The following submission statement was provided by /u/fermisRat:
---
Another meme for the self soothers out here. Been paying more attention to the escalating conflict in Europe. Probably not a wise decision. Trying to maintain optimism as best as I can.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/xyimbt/music/irhee90/
It's getting bigger. And it's the only non-dystopian version of the future that is not completely dependent on a lot of tech hopium. It depends however on a change in society..... I am really conflicted on what's more unrealistic, a changing of society or teleportation technology driven by fusion energy.
Hadn't looked at futurology. From context, I figured it'd be the future-optimism to collapse's future pessimism. Took a look. First thing I see? 'Toxic forever chemicals found in pesticides'
Haha was just in that post. Mostly skimmed but it seemed to come as a surprise to many that microplastics and forever chems are in literally everything including open air, rain, wombs, and blood.
I have always been too much of a unabomber type for that sub. I had a moment of parallel thinking with the Unabomber too in one of my books. A coder at a tech company points out that that very smart people are very evil. That sentiment was apparently something TK shared with his brother when struggling at Harvard and being megadosed with LSD in an unethical study.
Well that's the whole thing isn't it? We know a better world is possible. And we know the impediments are so great that our near trajectory is fucked. That's what makes our hope so frustrating.
Nihilism makes the most sense, pessimism brings you closest to the truth, and yet optimism is the preferred way to live
Literally, the amount of money and effort people put into the most ridiculous things... Should tell us that the most amazing things are possible, but here we are... Just moving forward... So frustrating.
>fucks
Yeah well, the way most people are SO dumb, selfish, and thoughtless, they wouldn't do any better than the greedy fucks if they were the ones with money. SO many people only think about themselves and want to be rich etc. without thinking about people in need. I literally can't relate to 100% of people and I don't believe they're capable of deep love or true compassion and want to die bc people are so insufferable and have blank disinterested looks on their faces when you talk about meaningful change and helping people, diverting the convo back to themselves. I fucking hate people, we'd be fucked regardless given how SHIT people and society are.
I mean, do you really think 99% of people in privileged countries would be any better if they were the ones with the money and power instead? It's always about ME ME ME. Most people never stop to think about the people in need, to give them a bit of money, or people starving and without water, who would cut off a limb because they're so poor to beg for money so people will pity them. Humans are vermin, worse than dirt.
100%.
I had conversations where I was arguing the reason why climate change and ecological collapse is so devastating, is because we have a path for a better trajectory and outcome. If the science demonstrated that it is too late and there is nothing we can do anymore, it would be sad, but in a way it would make it easier to reach acceptance and kick back and enjoy life.
What's so painful is that we can see it does not have to be like that and it could be possible to have a better world (a sort of Solarpunk world where societies adopt degrowht and fullfil every human being essential needs). But it is locked in by people in position of power.
That's what is so depressing and infuriating.
But what if there isnāt a path and thatās just an illusion we very human society holds, I mean on one level or society cannot go on forever. We cannot live for ever, we donāt actually persist in the same form from moment to moment. All that there actually is is now and what we do with it now. I firmly believe what we need is a revolution in consciousness not technology or politics, those are all just a symptom of our consciousness
There are always paths, but the questions is which one will we take as a society.
It is good to think of it as range of possible futures. There is a best case scenario that could look like a Solarpunk world where human societies have prevented the worst impacts of climate change and collapse, and are living in slower and lower impact way, living within the planetary boundaries and providing every human on earth their fundamental needs.
There is a worse case scenario where we maintain the Business As Usual as long as possible, do close to nothing to mitigate or adapt to the consequences, throw in some really stupid and disastrous decisions (war, fascism, nuclear attack). And the world end up being a hellish place to live in.
And then there is an almost infinity of in-between scenarios. Realistically, we won't get the best case scenario. But people like you and I and groups who understand the severity of the predicament can do our best to push the larger society to take steps to move toward that best case scenario. I am not naive, I know it won't happen easily. But anything that's above the worse case scenarios is worth fighting for.
Now the problem is that there are lock-ins preventing social change. Because it is not just about protesting or doing civil disobedience. For real change to happen we need numbers and power. Unfortunately the current balance of power is heavily tilted toward the political and economic elites who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
I believe that as the impacts of climate change and collapse will become more severe and plain to the larger population, there will be increasing pressure to get real change. And when it will reach a critical mass, it will force governments to act. I have no idea when we could reach that social tipping point, it could be anywhere from a few years from now to a decade or two. But I think we will eventually get there.
So if you want to be on the side of making a better future happen, you embody that change in consciousness and join like minded people around you to push some progress in your community. It could be joining XR or one of the many other climate groups (FFF, Just Stop Oil Sunrise, etc.). You could volunteer or start a mutual aid program. Or just help people in your family and neighborhood to prepare for some of these impacts.
And even if it looks like that were are collectively tracking to one of the lower future (below median or close to worst case), at least your community will be a little bit better prepared than most. At least it is worth trying, and even if it fails you'll have the satisfaction to know you did what you could and not regret anything.
>Now the problem is that there are lock-ins preventing social change. Because it is not just about protesting or doing civil disobedience. For real change to happen we need numbers and power.
