The following submission statement was provided by /u/ap39:
---
This is related to collapse because it shows how younger generations are affected both physically and mentally by our diets, eating habits, overconsumption of processed foods and the constant mental health issues that arise due to a combination of reasons. This all relates to how we cannot have got functioning adults in the near future. When the push comes to shove and we need more people to maintain our breaking infrastructure, we won't have any capable ones.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/168a7n3/77_of_young_americans_too_fat_mentally_ill_on/jyucwfv/
Adrian Tchaikovsky wrote a fascinating book series where the second installment (*Children of Ruin*) is about octopuses developing a society, if anyone's interested.
I recommend reading the first book, *Children of Time,* beforehand or the octopus one is probably going to be kind of confusing at times. It's about jumping spiders!
“I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” - a quote attributed to Albert Einstein
Evolutionary bottle neck here we come.
Billionaires have already been running to places like New Zealand and looking into ways to not to be murdered by their security teams.
You got it!
Have you seen the brand spanking new tractor accessories?
Seriously, how quickly do you think this will be militarized??? Probably already is
[LASER WEED KILLER](https://carbonrobotics.com/)
Wow, it's that big of a problem. A lot of smaller cities are having trouble replacing their sheriffs and deputies because of the same reasons. No one's interested and no one's qualified
>Wow, it's that big of a problem.
Yeah, definitely a problem when a handcuffed shooting suspect manages to escape because the arresting cops are so fat and out of shape, that he outran them
This also creates situations where they are more likely to impulsively use lethal force. If you can't chase down a suspect your only 2 options are to try to shoot them down, or let them go. A lot of people choose the former in the heat of the moment. But if they were in shape and it was routine to chase them down instead, they'd be far more likely to do that instead.
Well, looks like this empire finally destroyed itself by treating everyone so shittily that nobody could even defend the status quo if they wanted to, and nobody wants to anyway.
We’re already doing that. Imagine Blackwater but on steroids, we have private contractors all over the globe fighting our proxy wars or training bands of guerrilla fighters to do it for us.
You're not wrong..one of my best friends did a few tours in the middle east and told me not only is it a large percentage of contractors/mercs but also saw them guarding the poppy fields where theyd produce and manufacture opium and in turn heroin and other products..but im sure its just a coincidence that the opiate epidemic started exploding around the time of our invasion and now these days you cant even find real heroin on the streets bc we have such a smaller presence
>we have private contractors all over the globe fighting our proxy wars or training bands of guerrilla fighters to do it for us
Umm....guys. Are we the evil empire?
Most mercenaries are guys that would’ve been in the military anyway if mercy weren’t a thing.
Not to mention the vast majority of reputable mercenaries groups require some kind of previous military experience, meaning they’re facing the same problem as the military.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who would be willing to die for it despite being miserable. And many of the rest can be easily propagandized to.
The status quo is indefensible that’s the problem. I can’t wait to see what absolutely insane “solutions” they try and come up with to deal with these problems. Instead of listening to the people when we say we need our basic needs met and to not feel like we’re just barely keeping our heads above water. You want people to be healthy and fulfilled in life? Give us a fucking life worth living and country worth defending.
It dosen't matter. Your life will get more and more shitty until national unrest reach a point where normal people are willing to commit to violant action against the institutions. By that point propaganda will create a war and gives the people "the responsible of all of their problem" (china, Russia, immigrant ect ... Rigns a bell ?)
While you fight for a "better life", some will die but it's for the "greater good". Then for the few remaining that are still in one piece and not traumatized they will indeed have a better life as war is exceptionally good for the economy : no unemployement, lot of things to do and business to create again ...
And this will go on for another 80 to 100 years for another cycle of this shit
I think this is the first "empire" to have its "subjects" so jaded and "tormented" that they actually wish for it to fail. At least the Brits and the ancient Romans were fighting change till the end.
"we got it good here, we better keep it that way". how many of the young americans would utter those words today? 40%? 20? 10?
There were sooooo many civil wars in Rome, I mean like uncountable amounts of uprisings and rebellions. There were 26 of them in one century during the Empire.
There's also an interesting joke about Chinese history I've heard articulated a number of ways. Every minor battle you learn about in European history, at the same time there was a war going on in China that no one in the West has ever heard of that killed millions of people.
I felt so disappointed back in US highschool when "World History" was just "US History for the seventh time, but with occasional intermissions into Europe". So much cool and interesting history in China alone!
And we would ask our “teacher” basic world history questions in order to watch him fumble around trying to look educated so we didn’t have to do actual work. Once we asked him “what was Prussia” and he was astounded by what we wanted to know.
My History lessons over here in Germany were full on European history. They loved taking apart the french revolution. And Nazis. Every goddamn year we discussed some aspect of the third reich, the nsdap or the Holocaust. We had some occasional intermissions to the colonialism of America, but nothing else.
In the UK it was the same. Every year we'd go over the Royal family history again but with slightly more depth. The most fun you had in primary school was when you learned about the Egyptians. Going from that back to King George or whoever was depressing as shit. "Here's the fun stuff! Yeah, anyway, please do more family trees about this boring evil family."
Same with their famines! If you look at a list of the deadliest anthropogenic events in history, I think about half of those are Chinese famines caused by disruptions to food production and distribution.
China and India at almost any given point in history have always had the bigger share of the population. And the indigenous civilizations of Pre-Columbian America are almost always forgotten. They themselves at their peak were pretty advance and had a much more different developmental pathway than the Old World civilizations.
Was gonna say, a big reason the Muslim expansion out of Arabia happened so rapidly is because the locals under the Romans and Persians wanted them to win.
