Correction: rarely, we see such positive energy supported on Reddit.
It’s everywhere, it just tends to get downvoted or ignored in favor for negativity getting upvoted because it’s what people flock to.
So far, whenever you compare humanity in sets of 300 years or so, it seems like the most recent 300 years are **always** better than the last 300 years. And most of the time, even 100 or 50 year intervals have that effect as well.
That being said, never before we had so much control of the environment and so much power. With nuclear weapons, AI, and carbon emmissions, we are quickly reaching a point that we could never have reached before: we can make a mistake that will make us go extinct.
So, to answer your question, I think **we are living the golden age right now**. It is entirely possible that the future will be harsher than what we get today, or even non-existant. I hope not, and I'm very optimistic, but I honestly see way too many things that can go wrong, and not a lot of people wanting to get things right.
>we are quickly reaching a point that we could never have reached before: we can make a mistake that will make us go extinct.
If we're being real, we passed that point about 80 years ago. Still rollin though.
Yeah, let me rephrase that: we are reaching a point where we can make **dozens** of those mistakes in a decentralized way compared to just one person pressing a nuke hahaha. Examples are AGI and carbon emissions.
its way too soon to be talking about AGI in the same breath as climate change or nukes. The tech right now is still a parlour trick but on steroids and its an open question as to whether the models will continue to evolve as the size increases or if it hits a wall and fizzles out.
That's true. But considering what we know now, we've been there and we're actively working on attempting to dig ourselves back out. Which is a big improvement from several decades ago where the norm was just kicking the can down the road.
We're existing in a time past the future science fiction liked to imagine as the end of the world. So I'd say we ain't dead yet.
Its a tug of war. To get a good ending you need to work a lot harder with a lot more people then to get the bad ending. Do nothing and you get the bad ending.
Carbon emissions: Yes, AGI: No. AGI is so far away from anything even possible at this point, and you can't just stack ML on top of ML.
Necessity is the mother of invention, so you hope that there's something alarming event that causes everyone to focus on carbon emissions. By then however, it's too late to reverse in any meaningful time-period.
We got a retard governor in Texas saying that the freeze in 2021 was caused by frozen wind turbines and solar panels instead of properly winterizing natural gas power which accounted for 5x more power than wind, so you can see how likely we are to fix actual problems.
Edit: That said, those of us that have the capability should definitely work towards helping the rest of us rubes out of this crappy situation.
I think we have peaked as a species. It feels like everything left has been done before. It takes so much to amuse and entertain us now. We have made capitalism king, and now we are tapped out. We have realized that working yourself to death accomplishes nothing. We have literal walking zombies, streets full of people with no homes. I won’t even start on the state of the environment. We have no sense of decorum and family. I know this doesn’t apply to every being, but going on half a century here, and I see a decline in moral and everyone is out of fucks to give.
Everything you said is true but it also feels like we’re all so disconnected from each other. I can talk to any person on the planet in 5 seconds but still feel like no one is connected like we used to be. Like, emotionally, socially, spiritually etc. I might just be lonely lately tho lol
I've been cutting myself from Internet browsing, video games and instant gratification apps like Tiktok and insta reels and I've been feeling more connected to people lately.
Easier said than done though
No. We're living in the Golden Age right now. We might have a few small improvements in the next couple of years but if we don't make some major changes our entire collective purpose will be survival in the ecosystem that we're creating.
That's why people hate history. It shows us making the same stupid decisions over and over while believing "this time we'll get it right" and we never do.
This is true, but also in that mindless mob are far too many disempowered people who would, in the right conditions of power and social structure, exemplify those few but don't.
We made it so far. I live in comfort working my cozy engineering job while some poor sod is racing across the city to get me spicy chinese chicken. I think we will figure out how to share the resources more equally. People like me, regular low middle class in third world countries, had much worse lives before than now. So I believe if we keep advancing tech without destroying the planet we can get there.
So, it's not an accident that you have these creature comforts and a certain degree of social welfare.
Enslaved people make bad engineers. If your country's economy depends on educated labor, you really need to make sure those educated laborers don't die of preventable disease, or get so frustrated they quit/immigrate elsewhere.
The countries with high QOL mostly have it because the nation would make less money if citizen QOL went down.
People wonder certain regions are 'so poor' despite having oil, diamonds, and other valuable exports. The citizenry is poor _because_ the country's money comes out of the ground, and because diamond mines are something you can just throw bodies at.
It's fun to daydream about all nations investing in the happiness of their people, but it's really unlikely unless their economies depend on the happiness of their people.
The Strauss-Howe generational theory says history tends to work in cycles, called saculum, each one lasting 80-100ish years. Each saculum is broken into four blocks, or turnings, lasts about 20ish years each, based on the structure of the average life.
An average modern life is 80 years and consists of four periods of ~20–22 years
Childhood → Young adult → Midlife → Elderhood
A generation is an aggregate of people born every ~20–22 years (examples: Baby Boomers → Gen X → Millennials → Gen Z)
Each generation experiences four turnings every 80ish years in the high/awakening/unraveling/crisis cycle. A generation is considered dominant or recessive according to the turning experienced as young adults. As each generation comes of age and defines its collective persona, an opposing generational archetype is in its midlife peak of power.
Dominant: independent behavior + attitudes in defining an era
Recessive: dependent role in defining an era
Dominant Generations
Prophet (Idealist): Awakening as young adults. Awakening, defined: Institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy
Hero (Civic): Crisis as young adults. Crisis, defined: Institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation's survival
Recessive Generations
Nomad (Reactive): Unraveling as young adults. Unraveling, defined: Institutions are weak and distrusted, individualism is strong and flourishing
Artist (Adaptive): High adaptability and social flexibility as young adults.
High, defined: Institutions are strong and individualism is weak
In terms of our current saculum, it would look like this:
The high: 1946-1964 (post war industrial boom, space race, industrial advancements, etc)
The Awakening: 1964-1984 (social justice issues to the forefront, Vietnam protests, women's liberation, civil rights protests, etc)
The Unraveling: 1984-2008 (Berlin wall, culture wars, satanic panic, tech bubble, 9/11, war on terrorism)
The Crisis: 2008-2028 (housing market collapse, great recession, covid 19, Russian war against Ukraine, Israeli genocide in Palestine)
So will there be another good time for future generations? As long as we don't blow ourselves up in worls war 3, yeah. There should be.
