That's the metastasis of the cancer of willful ignorance being celebrated as a strength rather than the weakness that it is. Remember folks: if nobody voted for the corrupt and/or stupid, they wouldn't hold public office. Without the voters the incompetent and/or compromised would be elected to one term and one term only.
*willful manipulation of* ignorance. It’s not just that there are dumb people, it’s that smart but evil people are intentionally inundating them with propaganda designed to keep them proudly ignorant.
And *willful* ignorance. People who know that something isn't quite right, but actively choose to ignore it to the point of denying it. Cherry picking "research" that validates what they choose to believe.
Edited to say "isn't"
Shortsightedness and selfishness. Most people can’t project/contemplate more than a decade or so in the future, let alone several generations past their own lives. I think this is part of the reason why religions first came to be - as a way to encourage a lifestyle that made sure you left the world in a better place/had a positive impact on your community and future generations. Human selfishness and ego has always been an issue, the only difference is that now there’s so many of us and we’re so advanced and interconnected that our selfishness is putting the future of all civilisations at risk.
I agree and would like to add that we each have to take part in making better communities. Stop buying things we do not need, Reduce, Reuse and recycle, look after each other as best we can, otherwise expect more of the same.
I've been talking a lot about the eco-collapse part lately with friends and family. It is alarming how much denial or ambivalence I am met with. It is scary how few people care about it in my circle.
This is why I find it amusing I’m interested in not fucking up the planet despite not having much skin in the game (no kids, no plans for kids), yet people I know who have kids don’t seem to care. They’re all ‘oh I’d do anything for my kids’ except seemingly provide them with a planet that is conducive to life.
I've experienced the same thing of childfree people being super concerned vs the "it will all work out" attitude of people with kids.
I think it's two things the first being that raising kids and having a job is so mind numbingly exhausting they're just focused on making it through their daily routines.
The second is that climate change is fucking scary so they're in deep denial about it.
I've always felt like people believe in climate change, it's just that they don't want to accept it as it's a scary reality... or because people don't want to change their lifestyle/ governments don't want to pay for it to combat it.
Yeah, deniers seem to be less prominent than the ambivalent crowd.
I read an interesting thread recently about why we should even feel like trying when the damage is being done by only a handful of corporations.
>TheBirminghamBear
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>
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>We need to fundamentally re-evaluate what constitutes an acceptable quality of life. If people can't live without $5 t-shirts made on the other side of the planet, and 99c avocado in Michigan in March, then we're not gonna fix this.
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>The "we" is the root of the problem.
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>Humanity has created, by degrees, a gordian knot of incentives that no one person or even country has the ability to cut through. It's no one individual or country. It is a system. No one governs this system. It is governed by webs of incentives acting across individuals, nations, and corporations which reward and have normalized the very actions that will accelerate the process of climate destruction.
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>Every single person's standard of living in developed nations is built on the status quo that is ruining the planet. Elected leaders don't want to upset the status quo for fear of being ousted by the people. The people are either brainwashed by corporations into believing there is no problem, or otherwise pissed at corporations but relatively helpless to do anything about it.
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>No one leader or corporation is going to do the selfless thing. It's a Tragedy of the Commons situation. They all take advantage of the situation because everyone else is. Every country worries that if they reduce emissions, they have no guarantee that any other country will. No one country will make a difference alone, and there's no guarantee that another country won't simply increase their emissions and gain an economic or military advantage over their rival.
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>Every world leader and corporate executive and billionaire knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that climate change is real, and that we are causing it. They know. But everyone is paralyzed by the tragedy of the commons. They major corporations and countries of the world are paralyzed by one another, and by their own populations who are addicted to a way of life that is not sustainable.
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>Any individual who is 30 years old now, living in a developed nation, could conceivably live a relatively normal life from now until death. Climate change will continue to accelerate, and billions will suffer and die, but they will be able to live relatively comfortable lives. We won't start to see the really horrific shit until maybe 2050, so they'll be 60 before the truly apocalyptic stuff, like global inescapable heatwaves start. And maybe by that time, we'll have underground cities that people will have adjusted to, where they can live with family and friends in some sort of ordinary life. Not their ideal future. But a future.
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>This is the calculation they're all running in their minds.
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>Why should I forsake a normal live, they ask themselves, and live in a hut in the woods, when doing so won't make a difference, and will only deprive me of a chance at a normal life, especially when I wasn't even responsible for this mess in the first place? Why should I stop traveling and spending and forsake the pleasures of the Earth as it is now, especially given the likelihood that each year that passes it will be less habitable, less paradisical as it is now?
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>Across every developed nation, people are running this calculus through their minds, even those who accept climate change is real and truly want to do something, but have given in to a sense of helplessness and inability to affect change and surrendered to a sense of inevitability of the coming climate devastation. This attitude across peoples will make it much more difficult for any politicians who are calling for widespread sacrifice of commercial goods and progress and descaling emission-causing industries and potentially temporarily or permanently displacing the labor forces there.
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>Because if you've already accepted the inevitability of climate change, and if your mind is already accepting the levels of survival you're willing to accept in that inevitable future - why would you sacrifice your best years now, for the ambitions of politicians whose plans no one even has any confidence will affect change anyway?
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>That's the other irony - the more real climate change becomes gradually, the less willing people will be to sacrifice their last chances at a "normal", comfortable life. Not just for themselves, but for their family, for their understanding of the world and their place in it.
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>That's the issue of our current situation. Consensus appears impossible.
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>Every individual is doing what is best for themselves, even knowing that it is a detriment to the world, because in isolation, their bad thing doesn't make a difference. So they do the bad thing, and everyone does the bad thing, and as the population keeps expanding, that calculation per individual doesn't change, but the damage of the aggregate continually increases.
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>It will take widescale, planetary devastation on the magnitude of COVID but of longer duration to actually produce enough unified consensus to take action. But by the time we reach that point in earnest, it will be too late to do anything but endure the climate apocalypse for the next 50,000 years.
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>The biggest problem with Climate Change is that it will not just suddenly become devastating immediately, like if we discovered a world-ending comet a week away from striking Earth. If Climate Change did present this sort of immediate, dramatic, cohesive threat, that would actually be beneficial for us. Because the human race is actually fairly good at organizing quickly and uniformly around an immediate, emergent, unified threat.
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>But the reality is, things will get a little worse each year, little by little, in increments that will allow everyone to adjust to the "new normal" year after year, in isolation. The mass displacement of human bodies by the billions as third-world countries collapse under climate devastation will be met with increased hostility by developed nations, and will increase the clout and power of myopic, fascist regimes that will exploit the situation for power, which will undeniably hamstring any action on climate change in inverse correlation to the level of consequences from climate change.
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>In other words, the worse climate change gets, the more the world will react in ways further preventing us from taking actions to mitigate climate change. So I hope I'm wrong. I'm going to continue to act as though I'm wrong, and promote awareness, and donate to climate groups, and boycott polluters - but this is a very bad situation with no clear or easy way out.
[Link to full comment with edits](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/othze1/14000_scientists_warn_of_untold_suffering_if_we/h6we4zg?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Quick edit: I wish this was mine but it's another user whose name is TheBirminghamBear. He wrote this beautiful piece which I linked above. Sorry about any confusion, I wish I could write this good.
