With climate change, COVID, and war no longer on the horizon but at our front doors do you all also feel like you're living through the start of the end? I'm immunocompromised I can't go out even in small social circles, weather is insane, and everyone that is near the center is a war hawk. I feel like I'm screaming into the void but honestly I'm just scared and want to know I'm not alone in this feeling
Technically it started a decade or two ago, and we’re just beginning to see the effects. It’s so long a process, that the “end of the world,” might simply be the (traumatic, terrifying, ugly) rebirth of a new style of living. It’s fair to be scared, but the feeling of spinning your wheels and screaming into the void is what can turn rational fear into a deeper darker emotion.
Given the context, it’s obviously irresponsible to say that praxis and human interaction is the cure all, it wouldn’t be even if there wasn’t Covid. Nevertheless, it’s undeniable that nobody will make it through the coming polycrisis alone/isolated, and building community can take the edge off of climate-related doom. See if a local FNB, SRA, or any communist parties are doing coordinated disaster relief, and see if there’s work that can be done while still staying safe.
Solidarity comrade, its hard looking at, for example, Sacramento and not getting a little doomer. The important thing is to keep on, keep at life, and to persevere till the end of capitalism
You're not alone. I'm also immunocompromised, at home, and watching horrific events occur at a greater frequency every day. I feel like there's no future. Not just for me and you (being immunocompromised), but for everyone and they just don't quite notice yet.
Don't be told what you want to want to
And don't be told what you want to need
There's no future, no future
No future for you
If you understand that there is no known methodology or process, real OR theoretical, to sustainably reverse the accelerating accumulation of greenhouse games in our atmosphere, and in light of the fact that there is a 10-20 year lag between emission of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and the subsequent effect; we are completely boned.
The easiest metaphor I've heard was something like imagine if you put a blanket on, but it took hours for you to feel warmer. By the time you realized it was too hot, you now have 10 blankets on you. But you're just now feeling the effect of the first two blankets. And in this metaphor; there is no way to take any blankets off.
Idk where i heard it, but in regards to Climate Change someone said something like, "the Apocalypse already happened it just hasn't reached you yet." I feel like that also applies to fascism. We've been letting our governments and their financial backers run rampant across the globe, enslaving the Third world. And now that they've largely squeezed all the blood out that rock that they can, in the end of the USSR, they've begun looking back inward on the first world. Covid probably couldn't have come at a worse time, seemed like people were just starting to wake up.
eh, in the 1910s people were dealing with WW1 and the Spanish Flu, both a lot worse than today's situation. climate might fuck us though
why's that creature been rotated? guess my implication wasn't super clear - previous revolutionary waves came out of dire conditions where it seemed as if the world was ending. I'm scared too, but there's still hope
I mean, I'm bri'sh (and a trans woman lol), get where you're coming from but I still think your average anglo is capable of becoming human eventually. in a way I guess I've got no choice but to believe we can do better, since I tried giving up for a while already and it's not like it made anything better
Yeah, but I've also felt this way for a long time. It does seem extra fucked now. Less than 10 years ago you would be thrown into the climate sensationalist category and today extinction is in the mainstream news. We knew this was happening, and they pulled the usual tricks to maintain the status quo for an extra decade or two.
We seek the end of the current world order. We want revolution, presumably, which means the end of the (previous) world. I long for the end of the world. The way things were going could never last, we wasted too much, dumped too much, exploited too many, etc - and by "we" I mean collectively and the choice wasn't even ours but a few thousand key members of the ruling class, the only political actors in this current world.
Now, if you mean, like, the "end of the world" where nothing comes after and its just stretches of wilderness and quickly-decaying ruins of civilization - I don't think that's terribly likely, of course not zero because we still have the US nuclear stockpile. If you mean "the end of the world" where there is a reduction of the standards of living and the barbarism end of socialism or barbarism, that could happen. Climate change might mean no more agriculture, especially if there's nothing done and some tipping points are reached. There's still time to mitigate the worst and take action and even if we don't, it is fairly far off - not saying you won't be affected, there will be heat waves that kill seniors regularly in the west around the 2060s nevermind secondary effects like climate refugees or conflicts inducing fascistic reaction.
And of course, the world needn't end for your world to end. Not saying death, but you've already pointed out some stuff that changed like not being able to participate publicly in society because of the mishandling of a pandemic for 3+ years. Or people losing their jobs and homes and just never being able to claw back out of the reserve army of labor. And, yes, that's here just not distributed. The world has ended for quite a few people. I'm Metis and Dene, for the Dene people our world ended a while ago. For the Metis, we're the disinherited and never really had a world. And that's now coming for the sons and daughters of the settlers in the new world.
hell no nothing ain't shit till the capitalists are on the :gui-better:
Yes and no.