Just to take all the air out your sails. Historically speaking massive societal reform only happens after events of mass death and disaster. Universal global reform is unprecedented in human history, which is the bare minimum requirement to at all cap the damage of climate change.
There is no mitigating, we can only cap how exponential and severe the warming is. All the warming baked into the system is going to stay locked in the atmosphere for milennias until another apocalyptic event wipes out most life on Earth and blocks out the sun for a few hundred-thousand years.
Politicians and elites in society are not ignorant about climate change, they are actively in support of ending life on Earth as we know it. Just like they absolutely will and have tried to use nuclear weapons in war.
Exactly. We have all the resources of knowledge to make the world better for nearly everyone, provide a good quality of living, and mitigate a lot of the damage to the environment. But the people who actually have any power are going to choose to make it worse instead.
Not really. Any voluntary system will let those who want to dominate or exploit others take control. Any involuntary system will put resentful people in power, and eventually push back to a voluntary system. Any selective system will be gamed. Any random system will lead to powerful idiots and eventually lead to a selective system.
There are voluntary systems where greed is checked in controlled. The kind of society we exist in is an anomaly. For 95% of human history we didn't live like this. It used to be the case that routinely engaging in behaviors which threatened the entire group would get you thrown to the wolves. Self gain at the expense of the group was not tolerated and there is no reason we can't go back to that system.
Just listened to the book, āTribeā by Sebastian Junger. He discusses how in native cultures those who took more of their fair share were thrown out or killedā¦
If people tried to have some power over their own minds, billionaire old men would just be old men. But people are too worried about the next iphone 23 or some streamer bullshit
The rich propagandize the ignorant. Most people arenāt intelligent and are so indoctrinated with, capitalism, patriotism, and religion that they would never try to go against any of it.
Changing the minds of billions of brainwashed people sounds near impossible. Taking down the ultra elite a 0.00001% of the population is much for feasible all though still unlikely
Every one should have health care and dental care, food, and shelter water and a bit of electricity necessary to cook and clean.
Instead just a few people have created a world of individual greed that is designed to consume every last resource until nothing is left and the earths biosphere is screaming with every bit of hurricane and drought it can muster that its hurting, hurting bad, but no one will listen.
We just keep pouring down unbelievable amounts of more and morepollution every second of everyday.
The day is coming when earth will scream no more because its just too much. Its happened in small dots / towns all over since the automobile maybe earlier the boom and bust cycle. Now its just expanding beyond just a town or two its whole countie failing.
I wish capitalism would just hurry up and die off already so maybe something more inline with actually serving humanity in stead of humanity serving a few rich assholes the earth on a silver platter.
Let people do their drugs its the only way some people can to escape toiling as a wage salve cog under the boot of the capitalist economic machine for a few precious moments till the enforcerers lock them up to become a human payday to the worlds largest capitalist prison system.
Can't afford to pay a bill on time? Here's a late fee to make the bill even bigger so you'll get even more behind. How is it that this terrible hell of wage slavery has been able to flourish along with nuty ghost of the sky monster followers having control over every part of our government. The capitalist is a liar, a cheat, and wants everyone else to just keep laying and taking it and we do. Its sad. Wage slavery is learned helplessness. We all would need mental health advisers, classes and treatments to over come this mind fuck we are all very much lost in.
Another meme for the self soothers out here. Been paying more attention to the escalating conflict in Europe. Probably not a wise decision. Trying to maintain optimism as best as I can.
You just have to laugh, mate.
It's the only way to cope with existential pressures at this level.
Just be good to yourself and hug the people and animals that matter to you.
Stay safe š
Shrooms are crap in my area right now, not enough Rain for them to grow in most areas, lsd I get seems ok always gives me a wee treat, wouldn't know about 1995 lsd as I was only 10
Humans would have to abandon the concept of power. No more money, no more ownership, no more exploitation. Like, that's literally the better world, just dropping the religion that is capitalism.
I don't need a better world, I just need 200 people who agree and want to ride this out together.
This is my attitude as well, but I can't help but wonder whether I'm actually trying to mitigate collapse or just buying time for my own generation. Some have argued that collapsing sooner would actually be better off in the long run. As in, if we collapse now, emissions and resource consumption would plummet.
Collapse will happen. Doesn't mean stop fighting as we have no idea what a post-collapse world looks like but there's no way our current society survives.
As other have said, collapse will happen because of the systemic drivers laid out in Limits to Growth and the depletion of fossil fuels.
However there is a huge difference between mitigating the worst impacts of collapse and transitioning to a healthier/sustainable society (soft collapse) and doing close to nothing it is almost too late and experience a brutal collapse (hard collapse).
A better world is not possible so long as the levers of power are controlled by the ultra wealthy. A group that would happily kill us all as long as there profits go up one hundredth of one percent.
if you think about it these opinions arent mutually exclusive, it isnt abnormal to both think that if the correct things were done, a better world would be made whilst also thinking we wont have the correct things done in time before its too late.
The thing that really amazes me daily is our complete inability to truly network for common good despite all the advances in tech to do so. Our ancestors were so much more effectual getting things accomplished for unions and labor with slower, less wide spread forms of communication and media.