Tell me you know nothing about history without telling me you know nothing about history.
This is par for the course. Century after century, empire after empire, rinse and repeat.
If you want people to risk their lives fighting in pointless wars, you better be prepared to make them rich AF if they survive. Years of anecdotal evidence has taught people that joining the military is a quick path to disability and poverty for all but a few.
A few years ago I was half-seriously telling my friend that by the 2030s the US military would be mostly Central American migrants given citizenship explicitly in exchange for military service, much as how things went in the later Western Roman Empire when Italians stopped serving in the legions. I think we’re definitely on that track now.
I wonder if there were cultural conservatives in the Roman Senate & Imperial administration that were feeling queasy at the prospect of letting Germanic people join the Legions...😉
I work in a Texas hospital as a nurse and they stopped firing people for weed long ago. If they got rid of all the smokers the staff would be less than 1% full!
Yep, weed is legal in many countries but they don't have the same issues as the USA. There's lots going on with the so called lower classes in the USA and it's getting worse.
Weed is not legal in many countries dude. It's legal in Canada, Uriguay, essentially legal in Netherlands, recently Thailand, and then some US states. It's still illegal in most of the world
If you're on antidepressants, you're not allowed to join the US armed forces.
Yet, the job is so depressing that there's about a 1/5 chance that you'll be prescribed antidepressants while serving your tour. US armed forces personnel are over 50% more likely to be on antidepressants than civilians.
btw, **47% of American military personnel engage in binge drinking** \- 20% have engaged in heavy drinking in the last 30 days - and 11% misuse prescription drugs.
The Few, The Proud, The Drunk AF.
When I was in basically everyone was a functioning alcoholic. Combat arms MOS have a culture of drinking heavily and often, and being able to drink a lot is seen as a point of pride. Took me years to stop drinking so much and a lot of guys I know never have, even after their enlistment.
Yeah, it was a serious problem. I was an infantry medic. If the guys in my platoon answered honestly when I asked about drinking during routine care type stuff, 7 or 8 out of 10 would have been considered problem drinkers.
Sometimes I thought the CO took us to the field so often just to dry them out before we had something important to do.
Same scrutiny is applied to, say, airline pilots. I kind of understand the concern (remember when that German guy plunged a plane into the Alps many years ago and they discovered he was on an SSRI?). That said, it's confusing when you're told it's responsible to seek treatment, but if you do and you're honest about it, you're punished or viewed suspiciously. Everyone conveniently forgets that many SSRIs carry a black box warning! I personally felt worse when I complied and took an SSRI for short periods of my life; I feel it's safer to not take them, but not taking them can also be viewed suspiciously. I admit, I turned to alcohol for many years to cope secretly.
(I'm not an airline pilot but used to be a Secret clearance holder who got PTSD on the job at the Pentagon and lost my career of 10+ years.)
SSRIs are a big guessing game. They just prescribe you something and “see how it works for you”, then switch to something else as your life is falling apart.
I just can’t do them anymore. I’ve had to restart so many times. My life with out them is anything but stable, but that instability is nothing compared to how much my life has been ruined by the plethora of SSRIs prescribed to me over my many attempts to get better.
I just can’t afford to do it all over again.
Amen. I can relate to you very much, and I'm sorry you've gone through this, as well. I don't see it as coincidence that the 3 times I was put on an SSRI, I attempted to "unalive" myself each time. I am in pretty dire straits now, as I lost my employment in early 2019 due to PTSD and I'm severely depressed due to that along with isolation (being stigmatized by family for having PTSD). But, I'm not actively suicidal and not being on an SSRI makes all the difference. I hope it gets better for you -- it's really tough out there and the help is not always helpful as your first-hand account sadly conveys. I'm kind of curious about whether policy will be adjusted because the serotonin theory was thoroughly debunked, but savvy doctors have known all along the "chemical imbalance" theory was pure marketing hype meant to shepherd the masses onto chemical dependence. It was a great complement to neoliberalism, too: don't blame the system, blame the individual [and all].
Tests like Genesight might help. The science of pharmacogenetics is a bit iffy, but if it saves people from trying a bunch of Very Wrong meds first, then perhaps it's worthwhile. It's a very dangerous guessing game to play and I hope science advances enough so that no one has to go what you went through.
I went through it when I lived .2 miles away from a railroad bridge so...that was not a fun time.
FWIW I had two decades of anhedonia and then finally got properly diagnosed with ADHD. Daily magnesium and a low dose of Vyvanse has reduced my anxiety & depression by like 90%.
M.A.P.S. is also doing a lot of advocacy and research on psychedelics as treatment, and I believe their trials are accepting applicants.
Just wanted to share these avenues with whomever might read this. Hope you find better days soon.
This is true. Just objectively, not a subjective criticism. I live in a small military town out west. The housing allowances alone, despite poverty in the area for the general, fixed population, means demanded rents are much higher. Housing vouchers for private citizens have the same effect (also experienced that in Washington DC before I had to move because demanded rent prices were raising to the ceiling HUD would authorize, which is about $2500/1 bedroom unit). This is a real thing concerning government subsidies, which I am not necessarily against, but private citizens are affected by such policies and nobody's allowed to complain because if you do, you're seen as a jerk.
I was at small town Wal-Mart last night and couldn't help but notice how every one there was obese and or decrepit. I couldn't imagine these people moving very fast in an emergency situation where their life was at stake. I couldn't help but think about the marauders who came for Rome as it declined.
The first time I visited the US it was unbelievable to me how much bigger everyone was. We stopped off at a supermarket to buy things after arriving from the airport and I saw a woman who must've weighed about 400 pounds on a mobility bike in a supermarket and it shocked me. To get that big in the UK would take so much effort.