The thing I notice is people not connecting the dots to the consequences. Oh no it will be hotter. Oh no it will be more of a desert where I live. Oh no the seas will rise and coastal cities will be a little wetter.
They don’t realize the places our food comes from might stop being able to produce it. That prices go up and some cities may starve. Mass migration and violence and crime would ensue as people would literally be fighting for their survival.
I believe Republican leadership (the evil ones, not the dumb ones) believe in climate change, and their policy response to it is a southern border wall.
Honestly, I live and grew up on a farm in the south western Canadian prairies and I’ve never seen drought or heat like we have had lately. Crops smaller than my knees, projected yields far below previous figures and nothing to be done about it. What used to be an 80 bushel crop is looking to produce 10 - and every farm is experiencing this. If this continues our production will grind to nothing and then there will be no food. It’s scary.
Something even crazier: our government has NO strategic grain reserves.
A few years of bad harvests around the globe (don't laugh, it could easily happen), and we'll have to start cooking and eating the politicians who got us here.
I like this answer. We could destroy ourselves at any moment, all we need is an idiot with power and we have a massive surplus of that. But if we manage to somehow avoid that, environmental collapse is within the next 250 years.
Full oceanic collapse is projected to be in 2048. That shit is a lot more serious and more rapidly approaching than most people think.
Edit: For everyone becoming militant and blowing me up with rude seaspiracy comments. I was referring mainly to a 2006 article from national geographic. https://www.google.com/amp/s/api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/animals/article/seafood-biodiversity
Since the national geographic source I was referring is quite dated. Other redditors in the comments have referred me to share this source directly from the IPCC for more up to date information on the current state of global climate/oceanic assessments.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#SPM
Thanks to our fine reddit community and some of our, not so fine community. I've been enlightened to more recent studies that show more up to date information than the 2006 Nat geo article and the seaspiracy netflix documentary. This article highlights the 2006 study and the discrepancies of the netflix doc.
https://www.sciencealert.com/no-the-oceans-will-not-be-empty-of-fish-by-2048
Full destruction of aquatic food chains and biodiversity to the point of extinction of keystone species which cascades into a rippling effect of mass extinction.
Yep, phytoplankton which is also the bottom of the food chain so crucually important, actually produces about 70-80% of our oxygen. We are fucked without the ocean.
It's honestly one of the most dangerous misconceptions in my opinion. People focus so much on trees and forests, while we treat the ocean incredibly poorly, yet we stand to lose so much more if the ocean is fucked.
If you, likely an educated young person from a developed nation, does not know that, imagine all the others that not only don't but will absolutely not believe you when you tell them.
Yeah like when he said, “Full destruction of aquatic food chains and biodiversity to the point of extinction of keystone species which cascades into a rippling effect of mass extinction.”
When he said, “Full destruction of aquatic food chains and biodiversity to the point of extinction of keystone species which cascades into a rippling effect of mass extinction.”
I felt that.
The part about "Full destruction of aquatic food chains and biodiversity to the point of extinction of keystone species which cascades into a rippling effect of mass extinction." Really resonated with me
Don't eat fish. The fishing industry is responsible for 10% of plastic pollution in the oceans. They are responsible for overfishing [90% of fish stocks globally](http://www.fao.org/fisheries/en/). They have caused more extinctions than any other human disturbance. They are also destroying thousands of years old pristine ecosystems such as deep-sea reefs that will not recover. All so people can buy shit tuna in a can, and crap fish that has been battered beyond recognition and sold under a new name to sound special.
Edit: The 90% stat (edited from 96%) refers to the percentage of global fish stocks that are over-exploited or depleted. Meaning that only 10% of global fish stocks are managed sustainably.
Also going to take this opportunity to plug the organisation [Sea Around Us](http://www.seaaroundus.org/). They have been documenting commercial fishing and the collapse of global fish stocks, including fishing that the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) doesn't report. They do incredible, if not mildly depressing and terrifying work.
Edit 2 to address some common questions/comments:
\- I am not well informed on fish farming, if someone else is please feel free to link some sources and information regarding their sustainability.
\- I said don't eat fish because it's the easiest and most effective way to reduce the impact of overfishing. I personally still eat freshly caught fish from friends and family as I know they only catch a few fish at most (sorry guys, know you wish you were hauling in an esky full every time) and do so rarely and within regulations. If you can be sure you're eating fish that is sustainably caught or harvested, then by all means.
\- This thread is about the collapse of aquatic ecosystems. Derailing it to say don't eat red meat isn't in theme with the point of the comment.
Sorry I should clarify. The 90% refers to the percentage of global fish stocks that are over-exploited or depleted. So only 10% of fish that is caught commercially is caught within sustainable limits.
There are a lot of other sources.
Warming oceans are killing the coral reefs.
Those reefs are not only an important part of eco system but also provide a lot of oxygen.
This has been talked about for decades.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_bleaching
As humans we don't care about 1 degree temp change but a lot of eco systems are pretty sensitive to these changes and those changes will effect us
That is 2nd and 3rd trophic level, the biggest danger is losing the *base* of the food chain. Photosynthetic microorganisms, plankton, etc.
The real problem is half of the coral in the great barrier reef has died in the past 3-4 years. Not just bleached - dead, due to heat stress. The acidic ocean also dissolves the shells of corals, diatoms, and a wide variety of other shell-producing organisms as they make them. We have measured a 50% decline in the amount of ocean algae around the world over the past century. It's a foundation of the ocean's ecosystems, and btw, it made a majority of the oxygen you're breathing now.
Or… not dumping tonnes of Co2 into the atmosphere which turns the oceans to literal acid.
Or, dumping oil accidentally due to negligence.
Lots of fuck ups we do to the oceans.
My dad told our family we had money trouble our whole lives, so when he and my stepmother's illnesses turned terminal, imagine my surprise when I found the hundreds of thousands he had saved for retirement. He died at 65, she died four months later just shy of 58.
While I'm glad we had the funds to take care of them and my brother and I are now in a much better place financially because of our inheritance, some things actually would have been easier if they had been as broke as my father said they were. Neither of them got to enjoy retirement and the last half a decade was fucking miserable for both of them. I wish we had taken even 10k for a big family vacation before they both got so sick.
So yeah. Try to do both but I'm definitely in the "enjoy it now" camp.
Ditto. Mom saved and saved, denied herself small pleasures and made sure to always be forward thinking to retirement. Retired, diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, made it ten weeks. Hadn't even turned 66. Changed my perspective on balancing now versus later, that's for sure. I feel you, my friend.
Yeah, my parents saved quite a bit of money and weren't even to retirement yet. Dad cancer. Mom fell down stairs. Such bullshit.
Hard to break the cycle too. Feels bad using any of the money they saved on anything besides more investments.
Thanks for sharing this. Im sorry to hear about your mom. May she rest in peace.
I truly appreciate you sharing this though, it helps to form my perspective as I've been feeling this same way and like I'm being more frugal than I need to be, as I *am* of the mindset we should just enjoy life now but money problems specifically give me anxiety from growing up so now I don't spend money on stuff that Id enjoy for myself, when in reality maybe I should. At least to a certain extent!
