you know, i think i may have put things in perspective for myself, i'm not sure if i'm an optimist or a pessimist now, but i prefer to consider myself a realist, or maybe i'm an idealist. things are not worse now than they were before, unless you mean by pollution or destruction of the enviroment, which is pretty much inevitable in this day and age unless people were to have a complete revolution, a reverse neolithic revolution, which will never ever happen unless the entire world has a nuclear holocaust or such. BUT, my point is... nothing is worse, nothing is getting worse, there are two things that have changed: *the viewpoint and perspective of humans. people have gotten a lot less ignorant than they were 700 years ago, so it seems a lot worse now for women to be raped and children to be beaten and innocent people to be killed, while not so long ago, it was a normal occurence. *technology has advanced, which makes things somewhat worse...now, instead of having armies with about equal weapons fight each other, a country can just send over a nuclear bomb to the country they are fighting with and kill millions of people at a time. so, what, are we just doomed to choose between looking away from things, or not being able to take it anymore and ending it for ourselves? or, there's always the option of taking off our rose colored glasses or sending away our storm clouds, pulling up our sleeves and trying to make things better. would it be worth it? maybe, maybe not. unfourtunately, it seems to me that most people in the world are choosing to look away from things, and ignore that they are happening. but i choose to have hope...this is the age of aquarius! it is foretold that many glorious things will happen in this age as people start to wake up from the dark, and try to make things better. so maybe, hopefully, someday people will want to help, i hope. i love you all, its just a thought, pay no mind.