I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
“Nothing new under the sun” I suppose!
Abortions should be legal at any term
I have a 6 year old, is that too late? :)
Woodchipper
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Well, hopefully you at least feel thankful that so many of your ancestors brought children into a world much more filled with pain and suffering and death than today.
I’m not, lmao. My life sucks. Wtf is with all the breeders here trying to justify their contributions to climate change!? There is immensely more pain and suffering in our immediate future than there was at any point in human history. We are literally looking at the end of humanity here.
Oh, and are you not contributing to climate change? Ok for you tho, just not kids?
Oh, I still am, but I’m not increasing my footprint exponentially by adding more lives to the equation.
Breeders, oy… So wtf you still doing here if so miserable and zero hope?
I’m here because I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in your head. You’re trying to justify having children when we’re barrelling towards the most dire point of humanity’s history, one that will potentially cause the extinction of our species, while the powers that be are putting their foot on the gas. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Yeah, I’m going to call you a breeder because it appears that your not practicing responsible parenthood, you’re just breeding like an animal.
…unless you were trying to indirectly tell me to kill myself. If so then grow a pair and say it to my face. I’m still here because I know I’ll hurt the people around me if I end my life. That’s it. That’s the only reason why I still live. I’m a trans gal in Texas. I don’t have much to look forward to.
Do the rest of the world a favor and get yourself neutered, breeder.
I’m not trying, nor will I ever try, to justify a goddamned thing to a hateful fuck like you, just pointing out you’re a logically inconsistent hypocrite.
You haven’t done anything of the sort. The only reason why I’m still here is for others. Are you telling me that the only reason why children exist is for the benefit of others? That’s really fucking disturbing.
You’re mad because you know that I’m right. You’re mad because you know that the creation of children cannot be justified in this day and age. You’re mad because somewhere inside your skull, you’ve come to the realization that (if you’ve created children) you’ve brought them into what is very likely a doomed world in which they will eventually experience a hell like nothing any other human had ever experienced.
Good job, you selfish asshole. Your children may one day grow to be miserable and ask you why you had to bring them into the world. Then you will have to face them, look them in the eye, and tell them that it was all about your own happiness, not theirs.
Oh you’re so selfless, living in misery and taking part in ruining the planet on the way to certain doom, all for others! You’re a judgy, hateful asshole, really couldn’t care less what people of your ilk think about me. Have the day you deserve.
Lmao, did you really just tell someone to kill themselves because they don’t want to have children?
And you think you respect life. What irony.
Lmao hurr durr… Where did I tell someone to kill themselves?
So wtf you still doing here if so miserable and zero hope?
What do you think it means when you say this?
The question mark at the end means it’s a question, seems a pretty fair question to me. If there’s nothing for kids to be here for, and it’s a miserable shithole, and ruining the planet, why would you want to be here either?
Yes, climate change, microplatics in brains and balls and mountain fresh water and pollution all around.
Oh and forget about ever owning your house except you inherit.
And all of it is man-made.
There’s enough land in the world for every single adult human to have 2 acres. Pretty crazy. Then we have people living in actual closets that cost 2k a month. Crazy.
Maybe the area but how is living in the Sahara desert?
Yup.
You are born in the very very very best stretch the human race has ever known.
We have solutions for almost every problem which exists today.
Wars are at an historical low point.
Chances are good you’ve never been even experienced war first hand.
Housing is expensive, yes. But chances are you’re reading this on a couch or bed in a home, heated (or cooled), with a working stove, light at night and a fridge with edibles in it. And lets not talk about your immediate almost unrestricted access to all of human knowledge.
That would be unbelievable, impossible even during 99.9% of human history. (Or somewhere near this figure)
You should stop doomscrolling and start reading the real human history.
All of human knowledge at your fingertips. And this is what you chose to distill from it.
Your information is outdated by 5-10 years unfortunately.
Wars are at an historical low point.
Global conflict levels highest since end of Second World War.
We have solutions for almost every problem which exists today.
A very bold claim. We have lots of solutions, but not the will or resources to implement them. Climate change being the primary problem of which we have no real solution.
reading real history is work though. just like working out and eating well.
doomscrolling is like the equivalent of sitting you your ass and eating junk food/delivery and satiating that lizard brain to the exclusion of their higher functions and potentials.
majority of people are going to choose the latter as much as they can.
I think you’re missing the point.
Dying of disease because there simply isn’t a cure is a tragedy, but dying of disease because the cure is too expensive, not because of material and resource limitations but because some shithead just wants to be rich, when in reality we could produce enough for everyone - is a farce beyond comprehension.