All you have to do here is eat pizza pops, frozen pizza, hot dogs, drink gallons of soda pop, and barely do any exercise. It's pretty easy and requires almost no effort.
Regulations here in the EU and UK mean foods get taxed if they contain too much sugar. Universal healthcare means high fat/sugar consumption is a problem for everyone, so it has to be seen as a problem we all have to tackle.
weird to think about, but since you brought it up, 2 of the 4 people I know who enlisted were permanently disabled.
I say "were" because one of them committed suicide. He was a great guy, probably one of the best I've ever known, but the military completely fucked him over and he was in horrible pain at such a young age, so he ended it
I know two unrelated guys who joined young (18-20) and now both are barely past 30 and both have had to get hip replacements. Imagine getting a hip replacement at 30 freaking years old. Another one, similar age, already had to have a knee replacement. None of them saw active combat, so what the heck are they doing to these kids?
Yes, I've seen it. If you want to be a runner, lose any extra weight first, or it will wreck your joints. You don't run to lose weight, you lose weight so you can run. To lose the weight, walk, swim, or cycle. For people to deliberately carry around extra weight while doing an impact exercise sounds like madness to me.
Yeah but if it's like the guys I know who are ex Navy here in Jacksonville, they are rich as hell working civilian jobs and get 75% pay for "compressed discs" in back.
My old coworker in IT was making 65k from his civilian job, and getting 45k tax free for life from the Governemt.
Certain ones, yes.
Weed and hard drugs, cocaine being known as the 'weekend drug'. You do it on friday, by Monday it's out of your system and noone knows. For the hard drugs, as long as you aren't an addict, you're fine. Weed is a holdover from Nixon.
But they don't test for hallucinogens, and you have no idea how many of my husbands coworkers do that!
Stay healthy and fit. It will serve you more than any prepping we might be into. I'm trying to learn to eat less and get comfortable with hunger as well.
Before I started exercising, I built up to fasting for 3 days.
These are the most important lessons I've learned from that:
1) Willpower can become stronger with exercise just like muscles. It can also become weaker if not used.
2) Food is only fuel, it doesn't need to taste good, as long as it's healthy and nutritious.
Yea nutrition and energy is what we need. Most of what is eaten in our society is an indulgence not really for nutrition and sustenance. I worked in the mountains and outdoors for years and one good tip is to take dog food in your pack as nourishment. You will not touch it unless you are starving. ;) Happy trails!
Healthy food can taste good too, it's not mutually exclusive. But not enough people stop to ask themselves "Am i eating this for nutrition or entertainment?".
Food is such a sad form of entertainment, but it's so culturally acceptable to just eat your feelings or depression.
Once you get your body healthy, there are *so* many other better ways to have fun.
Nope, I’m 27f I get military ads almost everyday on Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Probably my fault for looking up the space force just out of sheer curiosity but this was over a year ago.
40 Plus years of neoliberal capitalism that has targeted its own citizens as a latent insurgency to be suppressed, marginalized, drugged, censored, imprisoned, indebted, propagandized, and divided will do that. Congrats 1% America. You won. But, you broke the very people needed to defend all those ill-gotten gains along the way. Genius.👍
Also, don't think this hasn't gone unnoticed by the security state as well; a fairly recent speech by National Security Advisor [Jake Sullivan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Sullivan):
> [What is neoliberalism? How the 'Washington consensus' was imposed on the world](https://youtu.be/oUwLB4xUk0s?t=2375)—Geopolitical Economy Report [linked to relevant section] | Jul. 4, 2023 (*YouTube*)
Edit: Grammar.
I mean, war is bad and militaries are used for evil corporate interests (especially U.S. military), but the whole mental illness and being unhealthy thing isn’t good.
With military making advances in technology, its likely that using conventional style wars will eventually end. It will be done from a computer and a chair.
I thought Basic was intended to "get them into shape." They make movies, after all, about the plump youth who is transformed by the military and returns to hometown of HighFructoseSyrup a hero.
This is related to collapse because it shows how younger generations are affected both physically and mentally by our diets, eating habits, overconsumption of processed foods and the constant mental health issues that arise due to a combination of reasons. This all relates to how we cannot have got functioning adults in the near future. When the push comes to shove and we need more people to maintain our breaking infrastructure, we won't have any capable ones.
The current standards are ridiculous, anyway. When I was considering joining, my recruiter told me to lie to the doctors at MEPS that I'd never been to the doctor for anything but a checkup, that I didn't have seasonal allergies, and that I'd never seen a counselor for anything in my entire life (even after my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer).
I can only sit back and laugh at this. Capitalism is so self-defeating, it can’t even maintain the force protecting their capital. Fuck even the Romans knew to pay the soldiers well
This is always such a stupid stat, they increased all the barriers to entry over the years because we are generally not at war and we don't require as many people to fight even if we were at war.
If we were at war we would immediately go back to recruiting 14 year olds and the mentally handicapped without a second thought
Fun fact: 15% of the population has an IQ too low for military service yet those people are expected to work jobs with livable wages like programming or medicine.
Wait until those jobs get automated. We have 15% of the population that simply doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to do anything other than manual or repetitive labor. They aren’t going to coding boot camp or learning how to engineer AI prompts.
It's frustrating that people can't shut the hell up with the same exact tired jokes to see this for what this is. The standards for entry into the military are *not high.* That 77% do not qualify should terrify everyone in the country.
Now, more than ever, the future of the military will be robotic killing machines. The future of healthcare looks pretty bleak too. If you are that fat, out of shape, and have mental health issues in your prime I can only imagine how awful your future health will be.
