The way the world is going..

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

Today I heard that even more businesses are being closed and bought up by large online retailers and fast fashion companies, for example Amazon, Alibaba, Ali express type outlets.

Thousands upon thousands have lost their jobs during covid, only for the industries they were employed in to be further brought to their knees, likely to the point of no return.

Certain industries are being culled and it is doubtful we will ever see things like big shopping centers, strip malls, and the traditional high street ever again.

Most will rejoice in the convenience of being able to order things with a click of a button, rejoicing in the closure of brick and mortar stores as beacons of consumerism despite that fact that thousands will be unemployed and hungry as a result of this, and there's no new jobs lined up for them due to the cheap, profitable exploitation of overseas labourers.

Not to mention the fact that biodiversity is dead. Never again will we see windshield wipers full of insects, because our species seems hellbent on making most of the plants and animals on this earth extinct. With every instance of nature as we know it being paved over to construct new housing complexes and parking lots, and small businesses being boarded up, it seems like it is just a matter of time before we exist like cramped sardines in a tin.

There are some people out there who want 20 billion humans to exist and keep steamrolling the earth with endless consumption, and think that degrowth movement and antinatalism is extremist. However, I think the world is headed for dire straights if we simply keep producing and consuming beyond our means and live in tiny little bubbles with 0 human contact. Your neighbors, in their own little bubble, stay weary of you, and you are only allowed to walk outside of your concrete enclosure for a few minutes each day when you aren't toiling away at work looking upon the city skyline, which is nothing but smog.

That is how I see the future. Yet people think we will just bounce back and create some technocratic futuristic utopia in the near future. Look at this. I'm afraid it's all downhill from here. Other young people in my age group have no hope as we inherit a massive recession, and none of us think we will have jobs when we graduate uni in a couple years. Also we are distanced from meaningful work and things that make life enjoyable like creation and creativity. You cannot write stories, make art, or create handmade goods without doing it for a profit, you must either sell your soul to some giant warehouse like Amazon or fill out spreadsheets all day before you are respected by society.

UK unemployment rate hits 5% as more than 800,000 jobs disappear during pandemic

Record number of redundancies between September and November, official figures show

www.independent.co.uk

 

[262653]

Wow... so wonderfully said. I could slice your post in thin little pieces and enjoy every taste of it. It's delicious.

I kinda like dystopian setting the way I like rainy weather. It's so mesmerizing to observe from the outside, inside a safe haven, behind the glass, but I certainly wouldn't want to find myself in the middle of that mess. I hope I will be dead by the day it becomes reality.

 

[Sherri]

I sincerely dream that one day the world would be the same, but also a part of me says otherwise. Difficult times indeed for everyone, where I'm from they don't even mention the suicide rates that plummeted from all this situation. Hugs hun, wish I could do more to help.

 

[Endeavour]

If "they" are doing it by using covid as the mechanism because they believe we are destroying the earth, then everything makes sense.

I mean imagine all of those hundreds of thousands of shops in high streets, they all need electricity, lighting, heating, goods to be brought to them in trucks, staff to go there every day, then hundreds of millions of car journeys for the customers to visit them.

If they can shut them all down and give it all to Amazon and their ilk, the customers never have to leave their homes, one truck can do hundreds of deliveries in an area, so instead of the customers going to the shops, the shops come to the customers.

Imagine all of that petrol, oil, gas, electric, and pollution that would be saved, how much longer the oil will last for, etc.

If you can then get people to consume less (especially food), and then if you can reduce the numbers of people - well imagine how good that would be for the environment.

No more air travel, no more road travel, much less wasted energy, less manufacturing, etc. And we won't be decimating nature to grow crops to feed cattle.

I'm sure that's the plan, and I also think there's some merit to it - it took hundreds of thousands of years for us to get to 1.5 Billion people on earth (in 1918) - in the hundred years since then we've gone to almost 8 billion.

Can't carry on, but the outcome for us will be a much more miserable existence with less of everything - especially people.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

Seven billion humans can all comfortably fit in the state of Texas with the population density of New York City, which is kind of crowded but not too crowded compared to some places. We've reached nowhere near the earth's carrying capacity. Not saying that I necessarily want more though it would be great if there were more just so we can finally be living in the nightmare dystopia people are always afraid of. At least at that point people would be much more willing to be open to suicide and understanding of other people doing the same because then the focus would be on encouraging people to off themselves in order to conserve resources.

