I’m very scared, it feels like the world is about to fall apart. I will also remember a passage that I heard, and which does not seem to be a joke: you will own nothing, and will be happy! And it seems that this is gradually becoming a reality.
What scares you?
Yes,
I don’t see empathy in people any more. It is mostly showoff and greed all around.
Sometimes I feel like joining/creating a village just like the Amish villages but without religion.
So, a commune. They exist but they’re often insufferable hippies. But I’m down for one where people respect and use science and technology, and use soap.
Sometimes I feel like joining/creating a village just like the Amish villages but without religion.
I have also been thinking about this lately. But it’s damn hard, although it’s worth it, I think.
I live in the U.S., and with how fucked the country is with fascists and fascist bootlickers, I don’t know where my future lies.
I can’t really afford to move to another country, and I can’t see myself settling down in this fucked up place.
So I’m just stuck in limbo, and it feels like my future is being held hostage.
And climate change is just the icing on the cake. Shit loads of people are going to die, quality of life is going to significantly drop. Climate immigration is going to explode and provide even more political power to fascists.
Yeah this weighs on my mind much of the time. We seem to be rapidly descending into neo-feudalism/dark enlightenment /whatever, and I think a lot of people don’t realize it. People giving Elmo money for cybertrucks or model Y with the light bar, voting red, making christo-fascist policies, etc. And a lot people don’t necessarily feel it yet. Some people have a higher salary than before the double salute incident, but those dollars don’t go as far as they used to. Plus global warming acceleration with AI and rolled back policies… Looking back, I think my generation’s future was already going to be troublesome, but with the choices of my own grandparents, some of my peers, and some powerful and evil people, these could be the best years of the rest of our lives.
I try not to be so doomerist on S. M., but the prompt seemed to call for it
Yep.
At this point I’m 90% sure that we are in a regression similar to the dark ages after the fall of Rome, or the collapse of the Bronze Age.
During our lifetime quality of life will keep going down, and who knows how low we will fall.
To be honest I don’t even think climate change would have a chance of getting us. I think society will collapse before the average temperature rises one degree. I’m looking forward total dissapear of basic commodities in one or two decades top. For instance, my country has universal healthcare. I think in 10 years it would be completely unusable to the point of being equal to not have universal healthcare at all.
I agree with most things you said except the climate change part. 2024 has already exceeded the 1,5 degree target and it will continue to degrade like the general quality of life.
My area has always been dry and is the most affected by increasing droughts. I can see this on the street, I think last or the year before was the first time the grass didnt turn brown, but actually burned to dust. The current heatwave melted roads and railway tracks, which need replacing and is threatening supply chains. Rivers are running low more and more.
Floods’ victim count will rise each year and eventually ruin us financially, and make people refugees - we will see what its like from the other side.
We have to ration water for gardens now. Never heard this be a common thing in my country.
Prices go up. Two years ago apple juice was very expensive, because of the mild winter, which is just one example.
We have dangerous animals now. Oak processionary moths are conquering the country, render parks almost unusable and make people who live nearby sick.
So it is already getting us. And actual shortages have not even set in.
I visited some permaculture gardens. It made me hopeful and sad at the same time. Hopeful because I saw how easy it actually is to turn a desert into a green oasis with simple manual labour. Sad because it also shows how easy it is to prevent these things, we’re just not doing them. I try to focus on the hopeful side though.
I’m cautiously optimistic. Around the world, imperialism is dying away. The global south is developing and gaining sovereignty, and socialist countries are rising as well. We live in tumultuous times, but there’s plenty of reason to be hopeful.
My answer has nothing to do with current events: what scares me the most about the future is the inevitable death of my parents. I am scared of never being able to talk to them ever again.
I hear this. Losing my father was harder than I expected. It kicked me in the ass enough to commit to calling my mom once a week. Thankful that I’ve done it and I’m sure I will be even more when her time comes. Sharing in case something similar makes sense for you. Cherish them while you have them.
Climate change. Shit is going to get super real in the next 20 years. Like half the planet starving real.
This is so true… Here in India shit is hot like 45 Celsius and 34 to 37 whole night… Can’t live normally without AC, i wonder how bad it’ll be in the upcoming years…
Climate Change is only one aspect of the real problem. Ecological overshoot is probably a better term, but terms like polycrisis and metacrisis have been tossed around.
The Stockholm Resilience Centre’s Planetary Boundaries is probably one of the best synthesis of it.
It’s bad, it’s getting worse. And it’s a motivator behind a lot of the bullshit going on in the world. Russia wants Ukraine for its breadbasket. US wants to end democracy because they don’t believe it will survive what’s coming.
Everyone that matters (Governments and Militaries) knows what’s going on, and the level of public debate is definitely downplaying things to not scare the masses. Meanwhile, we speedrun right into it.
Maybe. It doesn’t make much sense that the same US government Republicans are preparing for the worst that could have just prevented it. Staying under 2C wasn’t that difficult. The hardest part was getting China to go along, and that’s gone reasonably.
Staying under 2C wasn’t that difficult.
Respectfully disagree. Ending fossil fuels is not easy. Technically, politically and economically.
The hardest part was getting China to go along, and that’s gone reasonably.
…China, India, Russia, Japan, Europe, Canada, the middle east, Australia…
No one came close. China’ progress is significant and in some ways commendable, matched only by their failures.