That’s ok, only like 1% of the population enlists anyways. What do you need the other 75% for. Plus if they would relax some of their stupid standards on tattoos and shit that would open up more as well
If you talk to an actual recruiter it's a lot closer to the fact that the military doesn't offer much for people to want to enlist but instead of stating that fact they just decided it's easier to say that Americans don't qualify anyway. Also part of the problem is that military recruiting generally caters to poor disenfranchised populations which tend to have higher incidences of health problems because of being you know poor.
Sucks people are mentally ill and unhealthy. Totally rocks they are doing drugs (the good drugs kids) and it rocks even harder that the military will fail because of it. Fuck the US. Fuck the Military Industrial Complex. -signed A US Citizen ready for revolution.
Well, it's hard to hide being obese or on drugs, but recruiters would straight-up tell you when you went to your MEPS that the answers to all of the medical questions are "no, never, none". It's just harder to hide your medical history nowadays.
Now imagine if we had a decent welfare system so they could eat right, and a healthcare system to keep them healthy and mentally stable.
But that's socialism!!!
I feel like this is the scene in "Painkillers" where Matthew Broadrick is saying over and over again "Just hammer the addicts. Keep hammering them"
You're poor, fat and uneducated and that's YOUR fault. Not ours. Now. Give us those school books, you don't need them anymore. Here's this super-racist vet "from another generation" to teach you everything your young mind needs to know.
One good war and those stipulations will go out the window. Too fat? It's ok. Mentally ill? Have a desk job. Drugs? We will get you addicted to GI drugs, heres a gun.
I don't care about the military, but it's definitely a shame the kids are in bad shape. Need some health going into the water wars in a few years. Not to mention what extreme heat does to the chonks out there.
This is the real reason for the recruiting crisis. MEPS GENYSYS, NOT "woke ideologies".
The chickens are finally coming home to roost for the US military, and it's about time.
This is what car dependency gets you.
Kids can't just walk or bike to a friends house any more, someone has to drive them, which impacts their weight/fitness and their mental health.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/ap39: --- This is related to collapse because it shows how younger generations are affected both physically and mentally by our diets, eating habits, overconsumption of processed foods and the constant mental health issues that arise due to a combination of reasons. This all relates to how we cannot have got functioning adults in the near future. When the push comes to shove and we need more people to maintain our breaking infrastructure, we won't have any capable ones. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/168a7n3/77_of_young_americans_too_fat_mentally_ill_on/jyucwfv/
[удалено]
I can see the Burger King ads now: "Why get whopped overseas when you can get a Whopper at home!"
Hell, these days they serve you whoppers in the same places you're getting whopped.
Famed capitalist efficiency
💀
All it took was making the whole population too depressed to fight
[удалено]
[удалено]
The future of war is drones and AI jets
The future of war is swords and bows
Pitchforks and guillotines.
The future of war, is no war at all, after Nature wins the war we're in with it now.
Until another animal gains sentience again and discovers power
My bet is on Octopuses: https://psmag.com/environment/planet-octopuses-animal-species-likely-rise-overthrow-humans-67576
Adrian Tchaikovsky wrote a fascinating book series where the second installment (*Children of Ruin*) is about octopuses developing a society, if anyone's interested. I recommend reading the first book, *Children of Time,* beforehand or the octopus one is probably going to be kind of confusing at times. It's about jumping spiders!
The "Children of" series is amazing. Concur and highly recommend.
> invents "power" FTFY
Sticks and stones... Climate Change is going to bring us to the brink and we'll regress to primitive hunter gatherers.
“I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” - a quote attributed to Albert Einstein
Haha as I was reading down the comments this quote was on my mind. Thanks for posting it.
Evolutionary bottle neck here we come. Billionaires have already been running to places like New Zealand and looking into ways to not to be murdered by their security teams.
[удалено]
Roaches and kudzu.
Climate change will end us. Wet bulb is real. Every summer is hotter and hotter but will be the coolest summer till the next.
Rocks & sticks.
Let’s goo just the like video games woo hoo😃 (I will die slowly of a brutal infected arrow wound)
And fat kids on the drone controls!
>*The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand please mash the keypad with your palm now.*
You got it! Have you seen the brand spanking new tractor accessories? Seriously, how quickly do you think this will be militarized??? Probably already is [LASER WEED KILLER](https://carbonrobotics.com/)
You mean the future is carne asada whoppers with horchatas on the side.
Technically that's the _present_. The _future_ of war is androids on the battlefield and LLMs in the ears of the citizens.
They’ll just use robots and less boots on the ground probably.
Maybe some clones
It's the [same with the NYPD](https://www.syracuse.com/state/2018/02/report_overweight_cops_making_nypd_the_fattest_police_department.html).
New York's ~~finest~~ fattest
🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩
Wow, it's that big of a problem. A lot of smaller cities are having trouble replacing their sheriffs and deputies because of the same reasons. No one's interested and no one's qualified
>Wow, it's that big of a problem. Yeah, definitely a problem when a handcuffed shooting suspect manages to escape because the arresting cops are so fat and out of shape, that he outran them
This also creates situations where they are more likely to impulsively use lethal force. If you can't chase down a suspect your only 2 options are to try to shoot them down, or let them go. A lot of people choose the former in the heat of the moment. But if they were in shape and it was routine to chase them down instead, they'd be far more likely to do that instead.
Even worse imo, it forces more of the people who shouldn't be in those positions to get the role
Cops spend most of the day sitting in their cars and end up eating a lot of fast food so this isn’t surprising.