Not to mention the fact that biodiversity is dead. Never again will we see windshield wipers full of insects,

I see this as a good thing, fuck insects. They'll all be fine with or without us anyway. I agree with most everything else you said but it isn't like we can do anything about it. Oh well...

 

[Endeavour]

Seven billion humans can all comfortably fit in the state of Texas with the population density of New York City, which is kind of crowded but not too crowded compared to some places. We've reached nowhere near the earth's carrying capacity. Not saying that I necessarily want more though it would be great if there were more just so we can finally be living in the nightmare dystopia people are always afraid of. At least at that point people would be much more willing to be open to suicide and understanding of other people doing the same because then the focus would be on encouraging people to off themselves in order to conserve resources.


I see this as a good thing, fuck insects. They'll all be fine with or without us anyway. I agree with most everything else you said but it isn't like we can do anything about it. Oh well...

It's not just about people and where they live, it's the resources they need.

Each person on earth requires 1 metric tonne of dry animal feed to be produced just to provide 18% of their calories - 60% of all mammals are livestock, 36% humans, 4% everything else. We're destroying them to plant animal feed.

Nature needs them even if you don't like them, no insects and the sil will not be able to grow anything, and the plants wont pollinate.

They are all far more essential to ALL life on earth than we are.

 

[WornOutLife]

Oh dear, you're so right!
Consuming more than we have is certainly not something funny.
I'm so sorry for the next generation! Even though technology will improve lots, humanity will probably a chaos.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

It's not just about people and where they live, it's the resources they need.

Each person on earth requires 1 metric tonne of dry animal feed to be produced just to provide 18% of their calories - 60% of all mammals are livestock, 36% humans, 4% everything else. We're destroying them to plant animal feed.

Nature needs them even if you don't like them, no insects and the sil will not be able to grow anything, and the plants wont pollinate.

They are all far more essential to ALL life on earth than we are.

That's assuming every human lives exactly the same. Many are probably getting on perfectly fine with way more or way less than those numbers of food. That statistic I mentioned did include food because presumably you could use the rest of the world as farmland or whatever.

I know insects are important but I don't give a crap. They're scary and gross and they invade my house and I don't even want to eat them but that doesn't really matter. I'm just saying that no matter what we do we'll never be able to wipe them all out even if we wanted because of how durable they are. They survived many mass extinctions before.

 

[Good4Nothing]

If "they" are doing it by using covid as the mechanism because they believe we are destroying the earth, then everything makes sense.

Nope.
"They" don't give a damn about the Earth.
"They" are religious zealots yearning for the apocalypse and the return of their prophet. Destroying the Earth is their goal, to hasten the "end times", to summon the "rapture".

 

[262653]

I see this as a good thing, fuck insects. They'll all be fine with or without us anyway. I agree with most everything else you said but it isn't like we can do anything about it. Oh well...

Aye. I'm not a big fan of insects either. Or nature, come to think of it. OK, Endeavour already mentioned about their usefulness in the big picture. I still agree with you, the hell with insects. The future nature will take care of itself. It will, because there is no other way.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

That's assuming every human lives exactly the same. Many are probably getting on perfectly fine with way more or way less than those numbers of food. That statistic I mentioned did include food because presumably you could use the rest of the world as farmland or whatever.

I know insects are important but I don't give a crap. They're scary and gross and they invade my house and I don't even want to eat them but that doesn't really matter. I'm just saying that no matter what we do we'll never be able to wipe them all out even if we wanted because of how durable they are. They survived many mass extinctions before.

I think there is an evolutionary mechanism that makes us fear insects but i cant recall what it is called. Hate those buggers too, especially mosquitos.

We do need bees to pollinate plants, arachnids to kill other pesky bugs, as well as things like caterpillars and beetles and such to provide food for organisms higher up the food chain like Birds. When we lose a lot of species it tends to effect others in a cascade.

Mosquitos can go to hell though.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

We do need bees to pollinate plants, arachnids to kill other pesky bugs, as well as things like caterpillars and beetles and such to provide food for organisms higher up the food chain like Birds. When we lose a lot of species it tends to effect others in a cascade.

We do need the bees but bees as a whole aren't in too much danger, some species of bees are in decline like the honeybees but killer bees, wasps, and hornets are still thriving. People only raised such a big fuss about the bee population because of the honeybees which while admittedly I do like honey, I would give it all up for less bees in the world. The people who want to protect them don't even want to admit they're being selfish either. I'm allergic to pollen anyway so less pollinators is fine with me. Besides even without bees we'd still have butterflies, mosquitoes, and hummingbirds.