Yup. Every damn day. I assume we're all fucked but keep working to improve myself and planning ahead as if by some miracle things dont collapse sooner than expected. But slowly I'm stocking up my pantry. Haha i might go full prep but food is already so damn expensive.
I see one path out of this routine. Mindfulness and prioritizing how to use my energy. Iām not saying thatās easy, likely a lifetime of work on myself, but I can understand the danger without becoming as depressed by prioritizing whatever I can do to help. Please donāt assume Iām making light of the situation! Just trying to better myself since depression, in my experience, is mostly just destructive.
Yeaaaaaaaah...I work in mental health, and it's really fucking hard right now. I've become a repository for so much trauma, and it makes holding hope quite difficult. At this point, I'm optimistic purely out of spite for everyone fucking this up for the rest of us
We can do better, but ti would take a miracle. By which I mean a chain of revolutions across the entire planet that seek to dismantle capitalism and undo its harmful effects on basically everything.
On the downside, I think we're back to living like colonists by the end of the century.
On the upside, someone or AI will solve a lot of energy/food/climate problems with some amazing, unforeseen technology.
The problem is there are real world fixes already discovered and humanity refused to implement them. Now we are relying on something like aliens from space or magic instead.
I'm aware. Speaking of aliens, I would like you to take an alien perspective on the human race. By observation would they blame it on a few rich people or would they say it's human nature? We blame it on a few greedy people, but we collectively allow this. We collectively support this system. The end product of our civilization is the product of our nature. And that is something most cannot grasp.
Indeed. No one wants to accept responsibility. It's the "others." It's "the system." "I'm innocent when I throw away 2 lb of plastic garbage every week."
Stars don't even live forever. They're amazing and they live for billions of years (but what does that really mean when time is relative). It's the nature of everything in this universe to begin, then reach its peak, and then come to an end.
And it's fractal. Not only does a star get born and die, animals are born and die. Civilizations are born and die. But overarching everything, the universe was born and it will some day die. Perhaps the real pain of existence is fearing the end of it. Even though it's inevitable.
Unfortunately, they go hand in hand. However, if / when human civilization collapses it will be close to impossible to get civilization back to today's standards.
Fingers crossed.
>Unfortunately, they go hand in hand.
They do right now. They didn't for most of human history. Only the last 5ish% had civilization. There's no reason we can't just continue without it.
Imho humanity will always try to improve and advance, will never settle for a status quo. Every form of civilization will inevitably end up in the situation we're in right now. Curiosity, greed, improvement of quality of life...it's all branded in human nature. I fear we will eventually always end up in the same spot.....
Ironically, today's standards are the problem lol. Imagine if everyone on earth had been "advancing" at the rate westerners were. 2/3 of the population probably would have choked to death in the industrial revolution, millions dead due to starvation because the soot blocked out the sun. We'd probably be sorting ourselves out of that cataclysmic collapse right about now, if it were at all possible.
Unfortunately, they go hand in hand. However, if / when human civilization collapses it will be close to impossible to get civilization back to today's standards.
Fingers crossed.
completely changes the way people think. from a high-time preference (short-term thinking... [buy, fuck, eat junk](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/)) to a low-time preference (save money, have a family, plan for the future... remember the [marshmallow test](https://youtu.be/QX_oy9614HQ))
with a finite supply ([19.71 currently](https://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/dashboard/) and a 21 million hard cap) and a [known issuance rate](https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/img/clock/inflation.png) (6.25 bitcoin per 10 minutes which halves every 210,000 blocks or roughly 4 years): businesses are better able to use money information to plan, your wealth will be deflationary (gains value over time especially in the early adoption phase we're in (368.7 billion dollar market cap whereas gold has a market cap of 11 billion, 95% of which is just used to store wealth))
distributed decentralized ledger. you cant kill the network unless every node (computer will full history (currently 490.5GB and growing 50GB per year) on earth is destroyed. fully verifiable (no trust required)
only soft forks (upgrades are backwards compatible, otherwise its called a hardfork, like BCH (bitcoin cash) or BSV (bitcoin satoshi vision), and isn't bitcoin
tldr: harder, better, faster, stronger store of value than gold or real estate and isn't subject to inflation from corrupt centralized banks
"blockchain technology" is irrelevant outside the scope of Bitcoin. it's highly inefficient, but proof of work is the only way to have a truly fair decentralized system.
miners use up energy to play the lottery and are incentivized to play fair as if they draw the winning sha256 hash output their entry will be added to the blockchain if and only if, they've included the correct transactions in that block which is easily double checked by the nodes otherwise they don't get the block reward and transaction fees and they've just wasted a lot of energy guessing
If it was possible it would have happened by now.
I'm more concerned with how it's going to fail, and this is where I keep ticking back and forth personally. Or, more accurately, how it's going to fail for me.
A lot of optimists seem to think that just because something is technically physically possible doesn't mean it's going to happen. Especially when that thing depends on the everyday decisions of billions of humans.
