Do you feel sad for people born today?
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I'm old enough and have seen enough to know that I've got it better than a lot of people from the present and past. I can't know for certain what this person has undergone in their 22 years, but because they use Lemmy I can assume they are a relatively stable, middle class person. I may be wrong about that. This person is privileged enough to even be able to type said comment here. To claim they know what a "broken world" looks like is naive in my opinion.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I'm old enough and have seen enough to know that I've got it better than a lot of people from the present and past.
I agree. But I also am old enough and have also seen enough to know I have it a lot worse than a lot of people from the present and past. I have known this at 27, at 22, and at 20. These are actually not contradictory statements.
but because they use Lemmy I can assume they are a relatively stable, middle class person
This is a pretty odd assumption. A middle class person to me would be someone who doesn't struggle to pay rent/bills, and is saving up for a property or is already paying a mortgage without extreme sacrifices. They own property, or in (nowadays) rare circumstances a productive business and at least some of their income thus isn't generated from wage labour.
This is of course a very conservative definition, but let's go with that:
An extremely lavish internet connection of half a gigabit down with no caps or limits here in the UK costs about £30 or less a month and a phone or basic PC costs less than £100 even for both, easily.
The council tax alone, before things like electricity, water exceeds that. My rent is 11 times that and is extremely cheap compared to living in the city, which I can only do because I WFH - a rarity.
A median downpayment on a house costs £75,000 for a 30 years long mortgage, this is approximately twice the median, pre-tax income for full-time employees in the UK of £37,430.
Housing price rises, and even rent/bill/cost of living rises have also outpaced both wage growth and even in many cases inflation. Purchasing power is on the whole - down.
Focusing on the only things that have gotten enormously cheap very much contrary to the general trend - like access to social media, internet and electronics is like looking at a really nice tree when the forest is on fire.
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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.
Word. Just because America is on a downward slide everyone acting like these are the worst times ever. LOL. The people need some history classes.
When I was a kid, cancer was basically a death sentence. AIDS certainly was! Some of the tech I've experienced blows my mind. Wondering if my wife and I had finally caught COVID (we did 🤬), so I busted out the free laboratory kit I got in the mail. That was work for a hospital lab, and you were going to wait a few days. Sliced the side of my finger off, and they grew it back. I could go on forever.
In the movie Armageddon (1998), talking about the age of the space station being 10-years old, "Most of us don't drive cars that old." A 10-yo car was trash, common knowledge. My truck is a 2004 and my wife's car is a 2014. Both run great. And I could go on for ages as to how much safer vehicles are. None of the things we take for granted like ABS, air bags, crumple zones, none of that existed when I was a kid. Hell, some cars didn't have safety glass!
People will next tell me that global warming is a new threat that will kill us all. Friends and neighbors, we already survived an ice age.
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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]Actually kind of jealous, because they will have AI just do healthcare on every single human, and they will have AI teachers and so on.
EDIT: Did I mention fucking UBI?
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I'm old enough and have seen enough to know that I've got it better than a lot of people from the present and past.
I agree. But I also am old enough and have also seen enough to know I have it a lot worse than a lot of people from the present and past. I have known this at 27, at 22, and at 20. These are actually not contradictory statements.
but because they use Lemmy I can assume they are a relatively stable, middle class person
This is a pretty odd assumption. A middle class person to me would be someone who doesn't struggle to pay rent/bills, and is saving up for a property or is already paying a mortgage without extreme sacrifices. They own property, or in (nowadays) rare circumstances a productive business and at least some of their income thus isn't generated from wage labour.
This is of course a very conservative definition, but let's go with that:
An extremely lavish internet connection of half a gigabit down with no caps or limits here in the UK costs about £30 or less a month and a phone or basic PC costs less than £100 even for both, easily.
The council tax alone, before things like electricity, water exceeds that. My rent is 11 times that and is extremely cheap compared to living in the city, which I can only do because I WFH - a rarity.
A median downpayment on a house costs £75,000 for a 30 years long mortgage, this is approximately twice the median, pre-tax income for full-time employees in the UK of £37,430.
Housing price rises, and even rent/bill/cost of living rises have also outpaced both wage growth and even in many cases inflation. Purchasing power is on the whole - down.
Focusing on the only things that have gotten enormously cheap very much contrary to the general trend - like access to social media, internet and electronics is like looking at a really nice tree when the forest is on fire.
Housing prices? That's your argument? That's your bleak outlook? Dude, up until relatively recently you couldn't have a baby without it dying or dying yourself. Common cold? Deceased. There are people alive today who are being murdered because their existence maddens someone and your argument is that your housing costs have gone up.
Get some perspective. Your life isn't that bad.
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Cool I'd rather go to the store and buy one than dumpster dive and spend hours of my time repairing something I can buy in 15m for $50. Hours of my time is far more valuable than the $50 I'd save dumpster diving. Must be nice to have a lot of free time to go dumpster diving to save a few bucks. I might have done that when I was broke in my 20s.
