Is Civilization Collapsing?

[SerethiaFalcon]

Being negative, without offering reasonable solutions, does nothing for the world.

[MythOfProgress]

Mythofprogress, you've disagreed or at least refused to agree with every single point he brought up.

any of the points that i didn't mention, i already agreed with and didn't see much of a point to criticizing.

any of the ones i found questionable(as in, there isn't a good source of information for this or reputable studies to back up what their saying as far as i've looked)-i asked what their source was.

the ones i disagreed with, have evidence and/or explanations as to why this isn't the case and so me having a position on this is the same as me having a position on the temperature or the weather, the facts pretty much speak for themselves. if they aren't willing to engage with the facts or reconcile them into their views, there's not much i can say besides engaging with it on good faith and hope they are willing to listen as opposed to settling for theoretical concepts that aren't grounded in reality.

You seem to believe that things are getting worse in every way, which is just as unlikely as a belief system that says everything is getting better. Do you acknowledge that your own way of thinking is biased?

without any basis for it, sure, there's definitely some bias to be had in catastrophizing everything- but i'm literally pointing out the signs(giving links and evidence to the best of my ability) and being mostly rational in the way i approach my arguments and yet- im getting smoke as certain folk keep re-contextualizing these events and processes as "everything is fine, we're just going through some turbulence".

[MythOfProgress]

Exactly. Who are you expecting to fix your misery for you? Me? Society?

not talking about me, about society in general. i'm not surprised that i guessed right, this whole hyper-individualistic, capitalist thinking is one of the major problems in our society and contributor to the mental health crisis we have, when people focus on themselves and themselves solely- we will have a bunch of folks with the philosophy of "i got mine, f*ck everyone else" as they try to reach for success, stepping on anyone else they deem unimportant because that's just the name of the game.

IMO unless one can fix their own life they shouldn't have a saying how a civilization should be arranged. Start small, things will be more approachable.

continuing on from my original point, for anyone who does have that success- they will almost always rig the game in their favor as a logical extension of the individualistic, neo-liberal thinking i've mentioned earlier, this opens the door for taking advantage of lower-class folk and taking profits for themselves, evading taxes in anyway they can and lobbying certain laws into existence so they won't be as held accountable. you cannot "fix" your life if you are being cheated and unfairly disadvantaged as result of conditions you can't change(race,sex, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, disability, etc). if you really want there to be a true meritocracy, then you won't pretend as if there aren't differences between certain folk and hold them accountable while lifting up our most vulnerable.

Non-ironically: clean your room.

i also wouldn't be surprised if you listen to Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro.

Civilization isn't collapsing, your view of it is... fix it if you can.

If you say so.

've shared the indexes so that you can see that while some are in misery, some are thriving; most are average. For someone with an average g-factor living in a developed world this is certainly a choice, although a long-term one.

struggling is the norm, got it. and f*ck everyone else in the developing countries, got that too.

[MythOfProgress]

Being negative, without offering reasonable solutions, does nothing for the world.

Being positive(even when there is no reason to be), while offering bad solutions, is far worse in the long-run of things.

[Nero]

Being negative, without offering reasonable solutions, does nothing for the world.

Being positive(even when there is no reason to be), while offering bad solutions, is far worse in the long-run of things.

Actually neither does anything for the world, as a bad solution is not a solution. Come on man basic logic.

[Nero]

without any basis for it, sure, there's definitely some bias to be had in catastrophizing everything- but i'm literally pointing out the signs(giving links and evidence to the best of my ability) and being mostly rational in the way i approach my arguments and yet- im getting smoke as certain folk keep re-contextualizing these events and processes as "everything is fine, we're just going through some turbulence".

Because you are catastrophizing everything. Nothing that exists today effects the majority of the human population in the way that things like an actual world war or smallpox or Spanish Flu or the fucking Black Death. You have literally 0 concept of human history and can only see things in a binary black and white manner where up until now things were fine and now everything is irreversibly ruined even though compared to effectively all of human history this is the best time to live on average.