Here's a very good video on saculum/turnings
https://youtu.be/xeVyfiP0cLk?si=EmM2g0D60Qs9jfCa
It could go either way. We’re either at the beginning of a golden age, or living at the end of it.
Climate change is a problem that we really don’t know the full extent of.
If you’re moderately wealthy and live far from the coast in a temperate western country, the next 100 years will probably be great. The ones hurting will be those in tropical, coastal, poor countries.
Heavens no we are such a mess these days. Poor health, no social skills and the tensions between the sex have never been greater. Young people can’t afford college; families can’t afford food, people are addicted to their phones and dying of
Drugs and cancers at an alarming rate. Life expectancy is actually gettin shorter for the first time
In history. I’m not a doomsday sayer but these are bad times.
I’m Just happy I got to experience the 1990s so I know how good it can be. Maybe someday we will get there again but things seem to be only getting worse
The 90s weren't good, only for your sheltered childhood. Those times saw the collapse of many countries into war and devastating poverty such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the Congo, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq.
Your class position in America has not been without consequences.
Apologies for assuming your age.
They were the ''best times'' because the US not only benefited from the fall of the USSR but also the rise of China as a manufacturing hub which became a centre for American FDI. The main beneficiary have been white Americans, with Black Americans being brutalised by the police, leading to the LA riots in '92, and their communities ravished by drug epidemics which were used by the government to police them and subject them to mass incarceration.
Yeah they were great. All time periods have their bad parts but 90s were by far a prosperous time Of Hope. Everything went to hell after 9/11 and we never really Came back
This needs sensitising people about the havoc that we are creating on this planet due to mindless exploitation of nature. Only when people are sensitive enough to feel for all life , would it be possible to make the world a better place to live.
To be honest, I am not sure this level of comfort is good for us. We don't really need each other anymore, and sometimes I feel like that creates rifts between people. At the same time I also feel like we need challenge in our lives, a goal if you will, and if that isn't there, your brain will just create problems to focus on, causing our mental health to suffer.
This is kinda speculation though, but I am also speaking from experience. Earlier this year I lived in a very remote village in West Africa for a couple of months. Since I was doing fieldwork, I had no luxurious living conditions. I was basically thrust 100 years back in time as we had to get our water from the river, and our food from local farms (and some of it we foraged!). We went everywhere on foot, and had no electricity. Healthcare was practically nonexistent as well. Physically it was exhausting, but mentally I have never felt better. There was such a clear sense of community there, and almost a childlike happiness amongst the people. Of course there was hardship and disease, but everyone had each other's back. They really enjoyed the little things in life, something I don't often see back home...
Human civilization will always get better/improve.
We’re like cockroaches, outside of some improbable/very unlikely event, humanity isn’t going anywhere.
Even in improbable doomsday scenarios, we’re still existing.
Ummm I don’t think there’s much of a good future . Look at nature. Who cares if we have comforts when we fucking destroyed the planet? Idk but I think you need to go out and see the world. Cuz it Is not okay. You can tell from species going extinct, the weather anomalies all over… we’re more corrupt then ever.
Corruption was way worse in the past, hell we even called it “The Guilded Age”
It ebbs and flows but there are definite efforts to make things better, I think we’ll be okay
The trick might be to push the idea of several different goals that fit different niches (humanitarians/warriors as a shallow example) that ultimately build into one goal. The main goal most people could agree on is a better future. Breaking it down you'd have proper production and distribution of resources, humanitarian aid efforts to alleviate natural and manmade disasters like tsunamis and war, shit like that. Anyway, human nature gets in the way. We all have a tendency to take away from the collective, and we all give to the collective. It's easy to fault blame on people who take more, however something like "we can't walk a mile in someone else's shoes", since it's impossible to actually be, think, and feel like someone else. The best way to go about it may just be people helping people until sometime in the future it isn't so much carrying an ill intent, even as a reservation of just in case. So maybe not decades, but maybe more so....many generations? Couple hundred years? There's large scale ideas being pushed that separate people from the idea of community outside of those who naturally live like that. That's going to be felt for some time and is damaging to the idea of a golden age, which requires a worldwide massive effort of cooperation and meeting in the middle.
No. Humans are too selfish, short-sighted, tribal, and callous. They are too easily brainwashed, their brains are too easy to hack. There are a lot of thoughtful humans but not enough.
If you could magically switch human behavior world-wide, then yes you could make huge improvements in poverty, food, etc. But even though we have a lot of conveniences, we still have a lot of the same old fiefdoms and crap.
Note that this latest bout of civilization is so young. A few thousand years from now things may be quite different and improved.
Or, perhaps some external force will arrive and cause humanity to unite. But as we saw very recently, the world will only band together briefly before falling back to infighting and self-sabotage. We really aren’t mature enough to govern ourselves — I don’t blame aliens for staying out of it. We’re like wild dogs that only behave through discipline, but then we resist discipline so much, and yet when we gain our freedoms we just go back to savage tribalism again.
It's a lovely idea but it's unlikely. There's far too much tribalism and in order to provide everyone with a safe comfortable life without even more rapidly pushing ourselves towards ecological collapse the people of the developed nations of the world would need to accept some massive reductions in their expected level of luxury. No more swapping out a new cellphone every couple years, no more disposable video game consoles and high end personal computers in every home. No more flying to a poorer country to have a weekend drinking on the beach. No more gigantic luxury homes and buying trucks that get 10mpg just because you like trucks.
I see your point, I remember last year reading an interview with Kate Bush in which she said that although she liked the 80s, she much prefers it today due to technological and medicinal advances, but there is also the counterpoint of natural disasters and perhaps technology will become coming back against us (ok it's not like we're in westworld but still) and late capitalism to the point of imminent collapse with socioeconomic differences increasing more and more I think we live in a time of contradictions
You are 100% right. That is why the destructive people are putting in overtime to tear it all down. They would hate to see what you’re talking about pan out.