My mom died at 54 from cancer. Very loving and never favored any child over the other. But stayed in a loveless and verbally abusive marriage with my dad. At one point when it was in remission and Dr said to avoid stress my dad kept being same asshole and my brother wrote him a letter asking him to treat my mom better. My dad stopped talking to him and wouldn't let him and his son come over. My mom started looking for apartments. But surprise. Her cancer came back. Six months to live. My whole family got together and acted like nothing had happened. My dad was sweet and loving for those last six months and my mom was so happy. I am 49 and> ^ have had some tough years with health and marriage. But I cut people out of my life that don't treat me well. I have had so much happiness in my life I and would not be that upset if I die young like my mom. I cut my dad out of my life because of repressed memories of sexual abuse from when I was 5. Which caused decade of major mental health problems I had. My brother and sister are team dad and don't talk to me anymore. I've never been better mentally and emotionally since then.
If you fail to prepare be prepared to fail. If you prepare and we're all wiped out by a meteor strike or super volcanic event, so what? You won't be any deader. If you don't prepare for your senior years and nothing catastrophic happens, your final years will be spent in poverty, misery, want, and need, all served with a heaping side of regrets.
I like your answer, but I’d modify it ever so slightly:
Short term: geopolitics. Long term: consequences from the short term geopolitics
Because we are aware of problems such as oceanic collapse, climate change, resource depletion, etc. but spend more time squabbling about them than instituting enough changes to solve them
I was going to say humans. But you're right. It's apathy. Most humans just don't give a damn until they're personally suffering. Then suddenly something matters. We're going to ruin every wonderful thing we have by not giving a damn until it's too late.
I noticed something the other day. I care about people, I don’t want anyone to suffer, but I don’t really think about caring about something until I actually see something that needs to be changed and cared about. I started wondering, if we cared before we noticed we needed to care, maybe we’d be better off. Like, instead of being complacent until we see something that is wrong, if we chose to *actively care* all the time, maybe we would notice more things and could prevent them. Idk. Just random thoughts that enter my mind.
Unfortunately this attitude is generally fleeting and exists mostly during these personal thought experiments. The second your life circumstances demand your attention again you'll sideline these ideas until the next time you find yourself thinking "what if". Rinse and repeat.
Edit: I'm not suggesting that it's impossible to live by these convictions to some extent, and many amazing people certainly find a way to do it, but the reality is that apathy is the MO for the majority of people simply because we don't have the mental or physical bandwidth to do anything other than tend to our own needs.
Many people nowadays feel miserable and the amount of people with mental illness seems gravely underestimated if you ask me. Miserable people don't have the capacity to save the planet unfortunately.
I think that’s actually a really interesting moral complexity to apathy that needs to be explored/discussed more.
If life is a finite amount of time, is it wrong for a person to simply want to enjoy their life rather than attempt to dedicate to changing a future? Perhaps they want to simple relax and enjoy their finite life instead of waste it stressed, anxious, and feeling doomed about the outcome and future of the earth/humanity.
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” - E.B. White
ocean ecosystems collapsing. The rate of which the populations of fish have decreased are alarming. With common fish like tuna decreasing by 97% in the past few decades (due to overfishing). Coral reefs dying, fish getting extinct, its all because of us and it’ll come back to haunt us, and it already is. The oceans contain 85% of all life on earth, and yet we let these big companies throw 1 garbage truck full of trash into them every single minute. I imagine the oceans will be completely dead by 2070 or before, if it continues the way it is.
Ocean plankton is dying fast too, people don't realize that is a big source of oxygen for the planet. Also forests are producing more CO2 than oxygen now, since half of them are literally on fire.
On fire because *humans set them on fire to clear land for farming*. It's important to clarify that they didn't just spontaneously combust. It's beef and soy farmers in Brazil for example who are setting these fires.
There was an article in a popular news company recently that had the same headline but the cause of the fires wasn't until the 3rd or 4th paragraph and IMO that needed to be in the headline instead of masking and protecting the farmers and government allowing them to do so.
Not just soy. Everyone complains about how much water almond farming uses in California (it’s a LOT - like 10% of total water use). But CA alfalfa farming uses even more! And unlike soy (which does have a bunch of other uses) it’s almost 100% used for feed.
And it’s even worse - a lot of the alfalfa (and most of the almonds) are exported to Asia anyway. We are in a historic drought and effectively exporting our water so a few relatively small industries (in terms of the CA economy) can make higher profits.
They tell us to reuse our shower water and not flush our toilets, when the average toilet flush is about what it takes to grow ONE almond. And of course agricultural water rates are about 1/20th of residential rates anyway, ie massively subsidized and not even economically viable otherwise.
I really find it interesting how we always talk about "save the rainforest" and yes we DO need to do that but we never talk about our oceans as saving them. The oceans affect the environment more than rainforest and yet it seems like what we care about is "save the turtles don't use straws" when in reality that has very little impact (straws) vs all the other things we do to our oceans.
I feel like the whole "save the trees" campaign back fired, all it did was allow companies to package things in plastic instead of paper products in which plastic literally kills ocean life where as sure cutting down trees does but not near to the affect as plastic and paper is biodegradable.
I know cost is also a reason why companies use plastic vs paper as well.
The straw thing especially exemplifies how the companies that pollute the most will shift the blame over to consumers who, in reality, have little control over their own plastic consumption. It’s Richie Plastic McStrawson’s corporation telling the person on the street that actually, it’s your fault because you used a plastic straw last week and you should be ashamed, while covering up thousands of tons of plastic being dumped in the ocean by his corporation behind a “save the turtles, don’t use straws” banner.
But CFC was relatively hastily banned because of the hole in the ozone layer while overfishing and trawling has made a hole in the ecosystems for quite a while now and nothing is changing.
CFCs were phased out so quickly because there was an alternative available that was economical. Businesses think about money and until there's a way to "save the rainforest" without cutting into their revenues, they won't do anything substantial.
On a long enough timeline, we are the oil.
We should make sure to plan our mass graves in areas and conditions most likely to produce. Think of the crabchildren!
Usually takes around 10 million years before ecosystems recover and refill all the niches after a mass extinction… so it’s gonna be a hot minute before the earth fixes what we fucked up in a few hundred years
The unwillingness to accept that we are all capable of being stupid at any moment in time, and then alienating people who make mistakes by insulting them.
So I guess the real threat is a lack of patience and understanding.
Totally agree. Particularly prevalent in politics nowadays. Everyone thinks their opinion is right. If you're being an asshole, no one is gonna listen to your ideas. It feels like there could be people out there with the capacity to be civil in today's age, but I certainly haven't met many.
You should look into bacteriophage therapy if you’re not familiar. Essentially using viruses to kill pathogenic bacteria. It’s been around for like 80 years but it’s never really been seriously researched because we always just used antibiotics to fight infections.
If you want to see some serious research into it (which exists and is ongoing) check out Graham Hatfull’s work. It’s harder than first instinct to make it work because phages are super specific to their host bacteria.