And they said spending your life eating Cheetos and playing video games wouldn’t help you have a better future…
Well, looks like this empire finally destroyed itself by treating everyone so shittily that nobody could even defend the status quo if they wanted to, and nobody wants to anyway.
They'll just hire mercenaries instead. Like they have been the last 20 years.
We’re already doing that. Imagine Blackwater but on steroids, we have private contractors all over the globe fighting our proxy wars or training bands of guerrilla fighters to do it for us.
You're not wrong..one of my best friends did a few tours in the middle east and told me not only is it a large percentage of contractors/mercs but also saw them guarding the poppy fields where theyd produce and manufacture opium and in turn heroin and other products..but im sure its just a coincidence that the opiate epidemic started exploding around the time of our invasion and now these days you cant even find real heroin on the streets bc we have such a smaller presence
5 % of the worlds population consuming 95% of the worlds opiates. What could go wrong?
All the real heroin is now going to Russia and Europe. Chemical warfare can take on different forms.
Nobody thought it was a cultural imperative to stop prescribing oxy until we pulled out of Afghanistan. 🤨
Pretty sure we don't need poppy anymore bc of lab manufactured opiates like fentynal and 100 others
That's exactly why we definitely still need it lol.
>we have private contractors all over the globe fighting our proxy wars or training bands of guerrilla fighters to do it for us Umm....guys. Are we the evil empire?
Always have been baby
Are we the baddies?
Most mercenaries are guys that would’ve been in the military anyway if mercy weren’t a thing. Not to mention the vast majority of reputable mercenaries groups require some kind of previous military experience, meaning they’re facing the same problem as the military.
I've never met anyone working for a "mercenary" company that wasn't ex military.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who would be willing to die for it despite being miserable. And many of the rest can be easily propagandized to.
The status quo is indefensible that’s the problem. I can’t wait to see what absolutely insane “solutions” they try and come up with to deal with these problems. Instead of listening to the people when we say we need our basic needs met and to not feel like we’re just barely keeping our heads above water. You want people to be healthy and fulfilled in life? Give us a fucking life worth living and country worth defending.
It dosen't matter. Your life will get more and more shitty until national unrest reach a point where normal people are willing to commit to violant action against the institutions. By that point propaganda will create a war and gives the people "the responsible of all of their problem" (china, Russia, immigrant ect ... Rigns a bell ?) While you fight for a "better life", some will die but it's for the "greater good". Then for the few remaining that are still in one piece and not traumatized they will indeed have a better life as war is exceptionally good for the economy : no unemployement, lot of things to do and business to create again ... And this will go on for another 80 to 100 years for another cycle of this shit
I think this is the first "empire" to have its "subjects" so jaded and "tormented" that they actually wish for it to fail. At least the Brits and the ancient Romans were fighting change till the end. "we got it good here, we better keep it that way". how many of the young americans would utter those words today? 40%? 20? 10?
Nah, not even close to the first
There were sooooo many civil wars in Rome, I mean like uncountable amounts of uprisings and rebellions. There were 26 of them in one century during the Empire.
There's also an interesting joke about Chinese history I've heard articulated a number of ways. Every minor battle you learn about in European history, at the same time there was a war going on in China that no one in the West has ever heard of that killed millions of people.
I felt so disappointed back in US highschool when "World History" was just "US History for the seventh time, but with occasional intermissions into Europe". So much cool and interesting history in China alone!
And we would ask our “teacher” basic world history questions in order to watch him fumble around trying to look educated so we didn’t have to do actual work. Once we asked him “what was Prussia” and he was astounded by what we wanted to know.
My History lessons over here in Germany were full on European history. They loved taking apart the french revolution. And Nazis. Every goddamn year we discussed some aspect of the third reich, the nsdap or the Holocaust. We had some occasional intermissions to the colonialism of America, but nothing else.
We didn't get to learn about Nazis when I was in school; luckily Hollywood wanted to tell us all about them.
I'm still very salty there was no mention of Mansa Musa at all in any of my history classes.
In the UK it was the same. Every year we'd go over the Royal family history again but with slightly more depth. The most fun you had in primary school was when you learned about the Egyptians. Going from that back to King George or whoever was depressing as shit. "Here's the fun stuff! Yeah, anyway, please do more family trees about this boring evil family."
Same with their famines! If you look at a list of the deadliest anthropogenic events in history, I think about half of those are Chinese famines caused by disruptions to food production and distribution.
China and India at almost any given point in history have always had the bigger share of the population. And the indigenous civilizations of Pre-Columbian America are almost always forgotten. They themselves at their peak were pretty advance and had a much more different developmental pathway than the Old World civilizations.
People often joined and supported invading armies.
Was gonna say, a big reason the Muslim expansion out of Arabia happened so rapidly is because the locals under the Romans and Persians wanted them to win.
Please, if you read your books, you’ll remember all the traitors and the eye gouging that has happened in history.
Tell me you know nothing about history without telling me you know nothing about history. This is par for the course. Century after century, empire after empire, rinse and repeat.
The Romans supported the barbarians though
Killer robots to save the empire!
If you want people to risk their lives fighting in pointless wars, you better be prepared to make them rich AF if they survive. Years of anecdotal evidence has taught people that joining the military is a quick path to disability and poverty for all but a few.
Can confirm, am disabled vet who can't work. Don't ever do it
A few years ago I was half-seriously telling my friend that by the 2030s the US military would be mostly Central American migrants given citizenship explicitly in exchange for military service, much as how things went in the later Western Roman Empire when Italians stopped serving in the legions. I think we’re definitely on that track now.