Meh, the dumpsters are within walking distance, and I'd say on average someone out at our apartments throws out a microwave around twice a month or so. As long as the keypad works, the typical issues I tend to find are either a blown fuse or shorted high voltage diode, both way cheaper than even the gas it takes to drive 8 miles to the nearest Walmart. And I usually have suitable parts in my parts bin anyways.
And between two microwaves, there's almost always enough good parts between the two to make one work. It takes me less time to fix most microwaves than it does to even drive to Walmart.
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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?
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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!
Yes I do. I am an anti-natalist because I care about people.
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All ye who enter abandon all hope
Seriously, you people are a bunch of cake eaters. "The future is scary and things are getting worse." It's always been scary, you've just been privileged enough for it not to be.
All I can think of is how bad theyre going to have it.
Bro, people have it bad NOW. Life is and has always been suffering and struggle. Get out of your online bubble and go see some shit. Anyone here who says their life outlook looks bleak would have said the exact same shit 30 years ago or even 100 years ago.
Life is suffering no matter when.
Just read all of Vonnegut's works again. It's weird hearing him outline, from the 1940s onward, the same exact issues we have today. There are easily 300 passages I could quote here and claim as my own commentary on modern life. No one would blink.
“The good Earth - we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.”
"America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor."
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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?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Ukraine war alone reserved the trend.
The only thing that comapres is korean war.
You larping old regime propaganda in earnest jfc
Quit being a boomer and look at the numbers.
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Just read all of Vonnegut's works again. It's weird hearing him outline, from the 1940s onward, the same exact issues we have today. There are easily 300 passages I could quote here and claim as my own commentary on modern life. No one would blink.
“The good Earth - we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.”
"America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor."
Suffering is not new. It's universal. To exist is to suffer. Even if we were to find an infinite source of energy and food, we would find a way to suffer.
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Having a child in 2025 is just plain selfish.
In the throes of the Great Depression, people were making babies.
In WWI and WWII, where thousands of men died every day, people were making babies.
In my time, the threat of planetary nuclear annihilation hung over our heads. I was made.
OP: This is all just so awful!
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And we're fighting this fight by breeding more wageslaves for the capitalists?
I don't mean to be as dramatic as this comes off, but I don't understand this logic. You don't work extra hard when you want to stick it to the rich, you don't work at all, i.e. go on strike. People not having kids would make sense as a strike of sorts.
Okay and how does people having children automatically force them into wage slavery? Its not a forgone conclusion by any means. Your kid could be the kid who picks up the pieces of capitalism and forges it into an equitable society. We just don't know. So why give in? Why give up on these children before they've truly had their chance? As I said in another comment, you might not have them but children will continue to be born regardless. Might as well foster some hope and kindness. Like Gandalf said, do the little things that keep the darkness at bay.
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Okay? I fail to see the relevance of your comment then. Its about how we feel of the children born today. Not how you feel about having children. The children dont have to be your's. They're going to be born whether you approve or not. Giving them a reason to have hope is still a choice you can make.
Obviously my answer to OP's question is "Yes". Now can we have a conversation with more nuance?
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Yup. Between climate collapse, wealth shift to the ultra wealthy, and the global surge in popularity of right wing extremist authoritarianism, I don't see things improving any time soon.
Things are rapidly degrading, and intentionally dropping a child into the dumpster fire we're turning our planet into is an act of cruelty and selfishness that few others measure up to.
Having a vasectomy was probably the best decision I've made - not for my sake, but the kid's and any even less fortunate grandkids and so on.
My own parents have finally fucked off a bit about when their grandchildren are coming, and lecturing me on how I'm cheating myself out of life's greatest joy or some shit... I think current events have finally become so glaringly bad that even they can't ignore it, but reminding them constantly about how unfair that would be for the kid was so fucking tiring.
wealth shift to the ultra wealthy
What in the world do you think the Great Depression was?!
extremist authoritarianism
WWII and the Soviet Union?
Climate change isn't even a unique issue. Humans already survived an ice age, with nothing more than stone age tools.
And I'll remind you, people were making babies all along.
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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!
Mix of sad and angry. I see these broodmares popping out kids and I think of the movie Idiocracy because all of the more thoughtful people I know limited how many kids they had while the people having litters of kids all seem to be short-sighted selfish assholes. The thoughtful folks worry about saving college funds for the kids. The selfish ones don't. They don't have any plans, they are too busy making babies -- and those kids are going to be predisposed to be the same way which will make matters worse for the handful of kids raised by thoughtful parents.
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I'm sorry, but you are wildly naive. You've seen 22 years of this planet. You have no idea how good you and your potential offspring actually have it.
Age has nothing to do with how one is naive. Humanity will survive the climat crisis. That is sure...but at what cost...and that is what scares me
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The difference (sans 9/11 which isn't really comparable) is that all of those were actively worked on and ultimately solved.