We escaped the wolves and I sure am glad for it, but we have senselessly created new wolves just to throw people to them.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making an appeal to nature, or using the noble savage fallacy, nor am I reactionary moron who thinks everyone went to Galas or that in the past I’d be admiring the decorative architecture rather than be the slave making it, I’m a huge simp for science and technology, but I also can see that the world is headed in a very dark direction compared to the 2010s.
As a minority in both legislation and in practice my rights and safety have been actively eroded since the 90s and things were quite literally just better back then for basically everyone.
I struggle to think what exactly would be worse for your average Westerner being born earlier in actual human scales of time, like e.g. the 1990s.
The boomers around me don’t even understand that you don’t just “get” a job for existing, and my parents can’t imagine having a degree and worrying about making rent or skipping on heating or meals in a “first world country” like the UK, and they grew up in the fucking soviet union and not exactly during it’s heyday.
Living in wartime is awful. Living while wishing for things to be fixed, or even for any kind of hope, even if it means death in war, isn’t that much better.
I get what you are saying but everyone is ignoring the human condition. We feel things based on how they are around us in a relative sense.
It doesn’t matter if it is statistically better. Modern times are getting worse for people. Health, privacy, freedom are all declining in America. That is what people see and feel. I’m tired of people acting like we have life horizons that can see centuries.
Chronic health is a real current issue and it absolutely destroys quality of life too.
So yeah, great, best time to be alive. But since I was a kid many things have gotten worse. From health (cost, accessibility) and education to privacy. Maybe we will be much farther ahead in 20 years, but the next 10 are looking grim.
Word. Just because America is on a downward slide everyone acting like these are the worst times ever. LOL. The people need some history classes.
When I was a kid, cancer was basically a death sentence. AIDS certainly was! Some of the tech I’ve experienced blows my mind. Wondering if my wife and I had finally caught COVID (we did 🤬), so I busted out the free laboratory kit I got in the mail. That was work for a hospital lab, and you were going to wait a few days. Sliced the side of my finger off, and they grew it back. I could go on forever.
In the movie Armageddon (1998), talking about the age of the space station being 10-years old, “Most of us don’t drive cars that old.” A 10-yo car was trash, common knowledge. My truck is a 2004 and my wife’s car is a 2014. Both run great. And I could go on for ages as to how much safer vehicles are. None of the things we take for granted like ABS, air bags, crumple zones, none of that existed when I was a kid. Hell, some cars didn’t have safety glass!
People will next tell me that global warming is a new threat that will kill us all. Friends and neighbors, we already survived an ice age.
Once you can’t feed yourself, your children are dying, and the authorities are actively trying to kill you, how much worse of a times do you want!? People are being sent to concentration camps. The middle class is disappearing. Everyone not a billionaire is suffering.
What? Are you stupid? Realism with a tinge of optimism in this thread clearly designed to be a crying, woe-is-me circle-jerk? Get with it man! /s
It is not realism though, since it is based on factually incorrect statements.
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Even a cursory search shows the statement to be factual. Pick one
Blatantly incorrect.
New data shows record number of armed conflicts. In fact only the period of WWII saw more armed conflict than we are currently experiencing.
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Still an historical low point. Did you not check a single link I posted?
You don’t need to google this shit…
NM, you admitted it.
ALL of that has been going on since WWII, and slowly dialing down. The Ukraine war is such a shock because it’s so damned unusual.
I didn’t say the world was at peace, but war and death is at an all-time low. Look at the casualties reported in the news today. We’re stunned if 100 people get killed in a single attack. There were WWI and WWII battles you’ve never even heard of where 4,000 men were killed at once.
As to my education: I have 2 years of Advanced European History under my belt and 4 college credits to show for it. Not to pull the age card, but at 54 I’ve lived a fair bit of modern history. I’m guessing you weren’t around when global thermonuclear war was hanging over our head as a day-to-day fact of life?
You posted a google link, so no, noone read it.
I posted a non-google link which factually disproved your claim.
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This is such an odd conversation. I provided many charts, many numbers to look at, and you’re still arguing, what exactly?
BTW, Boomers were my parents, and I still have no idea what propaganda you’re referring to. If anything, American propaganda has always been about how violent the world is and how we need more defense spending.
Can you name any propaganda where the government has espoused how peaceful the world is?!
You have not provided any charts or numbers. I provided a link to an actual study on the subject disproving your claim.