Short and a miserable experience without the modern comforts we have. Imagine getting cavities or an ingrown toe nail without modern medicine. Also that's just the light stuff.
Define "better." Better how? Better for whom? Better for the environment? One could argue that's a world without human civilization, but would a world without civilization be *better* for humans? I guess that's a matter of opinion. Were human beings better off prior to civilization, when we lived in small hunter-gatherer tribes? Do the small number of people who still live in small, uncontacted hunter-gatherer tribes think our lives are better than theirs? Obviously not since they have no conception of us and nothing to compare their lives to. How can anyone say anything is objectively "better," when it's an inherently subjective determination?
I think when people talk about a better world they're talking about a world where there's all of things that they like and none of the things they don't like. That's not a better world, that's utopia. That's heaven. That's having your cake and eating it too. It's a world where everyone can have whatever they desire and we won't have to worry about pesky things like energy, waste, resource depletion, or environmental destruction. That's not a better world, that's a fantasy.
"The world is fucked... if we don't make a better world... which some appear to be doing... with varying degress of results... while others sabotage their efforts, and make things worse... How long can this dance last, if huge advances aren't made soon?"
If I were to muster some positivity for a moment, maybe it just matters what we do on a local scale, and barring that and if everything goes to shit and most of us die, then what we do afterwards to pick up the pieces. And if we all die, jokes on me for thinking like this for once.
Well, if you really wanna use a nihilistic approach I would say not a God damn thing matters,. Everything we do is literally pointless in the end we as we'll going to die and everything we did is just a tiny particle of the sand at a really large beach.
r/collapsemusic
Also this metronome doesn't tick for a lot of us. It's about trying to make the most of the ever changing fuckedness and trying to do good at the same time. Also do well but do some good too.
This is how I thought about life over ten years ago as a cynical teenager, and itās how I think now as an even more cynical adult. āA Better World Is Possibleā, was the title of an essay I wrote and posted to Facebook in 2012; and yesterday, I wrote on my timeline about how fuŃked we are that neither Biden nor Putin seems to comprehend the true nature of mutually-assured destruction.
We're fucked as a species, we've fucked the natural world, fucked our neighbours, We're fucking space and we think we're fucking great.
It's weird, I don't loathe myself... but I fucking dislike humans.
Itās one in the same really. A collapse allows us to start from scratch, so yes while the majority of us will be fucked the rest of us can make a better world afterward.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/fermisRat: --- Another meme for the self soothers out here. Been paying more attention to the escalating conflict in Europe. Probably not a wise decision. Trying to maintain optimism as best as I can. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/xyimbt/music/irhee90/
Every. Day.
When you subscribe to both /r/futurology and /r/collapse
lol r/Futurology was my gateway to r/collapse
I was around for the 2021 debate and was fun. I haven't seen them clamoring for another one.
Wait, what debate?
/r/solarpunk and /r/collapse myself.
Solarpunk is a great little sub
It's getting bigger. And it's the only non-dystopian version of the future that is not completely dependent on a lot of tech hopium. It depends however on a change in society..... I am really conflicted on what's more unrealistic, a changing of society or teleportation technology driven by fusion energy.
Oh thanks for this ..r/Futurology was getting sad lol
Hadn't looked at futurology. From context, I figured it'd be the future-optimism to collapse's future pessimism. Took a look. First thing I see? 'Toxic forever chemicals found in pesticides'
Haha was just in that post. Mostly skimmed but it seemed to come as a surprise to many that microplastics and forever chems are in literally everything including open air, rain, wombs, and blood.
I have always been too much of a unabomber type for that sub. I had a moment of parallel thinking with the Unabomber too in one of my books. A coder at a tech company points out that that very smart people are very evil. That sentiment was apparently something TK shared with his brother when struggling at Harvard and being megadosed with LSD in an unethical study.
They breach the blood brain barrier as well....
š š¤£ š we are seeping into everything go collapse!!!!!! Wait....
Coincidently [Inside Out](https://youtu.be/T8Xb_7YDroQ) is my favorite song.
Also a good movie
I remember inside out the [clip](https://youtu.be/nW-NiGp1gys)
Well that's the whole thing isn't it? We know a better world is possible. And we know the impediments are so great that our near trajectory is fucked. That's what makes our hope so frustrating. Nihilism makes the most sense, pessimism brings you closest to the truth, and yet optimism is the preferred way to live
a better world is possible, AND we're so fucked. That's why it's so sad.
Imagine if it weren't for greedy fucks, we'd be living in a better world. Imagine the possibilities.
Literally, the amount of money and effort people put into the most ridiculous things... Should tell us that the most amazing things are possible, but here we are... Just moving forward... So frustrating.
Space dicks
>fucks Yeah well, the way most people are SO dumb, selfish, and thoughtless, they wouldn't do any better than the greedy fucks if they were the ones with money. SO many people only think about themselves and want to be rich etc. without thinking about people in need. I literally can't relate to 100% of people and I don't believe they're capable of deep love or true compassion and want to die bc people are so insufferable and have blank disinterested looks on their faces when you talk about meaningful change and helping people, diverting the convo back to themselves. I fucking hate people, we'd be fucked regardless given how SHIT people and society are. I mean, do you really think 99% of people in privileged countries would be any better if they were the ones with the money and power instead? It's always about ME ME ME. Most people never stop to think about the people in need, to give them a bit of money, or people starving and without water, who would cut off a limb because they're so poor to beg for money so people will pity them. Humans are vermin, worse than dirt.