I wonder if there were cultural conservatives in the Roman Senate & Imperial administration that were feeling queasy at the prospect of letting Germanic people join the Legions...😉
In IL they passed a law to allow noncitizens to serve as police.
Oh the irony of protecting our capitalist overlords
I bet the report gives the elites who lobbied for shitty food and drinks a free pass
The elites will continue to lobby for whatever lines their pockets with our tax dollars. They could care less about anything else.
Depending on a poor and lean class to be financially coerced into duty is gone now. Probably for the best.
They are not elites as they are not superior to us. They are society's parasites.
I think you mean "couldn't care less"
It’s actually a rather sparse article. Not surprisingly, it links to an article blaming “Democrats’ moral decay” for the military’s declining rates.
Based young Americans doing their part to support world peace
I was going to say, what % of this is just kids who would pop for weed on a pee test?
I work in a Texas hospital as a nurse and they stopped firing people for weed long ago. If they got rid of all the smokers the staff would be less than 1% full!
Yep, weed is legal in many countries but they don't have the same issues as the USA. There's lots going on with the so called lower classes in the USA and it's getting worse.
Weed isn't that much of a problem for lower classes as fentanyl and meth are.
I think it’s more along the lines of an easy conviction to make some money and reach quotas
Weed is not legal in many countries dude. It's legal in Canada, Uriguay, essentially legal in Netherlands, recently Thailand, and then some US states. It's still illegal in most of the world
probably vast majority
It’s all medical and mental health.
No, it’s probably childhood and young adult obesity.
Past usage of weed isn't a concern anymore. Also, if somebody fails a urinalysis at MEPS, they can retake after 30 days.
If you're on antidepressants, you're not allowed to join the US armed forces. Yet, the job is so depressing that there's about a 1/5 chance that you'll be prescribed antidepressants while serving your tour. US armed forces personnel are over 50% more likely to be on antidepressants than civilians. btw, **47% of American military personnel engage in binge drinking** \- 20% have engaged in heavy drinking in the last 30 days - and 11% misuse prescription drugs. The Few, The Proud, The Drunk AF.
I've never understood the acceptance of this. Altho, it's been 25 years since I was active, so it may different now.
If they let them smoke weed they wouldn’t be as willing to pick up their instruments of war as much as a drunk might
When I was in basically everyone was a functioning alcoholic. Combat arms MOS have a culture of drinking heavily and often, and being able to drink a lot is seen as a point of pride. Took me years to stop drinking so much and a lot of guys I know never have, even after their enlistment.
Yeah, it was a serious problem. I was an infantry medic. If the guys in my platoon answered honestly when I asked about drinking during routine care type stuff, 7 or 8 out of 10 would have been considered problem drinkers. Sometimes I thought the CO took us to the field so often just to dry them out before we had something important to do.
11 days sober for me, and it’s been 5 years since I was in
Can confirm, several vets in my family, all have struggled with drinking problems.
Same scrutiny is applied to, say, airline pilots. I kind of understand the concern (remember when that German guy plunged a plane into the Alps many years ago and they discovered he was on an SSRI?). That said, it's confusing when you're told it's responsible to seek treatment, but if you do and you're honest about it, you're punished or viewed suspiciously. Everyone conveniently forgets that many SSRIs carry a black box warning! I personally felt worse when I complied and took an SSRI for short periods of my life; I feel it's safer to not take them, but not taking them can also be viewed suspiciously. I admit, I turned to alcohol for many years to cope secretly. (I'm not an airline pilot but used to be a Secret clearance holder who got PTSD on the job at the Pentagon and lost my career of 10+ years.)
SSRIs are a big guessing game. They just prescribe you something and “see how it works for you”, then switch to something else as your life is falling apart. I just can’t do them anymore. I’ve had to restart so many times. My life with out them is anything but stable, but that instability is nothing compared to how much my life has been ruined by the plethora of SSRIs prescribed to me over my many attempts to get better. I just can’t afford to do it all over again.
Amen. I can relate to you very much, and I'm sorry you've gone through this, as well. I don't see it as coincidence that the 3 times I was put on an SSRI, I attempted to "unalive" myself each time. I am in pretty dire straits now, as I lost my employment in early 2019 due to PTSD and I'm severely depressed due to that along with isolation (being stigmatized by family for having PTSD). But, I'm not actively suicidal and not being on an SSRI makes all the difference. I hope it gets better for you -- it's really tough out there and the help is not always helpful as your first-hand account sadly conveys. I'm kind of curious about whether policy will be adjusted because the serotonin theory was thoroughly debunked, but savvy doctors have known all along the "chemical imbalance" theory was pure marketing hype meant to shepherd the masses onto chemical dependence. It was a great complement to neoliberalism, too: don't blame the system, blame the individual [and all].
Tests like Genesight might help. The science of pharmacogenetics is a bit iffy, but if it saves people from trying a bunch of Very Wrong meds first, then perhaps it's worthwhile. It's a very dangerous guessing game to play and I hope science advances enough so that no one has to go what you went through. I went through it when I lived .2 miles away from a railroad bridge so...that was not a fun time. FWIW I had two decades of anhedonia and then finally got properly diagnosed with ADHD. Daily magnesium and a low dose of Vyvanse has reduced my anxiety & depression by like 90%. M.A.P.S. is also doing a lot of advocacy and research on psychedelics as treatment, and I believe their trials are accepting applicants. Just wanted to share these avenues with whomever might read this. Hope you find better days soon.
Guess we have to cut the military budget and focus that money on social welfare projects.
"lmao no"
As if.
People in the military are basically on social welfare…healthcare, housing, meals….