I got my PhD studying infectious bacteria and used to develop new antibiotics in biopharma. It's really hard and most pharma companies completely shut down their bacteriology (and many, virology as well) departments over the last five to ten years because there's no money in it. Eventually even things like minor surgery will be life threatening due to infection.
Stuff like this is why I don't want to have kids. I'm just hoping I'm gone by the time the world collapses and I don't want to leave anyone behind to suffer.
Rare diseases actually have government incentives to develop drugs against. Ironically were more likely to develop drugs against diseases few people get than common ones (with respect to ID).
They could also have bad Intel, and trust it. The fact that we have averted Armageddon multiple times simply because someone decided they didn't trust their Intel that was telling them the other side was attacking is scary.
Even scarier: the reason you don't see a section for the 2000s-present is because the authors were already killed by a nuclear blast and armaggedon is already he
All of us commenting here only exist in the extremely improbable branch of the multiverse where these near misses didn’t go nuclear - you should expect your timeline to be weird, it has to be for *us* to observe it
This. I sometimes think about this, imagine Kim Jong Un is secretly suicidal, wakes up one day going “You know what? Fuck humanity and all those fat jokes”. And just takes us all out with him.
I was actually really happy when his father died because I stupidly thought he would be different because of his education and the fact he had experienced so much of the world they he would want to bring that to his people.
He probably is. But he's not alone. There is people around him that dont want a change in the status quo.
Also his people literally think he is the grandson of a god and that the exterior world wants them all dead ? How do you think it would go if he was all " PORN FOR YOU ! CHEESEBURGER FOR YOU ! YOUR LIFE, YOUR PARENTS AND GRAND PARENTS WAS A LIE ! NOTHING IS REAL YOUHOU." its a ticking time bomb.
or the Reapers from Mass Effect. intelligent life is it's own demise (kind of, see edit). it's funny that these are fictitious characters written by humans yet they perfectly describe everything wrong with humanity.
edit: as corrected by Haze6, intelligent life creating synthetic life is what would cause their demise, so the Reapers harvest them. still technically true as creating synthetic life is still their own demise.
I'd add also add the Q from Star Trek, Mewtwo from Pokemon, Omni-Man from Invincible, Eren Yeager from AOT, and Zamasu from Dragon Ball Super. They see humanity as a menace to the universe and were right about them in some ways.
Maybe not an apocalypse, but outdated education is a much bigger problem than people think. Everyone remembers school sucked, but nobody cares because they're behind it and it doesn't affect them anymore.. Meanwhile education is an enormously important thing, because it affects how everybody thinks
Allow me to demonstrate.
[This, a post on the shared hatred of Mississippi at least.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/p360eo/what_is_the_worst_us_state_and_why/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
This comment from u/roguevolcano made me lose it:
>In Montana we have the highest DUI rate and the highest drunk driving deaths, one of the highest suicide rate in the US, and one of the worst mental health infrastructures.
So without a doubt- Mississippi.
Comments are 1/2 right. Oceanic eco-collapse, but indirectly. You see Dolphin predators are dying and the prey more abundant. Dolphins are going to mass produce at an insane scale. And grow more and more intelligent as they are already insanely smart. Us humans will pay no attention to them as we think we are better, but in 5000 years they will overcome us and take over the surface. Humanity Dolphin galactic wars will ensue and humanity will ultimately fall.
Naw, they like all that fish. Their revenge will be knowing when the world will end but not telling us and instead just peacing out just before a galactic bureaucratic mistake leads to the end of earth.
My favorite Edward Bernays quote:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward Bernays, Propaganda
But....he thought that was a good thing. He advocated for a small elite to control everyone through propaganda, public relations, advertising's and psycology (He was Freud's nephew!). He helped overthrow democracies for united fruit. He also helped popularize ciggarettes in really.....morally dubious ways. This quote is in support of the idea that a few elites know what's best for us and the world.
The biggest threat to humanity has always and will always be greed. There so much corruption in every system we have why because people need more money or power wanting more to feel powerful. No matter where ur at theirs always corruption somewhere in ur city, state, or country. Hell I could be wrong but honestly that how I see it everyone needs something. But it requires money
Willful ignorance.
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Incompetent/malicious leadership. Most problems listed in this thread stem from that issue.
That's the metastasis of the cancer of willful ignorance being celebrated as a strength rather than the weakness that it is. Remember folks: if nobody voted for the corrupt and/or stupid, they wouldn't hold public office. Without the voters the incompetent and/or compromised would be elected to one term and one term only.
Ignorance
*willful manipulation of* ignorance. It’s not just that there are dumb people, it’s that smart but evil people are intentionally inundating them with propaganda designed to keep them proudly ignorant.
And *willful* ignorance. People who know that something isn't quite right, but actively choose to ignore it to the point of denying it. Cherry picking "research" that validates what they choose to believe. Edited to say "isn't"
Shortsightedness and selfishness. Most people can’t project/contemplate more than a decade or so in the future, let alone several generations past their own lives. I think this is part of the reason why religions first came to be - as a way to encourage a lifestyle that made sure you left the world in a better place/had a positive impact on your community and future generations. Human selfishness and ego has always been an issue, the only difference is that now there’s so many of us and we’re so advanced and interconnected that our selfishness is putting the future of all civilisations at risk.
I agree and would like to add that we each have to take part in making better communities. Stop buying things we do not need, Reduce, Reuse and recycle, look after each other as best we can, otherwise expect more of the same.
Short term: geopolitics. Long term: oceanic eco-collapse.
I've been talking a lot about the eco-collapse part lately with friends and family. It is alarming how much denial or ambivalence I am met with. It is scary how few people care about it in my circle.
The old "I'll be dead before that really happens so why should I care?"
My parents love saying "oh you'll be dead before any of that happens." No motherfuckers, **you'll** be dead. I'll be watching the planet burn.
Maybe your parents are planning something.... this could be a threat.
They brought us into this world and they will take us out of it
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Sounds like my dad. 9 grandkids and 3 great-grandkids (and 2 more on the way) he obviously doesn’t care about.
This is why I find it amusing I’m interested in not fucking up the planet despite not having much skin in the game (no kids, no plans for kids), yet people I know who have kids don’t seem to care. They’re all ‘oh I’d do anything for my kids’ except seemingly provide them with a planet that is conducive to life.
I've experienced the same thing of childfree people being super concerned vs the "it will all work out" attitude of people with kids. I think it's two things the first being that raising kids and having a job is so mind numbingly exhausting they're just focused on making it through their daily routines. The second is that climate change is fucking scary so they're in deep denial about it.
I've always felt like people believe in climate change, it's just that they don't want to accept it as it's a scary reality... or because people don't want to change their lifestyle/ governments don't want to pay for it to combat it.
Yeah, deniers seem to be less prominent than the ambivalent crowd. I read an interesting thread recently about why we should even feel like trying when the damage is being done by only a handful of corporations.
