Do you think things will get better?
Do you think things will get better?
I don't mean better for you or me but better in general. Do you believe our species will ever reach some form of enlightenment or will we destroy ourselves?
No. I used to believe we were, I thought every generation the world was becoming more open and fighting for a better tomorrow.
But not anymore, I think the rich has put short term profits over the needs of the world sooo much that it's placed the majority in a bad situation. And because of that, people can and will only be able to look out for themself first. Because they are in a situation where they have to.
And I think we've gone past the point of return, where the future will continue to go negative, whether it be businesses destroying the society for profit, or the destruction of the planet or financial crises and hyper inflation from printing money, or just some outright war.
The majority are so busy trying to put food on the table or get a roof over our head that we can no longer care for the rest of the world.
I'm torn because I think it's going to be very different in a lot of different places, and I'm trying to account for my own US-centric biases.
Ukraine and Palestine are pretty much completely hosed. Heck, you could probably add other countries like Georgia to that list. NATO may dissolve.
Climate change is going to get worse. We went from "we have to stop now before we reach the point of no return" to "we really need to do what we can to mitigate how hard it it's". The US is now re-opening the floodgates for fossil fuels and rolling back environmental regulations.
People will be persecuted. Police departments in the US will continue to militarize. I expect more riots similar to the BLM ones. Race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, political affiliations, the works. Best-caae scenario is probably class-based riots at this point.
Billionaires will become trillionaires. Wages stay the same. I expect prices to go down at first with the influx of fossil fuels. The GOP will probably pass some tax cuts similar to 2017- temporarily give each individual a reduction of ~$200 per year for a few years while giving corporations billions in permanent cuts. But the prices will rise eventually.
There will be bright spots. Weird pockets of normalcy. The Nordic countries might be alright if Russia and Climate Change aren't too aggressive. China will be its own separate case- you'll still have the ongoing authoritarianjsm and genocide, but it'll be a bright and sunny solar punk version. I'm betting huge chunks of rural America will go unchanged- poor, straight, white Christians will remain poror, straight, white Christians. Those well-off enough to have their McMansions in the woods a couple hours drive away from the cities will probably stay the same.
Maybe California or other blue states are able to hold off the feds and other external forces enough to keep a semblance of the Old World?
Personally, I expect everything around me to just go downhill. Public infrastructure goes unmaintained. The occasional water boil advisory becomes more and more common over a couple years until it becomes a habit to boil water without checking. Certain websites become inaccessible, then ISP's roll out bandwidth caps and up prices. Electrical outages become more common- maybe even scheduled rolling blackouts. You'll need to factor poorly maintained roads when deciding what car to purchase.
Weird stuff is going to be cheap and available. There's still going to be new smartphones every year or two for a while. The PS6, the Switch 2, maybe a new Xbox all drop. Professional sports keep going just like theh mostly did during the pandemic. You can already buy a huge 4k smart TV for less than a month of groceries for 2 people, or less than a month's rent for a 1-bedroom apartment most places. The TV's will get cheaper while the rent and food gets more expensive. The streaming services will re-consilidate into one or two companies, force ads for everyone, raise their prices, reduce their libraries, and basically become exactly what cable used to be.
Gonna be weird.
Mateee this is exactly what I can see happening. This is exactly it! Let's see 3 years from now I'm going to look back on this comment
Humanity is so fickle, it’s impossible to tell.
In the US, we went from overwhelming opposition to gay marriage to overwhelming support in less than a decade.
On the other hand, we went from aggressively eradicating CFCs and fixing the ozone hole to dragging our feet on renewable energy for several decades.
Even further back, we went from back-to-back world wars and economic collapse to a tentative global peace and prosperity.
Monarchy seemed inevitable for ages, and then multiple democratic revolutions all sprang up in quick succession.
Equality was fundamental to the Constitution, but we still haven’t healed the wounds of slavery.
There seems to be no telling. Some problems languish for a long time, but then see massive improvements in the blink of an eye. Some obvious fixes lay dormant for an offensively long time.
When I think about this stuff, I get a weird mix of hope and despair and guilt and frustration and impatience.
It seems unfair that we got stuck with these particular crises, with no guarantee that we’re actually prepared to handle them. (Maybe that’s the entire story of humanity.)