As a parent in the US, yes. The future looks very dim among climate change, water overuse, corruption of civic institutions by the capital class, etc.
Even people born 20 years ago have it rough - they’re just now graduating college into a crummy job market and massively inflated housing market, with MAGA policies and AI destroying the economy for both blue and white collar folks as quickly as possible.
It seems cruel to create new life in this environment. Are you going to tell the kids that it’s their job to fix the world that the previous generations abused and degraded for short term gains, because it’s somehow our duty as sane humans to produce more sane humans to continue the fight? Many people today already live a worsening paycheck to paycheck existence, with too little free time to focus on systemic change. How will adding to that help?
Nearly every generation has felt pessimism at one time or another that the world is the worst it’s ever been. But it sure seems different this time.
The folk heroes of tomorrow will be people like Greta Thunberg and Mario’s brother, and that’s not a great existence to root for.
But it sure seems different this time.
They said that last time too. And the time before that? They said that then too.
Yep, they did. But they weren’t on the brink of tipping-point climate change negative feedback cycles. Exponential growth is great for the economy until it overruns the carrying capacity of the underlying fundamentals.
I expect to live to see worldwide famine and an unimaginably large worldwide refugee crisis as the equatorial band becomes uninhabitable. The groundwater we’ve been pumping out of aquifers took geologic timescales to accumulate, and as it runs out the effect on agriculture will be severe. The Colorado river is enormously oversubscribed, and none of the problems that Marc Reisner wrote about over 30 years ago in Cadillac Desert have improved.
I could go on, but it’s all depressing. Yes, this time is much worse. We might claw our way back out of fascism in a reasonable timescale, sure. But the underlying physical realities of the earth’s systems
will starthave already started to come crashing down and will only intensify within my lifetime, and definitely within the average lifespans of children born today.Remember the hole in the ozone layer? Or the nuclear threat, some people were sure that the world was going to end before 1984. Then the aids epidemic. And 9/11, my god, nobody was safe anymore! And then the Yellostone caldera, that thing is going to erupt any time now!
The difference (sans 9/11 which isn’t really comparable) is that all of those were actively worked on and ultimately solved.
We banned CFCs and fixed the Ozone layer. We have done nuclear reduction treaties with USSR/US and later Russia/US, even under Putin. We had prevention, medical and otherwise for HIV, and then effective treatment where having HIV is honestly not even that big a deal anymore. We’ve created and improved upon much better seismic measurement methodology and equipment.
People likewise thought the world would end in 2012 but through science and reason we have evolved past such superstitions.
Now let’s compare to now:
What has been done about climate change? In the grand scheme - nothing. Renewables are all well and good, but most of the emissions are offset with carbon credits that mean absolutely nothing. Recycling is literally just a lie 99% of the time.
The risk of nuclear confrontation has actually increased, not decreased, since ~2012, between NK, collapsing USA, collapsing fascist Russia, increased standoffs between India and Pakistan, China’s increasing militancy, increase in war just generally whether it’s Palestine/Israel escalating (yes I’m aware it’s been going on forever) or Ethiopia/Eritrea.
At least in my opinion, the bitter rivalry of the Cold war was actually significantly safer than the geopolitical farce we live, which i’d pinpoint as sometime around when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize.
We have the US as world police but the best they could do is give the Taliban some of their gear and get a lot of their own and others killed for it when they weren’t busy crashing the world economy and electing fascists with global ambitions for shits and giggles.
Wow what a Belle Époque, Metternich himself would be proud. (/s of course)
We have widespread vaccine mistrust/hesitancy, which puts vulnerable people at risk, not to mention broadly reactionary, outright fascist/nationalist and anti-science, anti-reason and/or anti-intellectual currents among both the elite and powerful strata in society who pretty openly seek to undo the very solutions and improvements we have had over the last 40 odd years and the general population who not only not opposed them, but seem to find these ideas appealing, whether it’s intersectional tolerance or workers’ rights or people’s general freedoms.
On top of all that, we are currently on course for a dictatorship of the rich, and while our conditions in terms of technology and science are nowhere near, our social attitudes seem downright feudal, if not worse when you consider the absurdity of the fact that most of the problems could literally be solved tomorrow (e.g. more empty houses in the UK than homeless people) but simply aren’t for no actual legitimate reason whatsoever, and the world not only seems to not have any corrections lined up for this trajectory, but seems to be actively accelerating towards it.
So many times I’ve tried to ignore the world and tell myself in the grand scheme of things this must just be the darkest moment before the sunset, but it keeps getting darker and darker, and only faster and faster.