 

[Fragile]

I really don't envy the ones being born today, they will live in such a different and dystopic world that I can't even wrap my head around this idea.

Perhaps it's part of the human experience to be sad and nostalgic about our world, change will always be hard to accept, and specially when we know how it once was and we know where we are heading, both as a species and as living organisms.

I'd be hopeful for a new movement that seeks to break this chain, but the ones who control the world are also the ones perpetrating and feeding from its decline, so expecting any change is very unrealistic.

Maybe us humans will have to make peace with living in a hostile wasteland at some point.

 

[EmbraceOfTheVoid]

This quote should be appropriate for this topic:

"I don't think there's a motive, atleast not one that is operating at a conscious level, per-se. People in any civilization are inculcated with a set of beliefs just as members of a cult - they are raised with a rather static lens they are taught is the "correct" way to experience, perceive, and make sense of reality; this can be something as simple as "things fall down because of gravity", to "money is a very important pursuit in life", or "communism is evil". Taught repeatedly both explicitly and implicitly, one begins to lose themselves in these messages, and the differentiation between "self" and this static perception becomes very fluid - an attack on this perception, even in the form of a piece of information that creates a stark juxtaposition, triggers a fear response, much like that of an animal encountering a predator. The idea is, we may have incredibly advanced technology, but we still operate psychologically at the level of tribespeople; we become incredibly attached to cultural belief systems the same way we attach to our mothers and fathers as children, even if they abuse and berate us.

This comes to the heart of the problem, in my mind. Our cultural apparatus no longer seems to have answers for us, and the chase of money, status, materialism, et al - the hollow idolatry of late capitalism - is failing writ large to satiate our existential fears, if in large part because the system pumping it out has become so corrupt and inequitable that it is losing its legitimacy, and with it, its ability to hold us under the "civilized" spell. But even so, you have billions who have been raised to believe in its wicked fairy tale, to see and judge themselves and others through its objectifying, atomizing, reductionistic lenses, and for the most part know no other way to perceive reality. This is a large part of why "mental illnesses", suicide, and childlessness have skyrocketed and continue to - these are perhaps natural reactions to perceiving reality accurately, beyond any cultural spell.

This said, how does one continue to exist in a world that is not only rapidly changing for the worse - where an extinction crisis is looming large not so far over the horizon, where one is more likely than ever to be socially isolated, exposed to toxic levels of pollution, live in a terribly unhealthy fashion, work an unrewarding, mundane job that barely pays enough - and NOT want to kill yourself, or at the very least be chronically depressed?

Well, the answer, which also includes the answer to your question, is to double-down and become even more insane in the ways of the culture. The role of culture itself is transcendence - to deny death itself and give life a sense of permanency; culture becomes the self and the self becomes culture, but by becoming so intertwined, one becomes a part of its hypervigilant immune system. The problem is, no one really benefits from this arrangement in the long run; but in the short run, the constant denial of reality keeps one in a state of blissful, willfully ignorant cognitive dissonance. To anyone not insane in the ways of our culture, anthropogenic climate change is the Sword of Damocles hanging over life itself, making everything we need to do to sustain life in modern civilization seem absurdly Sisyphisean.

And yet, the denial of reality serves a dual purpose - it allows one to sink into learned helplessness, and it allows one to avoid the existential crises that come with awakening to the fact they are utterly codependent and individually helpless (much like an abused child who ultimately conforms to its treacherous parents' whims, once it realizes they're the hand that feeds and it has nobody else). To illustrate, right now it is estimated some 60% of the world's population lives near a coastline, with nearly 2.4 billion people living and working within 100km, and some 634 million living only 10m above sea level. The majority of these individuals live in the mega-cities that themselves are the major arteries of modern civilization. These cities are neither sustainable nor self-sufficient, and depend on a fragile global logistics chain to continue functioning.

