"Karashta, you don't want kids? You'd make a great dad."
I've been asked this several times by close friends since my early 20s. My response has always been about what I feel is the irresponsibility of bringing a child I will desperately love into a world that I've seen crumbling around me since my teens.
People called me stupid for believing in things like the oncoming ecological and societal collapses, despite me trying to show them what I'd seen and read.
Somehow, "I told you so," doesn't, in any way, make me feel better about the situation.
My mom is desperate for grandchildren and she is so upset that our branch of the family will end with me. I'm not ever having a child or adopting. Shit is way too fucked for that and is only getting worse. I'm 26, and I fully expect to see society as we know it collapse within my lifetime. My hope is that humanity falling due to its own hubris will allow the planet to finally heal.
Most of the apocalyptic things people imagine are not supported by science at this point, and those that are possible can still be averted. But I also think that our children will find a way to adapt despite our problems. Will it be easy? No, but life is not easy even without the climate going haywire, and we find a way to live anyway. Our descendants will do the same.
There's been a documented decline of about 70% in animal populations, the amount of weather and climate related destruction has demonstrably increased, there's traces of plastic and forever chemicals almost literally all over, Australia was on fire for half a year, wildfires are increasing in frequency in the western US, hurricanes are coming with increasing frequency and intensity from the gulf up the Atlantic.
There's also the fires that tore across Greece, the tornadoes forming in states in the US that have seemingly never had them before, the massive loss of ice from Arctic and Antarctic areas of the world.
This is just a small smattering of the things I remember from recently.
I'm not saying that next year everything is going to immediately collapse. But I can see the stability of the ecosphere dissolving in front of me and there are quite a few nations that seem like they are leaning towards collapse if history is any judge of things.
Market Capitalism requires infinite growth/metastasis on a finite world of finite resources. Its very nature is as impossible as one pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
IF humanity cared about its own future, it doesn't btw, we'd be focused on shrinking humanity's footprint significantly over the next few generations to find homeostasis/equilibrium with this world, the only world we will ever encounter as a species that is naturally hospitable to us.
But that's a non starter. Not only will we not do that, but we will refuse to so much as temper our reckless growth/metastasis, even in the face of oblivion.
It's darkly hilarious how many unwashed peasants, losers of this rigged global economy, still RAGE against the concept of an economy that focuses on having everyone's basic needs met sustainably, because there would be no room for the super yachts and private jets they would never be allowed aboard anyway under such an economy.
We're literally gambling with our own extinction, and losing, in the name of "but someday I might be rich. And then people like me better watch their step!" It's the height of pathetic.
I largely agree with you but I also think advocates of radical change like this need to create a working model of what this actually looks like and implement it somewhere before people will trust that these ideas can help them. Obviously this is very difficult within the context of modern society but I don’t think it’s surprising that most people are wary of radical political and economic change.
I don’t think people are as worried about one day being rich as they are about utopian charlatans wrecking the economy and dropping them into poverty. There is a lot of propaganda that works to heighten this fear as well.
I hear you, but It's impossible to create a working model. The US literally toppled South American governments to make its resource markets open to our market capitalists. Look what we've inflicted on Cuba for half a century, and I look to their survival in the face of it as inspirational.
The global market capitalists endeavor to exploit and enshittify every national economy that dares to serve its citizens over private shareholders at every turn, to dehumanize societies for profit.
You may be right, that if all we can do is make claims in our appeal for radical action, the market capitalists will maintain power. To that I say, that is probably what will happen. This isn't a fairy tale or a movie where everything will work out in the end, the trajectory we're on leads to hell for our species, and we will in all likelihood arrive to that hell. If we're too comfortable or too afraid to do otherwise in spite of the evidence and increasingly our experience of the consequences, this only ends one way.
Market capitalism has been tested, run its course, and imho, it takes a fool not to declare it a complete failure and danger to the species. But I'm just a random perceptive asshole, so that doesn't change anything.
advocates of radical change like this need to create a working model of what this actually looks like and implement it somewhere before people will trust that these ideas can help them
Thank you, sometimes I feel like the only person who thinks like this and it's refreshing to be reminded I'm not.
Similarly, I don't understand the human obsession with constantly increasing the world population... as if that isn't inherently a bad thing. Isn't it obvious a finite pizza of fixed size cut into more slices means less pizza per person?
Will it be hell? Yeah. But every 0.1 degrees we prevent will help. We can't stop fighting because we are not the only people suffering. There are way way way more people that are terrified and are fighting really damn hard. We should never abandon those people. Then we are just bending over to the big polluting corporations.
Every 0.1 degrees can save so many damn lives.
Humanity WILL survive. Most of is in the west will. Giving up and letting the people in the worst parts of the world rot and burn is not something we should do.
Sorry but i really fucking hate the doomer comments here about giving up.
Yep. Have fun while you can. I mean I'm going to still do what I can do, vote for the right people but... At this point... It's like we are a person still diligently showing up to all his chemotherapy appointments despite the fact he's resigned to it not working in the end.