And to get ahead of the usual thought terminating cliches of “doomscrolling” and “go outside” in comments in threads like this - My life personally, world notwithstanding, is actually pretty great, I’ve been enormously lucky compared to many I know IRL, I’m happy on the whole, but it doesn’t make the world around me any less hopeless and depressing or change the facts on which I base that opinion.
If anything, the use of those same cliches just proves this point further - because effectively it’s no different than the “if I don’t look, maybe it’ll go away” from that Twilight Zone episode, and all other excuses like “we weren’t meant to process this much information” that people use to kill the curiousity they have about the world within their very soul to protect their fragile selves from the absurdity of the hell we seem to inhabit at the moment, only reinforce further that the observation of the world today as bleak definitely has merit.
Renewables have actually been making enormous progress, at least wind and photovoltaic (which is by far the cheapest source of new large scale energy production). I assume that’s why our current dear leader is going so far out of his way to stifle them as much as possible. He’s just following the Project 2025 playbook from the Heritage Foundation, which seeks to preserve the failing US hegemony that is dependent on the petrodollar as the world reserve currency.
But I think you’re right about everything else, including how great my life is right now personally. I just see us on the precipice of doom, like Wile E. Coyote having not yet realized he has run off the cliff’s edge. I understand that it’s hard for a lot of people to project into the future and accept the doom. That requires both a broad understanding that most don’t possess and the nerve to look into the void.
I recently reached more peaceful acceptance about our impending climate and societal collapse after I read Cadillac Desert and realized that even without climate change our water needs are unsustainable and we’re heading for an agricultural collapse.
In the mean time I’m trying to participate in activities that I love and help my children to find activities they love. Might as well get some good times in.
Idk why you’re down voted, I’m 100% with you there
The hole in the ozone layer is a great case study in effective amelioration of an anthropogenic climate problem. People got whipped up into a frenzy and politicians listened both to them and to the scientists. We switched refrigerants and have continued research and development to the point that heat pumps are now good enough to work in the winter in most places, using refrigerant blends. The ozone layer is well on its way to recovery. The overall response was excellent, and the Montreal Protocol was likely the most successful international agreement ever. That’s a stark contrast to our modern climate denialism and the vilification of science.
The nuclear threat is still real, but mutually assured destruction turns out to have been a pretty effective deterrent. But hey, maybe nuclear winter is the answer to global warming.
I don’t think anyone saw AIDS or 9/11 as an existential threat. I agree that there have always been things to dread, but you’re just building a strawman.
Dread about uncontrollable geologic forces is natural, but it’s not what I’m talking about. Yellowstone could erupt, sure. Many other geologic disasters could also occur, and humans would be along for a short ride of doom. That’s just life, and that’s okay.
But it’s especially depressing to watch the slow-motion failure of our social species to be able to communicate and organize effectively enough to stop a climate problem of our own making. It’s technologically preventable, but not socially. And at this point, I argue that it’s morally wrong to create children without realistic hope for a better future.
Climate change is the only true existential reason to feel that way.
Everything else is just over focusing on a short term dip. On average things are getting better over the long term. The British Empire collapsed, and so will the American one, and the world will keep on turning and progressing.
Hell kids born these days may have legitimate cures for most forms of cancer by the time they’re old. We won’t.
I’d argue that technology also, because it is consolidating wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer. This creates a positive feedback loop to further entrench their power. They have widened the divide and pulled up the ladder.
Oh, only climate change. Well that’s alright then. /s
Climate change is going to influence everything in our society for the worse: politics, economics, living standards, everything, including the amount of resources available to use for research.
and the world will keep on turning and progressing.
The world will keep on turning, but there is absolutely no factual basis for claiming it will keep on progressing. If anything that is one thing we can learn from history.
Climate change is going to influence everything in our society for the worse: politics, economics, living standards, everything, including the amount of resources available to use for research.
Cite the numbers that make you pessimistic.
If you don’t have numbers, then keep your crystal astrology bad vibes to yourself until you have something to back them.
I’m fucking sick of leftists acting like being moody and pessimistic is a valid political stan stance that does anything.
What kind of numbers are you going after?
I mean, probably you want numbers to prove that climate change is changing politics and economics, etc. for the worse, or maybe just numbers for proving that climate change is real.
But both of these seem like such trivial information that I’m probably just guessing wrong. But because of that, I’d be curious to know: what kind of numbers did you mean?
