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I think about this every hour, if not several times an hour. The cognitive dissonance between saving for retirement, expecting a stable government, and this are

I think about this every hour, if not several times an hour. The cognitive dissonance between saving for retirement, expecting a stable government, and this are huge. I don't understand how every parent isn't filled with sheer, abject terror at their child's death from starvation, thirst, disease, or violence.

ThePadawan 6y ago
> I don't understand how every parent isn't filled with sheer, abject terror at their child's death from starvation, thirst, disease, or violence. I also find it hard to believe that the default stance (even from non-religious people) seems to be that having kids is normal. It is amazing how even as a male, "oh you'll change your mind, everyone wants to have kids some time!" is brought up. It is absolutely baffling.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  Traits which are unlikely to produce offspring tend to be uncommon because, well, they don't reproduce themselves. We are the ancestors of people who had kids because they wanted to have sex (or at least one of the people involved did), or who actively wanted children.
ramblerman 6y ago
Walking around in pure terror is one option, but is probably more media inspired than reality based. You could also be optimistic in the face of the future. We are here because of a long line of good fortune and optimism, despite war, disease, famine. The human race has really faced some incredible odds. And technology while an accelerant for destruction could also be our liberator. Solve energy problems, get us off this planet, etc.. I think instilling that optimism in your kids is most important.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  I am hoping to train them in permaculture, resourcefulness, and to be strong members their community. We'll see how that goes, they're still very young.
- psiconaut 6y ago
  this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by deleuze: "There's no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons." I guess we can also translate as tools, given the techno-solucionist atmosphere ;)
  - CalRobert 6y ago
    Sure, tools. But given billions of desperate hungry people weapons may be apt.
adflux 6y ago
"I think about this every hour, if not several times an hour." Maybe it's time to lay off the news media & apocalyptical documentaries for a while. Can't imagine this is a very healthy way to live.
melomal 6y ago
> I don't understand how every parent isn't filled with sheer, abject terror at their child's death from starvation, thirst, disease, or violence. Sometimes the tech community just lives in another world. In reality: work, bills, screaming kids and life get in the way of thinking about anything but yourself. When I was 21 I was the same (vegan, vegetarian, telling people about BPA, not touching receipts with my hands yadda yadda yadda). Now I'm 30 and as far as I can tell, nothing changed, I didn't die from too much exposure to plastics, the world still is spinning but I have a lot more on my plate to think about than watching documentaries and fear mongering myself into depression.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  I'm 38 and have a 1 and 3 year old (we had a fit of optimism I guess), and am terrified that having them just in time for them to suffer the collapse of civilisation around them could end up being an act of cruelty. We've moved to a location that should fare well enough, ecologically, but of course that makes it a target for hungry, thirsty, better-armed groups of people.
refurb 6y ago
You could get killed walking your doggie. Or get cancer. Or have a stroke. Tomorrow. Worrying about your post-apocalyptic world that might happen doesn’t consume many of my brain cycles. I’d much rather worry about things that are likely to happen in the short term. Edit: no, my child’s death from thirst, famine, violence or disease is not a forgone conclusion.
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  Oh, that's not a "might", it's pretty much a foregone conclusion. Not tomorrow, not in 5 years or even in the next decade. But not so long term, it's going to be hard to continue catering a modern day lifestyle to billions. [1] [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.6154... Not so long term would be beyond 2050. 2100 sounds like far into the future... until you realize that kids born today have fair chance being alive at 79 or 80 to see the turn of the next century. [2] We are not even talking about any children you might have of your own. This is literally everyone who gets born today. Nephews, nieces, cousins, kids of friends and acquaintances,... So, this isn't even an thought exercise in the abstract. The insidious part of climate change are the delayed effects. Consider it like throwing a thick blanket over your body. It takes a bit of time before enough of your heat gets trapped to make you sweat. Most people will throw off that blanket once they get uncomfortable. When it comes to climate, throwing off the blanket on short notice isn't an option. So, while you - and many others - feel that humanity at large has the luxury of time to afford consider anything but climate change, generations to come will experience the very uncomfortable effects of a blanket they won't be able to shake off. That's just "present bias" in action. Now, I don't worry constantly about the future. That's counter productive. What I do worry about is how little action is taken even today to change that future. Sure, there are a tons of great ideas and technological advances. But electric cars or ships dregging micro-plastics out of the oceans aren't going to change this. What really grinds my gears is that this was already known some 60 years ago. This was already an debated issue at the White House in the 1960's... and over the course of those 60 years the affirmative actions that needed to be taken to avert this, have been muddled in compromises, bureaucracy and lobbying. That's not even hyperbole. [2] [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim... As time marches on, the window of opportunities to avert the worst case scenarios and projections shrink rapidly. If hard to accept policy choices keep being debated and pushed into the future, the future simply becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That window of opportunities has already partly closed up. Climate change is unavoidable. And any future policy choices will shift towards mitigating the increasingly dire effects, rather then avoiding climate change wholesale. As an individual, the single most powerful thing you could do is to vote for and support policy makers who do take this issue serious enough today.
King-Aaron 6y ago
> I don't understand how every parent isn't filled with sheer, abject terror at their child's death from starvation, thirst, disease, or violence. My boy is 11 months old and I'm already training him to be an expert swordsman for his inevitable victory in the wastelands
killtimeatwork 6y ago
I've basically come to terms with the fact that we're probably the last generation (or definitely one of the last) that is enjoying a level of comfort bordering on luxury. I enjoy it while it lasts. My biggest "trick" is not having children, so I don't have to worry about their future. The problems we're facing, barring some revolutionary technological breakthroughs, are basically unsolvable (because humans are terrible at planetary-level coordination) so worrying about them is just not worth it.
bamboozled 6y ago
I think it's only in the last 200 years or so that people could actually live comfortably with periods of not worrying about the things you mention. How many famines, wars and water shortages happened since the dawn of man? How many people worried about those things vs how many people were born? Not discounting the severity of the issue, just outlining how lucky people have been in the last few centuries.
- drewcoo 6y ago
  Small pox, diphtheria,and polio. Droughts, storm damage, flooding, and insects destroying crops. Poor medical care. Child labor. These things and many more existed in the last 200 years here in the US alone and they all endangered children in the ways mentioned. Childhood mortality rates in the US for the last 200-ish years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al...
bioinformatics 6y ago
There are many solutions to your problem, some simple, some more complex.

