My thing is nuclear war… I’m probably not even going to know I’m dead by the time it happens. Fascism and climate? I’m gonna know I’m fucked for quite a while before I die.
We literally should not “fear” any of these things, we have never had a period of history without looming hardships, it’s just that right now we’re far more aware of what those hardships are or will be.
We’re not heading for doom, we’re heading for a state of greater social accountability. Time will tell if this sense of accountability will lead to us better or worse outcomes, but our species and our planet is always changing either way.
The media ideas that we were heading towards a future of shiny tech and unified populations set us all up for a vast realm of disappointment. The future will have some miracles, sure, but it will also have more atrocities, more poverty, more disease and war and evil people doing evil things. As well as new cures, new technology to help people, new ways to interpret our existence and more. It will just be more of everything and it’s on each of us to figure out a healthy way to internalize this scary fact.
I can’t upvote or downvote you, because In some ways you’re right; humanity has never had a time without hardships. But some times and places had it much, much easier than at any other time or place.
We are heading for doom. Regardless of how or when it goes down, our species ends. We aren’t making it off this planet, I can tell you that. Even with a long term base on Mars, it’s supplied by earth.
And that’s an optimistic view. We will not advance enough to make it out of this solar system. And without doing so, we are automatically doomed. You could say that we have that technology within reach, and maybe we do. But we’re not going down the path that would make that technology likely with the time we have left. The biggest economy in the world is turning it’s back on science, and our planet is actively trying to kill us to keep itself alive because of what we’ve done and continue to do.
In fact I’d say that our continuous advances in tech has only a few decades left before climate change destroys our ability to continue our tech. It’ll pick and choose who lives until we don’t have the people left that were needed to get us out of this mess.
We are doomed. It’s just on us to figure out if we can exist as a society for 5 more years, 40 more years, 80 more? 80 years gets us to 2105 where most of our climate goals end. We’ve blown past 1.5C, and showing no signs of slowing down. In fact it’s speeding up. And we’re finding the results are worse than expected, the rate is faster than expected. I don’t think we can get fully off this planet in less than 50 years.
I say 50, because 80 is like, doomsday, it’s over. 80 years from now, you’ll be lucky to be able to send a rocket up with clear weather and a station that wasn’t already destroyed.
So we have 50 ish years to make it to a habitable place outside of earth and make it self-sufficient. We likely won’t even be back on the moon until 2030 or so. Another 10-15 to get to Mars? That’s just a landing. Not a self-sufficient base. Besides, that’s a dead planet. Sure, you could mine ore and ice and make some stuff and some fuel, but not enough to make it to Saturns moons. Even if you could, and you had earths help, are there people knowledgeable enough left on earth to make it happen as people are taken out by climate left right and center? That’s not including malnourishment, opportunity, wars, illness, etc.
This species is doomed. We just need to try to make it as long as we can. That means working together, stopping genocide, minimalizing fossil fuel use, advancing education, equal opportunities, clean air and water, taxing the ultra-rich… But yeah. Sure. That’ll happen in time to save us.
It might surprise you to know I don’t disagree. Other than the timeline, I fully agree that our species is doomed, and that doom will occur sometime within the next several centuries. Humans are a tenacious species and likely we will continue to exist in some state for another several thousand years, but likely in a state of primitive stagnation. We already had thousands of years of primitive stagnation, and back then we had resources readily available on the surface of our world like oil and coal easy to access.
Our civilization is unsustainable though. We will at some point cash the checks we’ve been taking out, and then one day there won’t be food on the shelves anymore, there won’t be gas in the pumps, there won’t be medicine in the hospitals and all the doctors will be gone. Buildings will fall and monuments will rust.
Life will continue in a very Cormac McCarthy-esque slow wind-down into an abysmal, long, dark night.
Despite all this knowledge, I still say we should not have fear or despair. We are here and now capable of forging a better life for ourselves, and arguably, more importantly, we can make lives better for others. It’s a fantastic blessing that we exist in this tiny, slim, razor-edge of technology and wonders and plentiful resources. That’s like winning the goddamn lottery. Do you realize how many people came before us stretching back into the dark haze of pre-history who never had a CHANCE of a better world and a better life? Even if brief?
And we’re not done even after we’re gone.
We will leave behind records. We have probes on other worlds and leaving our solar system, there will be a marker into the long darkness of the future that “we were here.” We did that. We fucking won.
The only reason it doesn’t feel like winning is because life is inherently painful and shitty. That’s just our biology at odds with the spark of sapience that is trying to move past it.
I fucking hate the state of our capitalist techno-feudalism world we’re building, BUT I also know where it’s going. If we can just scratch past this state of abject greed and selfish desires for personal gain long enough, we have a very good chance of creating a scion for our future, a descendant to carry the torch. We won’t have the stars. I already mourned that passing, along with many other idealistic fantasies of youth, but we may send new things out into the void, we may actually create intelligences that don’t require meat and food and money who can learn and wonder about the universe.
Again, it’s a miraculous time, we are on the cusp of so much, if we achieve even a sliver of our potential we will have left behind a fantastic legacy, worth celebrating even while our society crumbles into a cesspit of despair, hunger, drug abuse, greed, pain and intolerance and all the other myriad of factors nature is throwing against us.
Take time to appreciate being here, right now, because it’s not going to last but boy was it strange and amazing while it did. Nothing else on this planet did this much. It’s worth a toast.
Right, I’m not saying humanity only has ~80 yrs left, just society. Humanity could limp along for a few more centuries, but it won’t be a good existence.
Is it bad that I don’t fear nuclear war at all compared to the other 2?
Of course not. We are firmly in the middle of crises of fascism and climate. If we don’t deal with both, life will be much worse in the future.