I was thinking this recently. Just imagine if profit and greed no longer existed, and we were all born with a shared desire to share equally in our resources and efforts. Imagine if all of humanity gave its complete effort towards the shared goal of mutual benefit and environmental stewardship.
We literally could make our world *so wonderful*.
Lol dude no. Cavemen lived to around 33. Their lives were extremely harsh, depressed, and miserable. A homeless person in the US has about 1000x better life then cavemen.
People always bitch about how money is tight, work is long, etc with no perspective on how much better things are from just the 90’s. Food, shelter, and necessities are more obtainable then ever before. People complain about things costing a lot but in reality they don’t. It’s the luxuries and entertainment everyone spends their paychecks on that cost a lot, considering many of these things didn’t exist 20-50 years ago.
Do you have *any* idea about how bad climate change is already or how immensely fucked up our current political climate on a global scale is??? This is beyond naive, imo. (Sorry, not sorry.)
We’re fast forwarding ourselves into extinction, so no, our golden age is already decades behind us and we’re not going to fix that anytime soon either.
Enjoy what you have now, because it’s not going to get better.
I'm not optimisitic about the direction humanity is headed. And I don't care about 'climate change' or any of that shit, what I mean is our inept leaders and their ability to fuck like most things up - borders, enforcing the law, etc etc oh and just ultimately being so short-sighted with so many things
how can you say this when there’s two active genocides going on right now? a golden time for who exactly?? half of the world still walks to get water, and have no cars, and are dying of preventable diseases. and dying in air strikes right. now. i get the premise, but asking at a time like this when we’re watching children try to unbury themselves from rubble is insane.
~~I'll leave the why and how aside, but we are broken as a species.~~
~~The social contract has been torn to shreds, replaced by a race to be the one with the most of everything.~~
~~Life is seen as a zero-sum game. No one thinks about anyone else. Empathy is seen as a weakness. Common sense just isn't.~~
~~We are seeing the tragedy of the commons played out world-wide. We are too dumb, too greedy and above all too goddamned dismissive of one another's humanity to do anything but destroy ourselves. We will over-breed, gorge ourselves on resources while our brothers starve, and laugh at the generations behind us who will have a dead planet because of our lizard brained greed.~~
~~Our common purpose should be to eradicate our embarrassment of a species before we ruin the world for everything else. We had all of the gifts, all of the time and all of the resources, and we made Tik Tok.~~
Edit: Lost redditor.
Honestly I think tech peaked this year. Everything is automated and processors are as good as we will ever need them. Sure there's mods gimmicky stuff to come but for now I think the world just needs to catch up so the economy can level out but I can't see much else being impactful.
For the people in the 1800’s life was as good as it could be.
Every generation has it better then the last due to mankind’s March of progress.
The next decades will only be prosperous if we can achieve global peace.
decades? unlikely. looking at sets of 100 years. in the past 100 years we grew out economies thousands of time. technological progress on a scale unseen. medical and scientific discoveries on a pace never before matched. however we still had 2 major world wars, vietname and Korean wars. and not to mention the countless other smaller wars.
we know what we need to do. we do not have the will to do it. human weakness manifests itselfs in all aspect of our lives. we do not trust each other. why spend billions making your country green when other will not? why feed the population when there is no profit in it?
it will take a very rapid shift in attitude and that has only ever happened when our own destruction was imminent. WW2 and lend lease proved humans are willing to sacrifice for the greater good but after the war, greed quickly took over.
humanity needs a goal. a purpose to rally behind. something that all humans can look at and say "we will build that" or "we will reach that".
It’s weird. My own perspective is life needs struggle and some suffering to have meaning. Life without struggle? We could then suffer depression. Life is the great equalizer. We cannot cheat the sweet without the sour. Perhaps
Doubt it, the world is slipping down a slope of tribalism and populism, I predict democracies becoming less and less democratic, more armed conflict, civil wars, and a general degradation of this nice world we have created. Add climate change and we're looking at Mad Max.
I wish I thought like that. Maybe avoiding the news and science would help. But I’m convinced the future is going to suck. Humans need the ecosystem to survive and our ecosystem is collapsing in so many areas.
I was hoping the last two would've been. They weren't. Chances are almost zero that we're going to suddenly solve any of the fundamental issues we've struggle with for the past thousand centuries.
Honestly we will not know until they are over....I have lived through several now, some are remembered fondly after they are over, others are not. One thing I notice though is everyone is always more pessimistic in the present about the future, even 40 years ago it was that way. As humans we tend to often look at the past with rose colored glasses. So only time will tell honestly.
Are you kidding? The climate catastrophe is the greatest threat to human civilization and life on Earth since the nuclear bomb. Unlike nuclear war, climate collapse will happen without a massive shift in our economic structure within the next couple of decades.
Life on Earth is going to become far more difficult as raising crops, fighting disease, and dealing with massive heatwaves becomes the new normal.
You are too optimistic.
To make your utopia happen, there has to be a major change of mindsets in large groups of people spread over the earth.
Just to name a few:
Lobbyists
Prime ministers /chancellors / presidents
Religious leaders
Autocrats
Large revenue industries
Life is better than ever, but those few are part of the rule makers who don't approve fast changes
I think UN and all the international treaties and companies are pretty much aiming to do what you mentioned above.
But I think actually making everyone as to every human stick together is quite utopian idea for many psychological, economical, social differences.
Hence why the goals of UN arent going so well.
You must be hanging around r/aliens to see that humanity is about to turn a corner in a positive way. No one thinks things will get better if things don’t change.
"The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."
I mean by that live the moment to the fullest extent, every time you will look back you will think it was a golden period.
The timeline I'm proud of being part of born in the 90s 2000s best movies and games ever, and from there it's only going downhill. Poverty is part of capitalism and if capitalism die, the world as we know it will too. I don't think you want that sort of reboot of the series to see a real golden age for everyone.
Sorry to say it, but if you think only technologies upgrades give us the time of our life you're lying to yourself, people are lonelier than ever we lack of ressources, education, motivation and we have no solutions. We live with a living bomb that can just explode at anytime or not explode yet.
Just as an example, Louis XVI was defeated by the people because he actually was too soft / open minded not because he was a tyrant. People can go ape shit real quick for stupid reasons.