And then I remember what Tolkien had to say about such things:
All of these radical restructurings of society were based on gradual buildup until catalyst points shifted the dominant Mode of Production. By analyzing Capitalism, a decentralized market economy that necessarily gravitates towards centralization in Monopolist Syndicates, we can predict that Socialism is the next step. Marx is correct.
Here's a bit of hope for you, scientists have figured out how to trick the body into producing any protein or antibody they want, through technology like gene therapy and mRNA vaccines. We're about to cure a lot of diseases that used to be 100% fatal. Diseases that kill kids and adults alike.
Most things seem to be getting worse these days, but at least we're making progress in other areas.
Too bad those advances will be monetized as hard as possible and limited to those that can afford it.
Unfortunately there's a lot of truth in that statement, especially in the case of rare disease. It's really difficult to convince a company to spend billions to develop a treatment that will only cure 1 in 100,000 people without letting them charge an arm and a leg, and giving them a very long exclusivity deal so they can continue to charge high prices. So much of that cost to develop is due to the dozens of other failed drugs and formulations they tried on their way to success.
I don't have a solution for the problem, and I'm always a little suspicious of anyone who claims it's easy to solve. I think the UK has a decent idea, the NHS basically decides if the cost of a drug will be covered by insurance by comparing the expected benefit and the current cost. If the ratio is too skewed, they refuse to cover the medication. In theory, this should be an incentive for a company to charge less. In practice, it leads to some companies choosing not to market in the UK.
Thanks, that's good to hear. New scientific breakthroughs always inspire hope, at least for me, especially when they save lives.
That's great and all but we're going to be needing food and air conditioning.
In the long run, yes.
In the short term, no.
Things only get better if we make then better.
Yep, which is why it's an excellent time to get armed, organized, and "Read Theory, Darn It!" We absolutely have the power and ability to make things better.
The current trend sucks, obviously.
But historically, we used to be so much worse to each-other.
There's reasons (data and practicality) to have faith that things will continue to improve.
But it won't be enough, for many of us, in many of our lifetimes, so let's all stay angry and active.
I think the general population of humans struggle to recognize, understand, and address large scale threats.
There's the scientific community that'll try to explain these issues to the general public in simplistic term. But they're often overruled by dumb idiots in charge who store snowballs in their freezer as proof that climate change isn't real.
There's a belief that humanity needs to be brought to the edge of extinction to realize how bad things really are and to get their shit together. I don't believe humanity would be willing to save itself from extinction as it's just not profitable to do so.
It feels like everything is going down the drain right now but when you look at the whole human history, this is probably just a hiccup and overall it will continue getting better in the long run.
And although we missed the mark and won't be able to stop climate change, humanity will adapt somehow and live on. Enlightenment I don't know, but better yes.
But for the near future, I don't see good things coming...
I believe that nature will adapt too. Maybe everything is too fast. But once everything will die that cant live in this heat, there will still be nature that developes and mutates just to create a balance again.
And we will definetly survive somehow. Some poor people with redneck engineering but also rich people obviously. There is always a way. Even in chaos and destruction.
Yup. You look through history and FAR worse shit has happened in the past, even the recent past. The present though is what everyone has to deal with and that is your burden to bear best you can. Like you said, you see this sort of thing go in waves.
I know this sounds like a pat on the head but you also have to count your blessings in life and not just obsess over the things that are wrong with it or you'll always be miserable and never able to find any happiness. To say "everything is shit" is as unrealistic as saying "everything is wonderful".
Not for humans. Fascism can be recovered from, but climate change can't at this point until humans are gone.
Sure there will be lots of wars and famine but predicting human extinction as a result of climate change is a bit of a stretch. Even in a bad scenario where 99% of humanity dies off things could still turn back around, regrow and we try again for an advanced civilization in a couple millennia.
The question was whether or not things will get better, not extinction. We're unlikely to go extinct, but things will absolutely get worse for us.
Humans needing to be "gone" was hyperbole - we just need to not have enough people to be able to damage the climate any more.
We survived the Cold War. We survived that mild awkward moment where there were just 10,000 humans or something. We survived the Paleolithic by throwing and walking kinda good despite having super-mediocre body builds compared to the lithe apex competition.