I can probably help digging up some for you, but not if you just meant “prove that climate change exists”. But, numbers proving that economy will suffer from climate change should be easy to find. (And I think you could just search for them yourself…)
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is there anything substantial being done about climate change right now though?
Yes.
exemplify?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1jOqyjcO4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUA1kFSJnYQ
I was going to say more, but basically, watch those videos (or read their references).
Good news sells bad, solar energy is being deployed really quickly and accelerating exponentially, solar has a higher return on investment than gas, coal or oil (about 8x as much in developed markets, according to the IEA), nowadays, green energy is the better one for the economy, and the billionaires just want money, so if it is the green energy that has higher returns, they will invest in that.
Green energy has had 2x as much investment as fossil fuels, and about 80% of that investment is private.
In september 2024 the UK shut down its last coal powerplant.
And I forgot the most important! There have been days where energy has a NEGATIVE COST in some places in the world because of renewables, doesn’t that sound like a financial incentive to use renewables?
you could go on for days, there is a lot being done, we just don’t know about most of it.
Short term dip is a pretty dismissive way to address the extremism of fascist policies prevailing large parts of the world but okay.
It’ll be over within the next century or so
My grandma was born pre world war 2, she was literally born during the rise of fascism, then lived through her family getting conscripted and some killed, having to flee to the country side during the bombing raids, then through years of post war rationing.
She then travelled around the world during the 50s, raised a family during the 60s and 70s, and enjoyed a long, happy, fruitful, and fulling retirement / art career from the 80s, through the 90s, and 00s, and just passed away this year.
And there was zero chance she regretted being born.
No. Only joy for the new parents and child. (Though I do put in work to shore up their finances, try to get them my next bonus.)
Several reasons: being a kid today is better than being a kid 20-50 years ago. Toys are cooler, parenting competence and training has broadly improved, minecraft exists, and there is some really good childrens TV.
Health risks are largely down, especially compared to 35 years ago. (Anecdotally about 10% of families around my cohort lost kids. Far fewer in the younger cohorts.)
While economic mobility is down, more people means a stronger voting block. Boomers run the world because their protests changed policy. I see indications that kids are a more competent politic than earlier generations (eg, climate and LGBTQ rights), we just need them to matter sooner.
For what it’s worth, the economy is not just bad, it’s breaking. If workers remain this exploited, there will soon be nobody to sell to. We are seeing large (usually stupid) interventions to try and address it, I put nontrivial odds on something sane eventually being tried.
War deaths are low and really don’t seem likely to increase dramatically (see here).
Toys are cooler, parenting competence and training has broadly improved, minecraft exists, and there is some really good childrens TV.
You’ve got a lot of good points, but I want to quibble about this one. I’m not an expert, but everything I’ve read about childhood development tells me toys like blocks, string, dirt/sand/water, and paper/pencils are the best toys. They are open-ended and drive critical thinking, exploration, and creativity. TV is the worst as it encourages passivity. Even when educational, TV encourages kids to sit and accept input rather than doing anything with that information. Yes, minecraft is akin to online blocks, and it does have some logic training, but it teaches in-game physics instead of letting toddlers discover real-world physics.
Seems like a good one to quibble about! I’d like to think through it more myself. I’m going off personal anecdote, so if you have data sources to add I am extremely interested.
I think the strongest ‘yes, and’ is to point out that TV and toys competing with blocks were both very much present in the 90s and 00s. In the childcare settings I see, Bluey and paw patrol are world’s better than Clifford, teletubbies, or Barney. Hilde and SheRa are both excellent television. (I do not wish to disparage Mr Roger’s or Sesame Street; note they are still available!)
For toys, I note the spread of ‘Discovery Boxes’ that make those physics lessons you highlight substantially more accessible. You don’t need a mentor whose well educated to steer you towards the cool (and at least directionally correct) properties of nature. I saw only a handful of these before 2010, but they seem much more common now. Compare with the figurines, cheesy electronic noise makers, and furbies.
3D printers are also becoming more accessible (if you don’t know someone who has one, your local library might provide! They’re reaching that price-point), which has allowed kids (and me) to play with interesting mechanical devices, precise shapes, and have some say in the exact toy you enjoy. I know of one little girl who got special printed ‘poop’ emojis, which she helped customize and size for her intended play.
We also have much better board games starting to reach this cohort. Candyland, snakes-and-ladders, and sometimes uno are what I remember seeing 20 years ago. While they still make an appearance, I am also seeing Project L, Sushi Go, and unstable unicorns in playrooms. Classrooms now have Hex in addition to chess or checkers.