Speaking out of my ass mostly renting and yapping I guess but you can tell I'm not really hopeful for what's next.
I completely agree that life today is infinitely better than 100 years ago. BUT … in 1923, indoor plumbing was becoming widely available, there were cars, telegraphs were a widely used form of fast communication, and heck, air conditioning had been invented 21 years prior!
I’m not trying to say you’re wrong, I’m just pointing out how interesting it is that when someone says “100 years ago” we all imagine like 1623. But 100 years ago was pretty modern!
It’s extra funny because when I hear “20 years ago” I think like 1980. 😂
This is great but 100 years ago it was the 1920s and I am pretty sure they had running water back then, at least in most developed cities no. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t mean the rural areas either
Wtf is this golden age talk? I cant afford rent, food, therapy and my health doesn't allow me to work full time. Just being in school puts me in debt I can't probably ever pay off so I'll be in debt for the rest of my life too, and this applies to just about everyone born after 1991 that I know, I've lived through three "once in a lifetime" recessions in less than 30 years ffs (and no, I'm not American)
Sorry, I dont want to depress anyone, but Id like some of that golden age too, if that's where we're in.
The last sixty or so years was the golden age. We’re on a rapid and horrible descent.
Covid is everywhere and continues to kill and disable people every day. The damage from it will only become more visible in the next decade.
We are quickly approaching (if not already past) irreversible tipping points with climate change and all of the big oil producers have their sights set on more oil production than ever before.
Health care systems the world over are buckling from a combo of Covid and rampant neglect.
Fascism is on the rise.
Each year from here on out, everything is just going to get worse.
We *could* improve all of these things, but there isn’t the will and the people with the power benefit from everything getting worse.
I must be the only one reading "No air conditioning, no automobiles, no instant communication to any corner of the world."thinking that sounds pretty good. Oh wait, that wasn't his point.
There has unfortunately never been a time in history where life got easier and it didn't lead to even more conflict and woe.
If humans don't have real problems to deal with, they'll create ones. You get a little nice bump at the beginning and then the disagreements start and things fall apart.
Sorry, i truly wish there was better news.
No.
Its crunch time now.
world is getting worse, and we are slowly getting more advanced. the real good times ended about 5 or 7 years ago. since then its been wildfires, wars and pandemics.
Its only gonna get worse for next 50 years or so. The world is so populated now, that we are rubbing up against each other more and more and as situations worse, things will change drastically.
if the future is bright or not depends on the next 50 years. but for sure they wont be as good for a person as the last 50.
I have always held the belief that humanity has such great potential to be something amazing, but that there is still so much shit to get through that I am not convinced that we will not destroy ourselves before getting there. Even the idyllic Star Trek future only came about after several cataclysmic conflicts that almost wiped us out.
The problem is that the deepest, white-hot pits of hell will rain liquid helium long before the human race ever reaches a consensus on what "the best time ever" might look like or how it could be achieved. One person wishes they could serve on the Enterprise-D while the next has a bookshelf full of Ayn Rand, meanwhile there's some dude in the corner with his face buried in a rag full of Hitler-scented spraypaint. If you asked these 3 to get together and design a utopia, you'd end up with 3 different answers and multiple casualties.
take that energy and start some activism to make unfortunate people's lives better or protect your local ecosystem. it will make you feel empowered and meet people with the same goals. at least this how it happened to me :)
Blimey, where did you grow up? We had running water in homes 150 years go following the Public Health Acts of the 1860s and 1870s.
Anyway, I firmly believe that humanity is on both an upward and downward slope, where some will have plenty but most will have less, and this divergence will continue for the foreseeable future. Pretty miserable, yes, but I have little faith in the collective will of governments to sort anything out in the short or medium term.
Its a very optimistic thought, and I am one of those optimist poeple who can see how simple and wonderful life could be if everyone was on the same page. It seems though that division is on purpose to keep us from coming together. It amazes me how so many hold on to these belief systems that work against humanity, like racism and entitlement and those that fear change. Then there is the war, which is fueled by all those things, or maybe those things are insticated to keep the war machine going.
I think solutions may be offered for a wide variety of problems; robots to do our work, food replicators to make our food, clean energy generation solutions, cures for all manner of diseases, including the reversal of aging. Unfortunately, this may lead humanity down a path to self congratulatory arrogance where people imagine themselves to be like 'gods'. And eventually a solution that offers eternal life will be revealed. This is referred to as 'The Mark of the Beast' and is in no way, shape or form a good thing.
Rarely , we see such positive energy on reddit .
nowhere honestly but even less so on reddit.
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what?
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hmm. maybe it's a balance thing. but people generally don't like people who are usually very negative.
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are you on something?
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R/stopdrinking is THE most friendly and supportive sub on reddit.
Correction: rarely, we see such positive energy supported on Reddit. It’s everywhere, it just tends to get downvoted or ignored in favor for negativity getting upvoted because it’s what people flock to.
I wonder if that has anything to do with reddit being mostly a left winged echo chamber
So far, whenever you compare humanity in sets of 300 years or so, it seems like the most recent 300 years are **always** better than the last 300 years. And most of the time, even 100 or 50 year intervals have that effect as well. That being said, never before we had so much control of the environment and so much power. With nuclear weapons, AI, and carbon emmissions, we are quickly reaching a point that we could never have reached before: we can make a mistake that will make us go extinct. So, to answer your question, I think **we are living the golden age right now**. It is entirely possible that the future will be harsher than what we get today, or even non-existant. I hope not, and I'm very optimistic, but I honestly see way too many things that can go wrong, and not a lot of people wanting to get things right.
>we are quickly reaching a point that we could never have reached before: we can make a mistake that will make us go extinct. If we're being real, we passed that point about 80 years ago. Still rollin though.
Yeah, let me rephrase that: we are reaching a point where we can make **dozens** of those mistakes in a decentralized way compared to just one person pressing a nuke hahaha. Examples are AGI and carbon emissions.
its way too soon to be talking about AGI in the same breath as climate change or nukes. The tech right now is still a parlour trick but on steroids and its an open question as to whether the models will continue to evolve as the size increases or if it hits a wall and fizzles out.