Sure, a United Statesian might not know what price elasticity means when they go pro-tariffs, and shoot their foot on a national scale. Sure, "Eastern" youths might stretch themselves systemically thin to leap through an education colander into a limited, demanding job seat. Sure, there's a whole terror cloister awkwardly just below South Korea, a crap ton of eyes on the Ukraine, and the new context of exponentially advancing tech compared to the last kabillion years.
But I believe in the human spirit. Call me a fool. We don't even need to be enlightened to not destroy ourselves. We just need to be what we always fuckin been, what we always fuckin will be.
Stupid endurant.
in all three senses of the shit.
I survive not to cope with hope of a better tomorrow. I survive out of spite so I may get the chance to witness very very bad things happening to very very bad people.
At this point, it could still go either way. Make no mistake, we’ve already done, and will continue to do, profound damage to the environment and global climate that will take generations to reverse (if that’s even possible). That said, I think it’s going to need to get seriously worse before the world’s largest polluters have no choice but to go against the monied interests in fossil fuels and plastics. Like many very wealthy people are going to have to be directly affected by this is always that can’t be disingenuously explained away.
That's if Capitalism lasts that long.
I think it's gonna get a lot worse, but if we can hold it together then it'll be smooth sailing afterwards. Basically, I think we're approaching several "Great Filters" and if we can get past them then we'll be good.
Either we progress to Socialism or we die out, that's the filter. I am hopeful, though.
As long as we keep not listening to the scientists, no I think there is no getting betrer. A world like ours is not going to get better as the climate deteriorates, and we cannot reign in the rich from continuing to kill the envrioment for profit. So long as carbon credits exist large polluters will continue to pollute and simply buy their way back into compliance. Based on the lack of progress on this exesistential issue for the survival of the whole species, at the very least its going to get a lot worse before it ever gets better, if theres still an environment that can support life left.
Sounds like the answer is that we need to transition to Socialism sooner, rather than sitting around.
"Do you believe our species will ever reach some form of enlightenment"
If there is anything history has taught me is that we repeat the same basic behavior over and over and have done so as far back as we can see. We are essentially very intelligent monkeys, obsessed with social status, manipulation, altruism and cooperation mixed with hostility and exploitation. I think the basic sociology of humans is baked into our DNA and the very nature of animal life. People have always imagined they can create some utopia on earth but it always ends up a failure because of the very nature of man and the impossibility of even defining a utopia for everyone.
The basic DNA of humans is that our ideas form from our Material Conditions, and the driver of this is the mode of production.
What "Utopias" are you referring to, here? The old, Utopian socialist of Owen's kind, or the modern, Marxist form of Socialism (which rejects the term "utopian")?
Eventually but I think society might need to collapse and rebuild in between, and that supporting this level of complex civilization isn't gonna be possible, nor IMO desirable.
This is not to say we would go back to being cavemen, just that society has less tech and energy at its disposal and less people.
I guess we could get there without collapse, but I have zero faith in any kind of degrowth moment despite agreeing with it ideologically. This would help us avoid much death and suffering but it doesn't seem to be priority for anyone in power.
Progression to Socialism is the alternative. We shouldn't advocate for collapse, but public ownership and central planning, which can facilitate green initiatives divorced from the profit motive.
All collapse will do is reset the clock, we will eventually run into the problems of late-stage Capitalism again once humanity runs the course of history again in hundreds or thousands of years.
Name one socialist/communist nation that hasn't been growth based industrialist economy? I think anything growth based is not gonna happen much longer, due to energy shortage, habitat loss, climate change, running out of critical minerals etc.
Sure I'm open for some degrowth socialism but don't really believe that's the way things gonna work out.
The trend is that in general, living conditions for humans have gotten significantly better over time. Look how much better people in medieval times had over cavemen. Look at how much better people in modern times have over medieval times. In general, medicine and technology will continue to advance, further increasing living standards.
People like to turn a blind eye to technological progress and assume just because there are ebbs and flows in society and politics that it means that humanity is going down the toilet. The general trend has never been that way. We have ups and downs, but lives are generally continued to improve over time. I can't imagine that changing any time soon. Sometimes steps backwards are made, yes, but be thankful we aren't living in caveman times where you would have died during childbirth, from accidentally cutting your leg on a rock, from starvation, from getting eaten by a mountain lion, etc.