ThePadawan 6y ago

> I don't understand how every parent isn't filled with sheer, abject terror at their child's death from starvation, thirst, disease, or violence. I also find it hard to believe that the default stance (even from non-religious people) seems to be that having kids is normal. It is amazing how even as a male, "oh you'll change your mind, everyone wants to have kids some time!" is brought up. It is absolutely baffling.

CalRobert 6y ago
Traits which are unlikely to produce offspring tend to be uncommon because, well, they don't reproduce themselves. We are the ancestors of people who had kids because they wanted to have sex (or at least one of the people involved did), or who actively wanted children.

ramblerman 6y ago

Walking around in pure terror is one option, but is probably more media inspired than reality based. You could also be optimistic in the face of the future. We are here because of a long line of good fortune and optimism, despite war, disease, famine. The human race has really faced some incredible odds. And technology while an accelerant for destruction could also be our liberator. Solve energy problems, get us off this planet, etc.. I think instilling that optimism in your kids is most important.

CalRobert 6y ago
I am hoping to train them in permaculture, resourcefulness, and to be strong members their community. We'll see how that goes, they're still very young.
psiconaut 6y ago
this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by deleuze: "There's no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons." I guess we can also translate as tools, given the techno-solucionist atmosphere ;)
- CalRobert 6y ago
  Sure, tools. But given billions of desperate hungry people weapons may be apt.

adflux 6y ago

"I think about this every hour, if not several times an hour." Maybe it's time to lay off the news media & apocalyptical documentaries for a while. Can't imagine this is a very healthy way to live.

melomal 6y ago

> I don't understand how every parent isn't filled with sheer, abject terror at their child's death from starvation, thirst, disease, or violence. Sometimes the tech community just lives in another world. In reality: work, bills, screaming kids and life get in the way of thinking about anything but yourself. When I was 21 I was the same (vegan, vegetarian, telling people about BPA, not touching receipts with my hands yadda yadda yadda). Now I'm 30 and as far as I can tell, nothing changed, I didn't die from too much exposure to plastics, the world still is spinning but I have a lot more on my plate to think about than watching documentaries and fear mongering myself into depression.

