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?
No.
Our species has endured much worse than this.
Humanity has never experienced man-made climate collapse with 8 billion living souls inhabiting the same planet.
Humanity will likely survive as a species, but civilization is toast.
Civilization has collapsed several times. So has climate.
None if this is new. It only seems that way because people don’t read history books.
Climate collapse happened over thousands of years in past cases, in a few local cases over hundreds. Not decades like we are seeing now.
That said we have better technology so we are arguably able to adapt quicker. Either way comparing past climate change to current climate change is not reasonable.
I understand there’s a little variance here in terms of the timeline and specific causes, but I don’t think it matters much. Even if tech were to fail completely (unlikely) there’d still be a sizable number of humans who survive by living in caves and falling back on bushcraft. Where I live in the US there are 2500 caves within a few hundred miles, and those are just the ones we know of.
That said, I have a similar expectation with regard to technology. Necessity is the mother of invention and a combination of technology and necessary social policy changes will help mitigate the effects of climate change, though it won’t happen worldwide and it’s going to be a cataclysm for the human race for sure.
Makes me glad that I didn’t procreate.
Climate change and the breakup of the US are my two large-scale fears.
The US breaking up would be awesome for the world given its by far the most destructive and immoral empire currently.
“The world” in this case only means rich and powerful men. All the same in the end.
Hell, I’m more worried about the US /not/ breaking up. The whole country just lies down and accepts the decline into authoritarianism.
The whole country just lies down and accepts the decline into authoritarianism.
Objectively untrue and demonstrated in LA, Portland, Minnesota, and Chicago. Even better, it was demonstrated in bipartisan fashion. People who voted red were part of the silent sabotage that took place in Chicago and Minnesota.
And then there’s all the attempts by people to delete Donald too.
The country is doing what it can and also trying not to descend into chaos and survive at the same time.
I fucking hope you’re right.
Well, if watching the various resistance movements do silent sabotage this year wasn’t heartening, the following facts might make you feel better.
Dems are polling 14% over Republicans right now, and if that holds until November, it’s likely that the November elections will be overwhelming and rig-proof. Further, nearly every Donald-backed candidate has lost their election against a Dem in 2025 and 2026, and most of those elections occurred in states and districts Donald won by double digits in 2024. The only good election news Donald has had has occurred in Republican primaries, but that doesn’t matter due to his having a lower approval rating than Jimmy Carter.
The upside is Donald thought he had a mandate to revive Nazi Germany and learned that people literally just wanted illegal immigrants deported and not to see 5th graders chased down and cuffed by masked thugs, and yes, those are two different things. People voted for immigration reform and affordability, and Donald has not only failed on both, he’s failed spectacularly on both issues while getting us into a war no one wanted that has made the cost of living worse.
The downside is we can look at the last 40 years of Democratic politics and conclude that nothing will fundamentally change and, more likely, the majority of Democrats will coopt the power Donald has seized and embrace the new fascism.
It is nice to see that centrists are finally coming around on socialism, though. All it took was them having to live in their cars.
Dems are polling 14% over Republicans right now, and if that holds until November, it’s likely that the November elections will be overwhelming and rig-proof.
Even better, there’s a downside to gerrymandering. It helps you in close elections, but if the election is really against you, you end up losing even more seats than you would have without the gerrymandering. You have to design all your districts assuming a certain vote percentage. So maybe you design it so your side has a bunch of districts that have a reliable 5 point advantage to your side. Well, if your side is running 10 points behind? Now that gerrymander is hurting you.
Equally valid point. Ideally when Bonespurs has his final Big Mac Attack MAGA will more ore less self-destruct as all his wannabees backstab each other while clawing for their little piece of his reeking power vacuum.
Benn Jordan just released a video talking about a similar feeling.
Massacres on innocent children, women, elderly and non-combatants
What future?
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 3 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
A lot of people will die and then things will change for the better, eventually. 🤷♂️
Or it won’t. At least not while humans are alive.
Being afraid puts one in shackles. There’s no sense in being afraid of a situation you cannot change. So: no, I’m not afraid, but I’m pessimistic and I’m trying to adapt, and prepare myself with my kids for a possibly worse future and try to develop workaround strategies.
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.
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.
Techno robber barons pushing us toward ecological disaster? Why would anyone be afraid of that? /s
Although on a serious note, I don’t despair; I’m taking action, and I hope plenty of others are as well.
Just remember you’re going to die, eventually. So never be afraid of death. There are fates much worse than the inevitable. Like a poisoned future of musk clones.
Roko’s basilisk is going to resurrect me and torture me forever by forcing me to listen to people drone on about Roko’s basilisk for all eternity.
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.
something more local and immediate. notice alot of posts on different forums(like during the beginning of covid to end of lockdowns) how people are “still living at home with parents, and people in the comments thinking these people are losers” alot of them seem to live in HCOL, or MCOL areas making them still at home(if you ignore the ones that refuse to find a job or contribute though and not due to some circumstances). plus alot of job markets are pretty piss poor right now too, in many fields. im actually surprised they still have so many tech employee still employed, 2 of my family members were laid off in the last few years, because they arnt in peddling AI business i assume.
i was looking at one graduate program(not a degree) recently because its also a cheap graduate program for what the salary is in this industry, equivalent to a pharmacist salary but cost 20x less the cost to enter program i mentioned(pharmD program is around 245k-290k cost(if you go into a more expensive school), it gotten so much more comeptitive over the past few years. as people are trying to come to west coast to apply to only 9 schools that offer this program, plus CALI has added some kind of extra requirement to the CLS license. with all the AI resumes and screening by companies, i think we will see more joblessness, and living at home posts.
I assume its because the pandemic, recent layoffs(maybe not in tech)has made people concentrate on college courses and try to apply, while almost every job in bio is very nebelous in its requirements.