[Lorem Ipsum]

Can you move the discussion here to https://futuretimeline.net/forum/viewto ... f=5&t=2567 ?

[SerethiaFalcon]

-Removed post-
The discussion was resolved on my end.

[MythOfProgress]

While pessimism is good in some respects and you need both pessimists and optimists, in my own experience, those that are the loudest complainers in my life (as an example), never bring any solutions to the problems they complain about. I lose respect for them because they use their voice only to complain, but don't follow it with any actions in their real life when there are quite simple solutions in some cases. Even where the case is not simple, there are still actions to be taken. If all that energy that goes into complaining could be used for brainstorming solutions and ways to change the world, there would be a lot more progress being made.

you'll find that under the side of most pessimists, they'll almost always be disappointed idealists who tried to do things the "right way", that means voting for your representatives, joining protests and being activists, cleaning the garbage left in beaches and streets, advocating for green energy such and such.

for every person that tries to "solve" the problem, there is someone else that profits off that problem not being solved, as well as added caveats that complicate the whole situation when it comes to certain solutions. if the cure is worse than the poison, do we take it or no? our ability for action is limited, for we are one in a sea of millions(if not billions) that are aware of the issue, but would rather not do anything about because(quite frankly) it's too difficult and harrowing to think about and so people are free to just deny,rage,bargain the reality, which is that we live in an emergent system of civilization- where there isn't really anyone in control and we just have people making their best plays based on the deck of cards they have.

ironically, Kurzgesagt has a pretty good video on this that explains the nature of this in action.

don't get me wrong, i'm all for community-based solutions, going for low-tech or political solutions that understand we can't fix things technologically, they aren't as subject to the magical thinking, con artistry, or get-rich quick schemes that i've witnessed and observed in some of the climate change fighting projects/technologies i've heard of, but it's not the mainstream thought. you take a good look at the media and news and they will almost always encourage the system of neoliberal thought, trying to get rich or promoting fantasies that our civilization is sustainable and can last for as long as we want it to.

that being said, i'm not really a fan of the centrist notion of "both sides are wrong/right", it's possible for someone to be actually correct(or as close as can be) and for the other person to be wrong. i'm sorry to hear the people in your life haven't done much in terms of solving problems, but generalizing that to everyone else isn't really something i'd suggest.

2. Anytime people talk about these kinds of things, I always think that this makes it so suicide is actually a virtue. Because killing oneself is better than the burden their humanity places on Earth. Since everything is hopeless, there would be no point in living. That's what I mean. If you kill any kind of hope, while a pessimist might be able to survive, most others would not. It is why humans have irrational hope sometimes. It helps them survive. I mean, if one wants humanity to commit mass suicide then have at it. But, I think that kind of subverts the original message.

i'm not here to encourage it, nor am i to glorify it, but it is an option people can/will take when their lives become unbearable.

when the present life you have is mostly suffering, with your future prospects slowly withering before your eyes as the reality sets in that this pain you are experiencing(be it physical, emotional, mental, economic) will be constant and consistent throughout the remainder of your life(provided there aren't any adequate ways of alleviating, managing and coping with it), would you want to stick around for this? do you want someone to be in suffering just for the comfort of others and the fact that it makes some people uncomfortable?

not talking about it, is tantamount to not talking about the big ass elephant in the room that's right next to us- not talking about things through the framework of existential despair will make some people feel as if they are alone in what they are observing and feeling in regards to current events,

that being said, i'm not gonna push aside the risk of contagion when it comes to talking about matters like these, people will definitely be depressed, angry and sullen about having to hear about how things aren't as hopeful as we expected, but do you want them to be caught off-guard with a pikachu face as certain events and processes take hold in our society and they begin to realize things aren't as nice and dandy as they seem on the surface? i'm doing a cost-benefit analysis, and the benefit is greater than the cost.

