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Life expectancy has already lowered quite a bit from the pandemic we can't put a lid on, and when (if) that settles down cataclysmic climate change will continu

Life expectancy has already lowered quite a bit from the pandemic we can't put a lid on, and when (if) that settles down cataclysmic climate change will continue its work. Sorry but the future seems quite bleak.

BurningFrog 5y ago
One human constant through history is that the future always seems bleak to most of it. This seems like an understudied thing to me.
xyzelement 5y ago
At any point of human history, one could convince themselves that the future is bleak. There had been pandemics and plagues, cold and hot wars, revolutions and dangerous technologies and -isms. And yet in retrospect humanity's trend has been of greater ingenuity, connectives, safety and well-being. Sure, it's possible that THIS is the high point and it'll all go down-hill from here, but that's like being a broken clock - if you think every thing will kill you, you will eventually be right. But I see no reason to think like that. For example, sure the pandemic sucks but relative to what it could have been, especially in such a connected world, humanity is handling it pretty well. There seems to be resilience in our economies, supply chains, and people - that when they are tested they have bent and strained but not broken. Like a ship that gets rocked but doesn't sink in a storm that's actually a GREAT sign. I can related to your emotional state though. I remember walking in NYC a few days after 9/11, and seeing a half-completed building on 42nd street and thinking: this will never get finished. Nobody will ever dare come or invest or live in NYC - we're doomed and dead. That building is worth a billion dollars now and that neighborhood is thriving. It's important to remember that feeling of gloom and realizing that it doesn't always (in fact, most of the time) pan out as we feared the worst.
- minikites 5y ago
  >Sure, it's possible that THIS is the high point and it'll all go down-hill from here, but that's like being a broken clock - if you think every thing will kill you, you will eventually be right. It's not about present society being a global maximum, it's about present society being a local maximum. The lessons from history are often that things can and do get worse, sometimes for generations, before improving again later. It is absolutely possible (and I would argue probable) that life will get worse for a long while before improving.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    > (and I would argue probable) that life will get worse for a long while before improving. Sure. Like I said, you can do this at any point in time and if enough people do that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy so it's better not. Out of curiosity, I took a look at your submission history (which is vast!) and it's 90% doom and gloom across a vast array of topics. I do think living with such a negativity bias is very disempowering - and not to mention not fun. I don't mean to be stupid and blindly optimistic (I manage risk for a living among other things) but like I said, living with certainty that everything will be terrible will ruin your life. Like I said, since dawn of man, people had reason to believe what you believe. And those who really believed it would have no reason to build anything, learn anything, invest in anything, have children etc - why do any of that if the world is ending. But the world is inherited by those who DO do those things - everything we have, everything we are, everything we're investing in - is there because someone in the past believed that the future is worth the work. So just be careful how much of this your let into your psyche because it will lead to you to a dead end
    - minikites 5y ago
      >I do think living with such a negativity bias is very disempowering - and not to mention not fun. I don't mean to be stupid and blindly optimistic (I manage risk for a living among other things) but like I said, living with certainty that everything will be terrible will ruin your life. I think it only seems overly negative -because- so many people are blindly optimistic and assume things just get better naturally with no action required on our part. That's why I have such a negative outlook, I can envision the immense work we need to do to address climate change (and many other issues) and I'm seeing such a small amount of work being done that it's basically a rounding error. Watching people reject even the small amount of work required to personally address COVID (a free shot) does not fill me with hope that we can make big changes. >But the world is inherited by those who DO do those things - everything we have, everything we are, everything we're investing in - is there because someone in the past believed that the future is worth the work I think this is the disconnect between us. The future is worth the work, but we refuse to work on the future. We instead work harder to prop up the unsustainable present.
- marricks 5y ago
  I think the tragedy of 9/11 is distinctly different from this one. That one was covered non stop by media networks and lead to titanic shifts in the US and to US foreign policy. Comparing emotional states between now and then seems pretty useless. And sure every new crisis can seem bleak but just considering climate change when the field of people studying it have observable depression I imagine things are a bit gloomier than the average person may imagine. The pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of deaths just in the US hasn't had the same sort of coverage. Nor the fact that we haven't had hurricanes in the Gulf but massive flooding everywhere... my response doesn't come from emotion but from the lack of emotion I see in our leaders to the catastrophes. We haven't even begin to cut emissions enough to slow down the climate catastrophe and I doubt we ever will. While I imagine the US will start protecting its own supply chains I imagine it will act as it always has, protect the wealthiest and best off and leave middle and lower classes to fight for scraps. Just look at our healthcare system, best in the world for the richest, and one of the worst in the western world for lower classes.
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    * One of the worst in the developed world.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    > The pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of deaths just in the US hasn't had the same sort of coverage. Sorry, but where are you living/getting news from because I am jealous and I want to be that isolated. Literally every new story, list of headlines, broadcast, tweet, and conversation today includes COVID. CNN used to have daily death counts and totals. Every single person's life, from the way we study, work, shop etc has changed because of COVID. If your thesis is that somehow this big crisis hasn't been sufficiently publicized and people aren't aware, I just have a really hard time connecting to your perspective on the world.

