"Well, I don't want to argue, so I will not answer you agian, but anyone who thinks the world is a better place after things like 9/11 is not seeing things to clearly. I am 60 and I grew up in a complex called Parkway Village - it was right next to the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. Freeways and heavy traffic have been around all my life, but when I was young, people did not shoot at each other on them. Children did not bring guns to school and murder each other. People all over the world did not tie bombs to themselves and blow everyone around them up. You could board a plane without practially being strip searched. (They did have planes in the 50s and 60s, commericial ones, too and lots of people used them.) Global warming was not such a freightening concern. WMD, unfortunatley, were only just being invented, and atomic bombs were still for the elite few."

How has 9/11 made the world worse?  It has only handed the fear mongers of our government their golden opportunity to retaliate a thousand fold with their own terror on others and in the process they have spewed fear on the general public to control them (us) in order to advance their own terrorist agenda.  However, we are still as safe if not safer then we were on 9/11.  If you have bought into the fear that the terrorists and our own government have peddled, then they have succeeded in their missions.  If you live in fear, you are setting yourself up for both depression and hate.  Fear is behind all hate.  Unless you have a gun pointed at your head or are yourself in imminent peril, your fear is irrational.  It is irrational fear that is behind a great deal of depression, and a lot of hate.

Israel has searched airline passengers for decades.  It's a small inconvenience for air travel and we are safer and better off because of it.

So, how do WMDs and global warming affect you and I today?  Not one iota.  So why worry about it?  Why be depressed about it?  It is that kind of irrational fear that has been heaped upon us from every direction through our modern information age.  You can buy into the fact that there are WMDs and global warming, but you certainly don't have to be in fear because of it.

When I was 15, my neighbor, aged 17, went on a crime spree and was put in 'reform' school, escaped at age 18, went on another spree and murdered two policemen.  He died in the gas chamber in Nevada for that crime.  My neighbor  two doors up from me when I was 10, killed her husband with an ax.  Around that same time another neighbor aged 19, with a gun, killed the used car dealer who sold him a lemon.  I lived in a quiet, very safe neighborhood.  Guns and violence are nothing new.

"I am glad you are happy with the way things are however. Good for you."

I never said I was "happy with the way things are..."  I said things are better now than 30 or 40 years ago.  I'm happy with the way that I am.  I'm happy with my sphere of control, which is me, my aura and everything within it.  What happens outside of that world are things that I have no control over, and what I can't control, I don't worry about.  In fact, I think it is exciting to watch all that is happening in the entire world, from a neutral perspective.  Meditation has allowed me to focus on what I can control, and have neutrality about what I can't.  It's that simple.  You can also gain the same perspective from other venues as well.  The world is growing and changing for the better and you don't have to get caught up in other peoples/nations problems.

"But there are legimate concerns for a number of reasons that the human race will not survive. I hope and think we will, but there are a lot of things that must change drastically and quickly.

People know this, and that is one reason why antidepressents and tranquilizers are a billion dollar industry and are so heavily advertised on TV. Unfortunatley, people are eating them like candy."

I don't have the same perspective as you do, but, what if the human race were to end tomorrow?  What can you do about it?  Worry and depression doesn't help a bit.  

In this country the Great Depression era through the end of WWII were exceedingly more stressful than what we as a nation and individuals face today.  Yet the population didn't escape with drugs and alcohol any more (in fact less) than today.  And barbiturates, Dexedrine and Benzedrine and many others were available in those days.

Back to a couple of earlier points.  Unless you are in immanent physical danger, fear is irrational.  I learned that one simple fact in a seminar 35 years ago, and it has changed my life.  You are responsible only for you and no one else.  Taking responsibility for others, or the world outside of your sphere of responsibility is a way to guarantee yourself a lifetime of worry and certain depression.

If you think I'm perfect, I'm not.  Far from it.  But I've gone from depression, being suicidal, having to deal with vivid and disturbing abuse and trauma PTSDs, to a productive and enjoyable life, and I've done it without a single pill.