I guess it depends on what you mean by destroy. Like literally population 0, I doubt it’ll ever get there. But losing 75% of population, I can see some nuclear war breaking out
But losing 75% of population, I can see some nuclear war breaking out
Seems pretty likely (eventually). I take hope that I'll be in the direct blast radius, and not a mutilated horribly scarred survivor.
I choose not to think about this one much because it's well outside my circle of influence.
Ya everyday another corrupt superpower is getting that much closer to weapons of mass destruction. I’m sure there’s bio weapons already out there that would destroy huge chunks of the population. But nuclear would also be up there though probably much more difficult to hide
Do you think things will get better?
Yes.
A lot of the problems we face are systematic, to do with how our society is organised rather than any human limit. They are solvable problems, and many have already been solved already in some countries. The reason they're aren't solved isn't because we can't, but because the few most powerful people are powerful because of this rigged system, and have a self-interest in keeping it that way by any means necessary.
History has shown us clearly that even kings, dictators and other broken systems can be overthrown AND stopped from coming back, provided the people doing it are politically educated and organized. That's the key. If we just get angry without a plan, we will end up like the pitiful Jan 6 riot. But if we educate ourselves with lessons from history and work to create a mass movement, we can finally move forward beyond this frightening present situation.
They are solvable problems, and many have already been solved already in some countries.
This is a great point!
The way I look at it, things have to get better. Because if they don't then we will destroy ourselves. Barbarism until socialism.
Yep, now more than ever is a great time to get armed, organized, and "Read Theory, Darn It!" I keep a beginner list complete with audiobooks on Marxist theory, which is critical in my opinion if we want to achieve Socialism.
Things will get better, eventually, if we work for it. Our time is the age of the death of the US Empire. The decay of Capitalism in the US and Imperialism abroad drives much of the division in the world over today, but if we know how to get past this we will succeed. I recommend reading Marxist theory, it can be very comforting to know how the world actually works, and how we can overcome it. I keep a "Read Theory, Darn It!" beginner reading list if anyone wants it, let me know if you have any questions.
Will admins/moderators block this communism spam?
The admins and moderators are Communists, so I doubt it, but they can feel free to let me know if I'm going too far and need to cut back a bit. I'll act accordingly.
We have the potential for far better, yes.
The real question is, will enough people want for us to get better...
The short answer is yes, as conditions deteriorate due to Capitalism and Imperialism decaying, and decay they must, more people become radicalized every day. If these radicals read theory and get organized, eventually a tipping point will be reached. The very fact that conditions are decaying rapidly means radicalization is also rapid.
If you are Elon Musk it is looking amazing right now.
Yeah. At least until his yes-men high five him and slap him on the back on his way to board the deep space or deep sea vessel that he designed himself.
I think in one moment, when the capitalist world failed so hard that half of the world or more died because of it. The humanity will start to change to a better future. Like one solarpunk or such.
Eventually, the contradictions necessarily created by Capitalism, ie decentralized markets leading to centralized monopolist syndicates, will result in said syndicates being pulled from under the feet of the Bourgeoisie. Marx has remained correct in his predictions thus far. I don't think it will take half the world dying either for the US Empire to fall. This better future will be Socialist in nature, Solarpunk is more of an aesthetic than an ideology but this Socialist future will most likely heavily rely on solar power among other renewables.
I made a Read Theory, Darn it! introduction to Marxism reading list if you want to check it out.
Im both amazed and terrified at the fact we haven't killed ourselves into extinction.
Cause it becomes easier by the decade every time.Society is already a balancing act. If anything, the balancing will just get harder.
No
What is "better in general"? I don't particularly mind the human species going extinct, it's unlikely there'll be no life left over. No one knows the nature of the universe.
In any case, it's incredibly unlikely we'll go extinct anytime soon. Maybe climate change etc causes extreme loss of life, but humans are so adaptive, some will surely survive.
No one can even define "enlightenment" either. Maybe we already are, maybe such a thing doesn't exist. Currently, it's just a story element.
Thanks, that's good to hear. New scientific breakthroughs always inspire hope, at least for me, especially when they save lives.