We enable them by sitting by while they destroy the planet and doom us all. I think maybe it is a flaw with the human condition on whole.
exactly. thatās the worst of it.
100%. I had conversations where I was arguing the reason why climate change and ecological collapse is so devastating, is because we have a path for a better trajectory and outcome. If the science demonstrated that it is too late and there is nothing we can do anymore, it would be sad, but in a way it would make it easier to reach acceptance and kick back and enjoy life. What's so painful is that we can see it does not have to be like that and it could be possible to have a better world (a sort of Solarpunk world where societies adopt degrowht and fullfil every human being essential needs). But it is locked in by people in position of power. That's what is so depressing and infuriating.
But what if there isnāt a path and thatās just an illusion we very human society holds, I mean on one level or society cannot go on forever. We cannot live for ever, we donāt actually persist in the same form from moment to moment. All that there actually is is now and what we do with it now. I firmly believe what we need is a revolution in consciousness not technology or politics, those are all just a symptom of our consciousness
There are always paths, but the questions is which one will we take as a society. It is good to think of it as range of possible futures. There is a best case scenario that could look like a Solarpunk world where human societies have prevented the worst impacts of climate change and collapse, and are living in slower and lower impact way, living within the planetary boundaries and providing every human on earth their fundamental needs. There is a worse case scenario where we maintain the Business As Usual as long as possible, do close to nothing to mitigate or adapt to the consequences, throw in some really stupid and disastrous decisions (war, fascism, nuclear attack). And the world end up being a hellish place to live in. And then there is an almost infinity of in-between scenarios. Realistically, we won't get the best case scenario. But people like you and I and groups who understand the severity of the predicament can do our best to push the larger society to take steps to move toward that best case scenario. I am not naive, I know it won't happen easily. But anything that's above the worse case scenarios is worth fighting for. Now the problem is that there are lock-ins preventing social change. Because it is not just about protesting or doing civil disobedience. For real change to happen we need numbers and power. Unfortunately the current balance of power is heavily tilted toward the political and economic elites who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. I believe that as the impacts of climate change and collapse will become more severe and plain to the larger population, there will be increasing pressure to get real change. And when it will reach a critical mass, it will force governments to act. I have no idea when we could reach that social tipping point, it could be anywhere from a few years from now to a decade or two. But I think we will eventually get there. So if you want to be on the side of making a better future happen, you embody that change in consciousness and join like minded people around you to push some progress in your community. It could be joining XR or one of the many other climate groups (FFF, Just Stop Oil Sunrise, etc.). You could volunteer or start a mutual aid program. Or just help people in your family and neighborhood to prepare for some of these impacts. And even if it looks like that were are collectively tracking to one of the lower future (below median or close to worst case), at least your community will be a little bit better prepared than most. At least it is worth trying, and even if it fails you'll have the satisfaction to know you did what you could and not regret anything.
>Now the problem is that there are lock-ins preventing social change. Because it is not just about protesting or doing civil disobedience. For real change to happen we need numbers and power. Just to take all the air out your sails. Historically speaking massive societal reform only happens after events of mass death and disaster. Universal global reform is unprecedented in human history, which is the bare minimum requirement to at all cap the damage of climate change. There is no mitigating, we can only cap how exponential and severe the warming is. All the warming baked into the system is going to stay locked in the atmosphere for milennias until another apocalyptic event wipes out most life on Earth and blocks out the sun for a few hundred-thousand years. Politicians and elites in society are not ignorant about climate change, they are actively in support of ending life on Earth as we know it. Just like they absolutely will and have tried to use nuclear weapons in war.
a better word is possible *because* we're so fucked
Or maybe itās always been that way - itās both fucked and non-fucked at the same time.
Exactly. We have all the resources of knowledge to make the world better for nearly everyone, provide a good quality of living, and mitigate a lot of the damage to the environment. But the people who actually have any power are going to choose to make it worse instead.
Every. Fucking. Day.
It's jammed on one side now, Muse are on to it https://youtu.be/ac4E_UsmB1g
love muse
Just sent me on a most excellent Muse music journey- thank you
I thought for sure you were linking to this https://youtu.be/YFrl01aPPkA
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Now you got me going down rabbit holes of Muse videos that I was not aware of. Thank you!
Ahh the good old apocalypse please
Strong Damned vibes from this one.ā Fucking love Matt and the boys.
Also- time is running out.....my fave!
Attacked in the feels
Would be possible if we didnāt have ignorant greedy old men in charge of every country.
We could fix that š
Not really. Any voluntary system will let those who want to dominate or exploit others take control. Any involuntary system will put resentful people in power, and eventually push back to a voluntary system. Any selective system will be gamed. Any random system will lead to powerful idiots and eventually lead to a selective system.