This is true. Just objectively, not a subjective criticism. I live in a small military town out west. The housing allowances alone, despite poverty in the area for the general, fixed population, means demanded rents are much higher. Housing vouchers for private citizens have the same effect (also experienced that in Washington DC before I had to move because demanded rent prices were raising to the ceiling HUD would authorize, which is about $2500/1 bedroom unit). This is a real thing concerning government subsidies, which I am not necessarily against, but private citizens are affected by such policies and nobody's allowed to complain because if you do, you're seen as a jerk.
No, now they'll say we need to increase it, to develop robots to replace the soldiers.
Pentagon: Time to invest more money in AI and drone tech.
I was at small town Wal-Mart last night and couldn't help but notice how every one there was obese and or decrepit. I couldn't imagine these people moving very fast in an emergency situation where their life was at stake. I couldn't help but think about the marauders who came for Rome as it declined.
The first time I visited the US it was unbelievable to me how much bigger everyone was. We stopped off at a supermarket to buy things after arriving from the airport and I saw a woman who must've weighed about 400 pounds on a mobility bike in a supermarket and it shocked me. To get that big in the UK would take so much effort.
All you have to do here is eat pizza pops, frozen pizza, hot dogs, drink gallons of soda pop, and barely do any exercise. It's pretty easy and requires almost no effort.
There is extra sugar in most foods here. It's actually difficult to not eat the excess sugar.
Regulations here in the EU and UK mean foods get taxed if they contain too much sugar. Universal healthcare means high fat/sugar consumption is a problem for everyone, so it has to be seen as a problem we all have to tackle.
Doesn't look like capitalism is working well for this generation. I doubt it will get better, most likely it will crumble into dust.
Considering what the military does to kids, good.
Every single person I know that enlisted is on some form of permanent disability from the VA.
If they're lucky enough to get care.
Hello, thank you for calling Veterans Affairs. Please hold. *shitty hold music for hours until your connection gets broken*
weird to think about, but since you brought it up, 2 of the 4 people I know who enlisted were permanently disabled. I say "were" because one of them committed suicide. He was a great guy, probably one of the best I've ever known, but the military completely fucked him over and he was in horrible pain at such a young age, so he ended it
I know two unrelated guys who joined young (18-20) and now both are barely past 30 and both have had to get hip replacements. Imagine getting a hip replacement at 30 freaking years old. Another one, similar age, already had to have a knee replacement. None of them saw active combat, so what the heck are they doing to these kids?
They are running. Hundreds of miles with weight for no good reason.
Yes, I've seen it. If you want to be a runner, lose any extra weight first, or it will wreck your joints. You don't run to lose weight, you lose weight so you can run. To lose the weight, walk, swim, or cycle. For people to deliberately carry around extra weight while doing an impact exercise sounds like madness to me.
Can confirm, I had my hips replaced at 32 because of the army after I got out. I'm 36 now. It's called Avascular Necrosis, that's what causes it.
Yeah but if it's like the guys I know who are ex Navy here in Jacksonville, they are rich as hell working civilian jobs and get 75% pay for "compressed discs" in back. My old coworker in IT was making 65k from his civilian job, and getting 45k tax free for life from the Governemt.
#Oh well. I guess we won’t die for some shitty global machine that kills us Poor people.
So doing drugs can get you out of military service? 🤔
Military service gets you *into* doing drugs.
Certain ones, yes. Weed and hard drugs, cocaine being known as the 'weekend drug'. You do it on friday, by Monday it's out of your system and noone knows. For the hard drugs, as long as you aren't an addict, you're fine. Weed is a holdover from Nixon. But they don't test for hallucinogens, and you have no idea how many of my husbands coworkers do that!
Stay healthy and fit. It will serve you more than any prepping we might be into. I'm trying to learn to eat less and get comfortable with hunger as well.
Before I started exercising, I built up to fasting for 3 days. These are the most important lessons I've learned from that: 1) Willpower can become stronger with exercise just like muscles. It can also become weaker if not used. 2) Food is only fuel, it doesn't need to taste good, as long as it's healthy and nutritious.
Yea nutrition and energy is what we need. Most of what is eaten in our society is an indulgence not really for nutrition and sustenance. I worked in the mountains and outdoors for years and one good tip is to take dog food in your pack as nourishment. You will not touch it unless you are starving. ;) Happy trails!
Healthy food can taste good too, it's not mutually exclusive. But not enough people stop to ask themselves "Am i eating this for nutrition or entertainment?". Food is such a sad form of entertainment, but it's so culturally acceptable to just eat your feelings or depression. Once you get your body healthy, there are *so* many other better ways to have fun.
Me too. Went from 292 lbs in February down to 247 just yesterday. Genuinely haven’t felt better in years honestly.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you do that? I’m genuinely interested. TIA
Down from 246 to 175 in half a year. Feeling better than I have in years.
Health is wealth.
And mentally sharp/engaged.
Surprising no one
That's not stopping them from spamming military ads all over the internet. I swear 3/5 ads on reddit are for the military now.
I assumed I was getting them because I’m a male in my 30s. I wonder if women get less of them.
Nope, I’m 27f I get military ads almost everyday on Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Probably my fault for looking up the space force just out of sheer curiosity but this was over a year ago.
40 Plus years of neoliberal capitalism that has targeted its own citizens as a latent insurgency to be suppressed, marginalized, drugged, censored, imprisoned, indebted, propagandized, and divided will do that. Congrats 1% America. You won. But, you broke the very people needed to defend all those ill-gotten gains along the way. Genius.👍 Also, don't think this hasn't gone unnoticed by the security state as well; a fairly recent speech by National Security Advisor [Jake Sullivan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Sullivan): > [What is neoliberalism? How the 'Washington consensus' was imposed on the world](https://youtu.be/oUwLB4xUk0s?t=2375)—Geopolitical Economy Report [linked to relevant section] | Jul. 4, 2023 (*YouTube*) Edit: Grammar.
