Do you feel sad for people born today?
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I think things will make a turn in about ten years. Yes, climate is very critical, but the kids of today will have a better shot at shaping the world in a time when the last old ideas from the fossil fueled age have finally died.
It's going to get rough, but at least they have a chance of changing it. We never did get a chance, because the boomers were kept alive with improved healthcare. It's the same people who have all the wealth and power today as it was in 1980s.
So maybe Gen-X and millennials will be the next old assholes, but at least they're better educated and their views are much better aligned with younger generations than the old ones. We might finally be able to work together across generations politically in just a few years time. It's much needed, and it's hard work, but I envy the kids who get to be the creators of the post-boomer society.
Every single generation talks about how good it was when they were young. This generation will ultimately be no different. And as a parent, I am doing whatever I can to ensure my kids are happy.
On top of that, you can't miss what you never had. Humans are adaptable and resilient, and kids' imaginations are unstoppable, and my own kids, despite the constant intrusion of digital dopamine, still love to build forts, and play with Lego, and dolls, and just run around being goofballs.
Just gotta hang on.
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Climate change is the only true existential reason to feel that way.
Everything else is just over focusing on a short term dip. On average things are getting better over the long term. The British Empire collapsed, and so will the American one, and the world will keep on turning and progressing.
Hell kids born these days may have legitimate cures for most forms of cancer by the time they're old. We won't.
Oh, only climate change. Well that's alright then. /s
Climate change is going to influence everything in our society for the worse: politics, economics, living standards, everything, including the amount of resources available to use for research.
and the world will keep on turning and progressing.
The world will keep on turning, but there is absolutely no factual basis for claiming it will keep on progressing. If anything that is one thing we can learn from history.
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VERY specific people would have been better off born 20 years ago.
The vast majority of people would be better off today.
You can imagine in another 20 years that would be different, but almost everyone is better off today than they were 20 years ago, and they will be even better 20 years from now than today.
Specific groups may have a harder time in one time period or another, but society at large is getting better at the world scale over the long term. Hope still exists.
But the point is it is not about the situation today, it is about the situation in 20 years, heck just 10 years, of which these people will live into and experience very soon.
but society at large is getting better at the world scale over the long term.
That used to be true, it is no longer true. And it is not a natural law that this will happen, it is just something a lot of people who have lived in the golden period of the 1950s to early 2000s inferred, without actually considering a larger swath of history than that.
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We are not born to die, just as a book does not start to finish
Unfortunately, there are people in situations where they struggle to get much out of life, and I don't think any large society without hierarchy and wealth divide has existed
We are not born to die, just as a book does not start to finish
Both of those things are true though. We are born to die, and a book does start with the intent of it finishing.
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You are born in the very very very best stretch the human race has ever known.
We have solutions for almost every problem which exists today.
Wars are at an historical low point.
Chances are good you've never been even experienced war first hand.
Housing is expensive, yes. But chances are you're reading this on a couch or bed in a home, heated (or cooled), with a working stove, light at night and a fridge with edibles in it. And lets not talk about your immediate almost unrestricted access to all of human knowledge.
That would be unbelievable, impossible even during 99.9% of human history. (Or somewhere near this figure)
You should stop doomscrolling and start reading the real human history.
All of human knowledge at your fingertips. And this is what you chose to distill from it.
Your information is outdated by 5-10 years unfortunately.
Wars are at an historical low point.
Global conflict levels highest since end of Second World War.
We have solutions for almost every problem which exists today.
A very bold claim. We have lots of solutions, but not the will or resources to implement them. Climate change being the primary problem of which we have no real solution.
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Even a cursory search shows the statement to be factual. Pick one
wrote last edited by [email protected]Blatantly incorrect.
New data shows record number of armed conflicts. In fact only the period of WWII saw more armed conflict than we are currently experiencing.
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Still an historical low point. Did you not check a single link I posted?
You don't need to google this shit...
NM, you admitted it.
ALL of that has been going on since WWII, and slowly dialing down. The Ukraine war is such a shock because it's so damned unusual.
I didn't say the world was at peace, but war and death is at an all-time low. Look at the casualties reported in the news today. We're stunned if 100 people get killed in a single attack. There were WWI and WWII battles you've never even heard of where 4,000 men were killed at once.
As to my education: I have 2 years of Advanced European History under my belt and 4 college credits to show for it. Not to pull the age card, but at 54 I've lived a fair bit of modern history. I'm guessing you weren't around when global thermonuclear war was hanging over our head as a day-to-day fact of life?
You posted a google link, so no, noone read it.
I posted a non-google link which factually disproved your claim.
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This is such an odd conversation. I provided many charts, many numbers to look at, and you're still arguing, what exactly?
BTW, Boomers were my parents, and I still have no idea what propaganda you're referring to. If anything, American propaganda has always been about how violent the world is and how we need more defense spending.
Can you name any propaganda where the government has espoused how peaceful the world is?!
You have not provided any charts or numbers. I provided a link to an actual study on the subject disproving your claim.
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What? Are you stupid? Realism with a tinge of optimism in this thread clearly designed to be a crying, woe-is-me circle-jerk? Get with it man! /s
It is not realism though, since it is based on factually incorrect statements.