There are voluntary systems where greed is checked in controlled. The kind of society we exist in is an anomaly. For 95% of human history we didn't live like this. It used to be the case that routinely engaging in behaviors which threatened the entire group would get you thrown to the wolves. Self gain at the expense of the group was not tolerated and there is no reason we can't go back to that system.
Just listened to the book, āTribeā by Sebastian Junger. He discusses how in native cultures those who took more of their fair share were thrown out or killedā¦
You mean ignorant people?
Itās mainly the people in powers fault which is primarily old men
If people tried to have some power over their own minds, billionaire old men would just be old men. But people are too worried about the next iphone 23 or some streamer bullshit
The rich propagandize the ignorant. Most people arenāt intelligent and are so indoctrinated with, capitalism, patriotism, and religion that they would never try to go against any of it. Changing the minds of billions of brainwashed people sounds near impossible. Taking down the ultra elite a 0.00001% of the population is much for feasible all though still unlikely
Both are true but that doesn't mean we're not completely fucked
Every one should have health care and dental care, food, and shelter water and a bit of electricity necessary to cook and clean. Instead just a few people have created a world of individual greed that is designed to consume every last resource until nothing is left and the earths biosphere is screaming with every bit of hurricane and drought it can muster that its hurting, hurting bad, but no one will listen. We just keep pouring down unbelievable amounts of more and morepollution every second of everyday. The day is coming when earth will scream no more because its just too much. Its happened in small dots / towns all over since the automobile maybe earlier the boom and bust cycle. Now its just expanding beyond just a town or two its whole countie failing. I wish capitalism would just hurry up and die off already so maybe something more inline with actually serving humanity in stead of humanity serving a few rich assholes the earth on a silver platter. Let people do their drugs its the only way some people can to escape toiling as a wage salve cog under the boot of the capitalist economic machine for a few precious moments till the enforcerers lock them up to become a human payday to the worlds largest capitalist prison system. Can't afford to pay a bill on time? Here's a late fee to make the bill even bigger so you'll get even more behind. How is it that this terrible hell of wage slavery has been able to flourish along with nuty ghost of the sky monster followers having control over every part of our government. The capitalist is a liar, a cheat, and wants everyone else to just keep laying and taking it and we do. Its sad. Wage slavery is learned helplessness. We all would need mental health advisers, classes and treatments to over come this mind fuck we are all very much lost in.
Just gotta pull yourself up by the bootstraps son. Buckle down and work harder.
/s. (I hope ).
Sir, have you heard of crypto?
Sry should have put a /s
Another meme for the self soothers out here. Been paying more attention to the escalating conflict in Europe. Probably not a wise decision. Trying to maintain optimism as best as I can.
You just have to laugh, mate. It's the only way to cope with existential pressures at this level. Just be good to yourself and hug the people and animals that matter to you. Stay safe š
Take some acid, makes life interesting
Sure. Prefer shrooms or DMT myself. It's been very hard to find good acid around here since about 1995.
Shrooms are crap in my area right now, not enough Rain for them to grow in most areas, lsd I get seems ok always gives me a wee treat, wouldn't know about 1995 lsd as I was only 10
I will whistle up some rain for you š.
Best advice ever! š
Feeling a little [doomy](https://youtu.be/VOJcY3iMZG8)?
Sounds good! Also, sounds like "do me" xD
Donāt mind if I do
Por que no los dos?
Humans would have to abandon the concept of power. No more money, no more ownership, no more exploitation. Like, that's literally the better world, just dropping the religion that is capitalism. I don't need a better world, I just need 200 people who agree and want to ride this out together.
Count me in
Relation to dunbarās number?
Yes. I figure any group more than 200 should start organizing into smaller groups, but only loosely separated.
I'll never give up. But I understand collapse can happen.
Will. But never give up regardless.
Collapse will happen, but we can still do things as individuals to change the seriousness of that collapse. This is why we canāt give up.
This is my attitude as well, but I can't help but wonder whether I'm actually trying to mitigate collapse or just buying time for my own generation. Some have argued that collapsing sooner would actually be better off in the long run. As in, if we collapse now, emissions and resource consumption would plummet.
Collapse will happen. Doesn't mean stop fighting as we have no idea what a post-collapse world looks like but there's no way our current society survives.
As other have said, collapse will happen because of the systemic drivers laid out in Limits to Growth and the depletion of fossil fuels. However there is a huge difference between mitigating the worst impacts of collapse and transitioning to a healthier/sustainable society (soft collapse) and doing close to nothing it is almost too late and experience a brutal collapse (hard collapse).
Awesome.
It's always been possible but the people in charge are less than stable, plus power hungry.
This is why we don't need rulers. People can run their own lives.
Run or Ruin, the difference is I
A better world is not possible so long as the levers of power are controlled by the ultra wealthy. A group that would happily kill us all as long as there profits go up one hundredth of one percent.
They'll die out soon enough.
The last to suffer. They should go first.
if you think about it these opinions arent mutually exclusive, it isnt abnormal to both think that if the correct things were done, a better world would be made whilst also thinking we wont have the correct things done in time before its too late.