BurningFrog 5y ago

One human constant through history is that the future always seems bleak to most of it. This seems like an understudied thing to me.

xyzelement 5y ago

At any point of human history, one could convince themselves that the future is bleak. There had been pandemics and plagues, cold and hot wars, revolutions and dangerous technologies and -isms. And yet in retrospect humanity's trend has been of greater ingenuity, connectives, safety and well-being. Sure, it's possible that THIS is the high point and it'll all go down-hill from here, but that's like being a broken clock - if you think every thing will kill you, you will eventually be right. But I see no reason to think like that. For example, sure the pandemic sucks but relative to what it could have been, especially in such a connected world, humanity is handling it pretty well. There seems to be resilience in our economies, supply chains, and people - that when they are tested they have bent and strained but not broken. Like a ship that gets rocked but doesn't sink in a storm that's actually a GREAT sign. I can related to your emotional state though. I remember walking in NYC a few days after 9/11, and seeing a half-completed building on 42nd street and thinking: this will never get finished. Nobody will ever dare come or invest or live in NYC - we're doomed and dead. That building is worth a billion dollars now and that neighborhood is thriving. It's important to remember that feeling of gloom and realizing that it doesn't always (in fact, most of the time) pan out as we feared the worst.

minikites 5y ago
>Sure, it's possible that THIS is the high point and it'll all go down-hill from here, but that's like being a broken clock - if you think every thing will kill you, you will eventually be right. It's not about present society being a global maximum, it's about present society being a local maximum. The lessons from history are often that things can and do get worse, sometimes for generations, before improving again later. It is absolutely possible (and I would argue probable) that life will get worse for a long while before improving.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  > (and I would argue probable) that life will get worse for a long while before improving. Sure. Like I said, you can do this at any point in time and if enough people do that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy so it's better not. Out of curiosity, I took a look at your submission history (which is vast!) and it's 90% doom and gloom across a vast array of topics. I do think living with such a negativity bias is very disempowering - and not to mention not fun. I don't mean to be stupid and blindly optimistic (I manage risk for a living among other things) but like I said, living with certainty that everything will be terrible will ruin your life. Like I said, since dawn of man, people had reason to believe what you believe. And those who really believed it would have no reason to build anything, learn anything, invest in anything, have children etc - why do any of that if the world is ending. But the world is inherited by those who DO do those things - everything we have, everything we are, everything we're investing in - is there because someone in the past believed that the future is worth the work. So just be careful how much of this your let into your psyche because it will lead to you to a dead end
  - minikites 5y ago
    >I do think living with such a negativity bias is very disempowering - and not to mention not fun. I don't mean to be stupid and blindly optimistic (I manage risk for a living among other things) but like I said, living with certainty that everything will be terrible will ruin your life. I think it only seems overly negative -because- so many people are blindly optimistic and assume things just get better naturally with no action required on our part. That's why I have such a negative outlook, I can envision the immense work we need to do to address climate change (and many other issues) and I'm seeing such a small amount of work being done that it's basically a rounding error. Watching people reject even the small amount of work required to personally address COVID (a free shot) does not fill me with hope that we can make big changes. >But the world is inherited by those who DO do those things - everything we have, everything we are, everything we're investing in - is there because someone in the past believed that the future is worth the work I think this is the disconnect between us. The future is worth the work, but we refuse to work on the future. We instead work harder to prop up the unsustainable present.
marricks 5y ago
I think the tragedy of 9/11 is distinctly different from this one. That one was covered non stop by media networks and lead to titanic shifts in the US and to US foreign policy. Comparing emotional states between now and then seems pretty useless. And sure every new crisis can seem bleak but just considering climate change when the field of people studying it have observable depression I imagine things are a bit gloomier than the average person may imagine. The pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of deaths just in the US hasn't had the same sort of coverage. Nor the fact that we haven't had hurricanes in the Gulf but massive flooding everywhere... my response doesn't come from emotion but from the lack of emotion I see in our leaders to the catastrophes. We haven't even begin to cut emissions enough to slow down the climate catastrophe and I doubt we ever will. While I imagine the US will start protecting its own supply chains I imagine it will act as it always has, protect the wealthiest and best off and leave middle and lower classes to fight for scraps. Just look at our healthcare system, best in the world for the richest, and one of the worst in the western world for lower classes.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  * One of the worst in the developed world.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  > The pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of deaths just in the US hasn't had the same sort of coverage. Sorry, but where are you living/getting news from because I am jealous and I want to be that isolated. Literally every new story, list of headlines, broadcast, tweet, and conversation today includes COVID. CNN used to have daily death counts and totals. Every single person's life, from the way we study, work, shop etc has changed because of COVID. If your thesis is that somehow this big crisis hasn't been sufficiently publicized and people aren't aware, I just have a really hard time connecting to your perspective on the world.