The world you grew up with or was told existed before or during your childhood will never exist and may never have existed in the first place.
The opportunities and futures implicit and explicit in those worlds cannot be achieved.
But there’s not gonna be like a game over screen or a moment of recognition that the thread of prophecy is cut.
We will not experience a moment where everyone stops playing their parts and solos atonally at once, but a gradual change over the course of decades.
Our priorities will shift and our expectations will too. We will persist in the doomed world because we are not doomed.
What has been lost is the possibility of using fossil fuels as a springboard to a future free from want. People lived before that idea and will afterwards.
The end of the world "as we know it?" Sure, but that ends all the time.
The end of complex human civilization? Possible. I feel that this is the endpoint of our current trajectory.
The end of humans as a living species? Possible, but unlikely.
The end of Earth's biosphere's ability to support life? Highly unlikely.
The end of Earth’s biosphere’s ability to support life? Highly unlikely.
Worth considering what "life" means in this context, considering how many species are going extinct as a direct result of human intervention, whatever life remains on this planet will certainly be a fraction of what exists today.
Sure hundreds of millions of years in the future evolution will once again flourish but that is not really comforting, we don't know the kinds of feedback loops we may trigger that can impede evolution in the future imo.
Then if we consider arbitrary amounts of time into the future then may as well consider the fact the sun will eventually die as well.
You know what's kind of sad is that there's only 0.9 billion years left of a habitable Earth for complex life forms. Not because that's when the Earth gets engulfed by the Sun (that happens much later) but the luminosity of the sun will push us out of the habitable range.
Animals started 900 million years ago, so I guess there can be a rebuilding in that time but... I dunno. Complex animal life isn't what evolution maximizes for, it was probably a few weird accidents that led to terrestrial animal life that forms society and creates technology and starts the Marxist primitive accumulation of capital. Evolution is slow and seems to prefer plants and bacteria going by biomass or number of genes in use by life. So... we might just be it for the future history of Earth, and perhaps in the entire galaxy depending on how rare terrestrial society forming animals are.
Yeah? So we're eventually going to "lose", who's even keeping score? Everything ends eventually.
What we're here for is to bring some comfort and dignity to humanity, and if none of that exists we create it. Wether we're doing it in a healing world or a world five minutes from collapse, the goal remains the same.
Yeah of course. It's just a pity, like any loss. Like if/when the vaquita dolphin goes extinct it'll still be sad, that's all I'm saying. It'll be nice that I won't be around to actually feel sad about it I guess lol.
I don't know who said it originally, but contrary to popular opinion... pacifists are the angriest people on the face of the Earth. They've seen the cruelty woven into human society and reject it out of sheer disgust. At first I didn't get the idea, but seeing how the global ecosystem is disintegrating out of sheer apathy on the part of a powerful few people...
yes, I understand that anger.
i feel we are where we were in January 1923.
Things will get worse, but society will adapt to show both great movements of progress and some level of unprecedented human horror will also show itself.
Unfortunately the world won’t just end. The techno security state will make life harder, but somewhere this century a breakthrough will happen for the people. I just don’t have any guesses as to how or where.
Harry Truman, Doris Day
Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific
Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggiothe other night I dreamt of knives
continental drift divinde
mountains sit in a line
LEONARD BERSTIEN
It could be. I definitely get the vibe things will get worse and worse and the majority of the people around us are going to continue to be perpetually befuddled even if we lay out why over and over to them. Basically gave up trying to talk to people about politics and ethics and all that. I used to and I'd think maybe I'm making progress but I'm not, they forget all of it and are just "listening" because they view it as daily small talk. to pass the time. No one's invested in anything, they want the media to do it for them. As bad as the material conditions are, it wouldn't be so bad if people had communist consciousness and spirit, doing everything we can for each other and making up for tge problems of life but being trapped on a polluted, dying planet with selfish husks isn't appealing at all and not worth living in.
Depends what you mean by "the world" and "end".
If you mean an apocalyptic final punctuation to end humanity. No.
If you mean we're seeing points of frightening rupture, and it's unclear what will emerge or if things will get better. Yes.
Edit: in other words, it's not too late imo. If we can organize we can mitigate the worst of it and eventually, beyond our lifetimes probably, move towards communism.