I don’t think we’d have to fully end fossil fuels to stay under 2C. I think getting rid of them in power plants, road vehicles, and ocean vessels would have been enough.
And that probably would have taken less resources than these data center rollouts.
We could have kept oil in airlines and military.
That would just have slowed it down not stopped it. Fossil fuels must end, one way, or as it seems to be the case, the other.
To be fair, I’m not sure we could have eliminated gas from residential heating. That’s a big lift.
If we had gone nuclear and managed to make electricity pretty cheap, maybe.
No. Just no.
A wet bulb event killing a few hundred million in the span of a week or two will do it. The knock on deaths just from the disruption of the initial deaths will be equally catastrophic.
Benn Jordan just released a video talking about a similar feeling.
Mostly afraid of the climate
It does seem like a daily assault on our well being, doesn’t it? But there is something that helps with this - read history broadly. It helps give you a deeper understanding of current events that lessens the impact of the current moment. And consider the quote “this too shall pass”. It’s attributed to Sufi poets about impermanence. If times are bad it gives you hope that those times will one day, eventually but certainly, be gone. If times are good it makes you relish the moment deeply and do what you can to make it last.
Yes, definitely. I’m afraid that AI is going to keep advancing and companies will keep laying off even more employees then I get laid off and then I’m out of work and unable to find my next job. I’ve already been laid off once before and it already took me half a year to find a new job and that was even before the explosion of AI. I’m also afraid my shingles infection pain isn’t going to go away and I’m going to be stuck with long-term nerve pain, despite my relatively young age, because I started antivirals like 168 hours after onset of symptoms because I was almost misdiagnosed twice in a week.
Yes, plenty of things to be afraid of, I think that’s part of being an adult.
America is run by the Neo-Nazi party, and following their idols more or less to the T.
Israel is running a widely known genocide, and the world doesnt care.
Global Warming is going to start killing crops en masse soon enough, while removing the amount of livable land.
The American Neo-Nazi party is speed rushing the great depression, and WWIII at the same time.
China is the next largest power in the world, and they arent much better than America.
At least China has EVs and solar panels and exporting them as well.
The also have billions more people, they aren’t anywhere close to zero, or even meaningfully lower carbon emissions.
The problem is they still burn coal in winter :(
The world cares. The “world” is being blackmailed into complicity.
Mostly I’m just really fucking sad.
There was such a potential for all of us to live brilliant, flourishing, fulfilling lives.
Instead, half the folks in my country decided to shit on everything and everyone. The remaining half of us are now too fucking busy cleaning up after those fuckwits to make forward progress. We can’t even advocate for changes to things we know are bad because we’re trying to defend the broken status quo from something worse.
It’s going to take generations to unfuck the damage. More than my lifetime, at least.
“There was such a potential for all of us to live brilliant, flourishing, fulfilling lives.”
No there wasn’t. That’s just part of the illusion they sell you. The entire thing is just a shakey extension into the sky built upon a foundation it continues to havest from to give the impression of growth. It was only great for a few of us and it could never last.
I do agree with your sentiment and feel like if humans weren’t the way we are we could still build a global paradise.
But that’s not the way humans operate.
Instead, half the folks in my country decided to shit on everything and everyone. The remaining half of us are now too fucking busy cleaning up after those fuckwits to make forward progress.
Hey now, let’s not place blame unfairly. Only 1/3 of us voted for the turd. Unfortunately, another 1/3 decided to not participate, so the 1/3 of us who cared and tried to prevent this are stuck with the bill run up by those who want to burn it down and those who didn’t care.
Mostly I’m just really fucking sad.
There was such a potential for all of us to live brilliant, flourishing, fulfilling lives.
Same :(
The thing is, all of it, yes, all of it was and still is avoidable. We have the tools to unfuck the climate change, to get population levels under control, to distribute enough to those who need it.
We choose not to. Fucking hell.
There was never that potential with 8 billion people.
No, there was. And there is. That’s the worst part.
We produce more food than we need. We produce more goods than we need. Starvation and poverty are both choices made by those in power to ensure their own power.
Clearly humanity is never capable of improving anything on the grand scale.
at this point i’m beyond being afraid. i just plain dont care anymore, maybe we even deserve what is coming for letting it happen
I agree we should be throwing these assholes into woodchippers
I’m pretty sure we’re at the twilight of human civilization, and maybe all biological life, or at least most complex biological life.
Every period of history has felt like the world was heading for certain disaster. The human race is shockingly resilient and has survived much more than we deserve to
The human race has literally never faced this degree of worldwide climate catastrophe, and rather than do anything about it our owning class has decided to swallow a poison pill
It’s faced total Atomic obliteration and worldwide war and suffering a couple times now.
It’s faced total Atomic obliteration
Lol, no it didn’t. There was a threat of nuclear war, sure, but there was never anything close to atomic obliteration. Comparing cold war era nuclear worries to concrete damages by climate change is asinine.
The world war comparison is marginally better, but in both cases, those were human driven AND controlled events. Climate change is human driven, but we have absolutely 0 control over it and it will absolutely impact every corner of the globe much worse than any war we’ve fought.
The suffering that climate change has brought and will bring is like nothing we’ve seen before, and it can be hard to keep telling yourself every year that this will likely be the coolest summer of the rest of our lives.
“Survival is the exception, not the norm.”