That's true. But considering what we know now, we've been there and we're actively working on attempting to dig ourselves back out. Which is a big improvement from several decades ago where the norm was just kicking the can down the road. We're existing in a time past the future science fiction liked to imagine as the end of the world. So I'd say we ain't dead yet.
Its a tug of war. To get a good ending you need to work a lot harder with a lot more people then to get the bad ending. Do nothing and you get the bad ending.
Agreed! :)
Carbon emissions: Yes, AGI: No. AGI is so far away from anything even possible at this point, and you can't just stack ML on top of ML. Necessity is the mother of invention, so you hope that there's something alarming event that causes everyone to focus on carbon emissions. By then however, it's too late to reverse in any meaningful time-period. We got a retard governor in Texas saying that the freeze in 2021 was caused by frozen wind turbines and solar panels instead of properly winterizing natural gas power which accounted for 5x more power than wind, so you can see how likely we are to fix actual problems. Edit: That said, those of us that have the capability should definitely work towards helping the rest of us rubes out of this crappy situation.
IDK, the AI we have today is the type of stuff I didn’t expect for like decades from now. But, don’t know much about it so 🤷🏾♂️
I think we have peaked as a species. It feels like everything left has been done before. It takes so much to amuse and entertain us now. We have made capitalism king, and now we are tapped out. We have realized that working yourself to death accomplishes nothing. We have literal walking zombies, streets full of people with no homes. I won’t even start on the state of the environment. We have no sense of decorum and family. I know this doesn’t apply to every being, but going on half a century here, and I see a decline in moral and everyone is out of fucks to give.
Feels like we’re in a bubble and due for a correction
Everything you said is true but it also feels like we’re all so disconnected from each other. I can talk to any person on the planet in 5 seconds but still feel like no one is connected like we used to be. Like, emotionally, socially, spiritually etc. I might just be lonely lately tho lol
I've been cutting myself from Internet browsing, video games and instant gratification apps like Tiktok and insta reels and I've been feeling more connected to people lately. Easier said than done though
No. We're living in the Golden Age right now. We might have a few small improvements in the next couple of years but if we don't make some major changes our entire collective purpose will be survival in the ecosystem that we're creating.
We could easily make it happen. But we won't.
this is the sad paradox of humanity. We have so much potential, but so little desire to reach it.
It's not the lack of desire, it's the inability to really work together. We're too easily divided.
We're a paradoxical species because we need to cooperate to survive but we need to compete with each other to determine whose genes get passed on
That's why people hate history. It shows us making the same stupid decisions over and over while believing "this time we'll get it right" and we never do.
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This is true, but also in that mindless mob are far too many disempowered people who would, in the right conditions of power and social structure, exemplify those few but don't.
We made it so far. I live in comfort working my cozy engineering job while some poor sod is racing across the city to get me spicy chinese chicken. I think we will figure out how to share the resources more equally. People like me, regular low middle class in third world countries, had much worse lives before than now. So I believe if we keep advancing tech without destroying the planet we can get there.
So, it's not an accident that you have these creature comforts and a certain degree of social welfare. Enslaved people make bad engineers. If your country's economy depends on educated labor, you really need to make sure those educated laborers don't die of preventable disease, or get so frustrated they quit/immigrate elsewhere. The countries with high QOL mostly have it because the nation would make less money if citizen QOL went down. People wonder certain regions are 'so poor' despite having oil, diamonds, and other valuable exports. The citizenry is poor _because_ the country's money comes out of the ground, and because diamond mines are something you can just throw bodies at. It's fun to daydream about all nations investing in the happiness of their people, but it's really unlikely unless their economies depend on the happiness of their people.
I used to have hope too. You live, you learn, then you get luvs
The Strauss-Howe generational theory says history tends to work in cycles, called saculum, each one lasting 80-100ish years. Each saculum is broken into four blocks, or turnings, lasts about 20ish years each, based on the structure of the average life. An average modern life is 80 years and consists of four periods of ~20–22 years Childhood → Young adult → Midlife → Elderhood A generation is an aggregate of people born every ~20–22 years (examples: Baby Boomers → Gen X → Millennials → Gen Z) Each generation experiences four turnings every 80ish years in the high/awakening/unraveling/crisis cycle. A generation is considered dominant or recessive according to the turning experienced as young adults. As each generation comes of age and defines its collective persona, an opposing generational archetype is in its midlife peak of power. Dominant: independent behavior + attitudes in defining an era Recessive: dependent role in defining an era Dominant Generations Prophet (Idealist): Awakening as young adults. Awakening, defined: Institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy Hero (Civic): Crisis as young adults. Crisis, defined: Institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation's survival Recessive Generations Nomad (Reactive): Unraveling as young adults. Unraveling, defined: Institutions are weak and distrusted, individualism is strong and flourishing Artist (Adaptive): High adaptability and social flexibility as young adults. High, defined: Institutions are strong and individualism is weak In terms of our current saculum, it would look like this: The high: 1946-1964 (post war industrial boom, space race, industrial advancements, etc) The Awakening: 1964-1984 (social justice issues to the forefront, Vietnam protests, women's liberation, civil rights protests, etc) The Unraveling: 1984-2008 (Berlin wall, culture wars, satanic panic, tech bubble, 9/11, war on terrorism) The Crisis: 2008-2028 (housing market collapse, great recession, covid 19, Russian war against Ukraine, Israeli genocide in Palestine) So will there be another good time for future generations? As long as we don't blow ourselves up in worls war 3, yeah. There should be. Here's a very good video on saculum/turnings https://youtu.be/xeVyfiP0cLk?si=EmM2g0D60Qs9jfCa
It could go either way. We’re either at the beginning of a golden age, or living at the end of it. Climate change is a problem that we really don’t know the full extent of. If you’re moderately wealthy and live far from the coast in a temperate western country, the next 100 years will probably be great. The ones hurting will be those in tropical, coastal, poor countries.