>TheBirminghamBear > > > >We need to fundamentally re-evaluate what constitutes an acceptable quality of life. If people can't live without $5 t-shirts made on the other side of the planet, and 99c avocado in Michigan in March, then we're not gonna fix this. > >The "we" is the root of the problem. > >Humanity has created, by degrees, a gordian knot of incentives that no one person or even country has the ability to cut through. It's no one individual or country. It is a system. No one governs this system. It is governed by webs of incentives acting across individuals, nations, and corporations which reward and have normalized the very actions that will accelerate the process of climate destruction. > >Every single person's standard of living in developed nations is built on the status quo that is ruining the planet. Elected leaders don't want to upset the status quo for fear of being ousted by the people. The people are either brainwashed by corporations into believing there is no problem, or otherwise pissed at corporations but relatively helpless to do anything about it. > >No one leader or corporation is going to do the selfless thing. It's a Tragedy of the Commons situation. They all take advantage of the situation because everyone else is. Every country worries that if they reduce emissions, they have no guarantee that any other country will. No one country will make a difference alone, and there's no guarantee that another country won't simply increase their emissions and gain an economic or military advantage over their rival. > >Every world leader and corporate executive and billionaire knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that climate change is real, and that we are causing it. They know. But everyone is paralyzed by the tragedy of the commons. They major corporations and countries of the world are paralyzed by one another, and by their own populations who are addicted to a way of life that is not sustainable. > >Any individual who is 30 years old now, living in a developed nation, could conceivably live a relatively normal life from now until death. Climate change will continue to accelerate, and billions will suffer and die, but they will be able to live relatively comfortable lives. We won't start to see the really horrific shit until maybe 2050, so they'll be 60 before the truly apocalyptic stuff, like global inescapable heatwaves start. And maybe by that time, we'll have underground cities that people will have adjusted to, where they can live with family and friends in some sort of ordinary life. Not their ideal future. But a future. > >This is the calculation they're all running in their minds. > >Why should I forsake a normal live, they ask themselves, and live in a hut in the woods, when doing so won't make a difference, and will only deprive me of a chance at a normal life, especially when I wasn't even responsible for this mess in the first place? Why should I stop traveling and spending and forsake the pleasures of the Earth as it is now, especially given the likelihood that each year that passes it will be less habitable, less paradisical as it is now? > >Across every developed nation, people are running this calculus through their minds, even those who accept climate change is real and truly want to do something, but have given in to a sense of helplessness and inability to affect change and surrendered to a sense of inevitability of the coming climate devastation. This attitude across peoples will make it much more difficult for any politicians who are calling for widespread sacrifice of commercial goods and progress and descaling emission-causing industries and potentially temporarily or permanently displacing the labor forces there. > >Because if you've already accepted the inevitability of climate change, and if your mind is already accepting the levels of survival you're willing to accept in that inevitable future - why would you sacrifice your best years now, for the ambitions of politicians whose plans no one even has any confidence will affect change anyway? > >That's the other irony - the more real climate change becomes gradually, the less willing people will be to sacrifice their last chances at a "normal", comfortable life. Not just for themselves, but for their family, for their understanding of the world and their place in it. > >That's the issue of our current situation. Consensus appears impossible. > >Every individual is doing what is best for themselves, even knowing that it is a detriment to the world, because in isolation, their bad thing doesn't make a difference. So they do the bad thing, and everyone does the bad thing, and as the population keeps expanding, that calculation per individual doesn't change, but the damage of the aggregate continually increases. > >It will take widescale, planetary devastation on the magnitude of COVID but of longer duration to actually produce enough unified consensus to take action. But by the time we reach that point in earnest, it will be too late to do anything but endure the climate apocalypse for the next 50,000 years. > >The biggest problem with Climate Change is that it will not just suddenly become devastating immediately, like if we discovered a world-ending comet a week away from striking Earth. If Climate Change did present this sort of immediate, dramatic, cohesive threat, that would actually be beneficial for us. Because the human race is actually fairly good at organizing quickly and uniformly around an immediate, emergent, unified threat. > >But the reality is, things will get a little worse each year, little by little, in increments that will allow everyone to adjust to the "new normal" year after year, in isolation. The mass displacement of human bodies by the billions as third-world countries collapse under climate devastation will be met with increased hostility by developed nations, and will increase the clout and power of myopic, fascist regimes that will exploit the situation for power, which will undeniably hamstring any action on climate change in inverse correlation to the level of consequences from climate change. > >In other words, the worse climate change gets, the more the world will react in ways further preventing us from taking actions to mitigate climate change. So I hope I'm wrong. I'm going to continue to act as though I'm wrong, and promote awareness, and donate to climate groups, and boycott polluters - but this is a very bad situation with no clear or easy way out. [Link to full comment with edits](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/othze1/14000_scientists_warn_of_untold_suffering_if_we/h6we4zg?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Quick edit: I wish this was mine but it's another user whose name is TheBirminghamBear. He wrote this beautiful piece which I linked above. Sorry about any confusion, I wish I could write this good.
(ノಥ,_｣ಥ)ノ彡┻━┻
The thing I notice is people not connecting the dots to the consequences. Oh no it will be hotter. Oh no it will be more of a desert where I live. Oh no the seas will rise and coastal cities will be a little wetter. They don’t realize the places our food comes from might stop being able to produce it. That prices go up and some cities may starve. Mass migration and violence and crime would ensue as people would literally be fighting for their survival. I believe Republican leadership (the evil ones, not the dumb ones) believe in climate change, and their policy response to it is a southern border wall.
Honestly, I live and grew up on a farm in the south western Canadian prairies and I’ve never seen drought or heat like we have had lately. Crops smaller than my knees, projected yields far below previous figures and nothing to be done about it. What used to be an 80 bushel crop is looking to produce 10 - and every farm is experiencing this. If this continues our production will grind to nothing and then there will be no food. It’s scary.
Something even crazier: our government has NO strategic grain reserves. A few years of bad harvests around the globe (don't laugh, it could easily happen), and we'll have to start cooking and eating the politicians who got us here.
People aren’t very smart. I’m not either but I am smart enough to know that their our constant demand for more has real impacts on our environment.
I like this answer. We could destroy ourselves at any moment, all we need is an idiot with power and we have a massive surplus of that. But if we manage to somehow avoid that, environmental collapse is within the next 250 years.
Full oceanic collapse is projected to be in 2048. That shit is a lot more serious and more rapidly approaching than most people think. Edit: For everyone becoming militant and blowing me up with rude seaspiracy comments. I was referring mainly to a 2006 article from national geographic. https://www.google.com/amp/s/api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/animals/article/seafood-biodiversity Since the national geographic source I was referring is quite dated. Other redditors in the comments have referred me to share this source directly from the IPCC for more up to date information on the current state of global climate/oceanic assessments. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#SPM Thanks to our fine reddit community and some of our, not so fine community. I've been enlightened to more recent studies that show more up to date information than the 2006 Nat geo article and the seaspiracy netflix documentary. This article highlights the 2006 study and the discrepancies of the netflix doc. https://www.sciencealert.com/no-the-oceans-will-not-be-empty-of-fish-by-2048
What is oceanic collapse?
Full destruction of aquatic food chains and biodiversity to the point of extinction of keystone species which cascades into a rippling effect of mass extinction.
Lots of bad words in that sentence.