CalRobert 6y ago
I'm 38 and have a 1 and 3 year old (we had a fit of optimism I guess), and am terrified that having them just in time for them to suffer the collapse of civilisation around them could end up being an act of cruelty. We've moved to a location that should fare well enough, ecologically, but of course that makes it a target for hungry, thirsty, better-armed groups of people.

refurb 6y ago

You could get killed walking your doggie. Or get cancer. Or have a stroke. Tomorrow. Worrying about your post-apocalyptic world that might happen doesn’t consume many of my brain cycles. I’d much rather worry about things that are likely to happen in the short term. Edit: no, my child’s death from thirst, famine, violence or disease is not a forgone conclusion.

CaptArmchair 6y ago
Oh, that's not a "might", it's pretty much a foregone conclusion. Not tomorrow, not in 5 years or even in the next decade. But not so long term, it's going to be hard to continue catering a modern day lifestyle to billions. [1] [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.6154... Not so long term would be beyond 2050. 2100 sounds like far into the future... until you realize that kids born today have fair chance being alive at 79 or 80 to see the turn of the next century. [2] We are not even talking about any children you might have of your own. This is literally everyone who gets born today. Nephews, nieces, cousins, kids of friends and acquaintances,... So, this isn't even an thought exercise in the abstract. The insidious part of climate change are the delayed effects. Consider it like throwing a thick blanket over your body. It takes a bit of time before enough of your heat gets trapped to make you sweat. Most people will throw off that blanket once they get uncomfortable. When it comes to climate, throwing off the blanket on short notice isn't an option. So, while you - and many others - feel that humanity at large has the luxury of time to afford consider anything but climate change, generations to come will experience the very uncomfortable effects of a blanket they won't be able to shake off. That's just "present bias" in action. Now, I don't worry constantly about the future. That's counter productive. What I do worry about is how little action is taken even today to change that future. Sure, there are a tons of great ideas and technological advances. But electric cars or ships dregging micro-plastics out of the oceans aren't going to change this. What really grinds my gears is that this was already known some 60 years ago. This was already an debated issue at the White House in the 1960's... and over the course of those 60 years the affirmative actions that needed to be taken to avert this, have been muddled in compromises, bureaucracy and lobbying. That's not even hyperbole. [2] [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim... As time marches on, the window of opportunities to avert the worst case scenarios and projections shrink rapidly. If hard to accept policy choices keep being debated and pushed into the future, the future simply becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That window of opportunities has already partly closed up. Climate change is unavoidable. And any future policy choices will shift towards mitigating the increasingly dire effects, rather then avoiding climate change wholesale. As an individual, the single most powerful thing you could do is to vote for and support policy makers who do take this issue serious enough today.

King-Aaron 6y ago

> I don't understand how every parent isn't filled with sheer, abject terror at their child's death from starvation, thirst, disease, or violence. My boy is 11 months old and I'm already training him to be an expert swordsman for his inevitable victory in the wastelands

killtimeatwork 6y ago

I've basically come to terms with the fact that we're probably the last generation (or definitely one of the last) that is enjoying a level of comfort bordering on luxury. I enjoy it while it lasts. My biggest "trick" is not having children, so I don't have to worry about their future. The problems we're facing, barring some revolutionary technological breakthroughs, are basically unsolvable (because humans are terrible at planetary-level coordination) so worrying about them is just not worth it.

bamboozled 6y ago

I think it's only in the last 200 years or so that people could actually live comfortably with periods of not worrying about the things you mention. How many famines, wars and water shortages happened since the dawn of man? How many people worried about those things vs how many people were born? Not discounting the severity of the issue, just outlining how lucky people have been in the last few centuries.

drewcoo 6y ago
Small pox, diphtheria,and polio. Droughts, storm damage, flooding, and insects destroying crops. Poor medical care. Child labor. These things and many more existed in the last 200 years here in the US alone and they all endangered children in the ways mentioned. Childhood mortality rates in the US for the last 200-ish years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al...

bioinformatics 6y ago

There are many solutions to your problem, some simple, some more complex.