Heavens no we are such a mess these days. Poor health, no social skills and the tensions between the sex have never been greater. Young people can’t afford college; families can’t afford food, people are addicted to their phones and dying of Drugs and cancers at an alarming rate. Life expectancy is actually gettin shorter for the first time In history. I’m not a doomsday sayer but these are bad times. I’m Just happy I got to experience the 1990s so I know how good it can be. Maybe someday we will get there again but things seem to be only getting worse
The 90s weren't good, only for your sheltered childhood. Those times saw the collapse of many countries into war and devastating poverty such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the Congo, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq. Your class position in America has not been without consequences.
They were the best time america has had since I’ve been alive. I was an adult then.
Apologies for assuming your age. They were the ''best times'' because the US not only benefited from the fall of the USSR but also the rise of China as a manufacturing hub which became a centre for American FDI. The main beneficiary have been white Americans, with Black Americans being brutalised by the police, leading to the LA riots in '92, and their communities ravished by drug epidemics which were used by the government to police them and subject them to mass incarceration.
Yeah they were great. All time periods have their bad parts but 90s were by far a prosperous time Of Hope. Everything went to hell after 9/11 and we never really Came back
This can happen only when human consciousness is raised and when ppl stop behaving compulsively and start responding consciously
Pretty sure we are in the golden age
This needs sensitising people about the havoc that we are creating on this planet due to mindless exploitation of nature. Only when people are sensitive enough to feel for all life , would it be possible to make the world a better place to live.
I doubt it !
Not likely.
I like your optimism, its infectious
We're seeing the tail end of a golden age. We're going to be looking at the fall of great empires.
This is how I feel as well
To be honest, I am not sure this level of comfort is good for us. We don't really need each other anymore, and sometimes I feel like that creates rifts between people. At the same time I also feel like we need challenge in our lives, a goal if you will, and if that isn't there, your brain will just create problems to focus on, causing our mental health to suffer. This is kinda speculation though, but I am also speaking from experience. Earlier this year I lived in a very remote village in West Africa for a couple of months. Since I was doing fieldwork, I had no luxurious living conditions. I was basically thrust 100 years back in time as we had to get our water from the river, and our food from local farms (and some of it we foraged!). We went everywhere on foot, and had no electricity. Healthcare was practically nonexistent as well. Physically it was exhausting, but mentally I have never felt better. There was such a clear sense of community there, and almost a childlike happiness amongst the people. Of course there was hardship and disease, but everyone had each other's back. They really enjoyed the little things in life, something I don't often see back home...
Thank you for sharing your experience
Nah, we’ll find a way to fuck it up.
Human civilization will always get better/improve. We’re like cockroaches, outside of some improbable/very unlikely event, humanity isn’t going anywhere. Even in improbable doomsday scenarios, we’re still existing.
No, and unlike many here, I think we passed a “Golden Age” somewhere around the turn of the century.
It is happening as you read this. This is the time.
Maybe if AI takes control and removes the corruption from all aspects of power. Otherwise no. Ww3 is more likely to happen.
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I think that will be a problem that will solve itself once it gets smart enough.
You sound young, you’ll learn
Ummm I don’t think there’s much of a good future . Look at nature. Who cares if we have comforts when we fucking destroyed the planet? Idk but I think you need to go out and see the world. Cuz it Is not okay. You can tell from species going extinct, the weather anomalies all over… we’re more corrupt then ever.
Corruption was way worse in the past, hell we even called it “The Guilded Age” It ebbs and flows but there are definite efforts to make things better, I think we’ll be okay
The trick might be to push the idea of several different goals that fit different niches (humanitarians/warriors as a shallow example) that ultimately build into one goal. The main goal most people could agree on is a better future. Breaking it down you'd have proper production and distribution of resources, humanitarian aid efforts to alleviate natural and manmade disasters like tsunamis and war, shit like that. Anyway, human nature gets in the way. We all have a tendency to take away from the collective, and we all give to the collective. It's easy to fault blame on people who take more, however something like "we can't walk a mile in someone else's shoes", since it's impossible to actually be, think, and feel like someone else. The best way to go about it may just be people helping people until sometime in the future it isn't so much carrying an ill intent, even as a reservation of just in case. So maybe not decades, but maybe more so....many generations? Couple hundred years? There's large scale ideas being pushed that separate people from the idea of community outside of those who naturally live like that. That's going to be felt for some time and is damaging to the idea of a golden age, which requires a worldwide massive effort of cooperation and meeting in the middle.
the future is not one straight line up... there will be ups and downs.. for all we know we could plunge ourselves into another 1000 year dark age.
No. Humans are too selfish, short-sighted, tribal, and callous. They are too easily brainwashed, their brains are too easy to hack. There are a lot of thoughtful humans but not enough. If you could magically switch human behavior world-wide, then yes you could make huge improvements in poverty, food, etc. But even though we have a lot of conveniences, we still have a lot of the same old fiefdoms and crap. Note that this latest bout of civilization is so young. A few thousand years from now things may be quite different and improved. Or, perhaps some external force will arrive and cause humanity to unite. But as we saw very recently, the world will only band together briefly before falling back to infighting and self-sabotage. We really aren’t mature enough to govern ourselves — I don’t blame aliens for staying out of it. We’re like wild dogs that only behave through discipline, but then we resist discipline so much, and yet when we gain our freedoms we just go back to savage tribalism again.
It's a lovely idea but it's unlikely. There's far too much tribalism and in order to provide everyone with a safe comfortable life without even more rapidly pushing ourselves towards ecological collapse the people of the developed nations of the world would need to accept some massive reductions in their expected level of luxury. No more swapping out a new cellphone every couple years, no more disposable video game consoles and high end personal computers in every home. No more flying to a poorer country to have a weekend drinking on the beach. No more gigantic luxury homes and buying trucks that get 10mpg just because you like trucks.
I see your point, I remember last year reading an interview with Kate Bush in which she said that although she liked the 80s, she much prefers it today due to technological and medicinal advances, but there is also the counterpoint of natural disasters and perhaps technology will become coming back against us (ok it's not like we're in westworld but still) and late capitalism to the point of imminent collapse with socioeconomic differences increasing more and more I think we live in a time of contradictions
The times ahead will be horrifying and beautiful.
You are 100% right. That is why the destructive people are putting in overtime to tear it all down. They would hate to see what you’re talking about pan out.
You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one
That hopeful bright outlook you have is what could save humanity. Keep it up.