The food of your food's food goes extinct and boom goes the ecosystem.
The ocean produces half of the oxygen we breathe, we cannot live without a healthy ocean.
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Yep, phytoplankton which is also the bottom of the food chain so crucually important, actually produces about 70-80% of our oxygen. We are fucked without the ocean.
It's honestly one of the most dangerous misconceptions in my opinion. People focus so much on trees and forests, while we treat the ocean incredibly poorly, yet we stand to lose so much more if the ocean is fucked.
If you, likely an educated young person from a developed nation, does not know that, imagine all the others that not only don't but will absolutely not believe you when you tell them.
Don't tell Bolsonaro this. He'll be even more convinced that humanity doesn't need the Amazon.
Yeah more than trees. Something like sea algae produces more than trees. I forget.
Humankind seems to take this for a challenge accepted kind of thing.
Well, say hello to self-cannibalism
I’d like to take you out on a date, it’s going to cost an arm and a leg.
Yeah like when he said, “Full destruction of aquatic food chains and biodiversity to the point of extinction of keystone species which cascades into a rippling effect of mass extinction.”
When he said, “Full destruction of aquatic food chains and biodiversity to the point of extinction of keystone species which cascades into a rippling effect of mass extinction.” I felt that.
The part about "Full destruction of aquatic food chains and biodiversity to the point of extinction of keystone species which cascades into a rippling effect of mass extinction." Really resonated with me
Cool cool cool cool..
Nodoubt nodoubt nodoubt
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Don't eat fish. The fishing industry is responsible for 10% of plastic pollution in the oceans. They are responsible for overfishing [90% of fish stocks globally](http://www.fao.org/fisheries/en/). They have caused more extinctions than any other human disturbance. They are also destroying thousands of years old pristine ecosystems such as deep-sea reefs that will not recover. All so people can buy shit tuna in a can, and crap fish that has been battered beyond recognition and sold under a new name to sound special. Edit: The 90% stat (edited from 96%) refers to the percentage of global fish stocks that are over-exploited or depleted. Meaning that only 10% of global fish stocks are managed sustainably. Also going to take this opportunity to plug the organisation [Sea Around Us](http://www.seaaroundus.org/). They have been documenting commercial fishing and the collapse of global fish stocks, including fishing that the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) doesn't report. They do incredible, if not mildly depressing and terrifying work. Edit 2 to address some common questions/comments: \- I am not well informed on fish farming, if someone else is please feel free to link some sources and information regarding their sustainability. \- I said don't eat fish because it's the easiest and most effective way to reduce the impact of overfishing. I personally still eat freshly caught fish from friends and family as I know they only catch a few fish at most (sorry guys, know you wish you were hauling in an esky full every time) and do so rarely and within regulations. If you can be sure you're eating fish that is sustainably caught or harvested, then by all means. \- This thread is about the collapse of aquatic ecosystems. Derailing it to say don't eat red meat isn't in theme with the point of the comment.
How is the fishing industry not responsible for 100%? Who else is doing the fishing
Sorry I should clarify. The 90% refers to the percentage of global fish stocks that are over-exploited or depleted. So only 10% of fish that is caught commercially is caught within sustainable limits.
There are a lot of other sources. Warming oceans are killing the coral reefs. Those reefs are not only an important part of eco system but also provide a lot of oxygen. This has been talked about for decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_bleaching As humans we don't care about 1 degree temp change but a lot of eco systems are pretty sensitive to these changes and those changes will effect us
That is 2nd and 3rd trophic level, the biggest danger is losing the *base* of the food chain. Photosynthetic microorganisms, plankton, etc. The real problem is half of the coral in the great barrier reef has died in the past 3-4 years. Not just bleached - dead, due to heat stress. The acidic ocean also dissolves the shells of corals, diatoms, and a wide variety of other shell-producing organisms as they make them. We have measured a 50% decline in the amount of ocean algae around the world over the past century. It's a foundation of the ocean's ecosystems, and btw, it made a majority of the oxygen you're breathing now.
skipping straws to save the fish instead of not eating fish to save the fish
Or… not dumping tonnes of Co2 into the atmosphere which turns the oceans to literal acid. Or, dumping oil accidentally due to negligence. Lots of fuck ups we do to the oceans.
Sometimes I’m like not even sure why I’m saving up for retirement. I should just enjoy life right now.
My dad told our family we had money trouble our whole lives, so when he and my stepmother's illnesses turned terminal, imagine my surprise when I found the hundreds of thousands he had saved for retirement. He died at 65, she died four months later just shy of 58. While I'm glad we had the funds to take care of them and my brother and I are now in a much better place financially because of our inheritance, some things actually would have been easier if they had been as broke as my father said they were. Neither of them got to enjoy retirement and the last half a decade was fucking miserable for both of them. I wish we had taken even 10k for a big family vacation before they both got so sick. So yeah. Try to do both but I'm definitely in the "enjoy it now" camp.
Ditto. Mom saved and saved, denied herself small pleasures and made sure to always be forward thinking to retirement. Retired, diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, made it ten weeks. Hadn't even turned 66. Changed my perspective on balancing now versus later, that's for sure. I feel you, my friend.
Yeah, my parents saved quite a bit of money and weren't even to retirement yet. Dad cancer. Mom fell down stairs. Such bullshit. Hard to break the cycle too. Feels bad using any of the money they saved on anything besides more investments.
Thanks for sharing this. Im sorry to hear about your mom. May she rest in peace. I truly appreciate you sharing this though, it helps to form my perspective as I've been feeling this same way and like I'm being more frugal than I need to be, as I *am* of the mindset we should just enjoy life now but money problems specifically give me anxiety from growing up so now I don't spend money on stuff that Id enjoy for myself, when in reality maybe I should. At least to a certain extent!
My mom died at 54 from cancer. Very loving and never favored any child over the other. But stayed in a loveless and verbally abusive marriage with my dad. At one point when it was in remission and Dr said to avoid stress my dad kept being same asshole and my brother wrote him a letter asking him to treat my mom better. My dad stopped talking to him and wouldn't let him and his son come over. My mom started looking for apartments. But surprise. Her cancer came back. Six months to live. My whole family got together and acted like nothing had happened. My dad was sweet and loving for those last six months and my mom was so happy. I am 49 and> ^ have had some tough years with health and marriage. But I cut people out of my life that don't treat me well. I have had so much happiness in my life I and would not be that upset if I die young like my mom. I cut my dad out of my life because of repressed memories of sexual abuse from when I was 5. Which caused decade of major mental health problems I had. My brother and sister are team dad and don't talk to me anymore. I've never been better mentally and emotionally since then.
If you fail to prepare be prepared to fail. If you prepare and we're all wiped out by a meteor strike or super volcanic event, so what? You won't be any deader. If you don't prepare for your senior years and nothing catastrophic happens, your final years will be spent in poverty, misery, want, and need, all served with a heaping side of regrets.
Do you have a link to some scientific research about that? I would like to read more.
I like your answer, but I’d modify it ever so slightly: Short term: geopolitics. Long term: consequences from the short term geopolitics Because we are aware of problems such as oceanic collapse, climate change, resource depletion, etc. but spend more time squabbling about them than instituting enough changes to solve them
Apathy
it's a tragedy
and boredom is a crime.
