amongst all levels of populace and leaders.

I'm 29.

Wow. Thanks to everyone who replied, you've helped me alot. This is quite a list. :)

Someone
Are you sure you can ask an Internet forum about this for school? :S

Only one way to find out.

I used to ask forums for my school projects… it's totally a legit way to do research. In University, it does make things complicated in terms of informed consent and ethics and such.

I think the biggest problem in the world today is rampant consumerism. We don't need that much stuff, it's destroying our environment and it makes us shallow, individualist people with no concept of responsibility or existential wellbeing.

I could go further into the argument, but I might be getting too Marxist on all y'all.

I'm 24 years old.

Dane Cook.

Atom Apple
Dane Cook.

that name…….my eyes…..they burn……he may be the antichrist!

json

Atom Apple
Dane Cook.

that name…….my eyes…..they burn……he may be the antichrist!

Oh, no. If that were true, near everybody would like him.

When I started teaching (ages 18-21) I was shocked at how little my students knew (or cared) about domestic and global current events, or politics, or history. I took one class to a political illustration show (Stuff by Ralph Steadman, Sue Coe, etc.) , and the general consensus was “Eh, all that crap was about Clinton and Reagan. Why should I care about shit that happened when i was a kid?” Even the stuff that was made in the past couple years, they didn't know enough about to “get”.

You never know though.

When I was at that age, I would care less about politics.

But once my awakening began (sort of around age 22), I realized that the rabbit hole goes far deeper than you can ever imagine.

All it takes is a certain life event. That spark. That trigger. To shock them into reality.

Perhaps… a TASER or an ASS-WHOOPING from a psycho cop would help? At least it would get them to realize that there is something wrong with society.

Some people wake up at a later stage in life.

Laziness. Laziness causes people to cut corners, stop caring, and never even TRY to do a good job with anything these days. Everyone is so concerned with taking shortcuts and the easy way out that all it's doing is hurting the way we live our lives.

20, by the way.