Besides, humanity has already passed through some population bottlenecks in our deep past. There is no reason to think some might survive, and if not, well then, some other form of life will survive.

like the video and article mention, our society is radically different to what it was in the past, a collapse back then meant a society dying, withering away or transforming into something else but without any affect on other civilizations, today we are globally interconnected and rely on various supply chains for survival, we've centralized most of our important operations(whether it be food, water, oil or other resources) and source it to other countries, if they are affected, so are we.

if America catches a cold, the entire world gets sick just on the fact alone that we make up a significant portion in the global economy(not that this is a support for the idea of American Exceptionalism or euro-centric ideals). our biosphere is dying, and we have an inability to acknowledge this as what it is, the greatest engineered mass extinction of our time/

we've been able to artifically inflate our carrying capacity and population levels through the use of artificial fertilizers and fossil fuels in industrial agriculture, but haven't adjusted ourselves accordingly and eventually we'll encounter a period of starvation/famine once we run out of one or both of the aforementioned tools we've used.

combining this with our rapidly changing climate that heads for temperatures that are unsuitable for most forms of life does not bode well for our case. the idea that some other form of life will persist is true, jellyfish and any extremophile creatures may be able to persist in light of the climate collapse, but any idea that intelligent form of life will evolve is questionable, we(as humans, primates) evolved on timescales that are extremely long(ranging in the billions) and by the time our climate stabilizes from the hothouse earth period or becomes once again suitable for life, it will most likely be affected by the sun, which would be a little brighter in the first billion or so years but the brightness(more precisely the heat energy that's generated) is enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect and become a planet not unlike Venus.

any hydrocarbons we've already released probably wouldn't compare to this, but we've taken most of the cheap and easy oil that any potential civilizations that come after us will not have the same access to energy that we do.

go a further 2 billion or so years, the brightness will be turned up even more and heat energy increases thereby boiling most if not all of the water on earth and turning it to another hot, dry planet as the conditions for life are eliminated.

by the time we reach 5 billion years, the sun will have been approaching or entered its red giant phase, most likely roasting the earth if not engulfing it in its entirety. anything else, i leave up to the astronomers.

All we are hyperventilating about is that human civilization will not be able to survive...it's still all about humans. Which is fine, it's just that, it's not like the entire universe is ending or something. Life will continue somewhere else most likely at some point. No one will be around to care about what humans did in their tiny lifetimes anyway. So, for now, I mean, the pessimism doesn't match the scale of us as lifeforms, measly dots on a tiny planet in a tiny solar system in one of millions of galaxies. If our existence is an experiment, in a sense, then, if we fail, oh well. It is what it is.

this is nice and all, but this is all said from the comfort and safety of our homes, when you are experiencing tragedy, loss, pain in their full force you're not gonna be concerned with how vast the universe is, you'll be concerned with the suffering and asking the inevitable question, why me? not gonna turn down the notion that some form of alien life might exist out there, but it's so far-removed and distant from affecting me or my immediate surroundings that i don't care about that as much as i would my own environment and other species on the planet.

One of my memories that I always go back to is the kind of "vision" I had as a child, touching the mud walls of huts that were modeling how some of the tribes once lived in Kenya, and remembering some of the literature/stories. Then, seeing in my mind's eye, a crackling fire with that charcoaly dust smell that instantly takes me back there. An elder, mzee, is speaking to children and they are sitting enraptured by his tales of long ago stories passed down from generation to generation. The children's faces are so expressive as he takes them on journeys in the mind of places and experiences they have yet to see or know. After the stories are finished and the children have long since gone to bed, I look up in wonder at the night sky, how brilliant and full of stars the sky is. And, I think about the human experience and am enchanted by the feeling of an ancient place, one that takes us back to the beginning of humans on Earth. I have seen the struggles, experienced some of them myself, and yet, there is a joy to existence even in the bleakest of fates, sometimes, when one least expects to experience joy. It is not to deny humanity's shadowed pasts and behaviors needing to be changed or the wildness and unpredictability of nature, but rather, it walks hand in hand with simple laughter and human joys. That to me is the human experience. It is neither bad nor good, it just is.

it's a beautiful memory, thanks for sharing.

[MythOfProgress]

Can you move the discussion here to https://futuretimeline.net/forum/viewto ... f=5&t=2567 ?

???
did you mean to refer to another topic?