We banned CFCs and fixed the Ozone layer.
We have done nuclear reduction treaties with USSR/US and later Russia/US, even under Putin.
We had prevention, medical and otherwise for HIV, and then effective treatment where having HIV is honestly not even that big a deal anymore.
We've created and improved upon much better seismic measurement methodology and equipment.People likewise thought the world would end in 2012 but through science and reason we have evolved past such superstitions.
Now let's compare to now:
What has been done about climate change? In the grand scheme - nothing. Renewables are all well and good, but most of the emissions are offset with carbon credits that mean absolutely nothing. Recycling is literally just a lie 99% of the time.
The risk of nuclear confrontation has actually increased, not decreased, since ~2012, between NK, collapsing USA, collapsing fascist Russia, increased standoffs between India and Pakistan, China's increasing militancy, increase in war just generally whether it's Palestine/Israel escalating (yes I'm aware it's been going on forever) or Ethiopia/Eritrea.
At least in my opinion, the bitter rivalry of the Cold war was actually significantly safer than the geopolitical farce we live, which i'd pinpoint as sometime around when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize.
We have the US as world police but the best they could do is give the Taliban some of their gear and get a lot of their own and others killed for it when they weren't busy crashing the world economy and electing fascists with global ambitions for shits and giggles.
Wow what a Belle Époque, Metternich himself would be proud. (/s of course)
We have widespread vaccine mistrust/hesitancy, which puts vulnerable people at risk, not to mention broadly reactionary, outright fascist/nationalist and anti-science, anti-reason and/or anti-intellectual currents among both the elite and powerful strata in society who pretty openly seek to undo the very solutions and improvements we have had over the last 40 odd years and the general population who not only not opposed them, but seem to find these ideas appealing, whether it's intersectional tolerance or workers' rights or people's general freedoms.
On top of all that, we are currently on course for a dictatorship of the rich, and while our conditions in terms of technology and science are nowhere near, our social attitudes seem downright feudal, if not worse when you consider the absurdity of the fact that most of the problems could literally be solved tomorrow (e.g. more empty houses in the UK than homeless people) but simply aren't for no actual legitimate reason whatsoever, and the world not only seems to not have any corrections lined up for this trajectory, but seems to be actively accelerating towards it.
So many times I've tried to ignore the world and tell myself in the grand scheme of things this must just be the darkest moment before the sunset, but it keeps getting darker and darker, and only faster and faster.
And to get ahead of the usual thought terminating cliches of "doomscrolling" and "go outside" in comments in threads like this - My life personally, world notwithstanding, is actually pretty great, I've been enormously lucky compared to many I know IRL, I'm happy on the whole, but it doesn't make the world around me any less hopeless and depressing or change the facts on which I base that opinion.
If anything, the use of those same cliches just proves this point further - because effectively it's no different than the "if I don't look, maybe it'll go away" from that Twilight Zone episode, and all other excuses like "we weren't meant to process this much information" that people use to kill the curiousity they have about the world within their very soul to protect their fragile selves from the absurdity of the hell we seem to inhabit at the moment, only reinforce further that the observation of the world today as bleak definitely has merit.
Renewables have actually been making enormous progress, at least wind and photovoltaic (which is by far the cheapest source of new large scale energy production). I assume that’s why our current dear leader is going so far out of his way to stifle them as much as possible. He’s just following the Project 2025 playbook from the Heritage Foundation, which seeks to preserve the failing US hegemony that is dependent on the petrodollar as the world reserve currency.
But I think you’re right about everything else, including how great my life is right now personally. I just see us on the precipice of doom, like Wile E. Coyote having not yet realized he has run off the cliff’s edge. I understand that it’s hard for a lot of people to project into the future and accept the doom. That requires both a broad understanding that most don’t possess and the nerve to look into the void.
I recently reached more peaceful acceptance about our impending climate and societal collapse after I read Cadillac Desert and realized that even without climate change our water needs are unsustainable and we’re heading for an agricultural collapse.
In the mean time I’m trying to participate in activities that I love and help my children to find activities they love. Might as well get some good times in.
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Age has nothing to do with how one is naive. Humanity will survive the climat crisis. That is sure...but at what cost...and that is what scares me
wrote last edited by [email protected]I can agree with you on all of that. In this instance my argument is that it's always been scary. We hide behind a false sense of security. It's always been this scary. It will always be this scary. We were born to die. Humankind is just like a human life. At one point, whether we like it or not, it will all end.
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IMO climate change is kind of a different beast than hardships from the past.
This mostly but also a lot of that support that's available today is being stripped away.
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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!
Gf and I talk about this a lot. Both want kids but I don't know how to feel about this world anymore. I come from generational wealth so could just buy the kids houses but I feel like it's still going to be super shitty overall