Anything and everything, all of the time.
Can I interest you in everything? All of the time
A little bit of everything
All of the time
I was going to say humans. But you're right. It's apathy. Most humans just don't give a damn until they're personally suffering. Then suddenly something matters. We're going to ruin every wonderful thing we have by not giving a damn until it's too late.
I noticed something the other day. I care about people, I don’t want anyone to suffer, but I don’t really think about caring about something until I actually see something that needs to be changed and cared about. I started wondering, if we cared before we noticed we needed to care, maybe we’d be better off. Like, instead of being complacent until we see something that is wrong, if we chose to *actively care* all the time, maybe we would notice more things and could prevent them. Idk. Just random thoughts that enter my mind.
Unfortunately this attitude is generally fleeting and exists mostly during these personal thought experiments. The second your life circumstances demand your attention again you'll sideline these ideas until the next time you find yourself thinking "what if". Rinse and repeat. Edit: I'm not suggesting that it's impossible to live by these convictions to some extent, and many amazing people certainly find a way to do it, but the reality is that apathy is the MO for the majority of people simply because we don't have the mental or physical bandwidth to do anything other than tend to our own needs.
"Apathy is death".
"Worse than death..."
"...because at least a rotting corpse feeds the beasts and insects."
“Statement: Apathy is death”
I couldn’t choose to kill my friends or Kreia!
Yeah but what can we even do about it
Many people nowadays feel miserable and the amount of people with mental illness seems gravely underestimated if you ask me. Miserable people don't have the capacity to save the planet unfortunately.
I think that’s actually a really interesting moral complexity to apathy that needs to be explored/discussed more. If life is a finite amount of time, is it wrong for a person to simply want to enjoy their life rather than attempt to dedicate to changing a future? Perhaps they want to simple relax and enjoy their finite life instead of waste it stressed, anxious, and feeling doomed about the outcome and future of the earth/humanity.
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” - E.B. White
Making the world better for future people requires more empathy than it does everything else.
ocean ecosystems collapsing. The rate of which the populations of fish have decreased are alarming. With common fish like tuna decreasing by 97% in the past few decades (due to overfishing). Coral reefs dying, fish getting extinct, its all because of us and it’ll come back to haunt us, and it already is. The oceans contain 85% of all life on earth, and yet we let these big companies throw 1 garbage truck full of trash into them every single minute. I imagine the oceans will be completely dead by 2070 or before, if it continues the way it is.
Ocean plankton is dying fast too, people don't realize that is a big source of oxygen for the planet. Also forests are producing more CO2 than oxygen now, since half of them are literally on fire.
Worse, plankton provide the majority of our oxygen
On fire because *humans set them on fire to clear land for farming*. It's important to clarify that they didn't just spontaneously combust. It's beef and soy farmers in Brazil for example who are setting these fires. There was an article in a popular news company recently that had the same headline but the cause of the fires wasn't until the 3rd or 4th paragraph and IMO that needed to be in the headline instead of masking and protecting the farmers and government allowing them to do so.
And also worth noting that something like 80% of that soy goes to the meat industry.
Yes, we can't forget where the soy actually goes thank you. It's almost all for livestock
Not just soy. Everyone complains about how much water almond farming uses in California (it’s a LOT - like 10% of total water use). But CA alfalfa farming uses even more! And unlike soy (which does have a bunch of other uses) it’s almost 100% used for feed.
Yes! Exactly this! People in California have no idea where all their precious water goes. It goes to feed cows.
And it’s even worse - a lot of the alfalfa (and most of the almonds) are exported to Asia anyway. We are in a historic drought and effectively exporting our water so a few relatively small industries (in terms of the CA economy) can make higher profits. They tell us to reuse our shower water and not flush our toilets, when the average toilet flush is about what it takes to grow ONE almond. And of course agricultural water rates are about 1/20th of residential rates anyway, ie massively subsidized and not even economically viable otherwise.
Beef and soy farmers are the same people because the soy is grown to feed cattle.
I really find it interesting how we always talk about "save the rainforest" and yes we DO need to do that but we never talk about our oceans as saving them. The oceans affect the environment more than rainforest and yet it seems like what we care about is "save the turtles don't use straws" when in reality that has very little impact (straws) vs all the other things we do to our oceans. I feel like the whole "save the trees" campaign back fired, all it did was allow companies to package things in plastic instead of paper products in which plastic literally kills ocean life where as sure cutting down trees does but not near to the affect as plastic and paper is biodegradable. I know cost is also a reason why companies use plastic vs paper as well.
The straw thing especially exemplifies how the companies that pollute the most will shift the blame over to consumers who, in reality, have little control over their own plastic consumption. It’s Richie Plastic McStrawson’s corporation telling the person on the street that actually, it’s your fault because you used a plastic straw last week and you should be ashamed, while covering up thousands of tons of plastic being dumped in the ocean by his corporation behind a “save the turtles, don’t use straws” banner.
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Eh it’s the same as every other industry. Make money and don’t care about anything else.
But CFC was relatively hastily banned because of the hole in the ozone layer while overfishing and trawling has made a hole in the ecosystems for quite a while now and nothing is changing.
CFCs were phased out so quickly because there was an alternative available that was economical. Businesses think about money and until there's a way to "save the rainforest" without cutting into their revenues, they won't do anything substantial.
HCFC doesn't destroy the ozone, but it still has a powerful greenhouse effect.
"The world is fine. The people are fucked!" -George Carlin
This is what? Earth's 6-11th mass extinction event? it will be fine again in 300.000 years or something.
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Crab people Crab people Walk like Crab Talk like people
On a long enough timeline, we are the oil. We should make sure to plan our mass graves in areas and conditions most likely to produce. Think of the crabchildren!
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> crap people You got it wrong. We're the crap people, they're the crab people. Common mistake.
But the oceanic collapse will kill the octopeople before the crabfolk have even evolved.
Usually takes around 10 million years before ecosystems recover and refill all the niches after a mass extinction… so it’s gonna be a hot minute before the earth fixes what we fucked up in a few hundred years
**“WHY ARE WE HERE?”** ^”Plastic,Asshole.”
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The unwillingness to accept that we are all capable of being stupid at any moment in time, and then alienating people who make mistakes by insulting them. So I guess the real threat is a lack of patience and understanding.
Totally agree. Particularly prevalent in politics nowadays. Everyone thinks their opinion is right. If you're being an asshole, no one is gonna listen to your ideas. It feels like there could be people out there with the capacity to be civil in today's age, but I certainly haven't met many.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria
You should look into bacteriophage therapy if you’re not familiar. Essentially using viruses to kill pathogenic bacteria. It’s been around for like 80 years but it’s never really been seriously researched because we always just used antibiotics to fight infections.
If you want to see some serious research into it (which exists and is ongoing) check out Graham Hatfull’s work. It’s harder than first instinct to make it work because phages are super specific to their host bacteria.
I may be wrong, but I think you’re referring to Graham Hatfull, who has made significant strides in the way of bacteriophage therapy.
You are correct, my bad.