Imagine yourself to be a decently well-off middle class resident in one of these coastal regions, or cities. You have an advanced degree and a great white collar job - let's say you're a family practice physician at a small doctor's office and although you don't save much, you do make ends meet, have an alright social life, overall things don't seem too bad. You never struggle to put food on the table, you're relatively happy with your life, more or less. You feel "successful" in the eyes of your culture because of the two letters after your name, the size of your paycheck, the fact you "own" your property and a nice car from the last 5 years. You're the envy of your less fortunate friends and peers, who are struggling in the gig economy and paying $1100 for a bunk bed in a small room; they look at you and tell you, "you've made it, man!" - its a similar admiration you experience with the opposite sex, who perk up after you mention your career. So, things seem relatively stable in your life. Economic crises seem to come and go, the world seems to be getting scarier by the day but you don't notice much - sure, groceries are always getting more expensive and the packaged goods keep shrinking, sure, you keep seeing friends from your peer group drop off the map or appear in obituaries you scroll past on Facebook, regardless more and more of them are speaking openly of their "mental health" struggles, and sure, people seem to be driving a little crazier, more of your patients are uninsured or on Medicaid, and the weather seems to be more chaotic than ever. But for the most part, you get up in the morning, get dressed and drive to work like everyone else, and although you can't dismiss this tickle in the back of your mind that something isn't quite right, your life seems rewarding enough to keep the tickle repressed. You might get a surge of anxiety now and then - or maybe that's just another pothole on the slowly degrading, neglected highway you take to work, but eventually you forget it until the next time, and the next.

The point is, if you live in any measure of comfort like the above story, belief in the status quo IS your "self", it not only enables your life, it provides you a stable sense of identity and status. To consider climate change is to collapse that lens upon itself, reveal it as a dream, an illusion, and with it, everything you have come to see as fixed and rigid and sensible about your life, every answer you've ever had to those late night existential questions that keep you up. It is to awaken to the stark reality you are a helpless cog in a massive mechanism, who operates a machine you don't understand, that runs on a fuel you can't create yourself, to work a job that is only possible because of a global logistics chain, to shop at a grocery store full of food and drink from who knows where, made by who knows who, to return to your domicile in the evening powered by who knows what from who knows where - all you know is as long as you keep your bills paid, the lights will magically turn on, the food stays cold in your fridge, and you can veg out to the latest sitcom on Netflix after a long day at work. Besides, what could you really do about rising sea levels or a splitting polar vortex, individually?

If we return to the story, imagine yourself that person again - and you've brought up similar subjects with your friends, or your professional-class colleagues, but they tell you you're being a downer, so you eventually drop it, and maybe even begin doubt it's even real or that it matters at all. "The scientists will figure it out," you tell yourself, clutching the Bible that's actually a cellphone streaming the latest climate denial or techno-hopium to your eyes, as you drift off to a dreamless sleep. Anyway, you've got work in the morning and the clocks always ticking and the bills aren't gonna pay themselves.

It's far easier to accept the one reality that is farcical and mundane and be united with your atomized peers in that, to feel the power your status and money grants you, to do the steps of the dance of "normality" - than to stand completely alone in the other reality, in which you are a dependent child in an adult's body, subsisting in a world that is not only bewildering and complex beyond your imagination, but utterly terrifying and unpredictable beneath it all. In that reality there are no answers, only the fact that there doesn't seem to be a place for you in it, and your life is virtually unimaginable without the forms of modern civilization - the grocery stores, the gas stations, cars, two day shipping, fire and police departments. Most would sooner forget that is the world that is threatened and fading than imagine living in a world without it." -Stranger from the internet

 

[Deleted member 17949]

Humans gonna be replaced my robots, elite gonna rule everything while everyone else dies, watch it happen nya

 

[Soulless Angel]

I wish I had never been born, but as I am already here with no choice, I have to say I am glad I was born in the year I was born in, I got to know the world without sky TV, I got to know the world with out today's technologies,
I got to enjoy playing freely with no fear, climbing tree's scrapping knees, able to watch programs on one of 4 channels with everyone finding humour in the darkest comedies rather then taking offence,
When your neighbours were one's of smiles and joining together for street parties, when school was a time of enjoyment and non regimented ruling, where hair styles and loose *uniform* was allowed, instead education was the focus.
Where teenagers aimed to either travel the world or get into a strong job, were jobs were a plenty, were Shopping in the city was an exciting time at the weekend, a full day out,
internet shopping didn't exist, the shops did,

Then as I grew so did the world, as we went from 4 tv channels to hundreds, to TV apps,
As we went from a landline phone to the freedom of mobile phone's, were gaming moved online and social media developed,

Sadly as the world has grown so has selfishness, so has hate, anger. Laughter and humour as it once was is no longer the same.