Nuclear war…I mean, whatever you want to say, we are not currently in the middle of a nuclear war.
My thing is nuclear war… I’m probably not even going to know I’m dead by the time it happens. Fascism and climate? I’m gonna know I’m fucked for quite a while before I die.
We’re more in between nuclear wars at the moment.
Well I’m not saying live your life in fear but, yes
We literally should not “fear” any of these things, we have never had a period of history without looming hardships, it’s just that right now we’re far more aware of what those hardships are or will be.
We’re not heading for doom, we’re heading for a state of greater social accountability. Time will tell if this sense of accountability will lead to us better or worse outcomes, but our species and our planet is always changing either way.
The media ideas that we were heading towards a future of shiny tech and unified populations set us all up for a vast realm of disappointment. The future will have some miracles, sure, but it will also have more atrocities, more poverty, more disease and war and evil people doing evil things. As well as new cures, new technology to help people, new ways to interpret our existence and more. It will just be more of everything and it’s on each of us to figure out a healthy way to internalize this scary fact.
I can’t upvote or downvote you, because In some ways you’re right; humanity has never had a time without hardships. But some times and places had it much, much easier than at any other time or place.
We are heading for doom. Regardless of how or when it goes down, our species ends. We aren’t making it off this planet, I can tell you that. Even with a long term base on Mars, it’s supplied by earth.
And that’s an optimistic view. We will not advance enough to make it out of this solar system. And without doing so, we are automatically doomed. You could say that we have that technology within reach, and maybe we do. But we’re not going down the path that would make that technology likely with the time we have left. The biggest economy in the world is turning it’s back on science, and our planet is actively trying to kill us to keep itself alive because of what we’ve done and continue to do.
In fact I’d say that our continuous advances in tech has only a few decades left before climate change destroys our ability to continue our tech. It’ll pick and choose who lives until we don’t have the people left that were needed to get us out of this mess.
We are doomed. It’s just on us to figure out if we can exist as a society for 5 more years, 40 more years, 80 more? 80 years gets us to 2105 where most of our climate goals end. We’ve blown past 1.5C, and showing no signs of slowing down. In fact it’s speeding up. And we’re finding the results are worse than expected, the rate is faster than expected. I don’t think we can get fully off this planet in less than 50 years.
I say 50, because 80 is like, doomsday, it’s over. 80 years from now, you’ll be lucky to be able to send a rocket up with clear weather and a station that wasn’t already destroyed.
So we have 50 ish years to make it to a habitable place outside of earth and make it self-sufficient. We likely won’t even be back on the moon until 2030 or so. Another 10-15 to get to Mars? That’s just a landing. Not a self-sufficient base. Besides, that’s a dead planet. Sure, you could mine ore and ice and make some stuff and some fuel, but not enough to make it to Saturns moons. Even if you could, and you had earths help, are there people knowledgeable enough left on earth to make it happen as people are taken out by climate left right and center? That’s not including malnourishment, opportunity, wars, illness, etc.
This species is doomed. We just need to try to make it as long as we can. That means working together, stopping genocide, minimalizing fossil fuel use, advancing education, equal opportunities, clean air and water, taxing the ultra-rich… But yeah. Sure. That’ll happen in time to save us.
It might surprise you to know I don’t disagree. Other than the timeline, I fully agree that our species is doomed, and that doom will occur sometime within the next several centuries. Humans are a tenacious species and likely we will continue to exist in some state for another several thousand years, but likely in a state of primitive stagnation. We already had thousands of years of primitive stagnation, and back then we had resources readily available on the surface of our world like oil and coal easy to access.
Our civilization is unsustainable though. We will at some point cash the checks we’ve been taking out, and then one day there won’t be food on the shelves anymore, there won’t be gas in the pumps, there won’t be medicine in the hospitals and all the doctors will be gone. Buildings will fall and monuments will rust.
Life will continue in a very Cormac McCarthy-esque slow wind-down into an abysmal, long, dark night.
Despite all this knowledge, I still say we should not have fear or despair. We are here and now capable of forging a better life for ourselves, and arguably, more importantly, we can make lives better for others. It’s a fantastic blessing that we exist in this tiny, slim, razor-edge of technology and wonders and plentiful resources. That’s like winning the goddamn lottery. Do you realize how many people came before us stretching back into the dark haze of pre-history who never had a CHANCE of a better world and a better life? Even if brief?
And we’re not done even after we’re gone.
We will leave behind records. We have probes on other worlds and leaving our solar system, there will be a marker into the long darkness of the future that “we were here.” We did that. We fucking won.
The only reason it doesn’t feel like winning is because life is inherently painful and shitty. That’s just our biology at odds with the spark of sapience that is trying to move past it.
I fucking hate the state of our capitalist techno-feudalism world we’re building, BUT I also know where it’s going. If we can just scratch past this state of abject greed and selfish desires for personal gain long enough, we have a very good chance of creating a scion for our future, a descendant to carry the torch. We won’t have the stars. I already mourned that passing, along with many other idealistic fantasies of youth, but we may send new things out into the void, we may actually create intelligences that don’t require meat and food and money who can learn and wonder about the universe.
Again, it’s a miraculous time, we are on the cusp of so much, if we achieve even a sliver of our potential we will have left behind a fantastic legacy, worth celebrating even while our society crumbles into a cesspit of despair, hunger, drug abuse, greed, pain and intolerance and all the other myriad of factors nature is throwing against us.
Take time to appreciate being here, right now, because it’s not going to last but boy was it strange and amazing while it did. Nothing else on this planet did this much. It’s worth a toast.
Right, I’m not saying humanity only has ~80 yrs left, just society. Humanity could limp along for a few more centuries, but it won’t be a good existence.
Well I’m not saying live your life in fear but, yes