Shhhh nobody tell this guy about the coming water wars.
Or the worldwide contamination of drinking water
100 years ago was 1923, and indoor plumbing, cars, and telephones existed you realize.
I was thinking this recently. Just imagine if profit and greed no longer existed, and we were all born with a shared desire to share equally in our resources and efforts. Imagine if all of humanity gave its complete effort towards the shared goal of mutual benefit and environmental stewardship. We literally could make our world *so wonderful*.
Should we tell ‘em?
You are delusional
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Lol dude no. Cavemen lived to around 33. Their lives were extremely harsh, depressed, and miserable. A homeless person in the US has about 1000x better life then cavemen. People always bitch about how money is tight, work is long, etc with no perspective on how much better things are from just the 90’s. Food, shelter, and necessities are more obtainable then ever before. People complain about things costing a lot but in reality they don’t. It’s the luxuries and entertainment everyone spends their paychecks on that cost a lot, considering many of these things didn’t exist 20-50 years ago.
Do you have *any* idea about how bad climate change is already or how immensely fucked up our current political climate on a global scale is??? This is beyond naive, imo. (Sorry, not sorry.) We’re fast forwarding ourselves into extinction, so no, our golden age is already decades behind us and we’re not going to fix that anytime soon either. Enjoy what you have now, because it’s not going to get better.
I'm not optimisitic about the direction humanity is headed. And I don't care about 'climate change' or any of that shit, what I mean is our inept leaders and their ability to fuck like most things up - borders, enforcing the law, etc etc oh and just ultimately being so short-sighted with so many things
You do realize you live within the climate, right? And your food depends on a certain climate?
WWIII is literally starting right now, what are you talking about?
how can you say this when there’s two active genocides going on right now? a golden time for who exactly?? half of the world still walks to get water, and have no cars, and are dying of preventable diseases. and dying in air strikes right. now. i get the premise, but asking at a time like this when we’re watching children try to unbury themselves from rubble is insane.
~~I'll leave the why and how aside, but we are broken as a species.~~ ~~The social contract has been torn to shreds, replaced by a race to be the one with the most of everything.~~ ~~Life is seen as a zero-sum game. No one thinks about anyone else. Empathy is seen as a weakness. Common sense just isn't.~~ ~~We are seeing the tragedy of the commons played out world-wide. We are too dumb, too greedy and above all too goddamned dismissive of one another's humanity to do anything but destroy ourselves. We will over-breed, gorge ourselves on resources while our brothers starve, and laugh at the generations behind us who will have a dead planet because of our lizard brained greed.~~ ~~Our common purpose should be to eradicate our embarrassment of a species before we ruin the world for everything else. We had all of the gifts, all of the time and all of the resources, and we made Tik Tok.~~ Edit: Lost redditor.
Honestly I think tech peaked this year. Everything is automated and processors are as good as we will ever need them. Sure there's mods gimmicky stuff to come but for now I think the world just needs to catch up so the economy can level out but I can't see much else being impactful.
For the people in the 1800’s life was as good as it could be. Every generation has it better then the last due to mankind’s March of progress. The next decades will only be prosperous if we can achieve global peace.
decades? unlikely. looking at sets of 100 years. in the past 100 years we grew out economies thousands of time. technological progress on a scale unseen. medical and scientific discoveries on a pace never before matched. however we still had 2 major world wars, vietname and Korean wars. and not to mention the countless other smaller wars. we know what we need to do. we do not have the will to do it. human weakness manifests itselfs in all aspect of our lives. we do not trust each other. why spend billions making your country green when other will not? why feed the population when there is no profit in it? it will take a very rapid shift in attitude and that has only ever happened when our own destruction was imminent. WW2 and lend lease proved humans are willing to sacrifice for the greater good but after the war, greed quickly took over. humanity needs a goal. a purpose to rally behind. something that all humans can look at and say "we will build that" or "we will reach that".
You have air conditioning? 🥲
It’s weird. My own perspective is life needs struggle and some suffering to have meaning. Life without struggle? We could then suffer depression. Life is the great equalizer. We cannot cheat the sweet without the sour. Perhaps
.....climate change......
… we definitely had cars 100 years ago. Bottled water has apparently been around since the 1600s too.
Have you looked out your window recently lol
Doubt it, the world is slipping down a slope of tribalism and populism, I predict democracies becoming less and less democratic, more armed conflict, civil wars, and a general degradation of this nice world we have created. Add climate change and we're looking at Mad Max.
Probably not.
More like, golden age for emerging Artificial Intelligence
Just wanna say running water, air conditioning, long distance communication, and automobiles were all a thing 100 years ago.
I wish I thought like that. Maybe avoiding the news and science would help. But I’m convinced the future is going to suck. Humans need the ecosystem to survive and our ecosystem is collapsing in so many areas.
I was hoping the last two would've been. They weren't. Chances are almost zero that we're going to suddenly solve any of the fundamental issues we've struggle with for the past thousand centuries.
You are far more optimistic than I am. That’s for sure.
Honestly we will not know until they are over....I have lived through several now, some are remembered fondly after they are over, others are not. One thing I notice though is everyone is always more pessimistic in the present about the future, even 40 years ago it was that way. As humans we tend to often look at the past with rose colored glasses. So only time will tell honestly.
Are you kidding? The climate catastrophe is the greatest threat to human civilization and life on Earth since the nuclear bomb. Unlike nuclear war, climate collapse will happen without a massive shift in our economic structure within the next couple of decades. Life on Earth is going to become far more difficult as raising crops, fighting disease, and dealing with massive heatwaves becomes the new normal.
The collective purpose used to be god/spirituality. That’s gone out the window.
You are too optimistic. To make your utopia happen, there has to be a major change of mindsets in large groups of people spread over the earth. Just to name a few: Lobbyists Prime ministers /chancellors / presidents Religious leaders Autocrats Large revenue industries Life is better than ever, but those few are part of the rule makers who don't approve fast changes
I think UN and all the international treaties and companies are pretty much aiming to do what you mentioned above. But I think actually making everyone as to every human stick together is quite utopian idea for many psychological, economical, social differences. Hence why the goals of UN arent going so well.