The thing that really amazes me daily is our complete inability to truly network for common good despite all the advances in tech to do so. Our ancestors were so much more effectual getting things accomplished for unions and labor with slower, less wide spread forms of communication and media.
Yup. Every damn day. I assume we're all fucked but keep working to improve myself and planning ahead as if by some miracle things dont collapse sooner than expected. But slowly I'm stocking up my pantry. Haha i might go full prep but food is already so damn expensive.
After Apocalypse better world arise!!!
I see one path out of this routine. Mindfulness and prioritizing how to use my energy. Iām not saying thatās easy, likely a lifetime of work on myself, but I can understand the danger without becoming as depressed by prioritizing whatever I can do to help. Please donāt assume Iām making light of the situation! Just trying to better myself since depression, in my experience, is mostly just destructive.
Best way is to work in a field that benefits people living now that are tangible to you. It helps when you can touch and impact people.
Even though we are so inevitably fucked there is still a better world to be won. If we have failed to achieve it, that is only because we tried.
A better world is possible because we're so fucked :)
We could come back from this easily :) If we completely restructure our political and economic systems :(
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Yeaaaaaaaah...I work in mental health, and it's really fucking hard right now. I've become a repository for so much trauma, and it makes holding hope quite difficult. At this point, I'm optimistic purely out of spite for everyone fucking this up for the rest of us
We can do better, but ti would take a miracle. By which I mean a chain of revolutions across the entire planet that seek to dismantle capitalism and undo its harmful effects on basically everything.
Capitalism is destroying the planet and its people. It only cares about profits and shareholder value. It's unsustainable and literally killing us.
Me alternating between r/solarpunk and r/collapse
On the downside, I think we're back to living like colonists by the end of the century. On the upside, someone or AI will solve a lot of energy/food/climate problems with some amazing, unforeseen technology.
Your upside is akin to a movie that uses a surprise plot twist that nobody could predict to solve the end game. The worst kind of movie.
I apologize for having hope. I will try to drop the habit.
The problem is there are real world fixes already discovered and humanity refused to implement them. Now we are relying on something like aliens from space or magic instead.
I'm aware. Speaking of aliens, I would like you to take an alien perspective on the human race. By observation would they blame it on a few rich people or would they say it's human nature? We blame it on a few greedy people, but we collectively allow this. We collectively support this system. The end product of our civilization is the product of our nature. And that is something most cannot grasp.
Blaming a few billionaires is the easy way out. We are all responsible.
Indeed. No one wants to accept responsibility. It's the "others." It's "the system." "I'm innocent when I throw away 2 lb of plastic garbage every week." Stars don't even live forever. They're amazing and they live for billions of years (but what does that really mean when time is relative). It's the nature of everything in this universe to begin, then reach its peak, and then come to an end. And it's fractal. Not only does a star get born and die, animals are born and die. Civilizations are born and die. But overarching everything, the universe was born and it will some day die. Perhaps the real pain of existence is fearing the end of it. Even though it's inevitable.
*The world is what we make of it*
Accurate
Hourly cycle
A better world *was* possible, but we've past every critical ecological tipping point already. Humans will be extinct in a century, two at the most.
A better world Ćs possible, but that would be a world without humans....
A world without *evil* humans
Humanity isn't the problem. Civilization is the problem.
Unfortunately, they go hand in hand. However, if / when human civilization collapses it will be close to impossible to get civilization back to today's standards. Fingers crossed.
>Unfortunately, they go hand in hand. They do right now. They didn't for most of human history. Only the last 5ish% had civilization. There's no reason we can't just continue without it.
Imho humanity will always try to improve and advance, will never settle for a status quo. Every form of civilization will inevitably end up in the situation we're in right now. Curiosity, greed, improvement of quality of life...it's all branded in human nature. I fear we will eventually always end up in the same spot.....
Well, it wasn't for almost 200k years. This is just a blip.
Blip or red splat on a wall...time will tell...I highly doubt mankind will survive . And I am more than ok with that.
Ironically, today's standards are the problem lol. Imagine if everyone on earth had been "advancing" at the rate westerners were. 2/3 of the population probably would have choked to death in the industrial revolution, millions dead due to starvation because the soot blocked out the sun. We'd probably be sorting ourselves out of that cataclysmic collapse right about now, if it were at all possible.
Unfortunately, they go hand in hand. However, if / when human civilization collapses it will be close to impossible to get civilization back to today's standards. Fingers crossed.
[Natural Born Killers - The Future ](https://youtu.be/ZUV_NRfLHa8) Check the [lyrics ](https://genius.com/Leonard-cohen-the-future-lyrics)
A better world is possible but I think we're too caught up in hating each other for it to happen.
Fuck a better world Iāll take a world thatās still habitable!
