And to all the posters who have said that we (as Americans) aren't in a world darker now (and closer to the dystopia of the DKNR world), I painfully have two things to counter-argue to you. 1) School shootings 2) the hype over the 'octo-mom'.
You know, I'm going to have to disagree with you. I go to a public high school (and not a completely whitebread school either, majority is whites and hispanics, followed by african-americans, and then asians). I have never once had a cause to be frightened due to a shooting scare or other threat. Sure, there's a couple of police officers and some drug dogs at my school, but that's just a preventative measure. I live in the fourth largest city in the US, and can honestly say that I have not experienced or heard of a large case of school violence.
And about the "octo-mom": that's the press hyping. Some of the population buys it, but a large portion doesn't. The problem is, the portion of the people that are obnoxious and ignorant and buy into such things get highly publisized by reality TV (frex: Jane Goody). But there's a large portion of us who don't. And what I've noticed is there's a high amount of people in my generation who don't. When we eat lunch every day, one of our most popular topics of conversation is politics and current events. We aren't "nerds" (matter of fact, we're the female jocks), we aren't high class, and about half aren't in advanced classes. The thing I've noticed is that people in my generation are starting to care. There's a lot of kid's that do community service, and there's kids who formed a whole club to protest injustices in the world. They sent about 400 letters about Myanmar.
The world's not as dark as you're arguing, and there's definatley a determined generation coming up. Yes, there is war right now. Yes, the economy is in a slump right now. Yes, the state where I live might end up facing a pandemic right now. But there's still hope. As long as there are people willing to consider possibilities in the world and make changes and take responsibility, there will always be hope.