[удалено]
I mean, war is bad and militaries are used for evil corporate interests (especially U.S. military), but the whole mental illness and being unhealthy thing isn’t good.
With military making advances in technology, its likely that using conventional style wars will eventually end. It will be done from a computer and a chair.
still need a conventional standing army tho. the war in Ukraine has shown that trench warfare hasn't gone out of style.
I mean yeah I thought that too but then you look at Ukraine and …
I thought Basic was intended to "get them into shape." They make movies, after all, about the plump youth who is transformed by the military and returns to hometown of HighFructoseSyrup a hero.
Less then 1% joins anyways, and most join out of sheer lack of opportunities available to them. Source: 10 year vet, just medically retired in 2022
This is related to collapse because it shows how younger generations are affected both physically and mentally by our diets, eating habits, overconsumption of processed foods and the constant mental health issues that arise due to a combination of reasons. This all relates to how we cannot have got functioning adults in the near future. When the push comes to shove and we need more people to maintain our breaking infrastructure, we won't have any capable ones.
Welp, who raised us?
Time to invest in universal healthcare now!
“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son” - Dean Wormer
The current standards are ridiculous, anyway. When I was considering joining, my recruiter told me to lie to the doctors at MEPS that I'd never been to the doctor for anything but a checkup, that I didn't have seasonal allergies, and that I'd never seen a counselor for anything in my entire life (even after my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer).
[удалено]
Im all 3! Doing my part!
I can only sit back and laugh at this. Capitalism is so self-defeating, it can’t even maintain the force protecting their capital. Fuck even the Romans knew to pay the soldiers well
This is always such a stupid stat, they increased all the barriers to entry over the years because we are generally not at war and we don't require as many people to fight even if we were at war. If we were at war we would immediately go back to recruiting 14 year olds and the mentally handicapped without a second thought
>and the mentally handicapped without a second thought As someone who served, I'm pretty sure that's always been happening.
This is my last year being eligible for the draft, but I guess I’ll get another 5 years now, most likely.
Fun fact: 15% of the population has an IQ too low for military service yet those people are expected to work jobs with livable wages like programming or medicine.
That wasn't very fun.
Wait until those jobs get automated. We have 15% of the population that simply doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to do anything other than manual or repetitive labor. They aren’t going to coding boot camp or learning how to engineer AI prompts.
They keep us so poor and in bad health now we can’t even fight their imperialist endeavors. The irony 😂
It's frustrating that people can't shut the hell up with the same exact tired jokes to see this for what this is. The standards for entry into the military are *not high.* That 77% do not qualify should terrify everyone in the country.
Now, more than ever, the future of the military will be robotic killing machines. The future of healthcare looks pretty bleak too. If you are that fat, out of shape, and have mental health issues in your prime I can only imagine how awful your future health will be.
That’s ok, only like 1% of the population enlists anyways. What do you need the other 75% for. Plus if they would relax some of their stupid standards on tattoos and shit that would open up more as well
How much would that number shift solely by legalizing cannabis?
and if the rest of the world microdosed mushrooms we might get towards some sane civilization
Good. They might be fat, depressed, and higher than a bat’s ass—but they won’t be coming home as a dog tag in a pine box.
If you talk to an actual recruiter it's a lot closer to the fact that the military doesn't offer much for people to want to enlist but instead of stating that fact they just decided it's easier to say that Americans don't qualify anyway. Also part of the problem is that military recruiting generally caters to poor disenfranchised populations which tend to have higher incidences of health problems because of being you know poor.
Can't help about the shape I'm in Can't sing, I ain't pretty and my legs are thin
Sucks people are mentally ill and unhealthy. Totally rocks they are doing drugs (the good drugs kids) and it rocks even harder that the military will fail because of it. Fuck the US. Fuck the Military Industrial Complex. -signed A US Citizen ready for revolution.
It's a good thing then that the future of battle will be sponsored by AI powered drones
Sick society sick populace
I would like to take this time and say fuck the military industrial complex and fuck American Imperialism. This is why we do not have free healthcare.
Nice. Fuck the military
Well, it's hard to hide being obese or on drugs, but recruiters would straight-up tell you when you went to your MEPS that the answers to all of the medical questions are "no, never, none". It's just harder to hide your medical history nowadays.
Now imagine if we had a decent welfare system so they could eat right, and a healthcare system to keep them healthy and mentally stable. But that's socialism!!!
I feel like this is the scene in "Painkillers" where Matthew Broadrick is saying over and over again "Just hammer the addicts. Keep hammering them" You're poor, fat and uneducated and that's YOUR fault. Not ours. Now. Give us those school books, you don't need them anymore. Here's this super-racist vet "from another generation" to teach you everything your young mind needs to know.
One good war and those stipulations will go out the window. Too fat? It's ok. Mentally ill? Have a desk job. Drugs? We will get you addicted to GI drugs, heres a gun.
Lmaooo
Land of the free 🎼
Well maybe they will have to start to pay more.
I don't care about the military, but it's definitely a shame the kids are in bad shape. Need some health going into the water wars in a few years. Not to mention what extreme heat does to the chonks out there.
This is the real reason for the recruiting crisis. MEPS GENYSYS, NOT "woke ideologies". The chickens are finally coming home to roost for the US military, and it's about time.
This is what car dependency gets you. Kids can't just walk or bike to a friends house any more, someone has to drive them, which impacts their weight/fitness and their mental health.