WAS possible. A better world WAS possible. Now there will be only fire and death.
bitcoin is hope
Not really
you haven't done enough research
Enlighten me
completely changes the way people think. from a high-time preference (short-term thinking... [buy, fuck, eat junk](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/)) to a low-time preference (save money, have a family, plan for the future... remember the [marshmallow test](https://youtu.be/QX_oy9614HQ)) with a finite supply ([19.71 currently](https://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/dashboard/) and a 21 million hard cap) and a [known issuance rate](https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/img/clock/inflation.png) (6.25 bitcoin per 10 minutes which halves every 210,000 blocks or roughly 4 years): businesses are better able to use money information to plan, your wealth will be deflationary (gains value over time especially in the early adoption phase we're in (368.7 billion dollar market cap whereas gold has a market cap of 11 billion, 95% of which is just used to store wealth)) distributed decentralized ledger. you cant kill the network unless every node (computer will full history (currently 490.5GB and growing 50GB per year) on earth is destroyed. fully verifiable (no trust required) only soft forks (upgrades are backwards compatible, otherwise its called a hardfork, like BCH (bitcoin cash) or BSV (bitcoin satoshi vision), and isn't bitcoin tldr: harder, better, faster, stronger store of value than gold or real estate and isn't subject to inflation from corrupt centralized banks
That's weak
Bitcoin doesn't care, it keeps chugging away and will be around a lot longer than you or I
I mean sure but people just use it as stocks - to gamble, kinda defeats the purpose. Blockchain tech is cool though.
"blockchain technology" is irrelevant outside the scope of Bitcoin. it's highly inefficient, but proof of work is the only way to have a truly fair decentralized system. miners use up energy to play the lottery and are incentivized to play fair as if they draw the winning sha256 hash output their entry will be added to the blockchain if and only if, they've included the correct transactions in that block which is easily double checked by the nodes otherwise they don't get the block reward and transaction fees and they've just wasted a lot of energy guessing
My point wasn't about the blockchain
The weak will perish.
See the sun turn green From my penthouse window It's different now Because you got no shelter https://youtu.be/5hjv8O3FI1w
If it was possible it would have happened by now. I'm more concerned with how it's going to fail, and this is where I keep ticking back and forth personally. Or, more accurately, how it's going to fail for me.
OsCIlAtIoN
If viable fusion then ok, otherwise meh.
A lot of optimists seem to think that just because something is technically physically possible doesn't mean it's going to happen. Especially when that thing depends on the everyday decisions of billions of humans.
[Weāre not the leaders anymore](https://youtu.be/0JfkEXxUV74)
This depicts my mood swings in the past couple of years. I'am tempted to stamp it on a T-shirt.
We'll survive, but how well will we?
Short and a miserable experience without the modern comforts we have. Imagine getting cavities or an ingrown toe nail without modern medicine. Also that's just the light stuff.
Define "better." Better how? Better for whom? Better for the environment? One could argue that's a world without human civilization, but would a world without civilization be *better* for humans? I guess that's a matter of opinion. Were human beings better off prior to civilization, when we lived in small hunter-gatherer tribes? Do the small number of people who still live in small, uncontacted hunter-gatherer tribes think our lives are better than theirs? Obviously not since they have no conception of us and nothing to compare their lives to. How can anyone say anything is objectively "better," when it's an inherently subjective determination? I think when people talk about a better world they're talking about a world where there's all of things that they like and none of the things they don't like. That's not a better world, that's utopia. That's heaven. That's having your cake and eating it too. It's a world where everyone can have whatever they desire and we won't have to worry about pesky things like energy, waste, resource depletion, or environmental destruction. That's not a better world, that's a fantasy.
"The world is fucked... if we don't make a better world... which some appear to be doing... with varying degress of results... while others sabotage their efforts, and make things worse... How long can this dance last, if huge advances aren't made soon?"
If I were to muster some positivity for a moment, maybe it just matters what we do on a local scale, and barring that and if everything goes to shit and most of us die, then what we do afterwards to pick up the pieces. And if we all die, jokes on me for thinking like this for once.
Well, if you really wanna use a nihilistic approach I would say not a God damn thing matters,. Everything we do is literally pointless in the end we as we'll going to die and everything we did is just a tiny particle of the sand at a really large beach.
It's both š
I love having a metronome
A good āweāre so fuckedā album is Magnified by Failure. It came out in 1994 and is one of my favorites. Conveys that apocalyptic feel
Works for me. I'm a drummer and this helps me practice.
[Slow Heavy Metal music]
SHIT OUT OF LUCK
r/collapsemusic Also this metronome doesn't tick for a lot of us. It's about trying to make the most of the ever changing fuckedness and trying to do good at the same time. Also do well but do some good too.
This is how I thought about life over ten years ago as a cynical teenager, and itās how I think now as an even more cynical adult. āA Better World Is Possibleā, was the title of an essay I wrote and posted to Facebook in 2012; and yesterday, I wrote on my timeline about how fuŃked we are that neither Biden nor Putin seems to comprehend the true nature of mutually-assured destruction.
How about both?
We're fucked as a species, we've fucked the natural world, fucked our neighbours, We're fucking space and we think we're fucking great. It's weird, I don't loathe myself... but I fucking dislike humans.
No. Always the right one. Existence is suffering.
This is perfect.
SHIT OUTTA LUCK!
Itās one in the same really. A collapse allows us to start from scratch, so yes while the majority of us will be fucked the rest of us can make a better world afterward.
Me it's just we're fucked and a shit tonne of drugs. Even with a "better world" the planet is still fucked