People staying to their own bubbles, children banned from school if a skirt is one inch to short, or a hair cut is not deemed suitable,
Social media *likes* the goal of a teenager, social media fame their aim, using their looks for gain an income, *normal* jobs of no interest, yet if they are, there are so little,
Shopping online now a part of our live, the joy of browsing shop to shop laden with bags no longer a day out, as a click of the button you can have it at your door without moving off your sofa,
neighbours turning on each other, worse then a school ground, all so selfish only caring for their gains, street parties no longer happen, people too scared of a unseen threat that is so dangerous they have to ram a cotton wool bud down your nose and throat or up your ass to find.

 

[Teas]

I doubt the planet will continue to exist as more and more people overwhelm resources. Just thinking about how everything is disappearing thanks to human actions makes me sad. I guess I should be glad I'm won't be alive to finally see Earth eventually die. Sucks to be the other generation.

 

[LONE WOLF.]

I wish I had never been born, but as I am already here with no choice, I have to say I am glad I was born in the year I was born in, I got to know the world without sky TV, I got to know the world with out today's technologies,
I got to enjoy playing freely with no fear, climbing tree's scrapping knees, able to watch programs on one of 4 channels with everyone finding humour in the darkest comedies rather then taking offence,
When your neighbours were one's of smiles and joining together for street parties, when school was a time of enjoyment and non regimented ruling, where hair styles and loose *uniform* was allowed, instead education was the focus.
Where teenagers aimed to either travel the world or get into a strong job, were jobs were a plenty, were Shopping in the city was an exciting time at the weekend, a full day out,
internet shopping didn't exist, the shops did,

Then as I grew so did the world, as we went from 4 tv channels to hundreds, to TV apps,
As we went from a landline phone to the freedom of mobile phone's, were gaming moved online and social media developed,

Sadly as the world has grown so has selfishness, so has hate, anger. Laughter and humour as it once was is no longer the same.

People staying to their own bubbles, children banned from school if a skirt is one inch to short, or a hair cut is not deemed suitable,
Social media *likes* the goal of a teenager, social media fame their aim, using their looks for gain an income, *normal* jobs of no interest, yet if they are, there are so little,
Shopping online now a part of our live, the joy of browsing shop to shop laden with bags no longer a day out, as a click of the button you can have it at your door without moving off your sofa,
neighbours turning on each other, worse then a school ground, all so selfish only caring for their gains, street parties no longer happen, people too scared of a unseen threat that is so dangerous they have to ram a cotton wool bud down your nose and throat or up your ass to find.

100% Agree!

 

[Wayfaerer]

I had always fantasized about living in a post-apocalyptic world so if anything all the chaos and excitement is entertaining to me and not wanting to kms which is inconvenient because I have no choice but to. Instead of getting angry about seeing or reading total bullshit on the news I began to found enjoyment and amusement in it all for some years now. George Carlin was right when he said that we live in a freak show and Americans in particular have a front row seat to it. There is just so much balls-to-the-wall stupidity and cynicism in the world today that I wouldn't miss it if it were burned to ash. As far as how things are trending, I'd consider it dystopic only if it doesn't lead to civilization collapsing. If it doesn't and things still trend in an ugly direction then yeah, definitely won't miss it for sure.

We live in exciting times.

 

[Sensei]

I actually think that things will turn out well in the end. However, there will be some very dark decades before that happens, decades of climate change, erosion and over-exploitation of arable land, water shortage, mineral and metal shortage, oil shortage, mass migration, mass starvation, dictatorship, and war. Mankind will come out decimated, ravaged, and wiser on the other side.

 

[signifying nothing]

I think humans will need to be humbled, otherwise it's over for us. Life will evolve to the changes we're making to the planet, it's just a matter of whether we can be part of that or whether we die off in the transition.

 

[DeadButDreaming]

4chan will find a solution.

 

[UseItOrLoseIt]

Technology really scares me. Not by itself. But by the abruptness in which we introduced it on such a vast level.

We've adapted to life on earth for millions of years, evolving while living by its rules. Now the earth must adapt to us. An allergic reaction might happen.

But even if it's not the case, we changed our lifestyles completely. Sure it's comfy, but we derailed the path of our evolution 100%. Can't help but think of Lady Cassandra from Dr. Who:

 

[JustAMatterOfTime]

Very nice thread I agree with you 100% OP.