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I think the whole “wrong generation” thing is a bit of a misconception, at least in terms of culture. Say you really love 60s culture, you can dress like you are in the 60s and listen to all the music from that time - including obscure stuff your local record store wouldn’t have had then but likely do now. Then additionally you can also listen to the odd song for the 70s and 80s if they take your fancy. The 60s are a part of pop culture and you can swim in that stream for as long as you want.
Socially as well, I think people underestimate how much latitude we are given to be individuals in modern society vs even like 30 years ago where social pressures to conform were stronger.
Economically I think there could be some cause for concern for the future but there were really tough economic times in the past too. Stagflation in the late 70s for example is worse than what we are experiencing at the moment. Having a kid could be something people treat like buying a property and waiting for the ideal time to do it; however, property prices are unpredictable and trying to judge it perfectly is like trying to catch a falling knife. The best advice is just to buy a property when you can afford it, and that probably holds true for having a kid too (assuming you want one… that’s another benefit of living in contemporary times!)
You seem to have forgotten climate change, the main problem which we are facing, and which will cause tougher economic times than we have ever experienced before.
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We need more optimism, for sure. But I can't get my head around the idea that the new generation will be better than us.
The 70 years of relative stability has been exchanged by a few dickheads to make as much money over the expense of everyone as possible. Those people mean to keep it that way.
Even if I am being pessimistic, social media has made everything so depressing. We used to believe in continuous progress, we used to be excited about the future.
No, we have to funnel money to that lizard bot so he and his buddies can build their private bunkers because they know what they're doing is fucked up, but the money is too enticing.
Yeah the problem is with all the deregulation on generational wealth and workarounds for rich people to stockpile and keep their money, the offspring of the ruling class will be the same kind of assholes. Look at Sam Altman, he’s not old. Look at mark whateverthefuck. He’s not old. Now, those people didn’t exactly inherent their money, but you can’t tell me these guys won’t be around for the next 40 years fucking shit up. And their kids? And the kids of all the Murdochs, the bush kids, the Koch offspring…there are a lot of shitty families able to reproduce and spread their sickness. This isn’t going to wind down and give us a fresh start. These rich people will be protected by an increasingly violent state and they will all burn it down before they let it change. They’re not weakening over time. They’re amassing even more wealth and the regulations and ideas around capitalism are only getting more virulent and violent. We aren’t about to ride off into the sunset on the backs of a new generation. They are going to be focusing on surviving, more than we ever were.
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Tell it to the young American men who were drafted into the Vietnam War, and were dead 3 months after receiving their notices to report.
That is a very Americentric viewpoint. People are getting killed in wars as we speak, in fact more people are getting killed in wars as we speak than did in the 1960s.
They did not have climate change to worry about though, because they were blissfully unaware of that fact.
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I personally cringe when I hear a friend js having a kid. All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it. Hell id definitely have been better off being born 20 years earlier, but these new kids are REALLY screwed unless they have super rich parents.
"Nothing new under the sun" I suppose!
wrote last edited by [email protected]When the mother bear in bondage at the bile farm kills her own cub and I gotta applaud that poor bitch
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If we dont pass the torch only the rich will. Is that a world we want to fortify? I'd rather not. Someone has to oppose them. Thats our and our children's fight as the world begins to wane.
There will be no rich people if the poor people don't procreate.
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You seem to have forgotten climate change, the main problem which we are facing, and which will cause tougher economic times than we have ever experienced before.
Personally I’d lump that in with the economic problems category. I don’t personally want kids but it wouldn’t deter me if I did.
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I think we are in for a very hard 30-50 years politically and economically speaking.
Current young people are already poorer than their parents, and that's not getting solved. Next generation will be poorer and we will have to factor in a lot of tensions and unsolved problems that I think will derive in violence, a lot of violence. And very heavy societal collapses.
Maybe I'm dramatic, but the other day I thought that's not unlikely that a "western" country will experience a famine in the next 50 years. Many don't produce enough food for themselves by far, the moment they don't have the money or the possibility to buy it from other countries... Starvation it is. And with a growing population getting near the 10 billion humans, a few years of globally bad crops could devastate humankind.
So, yep, I think kids today are in for really hard times.
Yup, the fossil fuel foundation that enabled us to reach 10 billion is going away. Sunshine and puppies won't sustain 10 billion eaters.
The carrying capacity of a renewable energy system is not the same as a system that uses massive amounts of surplus energy coming from the ground.
It's lower. Far far lower. And getting there will be ugly, and your time frame is correct IMO.
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We are not born to die, just as a book does not start to finish
Unfortunately, there are people in situations where they struggle to get much out of life, and I don't think any large society without hierarchy and wealth divide has existed
Maybe I meant "We are born THEN die."
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I have a 6 year old, is that too late?
Woodchipper
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There will be no rich people if the poor people don't procreate.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Thats why Elon has an army of surrogates right?
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and assuming your kids aren’t in a Dhaka slum they’ll be 'ight
you're an optimist.
we're all going to cook, it's just a matter of how long it'll take to catch up to you.
we're gonna cook because some fucks said "I don't care, I want more money."
The science says we might see 4 degrees ultimately. That amounts to more severe weather of all kinds, and means a higher increase in places which will lose snow cover, but it's nothing an AC unit and careful emergency planning can't handle, and it won't necessarily harm agriculture more than it helps it.