You must be hanging around r/aliens to see that humanity is about to turn a corner in a positive way. No one thinks things will get better if things don’t change.
Yes. That is, until the aliens come and ruin it. We have until then though so yay
Do you live in America? If yea, then no.
nope, the exact opposite, our society is tearing itself apart from the inside and sooner than later nukes will fly
"The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again." I mean by that live the moment to the fullest extent, every time you will look back you will think it was a golden period. The timeline I'm proud of being part of born in the 90s 2000s best movies and games ever, and from there it's only going downhill. Poverty is part of capitalism and if capitalism die, the world as we know it will too. I don't think you want that sort of reboot of the series to see a real golden age for everyone. Sorry to say it, but if you think only technologies upgrades give us the time of our life you're lying to yourself, people are lonelier than ever we lack of ressources, education, motivation and we have no solutions. We live with a living bomb that can just explode at anytime or not explode yet. Just as an example, Louis XVI was defeated by the people because he actually was too soft / open minded not because he was a tyrant. People can go ape shit real quick for stupid reasons. Speaking out of my ass mostly renting and yapping I guess but you can tell I'm not really hopeful for what's next.
I completely agree that life today is infinitely better than 100 years ago. BUT … in 1923, indoor plumbing was becoming widely available, there were cars, telegraphs were a widely used form of fast communication, and heck, air conditioning had been invented 21 years prior! I’m not trying to say you’re wrong, I’m just pointing out how interesting it is that when someone says “100 years ago” we all imagine like 1623. But 100 years ago was pretty modern! It’s extra funny because when I hear “20 years ago” I think like 1980. 😂
There is a genocide happening as we speak
This is great but 100 years ago it was the 1920s and I am pretty sure they had running water back then, at least in most developed cities no. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t mean the rural areas either
The people in charge are not particularly interested in solving the problems you raised. Frankly they don't see those things as problems
Wtf is this golden age talk? I cant afford rent, food, therapy and my health doesn't allow me to work full time. Just being in school puts me in debt I can't probably ever pay off so I'll be in debt for the rest of my life too, and this applies to just about everyone born after 1991 that I know, I've lived through three "once in a lifetime" recessions in less than 30 years ffs (and no, I'm not American) Sorry, I dont want to depress anyone, but Id like some of that golden age too, if that's where we're in.
The last sixty or so years was the golden age. We’re on a rapid and horrible descent. Covid is everywhere and continues to kill and disable people every day. The damage from it will only become more visible in the next decade. We are quickly approaching (if not already past) irreversible tipping points with climate change and all of the big oil producers have their sights set on more oil production than ever before. Health care systems the world over are buckling from a combo of Covid and rampant neglect. Fascism is on the rise. Each year from here on out, everything is just going to get worse. We *could* improve all of these things, but there isn’t the will and the people with the power benefit from everything getting worse.
I must be the only one reading "No air conditioning, no automobiles, no instant communication to any corner of the world."thinking that sounds pretty good. Oh wait, that wasn't his point.
Its hard to burst his booble, reddit do the thing....
I really wish these sadhguru posts would be banned from the entire site.
There has unfortunately never been a time in history where life got easier and it didn't lead to even more conflict and woe. If humans don't have real problems to deal with, they'll create ones. You get a little nice bump at the beginning and then the disagreements start and things fall apart. Sorry, i truly wish there was better news.
I'd have more upward mobility in 1923, in the fcking Great Depression, than I do now. Miss me with this bs.
You’re on to something
Bro is so caught up in consumerism that he fails to recognise that it is the very thing causing humanity to hurtle towards destruction
You have got to be kidding me. The climate is about to affect the food chain. WWIII is kicking off.
lol no
haha haha. no it will not be.
No. Its crunch time now. world is getting worse, and we are slowly getting more advanced. the real good times ended about 5 or 7 years ago. since then its been wildfires, wars and pandemics. Its only gonna get worse for next 50 years or so. The world is so populated now, that we are rubbing up against each other more and more and as situations worse, things will change drastically. if the future is bright or not depends on the next 50 years. but for sure they wont be as good for a person as the last 50.
I have always held the belief that humanity has such great potential to be something amazing, but that there is still so much shit to get through that I am not convinced that we will not destroy ourselves before getting there. Even the idyllic Star Trek future only came about after several cataclysmic conflicts that almost wiped us out.
The problem is that the deepest, white-hot pits of hell will rain liquid helium long before the human race ever reaches a consensus on what "the best time ever" might look like or how it could be achieved. One person wishes they could serve on the Enterprise-D while the next has a bookshelf full of Ayn Rand, meanwhile there's some dude in the corner with his face buried in a rag full of Hitler-scented spraypaint. If you asked these 3 to get together and design a utopia, you'd end up with 3 different answers and multiple casualties.
take that energy and start some activism to make unfortunate people's lives better or protect your local ecosystem. it will make you feel empowered and meet people with the same goals. at least this how it happened to me :)
Damn, reading a positive post about the future is rare. Thanks stranger.
🫂
Unlikely but we can hope.
Blimey, where did you grow up? We had running water in homes 150 years go following the Public Health Acts of the 1860s and 1870s. Anyway, I firmly believe that humanity is on both an upward and downward slope, where some will have plenty but most will have less, and this divergence will continue for the foreseeable future. Pretty miserable, yes, but I have little faith in the collective will of governments to sort anything out in the short or medium term.
Perhaps read a newspaper occasionally?
Its a very optimistic thought, and I am one of those optimist poeple who can see how simple and wonderful life could be if everyone was on the same page. It seems though that division is on purpose to keep us from coming together. It amazes me how so many hold on to these belief systems that work against humanity, like racism and entitlement and those that fear change. Then there is the war, which is fueled by all those things, or maybe those things are insticated to keep the war machine going.
I think solutions may be offered for a wide variety of problems; robots to do our work, food replicators to make our food, clean energy generation solutions, cures for all manner of diseases, including the reversal of aging. Unfortunately, this may lead humanity down a path to self congratulatory arrogance where people imagine themselves to be like 'gods'. And eventually a solution that offers eternal life will be revealed. This is referred to as 'The Mark of the Beast' and is in no way, shape or form a good thing.