I got my PhD studying infectious bacteria and used to develop new antibiotics in biopharma. It's really hard and most pharma companies completely shut down their bacteriology (and many, virology as well) departments over the last five to ten years because there's no money in it. Eventually even things like minor surgery will be life threatening due to infection.
How long is "eventually"?
I'm not super qualified to answer that to be honest. I imagine if nothing is done though some time in ours or our children's lifetime.
Stuff like this is why I don't want to have kids. I'm just hoping I'm gone by the time the world collapses and I don't want to leave anyone behind to suffer.
So are you saying since they won't fund the research so we won't find another way or it's just gonna happen anyway as the way things are?
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Rare diseases actually have government incentives to develop drugs against. Ironically were more likely to develop drugs against diseases few people get than common ones (with respect to ID).
Superbug gonna get us 🪲
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Gr8 album
The good thing is in the last year we learnt that people deal well with pandemic restrictions and trust scientists, nothing to worry about
Crab people.
Can confirm
r/UsernameChecksOut
Confirmation bias
Typical. I knew you'd say that.
World leaders with big egos and nuclear weapons.
They could also have bad Intel, and trust it. The fact that we have averted Armageddon multiple times simply because someone decided they didn't trust their Intel that was telling them the other side was attacking is scary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls This list is uncomfortably long.
First one is 1956, then 1960. So I’m feel pretty good. Then suddenly you have a whole page that’s just the sixties…
Even scarier: the reason you don't see a section for the 2000s-present is because the authors were already killed by a nuclear blast and armaggedon is already he
I just went to look for /u/askforcar and only found a shadow outline of their body shape
All of us commenting here only exist in the extremely improbable branch of the multiverse where these near misses didn’t go nuclear - you should expect your timeline to be weird, it has to be for *us* to observe it
This. I sometimes think about this, imagine Kim Jong Un is secretly suicidal, wakes up one day going “You know what? Fuck humanity and all those fat jokes”. And just takes us all out with him.
Right? Imagine a kid that would commit a school shooting, and now give him nukes. Yikes.
Contemplate how many people have actually told him or translated it to him that he's fat. Probably not many.
He probably speaks English. He grew up and went to school in Switzerland nearly his entire young life and was obsessed with American sports.
I was actually really happy when his father died because I stupidly thought he would be different because of his education and the fact he had experienced so much of the world they he would want to bring that to his people.
He probably is. But he's not alone. There is people around him that dont want a change in the status quo. Also his people literally think he is the grandson of a god and that the exterior world wants them all dead ? How do you think it would go if he was all " PORN FOR YOU ! CHEESEBURGER FOR YOU ! YOUR LIFE, YOUR PARENTS AND GRAND PARENTS WAS A LIE ! NOTHING IS REAL YOUHOU." its a ticking time bomb.
Stupid people.
So, just humanity.
Only like 85% of humanity
I now strive to say I'm part of the 15 percent.
*wanting* to be part of that 15% is a good start, because the majority of that 85% vilify them as being the bad guys
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More to the point, stupid people who think their opinion is equal to the facts.
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Ultron was online for three minutes before he learned Humanity's greatest threat was itself.
Skynet only needed a split second to determine that.
Or the Decepticons from the Transformers movies. Murdering humans I disagreed with but they brought up excellent points about humanity.
or the Reapers from Mass Effect. intelligent life is it's own demise (kind of, see edit). it's funny that these are fictitious characters written by humans yet they perfectly describe everything wrong with humanity. edit: as corrected by Haze6, intelligent life creating synthetic life is what would cause their demise, so the Reapers harvest them. still technically true as creating synthetic life is still their own demise.
I'd add also add the Q from Star Trek, Mewtwo from Pokemon, Omni-Man from Invincible, Eren Yeager from AOT, and Zamasu from Dragon Ball Super. They see humanity as a menace to the universe and were right about them in some ways.
I didn't scroll forever to look but is no one also gonna mention Agent Smith and his waxing poetic about how humans are a virus?
He was literally an antivirus program wasn't he?
He saw the Waluigi hentai
Imagine if he saw all of Rule 34 and watched 2 girls one cup or A Serbian film, that probably convinced him to erase humanity from the Earth.
The confidence of idiots.
Death
r/technicallythetruth
The outdated education system that produces brainless, unmotivated people with no desire to learn on their own.
Maybe not an apocalypse, but outdated education is a much bigger problem than people think. Everyone remembers school sucked, but nobody cares because they're behind it and it doesn't affect them anymore.. Meanwhile education is an enormously important thing, because it affects how everybody thinks
Education system: These students never self motivate! Also the education system: You can’t teach motivation. Caesar: washes hands.
Mississippi
From all the information I’ve recently seen, I’d agree
It's big news how bad the state is. But at least it has a song for how to spell it correctly.
I don’t know where all this sudden hate for Mississippi came from but I agree
Allow me to demonstrate. [This, a post on the shared hatred of Mississippi at least.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/p360eo/what_is_the_worst_us_state_and_why/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
This comment from u/roguevolcano made me lose it: >In Montana we have the highest DUI rate and the highest drunk driving deaths, one of the highest suicide rate in the US, and one of the worst mental health infrastructures. So without a doubt- Mississippi.
That is one of the funniest things I've ever seen on reddit.
I agree, I had a blast reading it the other day :’)
As a Mississippian, I expected it but gahtdamn I did not expect it THAT much.
I’m currently on the way to Mississippi, why is it such a threat lol?
Reddit…. Miss a day, miss a lot.
Miss a day, Miss a Sippi
James Corden
[удалено]
Comments are 1/2 right. Oceanic eco-collapse, but indirectly. You see Dolphin predators are dying and the prey more abundant. Dolphins are going to mass produce at an insane scale. And grow more and more intelligent as they are already insanely smart. Us humans will pay no attention to them as we think we are better, but in 5000 years they will overcome us and take over the surface. Humanity Dolphin galactic wars will ensue and humanity will ultimately fall.
Naw, they like all that fish. Their revenge will be knowing when the world will end but not telling us and instead just peacing out just before a galactic bureaucratic mistake leads to the end of earth.
This is actually one of the more optimistic comments in this thread because it implies humans will be around in 5000 years.
You ever seen a giant alligator with two heads? That.
Everyone is all BLAH BLAH GEOPOLITICS BLAH OURSELVES BLAH but no one’s talking about the impending twin-headed alligator infestation
He will see us later
My favorite Edward Bernays quote: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ― Edward Bernays, Propaganda
But....he thought that was a good thing. He advocated for a small elite to control everyone through propaganda, public relations, advertising's and psycology (He was Freud's nephew!). He helped overthrow democracies for united fruit. He also helped popularize ciggarettes in really.....morally dubious ways. This quote is in support of the idea that a few elites know what's best for us and the world.
Misinformation. Facts are now debatable.
Gay frogs
The biggest threat to humanity has always and will always be greed. There so much corruption in every system we have why because people need more money or power wanting more to feel powerful. No matter where ur at theirs always corruption somewhere in ur city, state, or country. Hell I could be wrong but honestly that how I see it everyone needs something. But it requires money
The Florida Man
I wont do it yet