We can move the range we’re looking at to earlier, so that we aren’t comparing with the 90s low point (TV still present, mass produced toys still common). However I think as we slide back further, we find substantially more abusive parenting practices, and I think these wash out the benefits of more creative toys. I suspect this is partially causal; parents can manage their children without snapping psychologically partially because we do have quality entertainment for the kids. It’s hard work being entertainment all day. Someone could argue (but I am not confident) that entertainment time is replacing pointless labor/waiting/punishment time, and kids are still spending similar hours running around, playing in dirt, and stacking blocks.
My second argument would be to challenge the premise a bit. I know people who are living partially (or even mostly) for the next big cool movie/book/game/show/toy in their life. Silksong has a release date and I certainly feel better about this next week. I think it’s an objective improvement that the film nerds get to enjoy quality shows from age 3, and I don’t think it would be fair to begrudge them the opportunity (or that so many people take the opportunity). This is a reason to be happy for the kids.
Having a child in 2025 is just plain selfish.
Username checks out.
I guess it’s “evil” and “edgy” to care for the future of unborn children. You learn something new everyday 😂
In the throes of the Great Depression, people were making babies.
In WWI and WWII, where thousands of men died every day, people were making babies.
In my time, the threat of planetary nuclear annihilation hung over our heads. I was made.
OP: This is all just so awful!
Everyone here knows the solution; Eat the rich.
I used to.
Kids have never been something I never saw myself having. I have nephews and nieces and I used to worry about them.
They’ve grown up a bit and the kids are actually doing alright. In my family they are all loved and they’re well behaved kids.
They’re getting proper diagnoses and treatment for their adhd that my brothers and I probably should have gotten as kids. Instead we all got countless detentions and suspensions in school.
School these days is kind of a mess, but my nieces and nephews all have parents who step in and help. The biggest thing for one who was getting bullied was switching schools, it was a total 180 in his life after leaving that environment.
The omnipresent tech and AI stuff is a mess too. I think having involved and caring parents helps a lot with that. It’s harder to fall into the traps when you have good examples in life. Hopefully that keeps up.
As for money/job prospects that was a huge concern when I was coming of age too. 2008 fucked everything up. This too shall pass the youth job market has always been tough for the last 25 years. They’ll figure it out with a bit of help. They’re not doomed here. As long as there are people there will be needs to fill.
I do worry about the climate. I don’t know how to help with that. I try to do good but it’s beyond my control to stop. All we can do is try to mitigate and adapt.
All ye who enter abandon all hope
Seriously, you people are a bunch of cake eaters. “The future is scary and things are getting worse.” It’s always been scary, you’ve just been privileged enough for it not to be.
All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it.
Bro, people have it bad NOW. Life is and has always been suffering and struggle. Get out of your online bubble and go see some shit.
Seriously. I regularly meet people who make top 5% incomes, like 250K+. They living in luxury condos, have had their entire life paved out for them by welathy parents, and will never have any real problems or struggles in their lives.
What do they talk about every time? How poor they are. How everything is so hard. How they struggle so much with daily tasks. How their job is so awful. Why can’t they just go be on a yacht somewhere forever? How their friend/boss/parent is mean and not giving them more stuff, etc. etc. Why isn’t their life perfect and wonderful life they were promised? Why aren’t they famous and rich like some other person they met once?
And the millionaires/billionaires… all feel this same way too. Hence why they are all building apocalypse estates in New Zealand and bunkers in old missile silos and whining about how the mean government taxing them is so unfair.
Just read all of Vonnegut’s works again. It’s weird hearing him outline, from the 1940s onward, the same exact issues we have today. There are easily 300 passages I could quote here and claim as my own commentary on modern life. No one would blink.
“The good Earth - we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.”
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor.”
Suffering is not new. It’s universal. To exist is to suffer. Even if we were to find an infinite source of energy and food, we would find a way to suffer.
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wealth shift to the ultra wealthy
What in the world do you think the Great Depression was?!
extremist authoritarianism
WWII and the Soviet Union?
Climate change isn’t even a unique issue. Humans already survived an ice age, with nothing more than stone age tools.
And I’ll remind you, people were making babies all along.
China, US, and Russia are all having growing economic issues right now. Executives and government officials are all sold on the idea that AI will replace labor and create a massive unemployment population. Resources like farmable land, water, and rare minerals will be fought over. There is a global power shift towards authoritarianism. All signs point to the fact that your kids will become cannon fodder.
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